When Mychael didn’t respond, I thought I’d just cut to the chase. I had a knot in my stomach, but I went for casual and leaned back in the chair, tipping the front legs off of the floor. “Since I was there, I know what happened. I won’t even pretend to understand any of it, but-”

“More demons have been spotted across the city,” Mychael said quietly.

I swore. “Blue and naked?”

“The very same.”

“Any more purple ones?”

“No Volghuls-not yet.” His tone indicated that he didn’t expect that good fortune to last for long. His lips curved up in a tired grin. “I hear you made quite an impression in the Quad.”

I snorted. “At what? Finding a wine bottle?”

Mychael’s blue eyes gleamed. “Vegard came right out and called you magnificent; he said you didn’t give one inch of ground to that monster.”

“I didn’t know it was an advance guard to a freaking horde of demons.”

He chuckled. “It wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. If you’d known, you wouldn’t have budged out of sheer stubbornness.” In a blink of an eye, his good humor was gone. “There have been five Dagik sightings in the past two hours.”

“Dagik?”

“A species of demon. The blue ones,” he clarified.

“Oh. There’s probably more than five; they’re cloaking. We had over two dozen in that street with us, and they were cloaked until I hit one of them in the head with a brick.”

I got the treat of seeing Mychael momentarily speechless. “You hit a Dagik in the head with a brick?”

“It wasn’t an entire brick, just a chunk. And it wasn’t like I had a choice. I couldn’t get Vegard or Phaelan to believe I saw anything, so I figured pain would make the thing drop its cloak.” I tried a grin, though I didn’t find anything funny about what had happened in that street. “Turns out I was right. Then Vegard gave the rest of them a dirt bath. Then everyone could see them.”