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infected and sick in the city. “Where?”
    “Downtown when I was picking up the supplies I’d need. It wasn’t as focused.” He squinted at the empty container. “And without the dowsing rod, I didn’t get this clear of a reading. But I’m fairly sure this is the same magic. It feels the same.”
    “Where, exactly?” Because I was ready to track down whoever was behind this.
    “The cops were trying to arrest some human.” Papa Finn pulled his gaze from the bottle and focused on me. “He was… rabid. Feral. He attacked some random schmuck, and it took three cops to pull him off. He managed to break free and the last time I saw him, he was running off down the street. I didn’t think it was my business to chase him down and I was too focused on Bry.”
    I didn’t blame Papa Finn for not getting involved. Standard operating procedure was for humans to deal with humans and I deal with everything else. Humans had their laws, and I had mine. Mine were a little more painful and occasionally permanent, but the job got done.
    Papa Finn gave me the address, and I quirked a brow at him. “Hanging around near the Little Red House?”
    He refused to look at me and I decided it was something we’d chat about later. The Little Red House wasn’t strange per se, an adorable bed and breakfast that clung to its historical charm. The owner, however… Well, in a past life, she wore a little red riding hood and it wasn’t a huntsman or a wolf that took out her grandma. Apparently, goody-goody Papa Finn liked him some naughty of the occasionally homicidal kind.
    I had what I needed and I moved to stride around the house, already calling on my wolf to take a quick jog across town, but a familiar cry drew me back inside. I vaulted down the hallway, anxious to get to him. He was exactly where he’d been left, encircled by protective charms left by the elf.
    He flailed, little arms jerking this way and that as if he resisted an invisible attacker.
    “What’s that?” Jezze stepped around me, arm outstretched and finger pointing at one of those chubby arms.
    I carefully knelt at his side, brushing his sweat dampened hair off his forehead while I reached for his left arm. And when I saw what stained his white skin on the underside of his forearm, I nearly brought down a raining storm of fire on the house.
    It bubbled inside me, anxious to get free, to destroy and maim and hurt whoever did this to my son.
    A rune, long forgotten and never recorded, appeared to be burned into his flesh.
    Dark. Evil. Black magic.
    And it came straight from hell. Its presence teased that side of me, the demon that wanted to come out and play with the pretty, pretty picture. It called to my hell-ish nature and…
    Scorched Earth was sounding real fucking good. I just needed to kill something and I didn’t even have any dems on hand to tangle with. I rolled to my feet and carefully made my way outside Momma R’s house. Bry was peaceful again and I wasn’t about to raise the devil and wake him.
    Because really, that’s what I was about to do.
    I didn’t stop until I stood in the center of the driveway, away from the house but still within the low glow cast from the windows.
    “Uncle Luc!” I yelled out to him. “Uncle Luc, what the On High did you do?” I didn’t think it was him toying with my kid or causing an unnatural illness to spread across town, but nothing demonic happened without him knowing about it. Or enjoying the show with a bag of popcorn.
    Maybe it was more, what didn’t he do. Like, what didn’t he stop?
    “Uncle Luc!” Still nothing. “ Lucifer Eugene Morningstar !” I glared at the ground, wishing I could look through the dimensions and down into the bowels of Hell itself.
    There was no answer. Of course, his middle name wasn’t Eugene, but it was one I’d given him centuries ago and it’d sorta stuck. It was also an easy way to tell him that I was really fucking pissed or I really needed him. Coincidentally, right