Chapter Twenty-One
It's time for another lesson.
Trick is awake; he's always awake. I wonder if he ever sleeps—if he even needs to. Or maybe he just knows when someone is coming and so is never caught sleeping. I shake my head to clear it of these unwanted thoughts and close the door behind me.
He's watching me, his expression guarded but curious. He waits, as he always does, for me to say something. I lean against the wall and look everywhere but at him. I slide down the wall to a sit, crossing my legs in front of me. I am so tired of coming down here, of feeling torn between telling Ryland what I'm doing and freeing Patrick.
"Why are you here?" I don't realize that it's slipped out, but it is too late to take back the question. I've always wanted to know why the demons come, but also—more importantly—why they choose to take over bodies. Why they seem so insistent on staying in our world.
"Because some mangy git decided to throw a burlap sack over my head and put me in this lovely room inside a bunch of magic squiggles." His tone is one usually reserved for particularly slow children.
I rub my temples. His attitude is not helping, although I shouldn't be surprised. "Never mind." I lean my head back against the wall, tired beyond all imagining. I was stupid to think Trick would provide an honest or helpful answer about that.
"That's not what you wanted to know, is it?" He pauses, then his voice takes on a lecturing tone. "Look, if you're going to insist on communicating with me, there's some rules you need to know." I watch as he twitches a finger upright. "Number one: always be very specific when asking a question."
My smile is tired. "Telling me things that I shouldn't know?"
He cocks his head, like a parrot. "Yes. No. I don't know. I'm bored. You amuse me. It's better than staring at the walls. Pick one."
"The truth. Please."
I notice that his eyes widen. Patrick used to get that look in class whenever I would say or do something guaranteed to get me into trouble with the instructor. It's strange to see it deployed here. "You'd figure it out eventually. You're not as dim as you look." He pauses, pursing his lips. "And I don't know what to make of you." He sounds legitimately confused.
I shake my head. He's not the only one. "Is that your answer?"
"Yes."
"Okay." We sit in silence for a few minutes. It takes me a while to come up with the phrasing of the question I want to ask him. I'm hoping for a truthful answer. "Why did you pick Patrick to possess?"
He chews on his lower lip thoughtfully, a terribly human gesture. I am beginning to separate in my head the differences between Trick and Patrick. I suppose I'm thinking of them as multiple personalities housed in the same body; looking at them in a detached, clinical way.
"No particular reason." His voice is matter of fact. "He was there. He was available. No charms, no wards, nothing to keep me out."
"That's it? Just wrong place, wrong time?" I shake my head in disbelief. That can't be all there is to it. Poor, careful Patrick. "But why do it at all?"
"Because it's fun." Trick stretches as much as he can with his arms and legs bound. "Look, sometimes it's nice to have corporeal form, to feel things, to have sensations and experiences so different from what you are used to."
"But aren't you limitlessly powerful in your own form? I mean, you used to be called up to do your master's bidding and could use magic to perform wonders. You lose all that in a human body." Why would anything pass up cosmic power to spend time in a flesh suit? It didn't make sense to me.
"Some of us are. It varies by spirit." He looks intensely at me, as if willing me to understand.
"Okay, fine, you're all unique, special snowflakes. But that still doesn't answer my question as to why a limitless spirit would want to lock themselves inside a human." I watch him carefully, trying to work out when he's lying and when he might be telling the truth. Everyone has tells—maybe demons in human form have them too.
He leans his head back against the chair. "You know, it would be very nice if I could stretch out." He raised an eyebrow at me hopefully.
"You're stalling." I frown. My patience only extends so far.
He lowers his brow with a long-suffering sigh. "It was worth a shot." He wriggles a bit in his seat. "Why would one of us want to be corporeal, you ask?" For a second I feel like I'm in school, skewered by the professor for giving an answer so wrong-headed that I should be taken out and shot. "Let me ask you this: why wouldn't we?"
I open my mouth to reply, certain I know the answer, then stop myself. I've been looking at this through one kind of lens for so long that the pat answer comes easy, but it may not be the right one. I broaden my view, trying to think about what it would be like. It's hard; despite the history--some accurate, some so very not--we don't have a lot of information of what goes on beyond the gate. I can only work with what I know for a fact, which isn't much.
I try and come at from the reverse. I'm human, yes. What would make me want to be a demon—or spirit, as Trick insists? I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them, trying to make my brain work. But it isn't necessarily my brain that engages. Something inside me, buried deep maybe, says, To know what it's like.
I sit up fast, as if hit with an electrical prod. "You lot want to know what it's like to be human."
He tuts. "Not quite, but close. Good effort." He smiles slyly. "Not necessarily human though. More to feel, to touch, to taste, to experience everything the flesh has to offer." He inspects his fingernails. "It can get remarkably dull after eons of insubstantiality."
"I would think you'd welcome the binding then. You don't seem at all happy about it." I think I know the answer, but I want to see if he'll confirm it.
He frowns darkly, his dark brows pulled low over his eyes. "Would you be happy being locked in a box forever and ever? No matter how nice and new and comfy the box is, it's still a box." He closed his eyes, tilting his head back. "As a vacation, it's great. Being stuck for the duration? Not so much."
He leans forward suddenly. "I may want the sensations that being flesh can offer, but getting sick, growing old, eventually feeling the organs and whatsits stop and die? No thank you. That experience you can keep all to yourselves."
"What would happen to you? If the body died and you were still locked in there?" I have a morbid curiosity about this subject.
Trick shrugs again. "Not sure, exactly. But I have my theories." He goes silent for a second, thinking. "I mean, I suppose I could reanimate the body, but who wants to gad about clad like a shambling monster with bits of themselves falling off? It's terribly off-putting, not to mention unhygienic." He shakes his head in disgust.
I am horrified that I have to bite back a giggle. He's not supposed to be funny! But he sounds so completely offended by the scenario, like it's an affront to his good breeding or something that I can't help myself.
Trick smiles, but there's something in it, something beyond pure mirth. There's a craftiness present in it that makes my stomach twist. "So now you see why I'd like to bust out of this charmingly elaborate cage sooner rather than later, yes?" He pushes his head forward, almost lizard-like. "Have you made any progress finding which ritual was used on me?"
I shake my head. "I'm going to need to get into Ryland's office, but I can't do it while he's in there."
"Tick tock, tick tock, my girl. You're running out of time to help your little friend in here."
I recoil from his direction like he just tried to rip my head from my neck. "He's in there? With you?" My voice comes out softly, a breath, a hope.
"In a sense, yes. He never left." His face grows long and serious. "To put it in language you'll understand, it's like he's been shoved into a cupboard. He's stuck in there until I decide to let him out."
"Does he know what's happening? Out here, I mean." I blink back the sudden warmth of tears. I'm not sure I've relieved or horrified at what Trick is telling me.
"Hard to say for sure." He shrugs. "I've never really given it much though
t, to tell the truth."
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming at Trick. The casual tone in his voice, the utter unconcern for what it is he does to people, makes me want hit him. I'm glad I don't have my blades with me. I might be too tempted to use them.
"I have to go." Before he can say another word, I spin on my heel. I close the door harder than I mean to and restore the bar to its rightful place. Then I run down the hall, getting as far away from Trick and the image of Patrick huddling in the dark as possible.
The Iron Bells Page 26
