Of all the possible developments, we were faced with the worst—Georgie had been right about the Devil and wrong about Guan Gong. The sacrifice had failed; now we would be the sacrifice, a sacrifice to the Devil…
Sacrifice. We had not sacrificed anything.
Our ritual had only been symbolic. Although we had consigned the spirit of food and wine to Guan Gong in the spirit world, Georgie was easily able to afford buying the food and the other stuff. We had not offered any genuine sacrifice—had not offered up anything of real value to us.
Preston was staring at the Devil, not moving. Georgie had paused to reload his rifle. I scooted to the can of lighter fluid and dragged it with me to the car. With shaking fingers, I opened the gas tank, dropped the cap, and squirted lighter fluid from it do
