Demona nodded. ”There are two still left unaccounted for.” Kendrick & Associates were estate lawyers. She’d tracked her lost clan-mate down through the years from when they were first stolen in the early 1900s by a wealthy land baron who thought them too grand as ’artistic masterpieces’ to let them waste away on the top of an old castle out where no one went anymore. She had private investigators on her payroll, watching things like estate auctions for any sign of them. One of those investigators had found an old listing for a private, invite only, estate auction held a year ago in which the smallest of her lost clan-mates had been sold. She’d tried to go through channels in her Dominique Destine role, but apparently it would have been a breach of client confidentiality for the lawyers to give out the information she sought on the buyer. So, instead of going through the exhaustive process of trying to obtain the information through human channels, she’d thought to simply take a more direct approach and break in to the lawyers’ offices herself in dead of night, lest she risk again losing the trail. ”Xanatos knows this, and apparently was cleaver enough to learn where I would be searching next. Perhaps by compromising one of the investigators in my employ, or perhaps he simply planted the information for them to find? In either case, it was a trap; one I very nearly did not escape from.”

Una stiffened, looking away. ”Dire news indeed, then.” She supplied.

”It was a mistake to become involved with him in the first place, I know that. I should have listened to you when you told me as much.” She admitted.

”Yes, you should have.” Una almost snapped at her a little, which was a surprise.

”You know… it’s been a long while since I’ve thought of myself as being too trusting…” Demona told her.

”And the human woman?” Una asked, the question of whether Demona were making the same mistake again implicit.

”She… came to my rescue.” She admitted. ”Rather heroically, if you must know…”

Una regarded her with surprise then. ”In your human form?”

Demona shook her head. ”As I truly am.”

”Tell me more…” Una offered.

”I broke into the estate lawyer’s offices I told you and the others about, and they were there lying in wait. A mercenary team – Highly trained, and with weapons meant specifically to subdue a gargoyle. Thankfully, I’ve never told Xanatos the extent of the spell that gives me my immortality, or I’m sure they would have been armed with lethal ordinance and I would have had even worse prospects.” The spell the Weird Sisters had cast on her meant that only one person could kill her – If she were killed by anyone else, she would heal from it within a day. ”In the confined space, they were able to corner me and use a net and a type of electrified javelins to keep me at bay. Their weapons were sapping my strength more and more the more I was subjected to them… and, that was when Elisa came in, announced herself as a police officer, and told them to stand down and drop their weapons. When they would not, she engaged them in combat. The distraction let me fight free, and, between the two of us, we made short work of my attackers. She saw me as I am, and, while she was understandably surprised by the sight, she didn’t appear to even hesitate to take my side over theirs.”