I got to work on the book with Arthur, but it wasn't long before another black car, like the one Great Aunt Gertie showed up in, pulled up next to the van and a bunch of people got out. Arthur assured me it was fine and went away with them. I was starting to get a handle on what we needed to do to close the portal, when I got a text from Michael telling me to bring the water feature.
I teleported in to find him fighting an absolutely massive spider, put down the water feature, and went right in with my claws. It didn't like that, and made a horrible screeching noise, which I ignored, then sank a fang into my shoulder, which was harder to ignore. Michael sliced some legs off it, which separated it from me, and then I'm not sure what happened as Elizabeth put up a wall of ice around me and Michael. I suggested to him that we should start trolling Elizabeth, but I didn't have any good ideas for how to do that.
Anyway, by the time I got out of the ice wall, the spiders had disappeared. Outside, Adam was patching up Eddie who'd had a rough time with the spiders before I arrived. Elsa added a little healing magic, and he looked a lot better.
Back at the junk yard we collected everything we needed for closing the portal. It was a mobile portal, I'd learned from the book, so first we needed to move it close to some water. Specifically, Wicker Lake, which oddly enough some people seemed to have forgotten the existence of. It was going to take three of us, and I was a bit worried about that, as that morning's curse-delaying aside, Elizabeth and me didn't have a great track record of working together, and Arthur was out of the picture. Elizabeth assessed the other three. Adam was a no-go, and Michael kept insisting he wasn't magical despite a certain amount of evidence to the contrary. But Eddie, she said, had talent.
I suggested he cover his hair, to make sure we didn't accidentally set it on fire, and helped Elizabeth set up the magic circle. Then the three of us held hands and began the chant, and soon had the portal relocated. Then it was mostly a matter of holding it open while all the various yokai were pulled back into it, although the fact that they were trying to stab us on the way past made it pretty uncomfortable.
Adam and Michael were kept busy fending things off, and Adam clearly wasn't ready to use his flamethrower again after the djinn incident. Unfortunately, Michael wasn't ready to use it at all. Fortunately being right by the lake there was plenty of water handy. Now we had to try to keep going while being bitten by spiders and that was much tougher, as we had to sit there and keep the magic going while they swarmed over us. But in the end we got there. Big spider back in the hole, the hole closed up, and nothing on fire except some of the grass nearby. Apparently Eddie was exactly what we needed to balance our magic.
Adam tried to patch up my spider wounds after that, which I wasn't keen on, and it's only because of my demonic nature that he didn't make things worse. So I took myself to the hospital, where a lot of staff were suddenly freed up as the unconscious people started waking up. Kenji got his mum back. Not his dad though. He woke up again, but the spider curse had hurt him too badly, and he died later that day.
I got another visit from Toby the definitely not a gargoyle while I was at the hospital. He told me that since I had continued to not do the thing I was supposed to be doing regarding Michael, that I was getting my armour confiscated. Which I wouldn't mind so much if whoever They are would stop being so bloody enigmatic and just tell me what I was supposed to be doing!
I got the answer that night, via a dream. Combat training. Teach him to fight with weapons other than a cricket bat. Well that I can do. I normally rely on my claws, but you don't grow up demonic without learning a few weapons along the way. The challenging part is going to be getting Michael on board. We're in a different timeline, but he's still been chosen by someone for something, and I know it's important, even if he's still in denial.
Once we were all out of hospital, we met up again and discovered that Eddie has quite a collection of interesting items from the history of Wicker Valley. We decided it was about time our town had a museum, and since there's that abandoned warehouse full of teeth and scorch marks that nobody wants, we managed to get a venue for a good price. Elizabeth still doesn't have a job, so she's going to run the place. And once we've installed the scrying map and the healing water feature, it should be very useful.
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