Wayne sawed, and I handed him boards. He hummed to himself and did adorable things like wink at me every so often. Men didn’t flirt with me. Though, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that was what he was doing. What if there was something wrong with his eye?

Alexander ran up to me. I hadn’t seen him since the night I’d ordered him away. He’d been with Krystal and Daniella’s daughters. He threw his arms around me, and I caught him. He shook in my arms. I didn’t let go—something was wrong. He and I had a nice relationship—mostly teacher, student—although all of us acted as his caretaker on occasion. He’d been living on his own since he was five. Very rarely did he need actual tending. We were mostly educating him.

“What’s the matter?” I hugged him, even though to do so didn’t come naturally to me. No one had ever done the same for me.

Wayne stopped sawing, and over Alexander’s shoulder, he made eye contact with me. “What’s going on?”

Alexander pulled back to regard me, and his too pale face broke my heart. Was he sick? “Sister Mika.” I’d asked him to drop the Sister but he never did. I wasn’t going to argue right this second. “There are bodies. So many bodies.”

This child had seen a lot of death. If he said there were bodies—a lot of them—that meant a lot of them. “Where are there bodies?” I kept my voice low, trying to be a comfort. The first time I’d seen a lot of dead bodies had been my first trip out the Sisterhood to the South. There had been piles of them. I’d pretended to be brave. When I’d ended up throwing up over the side of the carriage, my number Three Guard had laughed at me. It had been a less than wonderful moment. I’d learned to keep whatever I was feeling to myself.

But Alexander was a little boy. And I wasn’t some cruel man who should never have been a Guard in the first place.

Wayne scooted over to us, placing his hand on Alexander’s back. “Hey, buddy. The Sister asked you an important question. I get how scared you are right now, but you are in her arms and she is the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen. You’re safe to tell her. I’m here, too. You don’t know me yet, I get that. But I wouldn’t let anyone or anything hurt you either. Where are the bodies?”

The little boy sucked in his breath. “Right outside the back gate.”

We almost never used that gate. I nodded. “Okay. I will figure out what to do about them. You’re safe here. I promise. I bet if you go in the house, you can talk Krystal into giving you some chocolate, and then you can go read with the girls.”

Daniella’s daughters almost never came out of their suites. The things those children had witnessed in their lives made them somewhat reclusive. For now, Daniella wanted us to go along with their desire to shield themselves. The babysitters took care of most of their needs.

With a final glance my way, Alexander took off running toward the house where the girls were studying.

“He’s very brave. If he is this shaken, whatever is by the back gate must be very bad.”

Wayne nodded. “Let’s get it over with.”

He was kind to offer his assistance. “Wayne, this isn’t your job. It’s entirely mine. You can keep working. I’ll manage this.”

“Nope, sorry. I’m unable to work when I hear there are dead bodies by the back gate. That’s a rule I have.” He winked at me. “You get company on this task.”

I decided against arguing. The truth was I could really use another person to go with me. If I needed someone to run for help, he could do so. I wouldn’t let him see me weak and grow to hold me in disdain.

I stiffened my back and walked by his side toward the gate. The back part of the property was mostly overgrown with weeds. There were no structures to maintain, just a long, winding path that eventually led to a wrought-iron gate. Nothing seemed amiss until I got right up to it. Strewn out on the other side were fields worth of bodies.

My powers surged to life.

“What in the world?” Wayne grabbed the gate and stared out at the scene. His eyes were wide. “What could have done this? Killed all these people.”

A silent dread filled me up from the inside out. “Any number of things could have killed them. Plague. Disease. Murder. But these folks were killed by a demon and walked here after they were dead.”

Wayne turned to me. “What?”

“Sometimes the demons do this. Like their personal calling cards. A wall of zombies to announce their arrival. I imagine Alexander saw the initial approach. Seeing that level of horror would be why he’s so afraid. The boy knows when to be scared, that’s for sure.” I put my hand on Wayne’s arm. He was a steady presence in a world that was about to become off balance. “This is the work of a chaos demon.”

He nodded. “What do we do?”

“This is where I draw the line, Wayne. I can’t allow you to get hurt. This is what I do, what I was born to do, my gift to the world.” Even as I spoke the words, I realized I meant them. It had been so long since I’d thought of the nature of my existence that I’d long stopped thinking about how I felt about my journey. “Not everyone is given the knowledge of just what they should be doing on this planet. They come, and between birth, starvation, and death, perhaps they take a moment to question the nature of their existence. They ask why. I need never do that. I know why. I am here to serve. I am a Sister. It is a burden and a gift, one I share with a legacy of women who have come before me. We stand between the light and the darkness and tell all that is evil that despite evidence to the contrary, they will not win today.”

I put my hand on Wayne’s cheek. He was warm. I wanted to remember the feeling. Things were about to get cold. “Please go back to the house. Keep the doors locked. Chaos demons are powerful but low grade. He’s not going to get into the house with Bob underneath it. Please go there.”

I grabbed the latch and turned it to go through the gate. I really hoped he listened.

“Hey,” Wayne called out to me. I turned to look at him one last time before I proceeded through the fields of dead to find what I knew waited for me. “There is more than birth, pain, and death. There’s love. There’s babies. There’s laughter. Food. Sunsets and sunrises. There’s surprising yourself by doing something you never thought ever to do. There is a beautiful girl who doesn’t smile much that you want to make grin from ear-to-ear because she makes your heart jump whenever she’s nearby. There’s strength. Wisdom. Learning. The first snow and the leaves changing. The rain in the spring. A million things to go along with all that is hard. That’s what you do this for. That’s why you have your gift. For those things.”

I was so glad he had that life. More than I’d ever be able to tell him. “You should go back home, Wayne. Protect your place from this world. Thank you for sharing a piece of it with me. I did forget.” And just because it seemed the thing to do, I grinned at him. He met my smile with one of his own. I liked that he thought I was a beautiful girl, and he was right, I didn’t smile much.

The fields of dead were sort of beautiful in their grotesqueness. Most of these people had signs of possession on them. That made sense. Lesser demons—barely demons at all—possessed humans and slowly killed them, moving on to a new host when the previous body rotted to the point they couldn’t exist in them anymore. For a while, the host and demon shared a vessel. Then things changed. The human went mad, driven to death with the possession, and only the demon was left after that. Eventually, the body died with the demon still inside.

It was a terrible way to die.

A chaos demon wasn’t high up on the food chain in terms of power. The one I’d killed at the front gate was an Original. He could make other demons. A chaos demon could not. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t lead an army of possessed here then shoo the demons inside of the bodies away, leaving this field of ended dreams behind.

I stopped abruptly. A little girl lay in the mass graves, holding a teddy bear. I covered my mouth to try and hold back the sob that violently shook my body. I hadn’t known I was about to cry. This was neither the time nor the place for it. I had no choice but to suck it back in. I hated when they took children. Nothing made me angrier. Those souls hadn’t even had a chance to live. It went against the natural order of things and… and… and… I roared my agony to the sky, letting it turn to rage.

The spirits danced around. I wouldn’t meet the chaos demon and his army of dead calmly and with resolve. No, I would hurt it until it wished it had never been born at all.

I rushed forward. This wasn’t my training; this wasn’t how we were supposed to fight. Use your head, they’d told us. Stay focused, we were instructed. No, not today.

“Hello, Sister.” The Chaos demon had barely spoken when I blasted him with my powers. He flew backward. This was not how it was done. We told them to leave. We gave them a chance. We forgave them.

I wasn’t feeling particularly forgiving.

I blasted him again, and he hit me back, tilting the world. My skin burned. Chaos demons made chaos… I wasn’t at all worried when it looked like a thousand colors passed through my vision and the objects around me changed shape. Circles were squares. The world was a hexagon. Nothing mattered. Only that the demon existed no more.

“Be gone, foul thing.”

I woke some time later in the guesthouse with a washcloth on my forehead, sprawled across Wayne’s lap. He snored lightly. How had I gotten here? My head pounded like someone had taken an ice pick and was battering me with it over and over.

At the end of the bed, Anne stood staring down at me. Her hands were on her hips. Even with my headache blurring everything, I could tell she was angry. When had I gotten here? What was happening? She crooked her finger in a follow me gesture and walked from the room. My body objected, but I managed to get out of the bed without waking Wayne. She stood in the kitchen, hands still on her hips.

She was going to yell, and I wasn’t exactly sure that my head could take it. Instead, she rushed over to me and put her arms around me. “You are alive. That is what matters.”

My throat was dry, but I managed to talk. “Anne, the last thing I remember was zapping at the Chaos demon.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. You burned out, Mika. You’d be dead if that man in there hadn’t collected you from the ashes of the demon. You destroyed him, but you took no care doing it. I can hardly get one word out of your rescuer. One of the contractors? He’s pretty fearless considering what he just witnessed would make most men cower. He wouldn’t leave you either. I guessed when you would first wake. You remember burn out? What we learned? If we live through it, then we have multiple days of recovery ahead of us. Wayne would tell me very little except that the rest of the contractors are due back very soon. He’s very…”

Whatever she would have said got cut off by Wayne rushing in the room. “You’re okay.” He grabbed my arm, and I let him as though it was something he had the right to do. “What happened? That was different than the other demon.”

“You took down another demon?”

A wave of dizziness hit me. I needed to tell her things fast. “Bob says demons are coming. A lot of them. So far, two. An Original and the Chaos.”

She shook her head. “Who is Bob?”

“Demon under the house.”

Anne gaped at me. “You went under the house?”

It was Wayne who answered. “The plumbing is there. It had to be looked at. Mika just keeps battling and battling. When does it stop?”

“She shouldn’t have done that. We don’t fight day in and day out; we spell each other. Never more than once a week, and after an Original—”

Wayne interrupted her, clearly having none of the reverence for Anne that the rest of us did. “Then she shouldn’t be left here, with no help, to handle all of this by herself. Krystal’s having a nervous breakdown. She can’t use her powers. Mika has been all alone. If you don’t want her doing this to herself, then run your place better.”

“Hey.” I hadn’t noticed Bryant across the room, but I should have figured Anne wouldn’t be alone. She was never without at least one of her Guards-slash-husbands. “I don’t know who you are but…”

Anne put her hand on Bryant’s arm. “He’s right. I didn’t know about Krystal. Poor Mika. This had to have been hell. I am sorry, my friend. It won’t happen again.”

“He still doesn’t get to yell at you…”

She cleared her throat. “I think maybe for Mika, he does.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I let Wayne lead me back to the bed. “You don’t have to take care of me. With Anne back, I’m sure she would. Or have one of her guys do it.”

“No, I don’t want them doing that. I really just… don’t.” He scooted in next to me. “Coming at you like that while you’re clearly not okay? No.”

She hadn’t really done anything except hug me. This felt nice. “I’ve never had strangers be so nice to me before.”

Wayne spooned behind me. I’d been across his body, so I supposed this wasn’t any more risqué. Besides, he was warm, and I was suddenly frozen. He must have felt it because he pulled the blankets up around us.

“I don’t know how you do that. How you just do that…” He let out a huffed breath. “I couldn’t do that, day in and day out. I can see why you forget there’s good things in the world.”

I wouldn’t want this for him, not on a permanent basis. He needed to get out of here and get back to the place where there weren’t demons.

“What is the weather like? Where you’re from?”

If he was surprised by my question, he didn’t respond that way. “It can get very cold, very windy. But the springs are beautiful and the summers mild.”

“Is there a cool breeze when it’s hot and a warm breeze when it’s cold?”

He adjusted slightly behind me. “No. I wish.”

I guessed nowhere was perfect. “Tell me about the tree, the one that’s supposed to be responsible for keeping away demons.”

“It wasn’t always there. Or so the old people say. It’s been there as long as I’ve been alive. But the legend says that one day a man came. He wore all black. He put a stick in the ground, and out of it grew this tree. They think it somehow protects the place from demons.”

A stick in the ground? I smiled. “I like that story.”

“Sure. Me, too.” He sighed. “I’m never this tired. What is the matter with me?”

I actually knew the answer to that. “Sounds like you ran out into the ashes to get me. You weren’t wearing any protective clothing, and that chaos demon realized pretty quickly that I meant business. He hit me with everything he had. You probably got demon magic all over you. It’ll pass. Your body can filter it out, but you need to give yourself time. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“Demon magic.” He sighed. “I guess we’ll just rest here together.”

I closed my eyes.

Voices woke me, and I was aware right away that Wayne wasn’t in the bed. Everything was colder. I swung my feet over the bed and padded quietly to the door. I’d learned as a child, in the Sisterhood, that it was better sometimes if people didn’t know you were there.

“You ran out into the place and grabbed her? What were you thinking?” Gordon was clearly not happy with Wayne’s decision to charge into danger.

It was Ren who answered. Peeking through the doorway, I could see he leaned against the counter of the kitchen. “I’m sure he was thinking that he was going to save her life.”

“Good work,” Lennon patted Wayne on the back. “You’ve always been so frickin’ brave, man.”

Neil stood silent, his gaze moving from each of them as they spoke.

Wayne shook his head. “You’d have done it too, Gordon. You would have. There’s no way any reasonable person would have seen her go down like that and not rushed to her side. I could barely make out the demon. He flashed in and out like a light show. I just reacted. I’m fine. She’s burned out, but she’ll be fine, too. That being said, I don’t ever need to do that again. The bodies were moving around, still dead.”

I hadn’t realized that. I was sorry Wayne had seen it.

“Look”—Gordon held up his hands—“I’m not trying to take anything from what you did. I’d like to think I’d do the same. I don’t want Mika to die. I think she’s amazing. I want to fix this place up so that it’s sturdy and safe for them so they can all keep being incredible. That’s how we participate, that’s how we help. We’re five guys from a place most people will never see, thank divinity. We’re not meant to be running around with demons. They have Guards for that. They just harassed us outside. Now that they’re back, let’s take a step back, do our jobs, and get on with seeing the world before we go home.”

My heart fell into my stomach. Yes, of course Gordon was right. They’d only been here days, and I’d mixed them up into this mess as though they should be here. They absolutely did not belong in my battles. They weren’t my Guards. They were five nice men.

When I pushed open the door, all five gazes landed on me at once. I didn’t let myself make eye contact with anyone. “Thank you so much for what you did, Wayne. I’ll never be able to make this up to you.”

He shook his head. “I’m fine now. I’m not even tired. It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. It’s everything. And now it’s time for me to go.” I nodded to each of them. “Thank you.”

Gordon scrunched up his face. “Where are you going?”

“My rooms.”

He ran a hand through his dark hair and backed up, sort of putting himself between me and the door. “Is that smart? Wayne says you are having something like burnout.”

I walked slowly past him, placing my hand on his arm when I did. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. This isn’t your job or your responsibility.”

Neil finally spoke. “Look, it’s obvious you heard the discussion out here. Gordon didn’t mean for you to leave.”

“I know.” I was moving slowly, but I was going. “Goodnight.”

Ren called out after me. “Mika, you’re clearly not okay.”

“No, but I will be. Thank you for everything.”

I had never been wanted, not really. I was a mid-level Sister with few powers to recommend me. If my parents had fought against my being taken, I’d never heard the story. When I’d tried to stand up against Katrina, I’d been cursed for my troubles. I couldn’t even manage a chaos demon without nearly getting killed in the process.

I had no Guards. I was alone in a crowd, and always had been.

I climbed into my bed in the house and covered myself up with my blankets. I liked my quilt better than the one in the guesthouse, but Wayne’s bed was more comfy than my own. When they were gone, I was going to switch out my mattress for that one.

A knock sounded on the door. Who would be here in the middle of the night? “Come in.”

Lennon scooted into the bedroom. “Found you. It wasn’t even hard; I just thought you’d like the view from this side of the house. Honestly? This is how Gordon processes things. He didn’t mean a thing by it. Come back. We hate the idea of you over here by yourself.”

“I am by myself.” I scooted back on the bed. “I will probably always be by myself. And Gordon was right. You have no business dealing with demons. I should have stopped it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “There are five of us. One of you. We’re all really good at getting what we want. Helping you was on the agenda whether you liked it or not.”

“Well, now it can be off your agenda.” He had the thickest hair. I wondered what it would be like to run my fingers through it.

He kicked off his shoes. “I’m not going to be able to sleep worrying about you. So I’ll just stay on your floor.”

Wait. What? “You can’t sleep on my floor. You have a comfortable bed.”

“I have slept worse places, trust me. The back of a wagon that Neil was steering was probably the least comfortable. This will be fine.”

I sat forward. “You’re really not going to leave?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

I patted next to me. “Then come here.”

If I could sleep next to—and on top of—Wayne, then I could do so with Lennon, too. Out of all of them, he was overtly confident. When he spoke, he seemed to always be sure of himself. He nodded and scooted in next to me.

“You’re freezing.”

I nodded. “It’s the demon.”

Lennon pulled me against him. “You know, I’d really like to take you home. Bundle you up right now and bring you back with us.”

That was so sweet, it brought tears to my eyes. I was glad for the darkness so he couldn’t see. “I’m the last person you’d want to bring home. The reason we get taken from our families, or at least the reason they say, is that we draw demons to us. The evil creatures should run away. We’re the only ones with the power to stop them, yet they can’t leave us alone. The endless cycle. If I came to Peter’s Isle, I’d bring the demons with me. Just like I’ll bring the demons to anyone who spends time with me. Maybe you should go back to your own bed.”

He settled deeper into the pillow. “I’m good right here.”

He really was.

That was the problem.