“The signs were all there,” Osh said, eyeing Reyes as though he’d personally fucked up. “Bodies started showing up, one by one. The first ones were two counties over. Then they started getting closer, like something was homing in.”

“The bodies?” I asked Reyes.

“Is this about Beep?” Cookie asked.

I nodded. “They had to move her.”

Cookie’s worried expression mimicked the fear thundering through me. I led her to a chair and sat her in it before sitting in the one Reyes held for me. “What do bodies have to do with anything?”

“You want to tell her?” Osh asked Reyes.

He took a knee beside me, and I wondered if he thought I’d lose it again. I wondered even more if I would.

“We have something of a checklist. An outline of things to keep a lookout for. It’s how we know the gods are getting close. And one of the signs is dead bodies. But how did they look?” he asked Osh.

“I wouldn’t be here if they didn’t fit the criteria.”

Reyes bit down and cursed under his breath before coming back to me. “A supernatural entity can’t just shift onto this plane carte blanche. It doesn’t have that kind of authority. In order to be able to interact within the parameters of the plane, it has to be able to shift fully. And the only way to do that, as you may have noticed, is to inhabit a human.”

“But,” Osh said, “a human’s body is too fragile to hold a god for more than a few hours. It begins to decompose instantly and at a much faster rate than normal.”

“But demons can do it,” I argued. “They’ve possessed people for years at a time. They’ve even kept an injured or sometimes a dead body going for months.”

“Yes,” Reyes said. “A demon can do that. Pretty much any supernatural entity from any dimension that can find its way onto this plane can possess a human to shift fully.”

Osh pushed off from the wall and turned to look out a high window. “But while a demon can keep a human body in a state of animation for an eternity, a god is simply too powerful for a vessel as fragile as a human to hold.”

He turned back to Reyes. Let him take over. “A god can only keep a body animated for a little while before its cells eventually begin to disintegrate and meld into one another. Until it no longer looks human.”

“And what happens to the person it possessed?”

“Nothing that hasn’t already happened. He or she will have died the instant the god hijacked the body. It’s like putting the core of a nuclear reactor inside a human and watching the person melt around it.”

Cookie’s hands curled into fists around the fingers I’d laced into hers. She was shaking visibly, her pretty brows drawn into a severe line.

Osh didn’t notice. “If there is a god in the area and he is using and discarding bodies at will, he is onto Beep’s scent. And like any good bloodhound, he won’t give up until he has his prey firmly between his jaws.”

Cookie inhaled sharply, and Osh finally realized how distressed she was. I think, in fact, my worry for her was keeping my own stress-induced hissy fit at bay. I wanted to rant and rail and crush a few larynxes until somebody came up with the location of my daughter. But I couldn’t do it in front of Cookie. I couldn’t upset her any more.

“And the bodies?” Reyes asked him. Still kneeling beside me, he had one hand on my leg and one around the arm of the chair. The arm cracked with the pressure he was putting on it.

Osh nodded. “They’re … decomposing at an unnatural rate. Not to mention the fact that the hounds were getting restless. Pawing the ground. Sniffing the air. Itching to hunt.”

“But what could they do against a god?” I asked.

“Buy us time.”

The direness of the situation had me light-headed. “You got Beep out of there before you needed them, though?”

He nodded again. “She’s at a new safe house with the Loehrs and most of the Sentry.”

That’s what we were calling Beep’s army. The Sentry. “Most?”

Osh dropped his gaze. “Your man, Donovan. He stayed behind to keep an eye on the area. To let us know if any more bodies showed up.”

I blinked, astonished, and so grateful that he would do such a thing that a lump formed in my throat. “Is he still there?”

The beautiful kid before me, who was actually older than Reyes by a couple of centuries yet looked like he was in his late teens, nodded, his mouth a grim line. “He’s trying to get ahead of it. To track it down and figure out its next move.”