Dime a Demon

by Devon Monk

  “Death has a phone?” Jean asked.

  “Has to.” Delaney slurped coffee. “It’s required for the job.”

  Jean flipped her a thumbs up and helped herself to a stack of cookies and cheese.

  “Myra Reed,” Than intoned.

  “Kind of an intense way to answer the phone,” I said.

  “And how would you expect me to answer a telephone?”

  “Pretty much like that. Okay, I just need to know if the frogs are people.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they the people who ran to the vortex?”

  “Yes, they are the people who ran toward the vortex. As far as I can discern.”

  “As far? Do you have some kind of limit I don’t know?”

  “My power is currently in the root of a tree in what I believe Crow called a cosmic kumbaya circle. One could assume I’m allowed a margin of error.”

  I widened my eyes at Delaney, and she just nodded like, yeah, he’s all sass.

  “Do the frogs, I mean people, still have their souls?”

  “Souls are not easy to harvest, no matter the shape a human may take.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  He sighed. “Yes.”

  “Okay, that’s all I needed to know. Wait! Do you know how to turn them back into their human selves?”

  “That is not my expertise.”

  “So…no?”

  “No.”

  I smiled at the distaste he packed into one word. “All right. Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow at the station. You’ll be with me again.”

  “How my heart races at the thought.”

  And that was so much more sass, I laughed. “Good night, Than.”

  “Good night, Myra Reed.”

  “He’s got nothing,” I said. “Except he thinks the frogs are our people. So witch? Wizard?”

  “Demons.” Bathin strode into the room, the unicorn glaring daggers at his side.

  “How did you get into my locked house?” I stood.

  Bathin stopped where he was, smart man, and so did the unicorn. “Xtelle knew the lock code.”

  “Why didn’t you knock?” Jean asked. She sounded relaxed and amused.

  “I didn’t even want to come here,” Xtelle said. “But now that I am, I’d like to report a crime. He has bound me against my wishes. I am being kidnapped. He’s breaking Ordinary’s laws.”

  She hopped a little to show her front hooves. Around each was a loop of solid gold.

  “You have gold handcuffs?” Jean asked. She gave Bathin a slow look up and down. “Respect the kink, dude.”

  He tipped his head like you are not wrong, but turned immediately to me. “I need to tell you something.”

  “If it isn’t how to turn frogs into people, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “It’s important.”

  “What could be more important than un-frogging people?”

  “Xtelle is my mother.”

  The silence in the room was like plunging into deep, cold water, dropping down, down, down to the bottom.

  “What?” Delaney shot up to her feet and so did Ryder.

  Jean, still in the chair, laughed. “Your mother is a unicorn, Bathin? Well, it might explain those eyes of yours.”

  “You like my eyes, huh?” he said with a smile.

  She rocked her hand in a so-so motion.

  This was the part where I was supposed to say something. Where I was supposed to take over the problem, figure out what was going on, and present the solution. But my brain refused to wrap around this new information. It was like all my wiring had shorted.

  “I…I don’t even…” I said.

  Bathin nodded like that was the most cogent thing I’d ever said. “She took the form of a unicorn so she could trick you into staying in Ordinary. She opened the first vortex of Hell into Ordinary.”

  “I told you, I did no such thing,” she snarled. “I found the vortex and stepped through it. I did not make it.”

  “I don’t believe her,” Bathin said, “and since I’m her son, you can trust my judgment of her character.”

  “What? Now I’m a terrible mother?”

  “You’ve always been a terrible mother, but a fantastic demon. Which is why I don’t trust you and have never trusted you.”

  “Oh, you can trust I’ll make you pay! I’ll tell your father you’re upworld slumming with mortals and monsters and neutered gods. He will raise the fire of Hell and despair upon you.”

  “Xtelle,” Bathin said, so cold, so unlike what I’d ever heard him say before, “if you put Ordinary at risk, I will break your bones apart, atom by atom, and leave your flesh for the crabs.”

  Bathin’s delivery was so matter-of-fact, so certain, it shocked her into silence.

  He had shown a glimpse, just a sliver, like the shine off the edge of a razor, of the power he possessed. It was massive. Destructive. Caught there just beneath his wicked smile and pretty eyes.

  Jean was wrong. There was nothing so-so about his eyes. They were gorgeous. And dangerous.

  And why was I thinking about his pretty eyes? I should be thinking about how to get rid of not one, but two demons who did not belong in Ordinary.

  But first, it was time to get Delaney’s soul back.

  I walked out of the room and to my office. There was no tug in my chest, nothing that was driving me to do this. But I was done. Done being lied to by demons. Done with the tricks.

  I wanted my town to go back to normal. I wanted my sister to go back to normal.

  “Myra?” Bathin called.

  “No.” Delaney’s voice carried the clean strength of the earth and stones that made Ordinary what it was. “Leave her alone. You’re going to stay away from her until we get this worked out. Let’s start with this: What the hell, Bathin?”

  I pulled the keepsake box off the top shelf in my office, drew it against my chest for a moment, the edges of wood digging in, the faint, lingering magic embedded into it when Odin had carved it humming like an old tune.

  “Your mother has been in Ordinary posing as a pink unicorn for two days, and you just now tell us?” Delaney asked.

  “Yes,” he gritted out.

  “Do you want to give me an explanation that will make me change my mind about kicking you—both of you—out of town?”

  “I won’t make the lie worse by adding falsehoods to it. I didn’t know what was coming through the first vortex until we got there. When I saw her like this…”

  This would end him. These scissors in this little box. I would end him. And pay a great price for doing so.

  But Delaney’s soul would no longer be a pawn in a chess game we couldn’t see.

  I took a deep breath, pushed my heartache away, and strode into the room.

  “Time’s up, Bathin,” I said.

  He lifted his head as if I’d just come into the room with a gun. His gaze fixated on the box cradled against my chest. He knew what it contained, even though I had never told him.

  But then, I would think the only weapon that could force him to release the soul that allowed him to stay in Ordinary might be something he would always sense.

  “Bathin,” Xtelle said. I heard it then, the motherly warning, protection for her son.

  That was strange.

  Or maybe it was just her saving her own neck. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to her when I banished Bathin. She had lied about her nature. We didn’t allow that.

  We had rules in Ordinary. Rules in place to keep not only the humans safe, but to also keep the supernaturals and deities safe. She had broken those rules by not only lying to us, but also by not signing a demon contract.

  I was calm. Clearer headed than I had been in over a year. Since Delaney had traded her soul. Since Dad’s death.

  “No,” Bathin said to his mother.

  He stepped around the unicorn, closed the distance until he loomed in front of me. Everyone in the room shifted position.

  “Myra,” Delaney warned.

>   “You don’t have the one book with the one page,” he murmured as if it were just he and I in the room. As if this was our second date and he was still trying to show me I could trust him.

  “I don’t think I need it, do I?”

  “You’ve been told you do.”

  “By a demon?” I laughed, and it sounded alien to me, as if it were not even my voice or my mouth.

  I was sort of floating above myself, numb, aware, sharp. Waiting for this to happen. Finally. Finally.

  “What makes you think I would ever trust what a demon says?”

  “You wouldn’t,” he said.

  “What makes you think I would trust anything a demon does?”

  “You wouldn’t,” he said.

  “What makes you think you can use my sister’s soul, her soul, Bathin, and just walk around while it tears and rips and bleeds like it’s nothing. Like it’s nothing!” I was snarling by the end of it. Damn right I was snarling by the end of it.

  “I can’t. I shouldn’t. I’m not.”

  “Myra,” Delaney said. “Let’s take this one step at a time.”

  “No.”

  I twisted the lock and lifted the top of the box. Since I’d put the velvet bag containing the scissors in it, I’d cleaned out all my other keepsakes. I had been afraid my childhood would be tainted by this dark weapon that demanded such a high price.

  But now it was not fear I was feeling. It was power. I picked up the velvet bag, let the wooden box drop to the floor.

  “Oh, shit,” Jean said. “We need to lock this down. Holy fuck, Delaney we need to stop this. Now, right now. Myra, don’t!”

  Then Jean was on her feet lunging toward me, and the tug on my chest was so hot it was like a knife stabbing bone. Stabbing right through my skin, my muscle, all the way through to the other side of me. The wrong place, the wrong time of this moment rang me like a gong the size of the moon.

  “It’s not worth it,” Bathin whispered.

  “It is.”

  I gripped the scissors and swung.

  Bathin was fast. Supernaturally fast. He grabbed my wrist, stepped sideways into my body, and forced open my hand.

  The scissors clattered to the floor.

  Wrongwrongwrong.

  A wave of vertigo washed over me. And then I felt nothing.

  Chapter 17

  We were no longer in my house. We were no longer in a room.

  “This isn’t ideal,” Bathin said. He breathed hard like he’d just lifted a car one-handed. A big car. A bus. “And it isn’t going to last long. I don’t know what I can say to make this right, because you refuse to listen to me.”

  “You’re a demon!”

  “That’s racial profiling, Myra. Just because I’m a demon doesn’t mean I’m evil. I’ve been trying to tell you that since the first day I came to Ordinary.”

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “In a place.”

  “No. Where are we?”

  Panic rolled under my skin. There was only blurry turquoise-silver where the sky should be, and other than Bathin, everything around me was a shade of tropical-ocean-blue and white—blurry and indistinct.

  “Where are we? What are we inside?” There was no wind or air or growing things. Where was the air?

  “There is air. Or what you need to survive in this state. You’re not going to suffocate.” He reached toward my shoulder.

  I slapped his hand away and punched him in the solar plexus.

  He “oofed” out air and bent, holding his hand over his gut.

  “Keep your hands off me.”

  He nodded, spit, then slowly straightened.

  “Take me home.”

  “No, you need to—”

  I roundhouse-kicked him in the knee.

  “Fuck,” he grunted as he buckled to the ground. “You need to listen—”

  I aimed another kick at his head. His hand snapped out, and he caught my ankle, holding my foot up high enough I had to balance on one foot.

  “Let go!”

  “Listen to me!”

  I pulled on my foot, ready to use the leverage to hop and kick him in the head with my other foot, but he saw the move coming, shoved my foot away, and gained his feet so fast, he was a blur.

  Both hands shot out, grabbed my wrists, and then his leg was around mine, our bodies locked together as he pressed my back against something smooth and hard and warm. It felt like sun-warmed marble.

  “Just.” He slapped my hands above my head, his incredible weight pinning the rest of me. His hands squeezed my wrists and the walls heated just at those points becoming liquid enough to flow up and over my skin, wrapping my wrists.

  “Let me go.”

  “Not until you listen.” He pressed my legs back and the wall heated there, flowed out and caught both of my ankles no matter how much I struggled.

  “There,” he said, breathless, still pressed against my body, his hands over the stone covering my wrists. “There.” He swallowed, stared at my eyes, then let his gaze wander over my face.

  I didn’t know what he was looking for. I hoped it was anger because I had plenty of that to offer.

  “Just, hold still long enough for me to get this out. Right?” He pressed down on my wrists one more time as if making sure the bindings were going to stay. “Right,” he answered himself.

  He paced away, limping heavily. “Balls, woman, you can kick.”

  “Come here, and I’ll show you how I can break bones.”

  He paused with his back to me, and dragged his fingers through his hair, resting his hands on top of his head, fingers laced together, elbows out.

  “It’s not going to take your sisters long to find us. I’m sure they’ll have some way to break this. If Delaney can do it once, I’m sure she can do it again.”

  I frowned, trying to figure out what he was talking about. Something Delaney had done before. Some place he’d been with her.

  “We’re inside a stone, aren’t we?”

  He turned, his hands still on top of his head, and there was a look of desperation in his eyes. “Yes. It’s one of the things I control. Stone. One of the other things I control is moving a person from one place to another. You used to know that about me.”

  “I still know that about you.”

  “But for the last year the only thing you’ve seen about me, the only thing, is that I hold your sister’s soul.”

  “Because you do.”

  He nodded. “That is true. She gave it to me. That’s within the laws and rules of human-demon contract. But ever since I’ve had it…no, even before that…ever since I started listening to your father talk about humanity, about the laws of the universes, the worlds, about gods and monsters and blood and family—family, Myra—things changed.”

  He dropped his hands, but didn’t move any closer.

  “I changed.” Here he shook he head and laughed softly. “You have no idea. I am not the creature I once was. Possessing a Reed soul for so long, your father’s soul, was like being a candle in the sunlight.

  “Wax melts, given enough time in the flame. Light reshapes it. I’ve been reshaped by light. At first by your father’s words, then his soul, but then Delaney’s…” He inhaled, exhaled, and it was as close to awe as I’d ever seen on him.

  “Holding her soul—that light—has changed me. Taught me. Some days I don’t even know what I am supposed to—” He shook his head again. “No, that doesn’t matter. We’re here for you and for Delaney. Here, where my mother won’t hear me. Here, where my father can’t hear me. But I don’t have very much time. Because your sisters…”

  “…will find us and break this cage.”

  He nodded. “I need you to hear me, Myra. I am giving you the truth as I know it. And if you hear me, you might find a way to save Delaney’s soul. Because gods know, I don’t know how to do it.”

  I waited. I had time on my side. Either he’d get close enough I’d be able to kick him again somehow, or Delaney and Jean would find us
and break this stone.

  He could talk all he wanted.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve been using her soul as a way to stay in Ordinary. I have never made a secret of that. But what I haven’t told you was why I wanted to stay in Ordinary. Why I was in that stone to begin with. Why I caught your father’s drifting soul like a feather in the wind and drew it into the safety of the stone with me.

  “I am the demon king’s son.”

  I just gave him a steely stare. I knew that already.

  “He wants me dead, has wanted me dead for years. I am not his only son, but I am the only one of his offspring to defy him.” He scrubbed at his face, then wrapped his hand at the nape of his neck.

  “I’ve been running for a long time. Eons. He always finds me. Tortures…and lets me go. He likes the chase, my father. And the pain. And the blood. And the agony. Demons.” He nodded once, his eyes locked with mine, as cold as a surgeon’s knife. “There is no evil like them.”

  “So, what?” I wanted any excuse to look away from the raw honesty behind his gaze. I could almost feel his pain, his desperation, his hopelessness as if it were my own, scratching at the walls of my heart. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Did you just feel that?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “My…my feelings?”

  “No.”

  He nodded. “That’s a lie. We can both tell when the other is lying here. This is an Amazonite. The stone of truth. Here, there is only truth and clarity. Try it out.”

  I pulled at my wrists and feet, but the Amazonite still held me strong. “Try what?”

  “Ask me something and I’ll lie. You’ll be able to feel it.”

  “Just because of the stone?”

  “Yes. You’ll feel if I’m lying just because of the stone.”

  His expression was calm, his gaze steady. There was absolutely nothing about his body language showing any indication that he was lying. But I knew. I knew it as if I had uttered the words. As if his answer was a part of me that didn’t fit.

  “You’re lying?”

  “That was a partial lie, yes. I’ve been telling the truth since we’ve been here.”

  I waited for that wrong puzzle piece feeling to hit me again, but it didn’t.

  “Well, hell,” I muttered.