Chapter One“There's more than they tell you,” the cat said in a hoarse voice, raspy and devoid of any real feeling beyond contempt and dislike. of a voice you would expect to come from a large black cat, if cats could talk regularly. Glancing nervously over my shoulder at the hallway I came down, I let out a sigh before looking back at the cat. "I figured so." I said. The cat made a vague noise and raised a paw, spreading its toes and applying a surprisingly pink tongue to clean the claws and fur between them. For a long moment, which seemed like an eternity to me, he focused exclusively on that, before lowering his paw and focusing his dark vermilion eyes on me, eyes that almost glowed in the dull green light of the gas street lamps. If you understand this, what are you going to do about it?" he asked, and although his face hadn't changed, you could hear the raise of an eyebrow in his gruff tone. I narrowed my eyes at him and raised my eyebrow. "Ask the guy. "The only one here who apparently has half a clue," I told him, feeling rather irritated with him. Something in his eyes looked pleased, and he gently walked down a few steps to where I stood at the bottom. "The rooms back here are soaked in blood,” he began, with a purr in his voice, and the cat seemed quite pleased with the situation. “Not so much in the literal sense, of course. If you had a proper nose, you could smell the metallic odor permeating the air. » I pressed my mouth into a thin line and shook my head. “So they're lying about the number of deaths here, right?” I asked and the cat shook his head. “I wouldn't be so sure, I think they're both... a half of the card… the heads of families. “To regain their former power in this world, demons must consume a lot of flesh, especially that of the innocent and the pure,” I had to stop speaking and swallow, my hands trembling under the edge of the table as I struggled to keep my eyes forward. “Or those who are bound to the body of the one they have possessed.” There was a small gasp to my right, and I looked at Gertrude to see one of her hands over her mouth, with a shocked and horrified expression, somewhat surprisingly, an overly dramatic actress. “How simply terrible!” She said, even as her eyes smiled at me, daring me to do anything or say, however, with the demon sitting to my right, frail and sickly looking, smiling at me while the thin bony fingers of his other hand rubbed lazily against the blade of the butter knife on the table.