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“Gone,” Elisabeth echoed, more confused than anything. “But Silas would never - ” and then she realized that was right. Silas would never.
Nathaniel looked grim. “I doubt they gave him much of choice.”
They, Elisabeth thought. meaning, presumably, the other demons. Not the ones serving human masters - the ones currently stuck in the Otherworld. because Silas had fought the Archon and prevented them from crossing over and taking over the human world.
“But,” she said. She had never heard of demons being able to affect the human world from the Otherworld. Such a thing wasn't supposed to be possible.
After all, if demons were able to do that, why would they need to contract with human sorcerers at all?
“Oh, I'm sure they can't snatch human victims willy-nilly. We'd have certainly heard about it if that were the case,” Nathaniel said. “But one of their own, whom they felt they had a grudge against ... well. That's a different matter entirely, isn't it?”
Elisabeth shivered. Because Nathaniel was right: they would certainly have heard about demons kidnapping people left and right.
But demons kidnapping a human here and there, now and then? Elisabeth had experienced herself how easy it was for people to forget you existed. If she had vanished from the asylum, who would have missed her? Even Nathaniel had simply assumed that she had gone back home until she showed up on his doorstep.
So perhaps the notion wasn't as far-fetched as that. She said, “What are we going to do?” and Nathaniel hesitated, as if there could be any doubt about it.
“It's not as easy as that, Scrivener,” he said, after a lengthy pause. “Traveling to the Otherworld is not for the faint of heart. Nor the strong of heart,” he added. “Or the intermediate of heart. Actually, it's not for anyone.”
They would be two humans, in a strange world full of demons who would view them as food. They would find no allies. The odds of their being able to even find Silas were minimal. Realistically, speaking, there was no chance whatsoever that they would succeed.
“Let me get Demonslayer,” she said and then, because she knew the way his mind worked, “Don't you dare go without me.”