Emma was ready for battle. She carried the hunting rifle like a club in both hands. The safety was on, but the daemons didn't know that. Her daemon egg was safely stowed in her backpack, in the guest room, where no one would find it. After losing the other daemons, she was terrified of leaving it behind. But eggs have a reputation for not liking dangerous adventures. Emma was determined to have the opposite reputation.

Charlie wasn’t as carefree and innocent anymore. He bore a haunted expression, his gaze frantic and uncertain. He kept looking over his shoulder, or peering around corners into shadows. Emma hurried along the sidewalk toward the fire in the distance. It was about the size of a campfire. Maybe the daemons weren’t the cause, but it was the best clue they had for now.

"Can I use my flashlight?" Charlie asked, long strides keeping up.

"No lights. It's bad enough all the city lights must be driving them mad, poor things."

"We should call the police."

"Out of the question." Emma didn't turn to look at him while she hustled. All she could see was the fire. All she could feel: the strain on her heart.

"Whose side are you on, anyway? The innocent people with their business on fire, or the daemons?"

"It’s not about sides. It's illegal to have daemons," Emma lied. "Straight to jail, you and me both. We have to handle this ourselves. What college would want you, seeing you were arrested for arson, and conspiracy with daemons? That’s worse than failing your final exam!"

"I'm starting to think you're making this up. Do you really have a contract with them, so nobody can talk about the daemons? I didn’t break it or say a word, but they're still in trouble."

Emma strategically ignored this question and hurried a little faster.

"Anyway, assuming you really do have a contract," Charlie continued, "why didn't the contract say they weren't allowed to start fires or escape? That’s the first thing I would put down."

The flames were clearer now. It hadn’t spread yet from where it burned on the roof. What were the daemons doing? It wasn't that late, but the street was deserted. Why wasn't someone helping? Emma felt herself beginning to panic.

"Okay. Fine. I don't have a contract. I made it up," Emma confessed. "But I definitely plan to make them sign one as soon as I catch them."

"Are you sure you want to keep the daemons? Maybe you're better off not being involved."

"Unacceptable," Emma snapped. "They are not just my daemons, they are my grandmother. Everything that’s left of her. They are my spirit; my soul which has drifted out of my body. They are a magic oasis in the desert, and I am dying for thirst. They are me, they are mine, and I want them back."

There was no dissuading her from her path. They soon arrive at the parking lot, empty now. The lights were off inside the restaurant. There were plastic sheets over the windows, and a big sticker which read 'Dim Sum Palace: Closed for renovations.'

"Closed." Charlie panted. He stopped beside her, both short of breath. "That's good. Nobody hurt."

"Hey! Chickens!" Emma called cautiously upward, craning her neck. "I forbid you to cause trouble, chickens!"

"How are we going to get on the roof?" Emma carefully circled the building, inspecting it from all sides. Plain concrete walls. Nothing to hold onto. The green tiles on top sloped sharply, and would be difficult to walk on. They might call themselves the Dim Sum Palace, but that's only because the Dim Sum Dump wouldn't sell. Maybe it wouldn't be the end of the world if it burned. Although, surely it would be the end of someone's world.

Emma stood back a way to see the fire burning on the roof. Black scales crept along the edge of the light. Yellow eyes leered over the edge of the roof, then scampered away into shadow.

"The chickens!" Emma howled with excitement. Charlie would have preferred her being a little less gleeful. "Come down chickens! Good chickens!"

"I thought they hated the light. Then why start a fire?"

"The more you hate the light, the more you need its warmth," Emma said in a hushed tone. She repeated something she'd heard grandmother say once, although she didn't quite know what it meant.

Emma coughed, consciously readjusting her voice. She didn't want to sound shrill like her mother. She wanted her voice to be a low, almost seductive, growl: a panther playing with her food. She wanted to sound like grandmother Orwell. Then maybe the daemons would listen.

"I said come down this instant, daemons!" Emma repeated sternly, dropping the evasion of calling them chickens. That did nothing but assuage her own fear. Emma decided she would not be afraid anymore. Not because there wasn’t anything to be scared of, because there was. But because grandmother wasn’t afraid, and she was with her. "You might not have a contract with grandmother anymore, but you can have a new one with me. That's what you need to bind you to this world, isn’t it, daemons?”

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Five yellow eyes peered over the edge this time. Emma wished they came in pairs. Then they were gone again.

Emma looked around frantically. Her eyes landing on a dumpster against the wall. Hope never smelled so foul.

"I’m going on the roof."

"What? No. How?"

"If we both get on the dumpster."

"You still wont reach."

They talked over each other, but Emma had made up her mind, and decided it was a steamroller.

"Once we’re both there, you lift me up."

"You're not that tall!"

"Quiet, you silly boy. I know exactly what I can climb, how tall I am, and how tall you are. You are tall enough to lift me, but not so tall that you can talk back and not do what i say!"

Charlie sighed and suffered under her glare. He soon surrendered as well. It wasn’t just that the girl had a rifle either, since she had to leave that with him if she hoped to climb. Charlie had always been afraid of Mrs. Orwell though, and he saw the old woman when Emma scolded him. So too he felt that dead witch watching them still. and would be terribly upset with him, if he did not help her granddaughter.

The task proved easier than expected. There were some old shelves in the dumpster they could stand on, and they soon had these on top of the dumpster and leaning against the wall.

"I’ll go first," Emma said.

"I’ll hold the gun."

"Fine, but you’ll hand it up to me as soon as I’m on top."

Charlie agreed. He helped Emma balance on the shelves, holding her legs when she reached the top. Then she was hoisting herself up, a monkey with a purpose. Charlie held the gun to his chest, cradling it like a fragile thing. He remembered more than one night being woken by a gunshot across the fence. Grandmother had this gun for a reason. Protecting the chickens from the coyotes, she always said. But those chickens didn’t need protecting. The gun was protection against them.

Emma was fully on the roof now. She kneels and reached down, gesturing for Charlie to pass the rifle up. She didn’t see daemons slither and bound in from either side.

"Emma, look out!"

Too late! Hands of shadow, claws of ice, breath of fire, the daemons swarmed her. Five of them seizing hold of whatever piece of cloth or hair they could. They dragged her farther up the roof, disappearing from Charlie's view. Emma let out a bloody scream.

"I'm coming, Mrs. Orwell!" Charlie knew exactly who he was talking to.

He stuffed the rifle down the back of his shirt the best he could. Then climbing with both hands, he leaps up the bookshelf and pulls himself onto the roof.

The source of the flame revealed: a tin trash can stuffed with burning sticks. But filled no longer, one daemon reaches into the flame with clawed mockeries of hands. It flings the burning sticks wildly, but they land perfectly, the start of one touching the end of the next. Swiftly a smoldering circle was forming around Emma.

The daemons glimmer. Their misshapen bodies shift and change even without the dancing firelight. Yellow eyes haphazardly scatter like grapeshot through strange and twisted shapes. Charlie had never seen them in such strong light before. He wished he never had. He couldn’t imagine why Emma would want them for pets.

"Let go of her!" he yelled.

"Grandmother Orwell is not happy!" Emma shouted at them. Struggling for show, but not so much to rip her clothes, or feel the point of those razor claws.

The daemons didn’t care. They howled with laughter, an unearthly chittering sound. The circle was almost complete. Charlie's rifle flew out from his shirt. He pointed at the daemons holding Emma. Too risky. Then at the one building the ring of fire.

"Charlie, don’t!" Emma shouted.

Something was happening with the burning sticks around Emma. Their flame was growing brighter and bursting upwards to breathe in the night. An unseen fuel nourished the fire, and great plumes of smoke crowded out the sky. Worse still, Charlie could see monstrous forms and ghostly shapes manifesting in the dark clouds. They were growing more real and solid by the moment.

Charlie didn’t know a lot about daemons. But he did know they were always trying to get into the world. He knew any moment of weakness could be enough to let them in. This could only be a summoning, he decided at once, his instincts roaring loud. Those monsters might look like they’re made of smoke now, but as soon as that summoning circle was done... it was real claws which pinned Emma now. Whatever came through that smoke would bring hell with it.

Why did they have Emma? Charlie could think of only one reason: a sacrifice for their infernal spell.

The daemon flinging sticks was alone. A clean shot. Charlie slid the safety switch, cocked the bullet into the chamber.

"Charlie!"

He flinched. He pointed the gun into the air instead, and fired.

The daemons froze. The sound was enough to shatter the night. The flash of the muzzle was painful to them. But so too they seemed to recognize that particular gun, knowing where it came from, and what it could do.

The daemons scattered. They dove from the roof in every direction. Emma fell spinning to the roof, where she spread out to get her grip. Charlie nearly toppled over backward on the angled tiles. He swayed dangerously before catching himself and crouching low.

Emma collapsed onto her back, laying spread eagle, staring up at the sky.

"Are you alright?" Charlie asked, picking his way up the roof toward her.

"Charlie charlie charlie... now look what you've done."

"I saved you from the daemons, that's what." Charlie stomped on the last smoking embers on the tiles. The burning trash can was subdued. The flames really must have been part of a spell, because they lost all their vitality without the daemons.

"What if they never come back?"

"So much the better."

"They were trying to tell me their secret," Emma growled. "They wanted to show me something in the smoke, only you ruined it. Now they wont ever trust me again!"

"Are you sure? How do you know?" Charlie asked sheepishly.

Emma stood up to snatch the rifle back. Charlie was quick to get the safety back on before passing it back.

"I don’t know, because you ruined it!" Emma snapped, frost and venom. She really was starting to sound like the old witch. "I didn’t understand their language. It’s just like those odd books in their own alphabet that grandmother has in the library. I think I need to find her real contracts, and figure out what they really say."

"I’m sorry. I was only trying to help."

The stillness of the night returned only briefly before being ruined once more. The hunting wail of a police siren. Flashing lights at the end of the block. Grandmother might be able to fire a gun, but she wasn’t here anymore.

"We have to get away," Emma declared. "Quick, climb back down before they catch us! It may not be illegal to own a daemon, but we certainly don’t have a license to hunt them in the city!"