Crimson climbed up beside him. “Looks like you’re slowing down in your old age,” Jasper mocked gently and was pleased to see him smile, though he wished he wasn’t.
“Don’t let it go to your head. I let you win.” The werespider pushed his wet hair back, sending trails of water running down his finely muscled back and chest.
Jasper looked away, at the moving water below them. The silence that stretched before them was more comfortable than the previous. Crimson dangled his long legs above the water, catching the soft crest of a wave with his toe, and Jasper rested his chin on his bent knee, noticing that even this small distance out revealed more stars in the sky.
“I like it out here,” said Jasper.
“Eh…” said Crimson. “It’s alright. I liked it better when it was all frontier. Sad about the natives, though. The seventeenth century here was almost as depressing as the fourteenth one in Europe. I didn’t think there’d be any of them left by the time your people were done.”
“Hey now, ‘my’ people didn’t make it over here until the 1800s.” He said it lightly, playfully. He, in fact, hadn’t come here until 1987, when he was two. He’d been born in Ireland. His father was of Irish descent. His mother… well, signs pointed to her having been something else entirely. He wished he knew what. “And we had it almost just as bad as everyone else.”
Crimson raised a cynical eyebrow.
Jasper grinned. “Well, that’s what I hear, anyway. It’s not like I know for sure. I wasn’t exactly there.”
“I was,” said Crimson. It was strange to think about.
“Can I ask you a question?” Jasper asked.
“What’s one more?”
“How old are you exactly?”
“Exactly? Fuck if I know, man.”
“Well, then, roughly.” He found it a little hard to believe he could forget how old he was, but he supposed that Charlie was only in his forties and he always had to stop and think about the answer.
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Sure I would.”
For a moment it seemed like Crimson wouldn’t answer. Pulling his gaze from the ocean, he looked at Jasper. “Three thousand. Give or take a few decades. I can’t really keep track anymore.”
Jasper had to stop himself from calling bullshit. Three thousand years was a number he couldn’t fathom. How could a person live for three thousand years? Why would they want to?
Crimson was still looking at him, reading the expression of disbelief.
“That’s… a long time,” Jasper said finally, and Crimson sighed, looking back out at the water.
“You have no idea.”
Chapter Fifteen
—
Best-Laid Missions
Jasper had been to this bookstore a couple of times, sometimes with Crimson and sometimes alone. It wasn’t anything special, one of those chains with multiple stories and a coffee shop built in. The stacks were full and organized by genre and then by author. Something was comforting about being surrounded by stories; Jasper needed some comfort now.
He found an empty section of the store, tucked in a corner with the sociology books. A plastic wicker armchair with a missing pillow was between two bookshelves, and Jasper sat there, knee bouncing anxiously as he took out his phone. He flipped it open and closed a few times, going as far as bringing up his father’s number before snapping it shut again.
There was no point delaying it.
Jasper called Charlie and listened to the phone ring. It seemed to ring for a long time, though in reality it was only three or four times. Normally talking to his dad calmed him down, but when his father’s deep and even voice spoke a single “Hello?” he brought his thumbnail to his mouth and worried it with his teeth.
“Hey, Dad,” he said. “It’s Jazz.”
Charlie’s voice brightened. “Jasper, hello! Happy hunting?”
“Um, well, about that.” Jasper took a deep breath. “Uh, so about the mission… I think… it’s kind of a bust.”
He heard the sound of a door opening and closing, muffled over the cell. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… well, I’ve been hanging out with the guy for a while now and, I don’t know, I just think we were wrong. He’s… he’s a loner. He doesn’t have a pack, and from what I’ve gathered, most of his allies and friends are either dead or we already have ’em in the cells. He’s alone, man. Total dead end.”
Charlie was silent on the other end of the phone. Jasper imagined him in his apartment study, the wall of windows looking out at the Manhattan skyline, shades half-drawn to cut the glare from the late afternoon sun; the bookshelves full of history and demonology books, spines worn by time and touch; the large desk in the middle of the room that he sat behind, leaning thoughtfully back in his chair. Jasper bit his thumbnail down to the quick.
“A dead end,” Charlie said finally.
“Yeah. A dead end. Really, I don’t think this guy knows anything important.”
“You don’t? You haven’t been with him that long. How can you be sure?”
“It’s been more than a month.” It felt even longer. Everything felt different now, like he was seeing things clearly. He felt different. He remembered first meeting Crimson and how much he disliked him. It had been instantaneous, instinct, habit. He was a demon and that was all that mattered. Now Jasper saw more important things: Crimson was rash and brave and quick and funny. He knew every Stones song ever recorded and had a story for every topic and occasion. He was almost predictable in his routines until he wasn’t, and Jasper was always surprised by what surprised him, like how he could play the piano as well as Billy Joel or Elton John, or that he was so scared of elevators he would rather walk up forty stories than ride in one. Even when Jasper was mad at him, which wasn’t uncommon, he liked him, and behind his sneers and moody silences, he thought Crimson liked him too.
He hadn’t felt this way since Adam.
They were friends.
He could not explain this to his father.
“He’s lonely, Dad. He fell for it, easy. He thinks we’re, like, best friends or something.” The words tasted bitter. He was trying so hard to sound removed from it. Just another job. “He’s told me a bunch of shit, but none of it is useful.”
“What about that vampire? Alcander Owen?”
“He’s an agoraphobic vampire with anxiety. He can, like, barely function. I really don’t think there’s any sort of lead there.”
“So what exactly did you have in mind as a course of action?”
While Charlie was both his boss and his guardian, it rarely ever felt like he was giving orders. He listened to Jasper and valued his opinion, even when his opinion was less than perfect. Jasper almost breathed a sigh of relief. “Cut our losses and abort the mission?” he suggested.
There was a beat of silence slightly too long to be anything but a surprised pause. “That’s really what you think would be best?”
“Yes, it really is. Whole thing was sort of a waste of time.”
“Alright. Well, in that case, we’ll call it.” Charlie’s voice sounded mildly disappointed. Jasper was glad he didn’t have to hide the fact that he was smiling. He opened his mouth to tell him he would be on the next flight home, but Charlie wasn’t done. “We can send someone from the Miami branch to help you put them down if you need them.”
The shock of his statement was like a punch to the heart. “What?”
“Unless you’re certain you can handle them on your own.” Charlie mistook his question. “I know there’s only two of them.”
“No, I-I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“It’s no trouble. I’m sure they’d be happy for the action. There isn’t much down there other than witches, and they tend to know their place better than demons. I know you’re capable, but there’s no need to be reckless.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I just… I don’t think we have to kill them. I mean, they’re out of New York, isn’t that enough?”<
br />
There was another silence, this one impossible to read. If Jasper were in the room with him, he would be able to tell what he was thinking. He chewed his nail again, tasting blood.
“What are you saying, Jasper?”
“I’m just sayin’… that I-I think we can just leave them alone. They aren’t hurting anybody.”
“Oh, they aren’t, are they?” Charlie’s voice had turned in a direction Jasper wasn’t used to hearing, especially directed at him. “How often do they have to feed? Once or twice a month? What do you think happens then? Jasper, you know this. It’s basic. They kill people; that’s why we kill them. To save people. How many people do you think the werespider’s murdered in his time? Hundreds? Thousands? Double that with the vampire. They have to be taken care of.”
Jasper’s breath felt caught in his chest. Charlie was right, Jazz knew what demons did to survive. He knew that they should be stopped, that he should want to save as many people as possible. It just wasn’t as simple as that anymore. Crimson was a person; Al was a person. They were his friends, as fucked up as that might be. He wanted to protect them too.
“Jasper.” Charlie’s voice, firm.
Jasper realized he hadn’t said anything. “I just don’t think—”
“There is nothing to think about! Jesus Christ, Jasper, what’s wrong with you? Has he gotten into your head, is that what’s happening here?”
“He isn’t in my head,” he snapped. And he wasn’t—Jasper knew how demon hypnosis worked, and he knew how to fight it. It had never worked on him anyway; he never felt the pull other Hunters described when a vampire tried to compel them. Crimson had never turned those shining eyes on him anyway, not since the very beginning. “I just don’t think it’s right. They aren’t monsters, they’re—”
“Enough! I want you on the earliest plane back. The Miami branch will finish this if you can’t. Now tell me where to find them.”
Panic stabbed at his chest. “No.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no.” Jasper’s voice shook, but he continued anyway. “No, I won’t tell you, and no, I won’t kill them.”
“Jasper Daniel Craig,” he warned.
“I gotta go. I’m sorry.” He hung up the phone. It rang immediately, and he ended the call. When it rang again, he shut it off.
The stacks of books, which had been comforting to him moments before, now felt suffocating, too close and too heavy. He needed to get out of here. He wasn’t sure where he was going to go, he just needed to get out. He needed fresh air. He needed a cigarette.
Jasper headed for the stairs that led down to the lower level, but as he rounded the corner of an aisle, he froze, like an animal trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car. Crimson was standing there, holding a book open in front of him. He was in the political science section, which felt like the most ridiculous place to find him. He probably didn’t even know who the president was. The werespider looked up at Jasper and replaced the book. His face gave nothing away.
“How long have you been in here?” demanded Jasper. He wasn’t ready to deal with Crimson and couldn’t tell what the demon might or might not have heard. “Were you following me?”
“I followed your trail here, yeah,” replied Crimson, all innocence. “But I wasn’t like… stalking you or whatever.”
“You could have texted me if you wanted to know where I was. You didn’t have to—to track me.”
“I didn’t know it was such a big fuckin’ deal,” replied Crimson. If he expected some sort of signal as to what he had or had not heard, there was none.
“It’s just weird.” He fought to keep the anger from his voice. Maybe it was all as innocent as it seemed. Maybe he was just overreacting.
Crimson languidly raised an eyebrow. “Alright,” he said. “Noted.” He put his hands in his pockets, surveying him with a tilted head. “You okay? Your heart’s beating really fast.”
The demonic hearing was no fair. Crimson could do it to him, but he could not do it to Crimson. “It tends to do that when a person is angry, which I am.” He wasn’t, really. Well, in a way, he was. But not at Crimson.
“Why?” asked Crimson. The other patrons were starting to look at them now, though neither of them had raised his voice much above a conversational tone.
“Because it’s rude, Crimson. And it’s an invasion of privacy. And it…” He wavered. “It makes me feel like you don’t trust me.” This was all some version of the truth, just simplified to an abridged version that ignored the crux of the matter, which was that he was scared, not angry. He wished he could tell him but knew he couldn’t. Not ever.
“Oh,” said Crimson. He rubbed the nape of his neck, his expression surprisingly sheepish. “If ya wanna know the truth, I’m real bad at texting. And I didn’t think people talked on phones anymore.”
Jasper’s heart beat a little slower. He hoped like hell he wasn’t lying, but at this point he’d take any out he could get. “People don’t talk on cell phones anymore,” he agreed. It seemed like he could scarcely remember a time before text messaging. “But you can call me.” This was the most ridiculous argument he’d ever had in his life. He made for the door.
“You don’t want a book?” asked Crimson as he followed.
“I don’t have any money,” said Jasper. Then he turned suddenly on his heel, grabbing the book Crimson had just picked up out of his hand and setting it firmly back on the shelf. “I don’t need you to steal stuff for me.”
“Maybe it was for me,” said Crimson, but he didn’t try to take it again.
Out on the sidewalk, Jasper lit a cigarette. He looked up one side of the street and down the other. Was there some way Charlie could find him here? Was it worth alarming the demons? If he told them, they would almost certainly want to know how he knew, and he doubted if he could explain without running the risk of getting murdered in the process.
He looked at the werespider. “Hey, uh… You wanna get out of town?”
“Why?” asked Crimson. “Should I?”
Jasper coughed on cigarette smoke. “I was just thinking maybe we could try for the other coast this time.”
“Yeah, sure. Maybe we could all go to some out-of-the-way log cabin, deep in the woods, where no one will hear us scream. That the plan?”
Alarm bells rang in Jasper’s mind. He tried to keep calm. “What?”
Crimson cracked a smile. “You know I’m just fuckin’ with you, right?”
Jasper smiled nervously. “Yeah, I know.”
Crimson turned away, starting down the street. “I was thinking we would probably head back to New York soon. I figured you would come with us, but if you’ve got your own thing going on—”
“No thing,” said Jasper quickly. “I just thought it might be fun.”
“Not with Alcander tagging along it won’t.” Crimson hesitated. “I really should get him back home. I’m gonna give it another week or so. Ivory’ll have gotten bored by then. She’s probably already off bothering someone else. But we could go on another trip afterwards if you want.”
The sentiment was nice, but it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He couldn’t very well argue about it either. “Alright,” said Jasper, resigned. “I guess we’ll see.”
Chapter Sixteen
—
The Joan of Arc Institute
It took a few days to locate the demons and the rogue Hunter who was with them. It was less that they were particularly good at hiding and more that the Hunters had a lot of city to sweep and not many agents to search. The Miami agency was more involved in controlling and monitoring the state’s rather large spellcaster population than in hunting demons, who tended towards colder climates.
They had psychics who could sense auras and minds, and had spellcasters who could find anyone with an incantation so long as they had something of personal value to the person or creature they were tracking. With a population of over five million people and an area covering more than eighty-five miles, i
t looked like they were facing a pretty big job just to track down three individuals.
It was Ryan Bowie’s idea to use the Hunter’s ID photo and a facial-recognition program he’d been working on to scan the security feeds of the larger hotels in Miami. Their feeds were uploaded as they were recorded into a company’s servers, which he’d easily found and gained access to. From there, he said, it was mostly a waiting game as the program scanned the footage from the last few weeks. It could take up to five days, assuming they got a hit at all. Otherwise it would be back to the drawing board.
The program had already been running for nearly a full day.
“How old is this kid?”
“Eighteen. The picture’s from last year. Shouldn’t have changed so much that the program can’t pick him out.” Ryan was leaned back in his chair, his feet propped up on the desk, legs crossed at the ankles, a Rubik’s Cube spinning in his hands. The glow of the computer’s multiple monitors could be seen in his eyes, which stayed focused on the flickering images of the cycling security feeds. In the corner of the leftmost screen was the Hunter’s picture: short, curly reddish-brown hair and almost startling green eyes stared back out at them from a freckled face.
Selena Chase frowned. She, along with most of the room’s six members, was dressed in simple Hunter’s garb: a long-sleeve black shirt, fitted close to the body, thicker through the chest and arms; dark pants that were resistant to tearing and staining; and heavy-soled leather boots. Her hair was dark and cropped into a short, straight bob. She tugged absently at a strand of hair, tucking it behind her ear. “That’s an awful long time for someone his age to be alone with a demon.” Hell, she couldn’t imagine doing it. Jasper Craig was either very brave or very stupid for trying. Knowing what most Hunters his age were like made her think he was probably both.
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