Samantha settled into a chair, grateful for something to focus on besides her mother's knowing looks. "It means something very old and very dangerous tried to force its way into our reality. Margaret and Sage called it a Devourer—it feeds on magical energy, and it was using rifts to manifest here."
"And you stopped it," Linda said, her tone shifting from teasing to genuinely curious. "How?"
"We poisoned it," Samantha explained, watching her mother's face. "Our bond—" she gestured at herself and her three mates, "—is based on connection, love, unity. All things a creature of pure hunger can't digest. So we fed it our bond, and it choked on what we are."
Linda set down her coffee cup with careful precision. "You weaponized your relationship against a cosmic entity."
"When you put it that way, it sounds—"
