by Krista Walsh
“I know,” he said.
He moved toward the doorway, and Daphne followed him through the boiler room toward the demons lying dead in the corridor.
“You’ve sensed them, too, haven’t you?” she asked. “The changes in the air?”
“They’re getting stronger. Closer together.” Zach grabbed both halves of the Lingor demon and threw them up the stairs next to Borl’s body, then headed up the stairs and grabbed the maylin as he went. “Whatever it is, it’s coming hard and fast.”
“If it’s as big as it seems, we won’t be able to do anything about it on our own.” Daphne said. She headed over to the broken window and watched as Emmett turned the van around the corner and disappeared. “I wonder if we were ever meant to.” She turned back to Zach and crossed her arms. “What are you going to do about Molly?”
“What do you mean?”
“She wants to join us on this crusade. You know it might be a suicide mission.”
“I know.” Zach grabbed the other Ghurgzic demon by the arm. He channeled some of his new strength into his muscles and hurled him closer to the door.
“And you’re still going to let her?”
“I don’t see much point in trying to stop her,” he said, coming around to shift the second demon on top of the first. “She’s made her position clear. She won’t back down.” He folded his arms across his bare chest and hissed as he brushed over the healing gash on his stomach. More scars to add to his collection. “She’s proved she can handle herself.”
Daphne stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I hope she’s right. I don’t think we’re looking at a little skirmish here. I think, if we do this — if we really want to stop whatever these demons are trying to start — we’re going to be working to prevent a war.”
Zach didn’t say anything. There was no point. He knew she was right.
Daphne sighed. “I just hope we’re ready.”
“I don’t know if ready matters,” he said. “The fight is coming whether we step in or not. We just need to decide how much we’re willing to lose before we do something to stand in its way.”
Her lips twitched. “Well, we’re starting with a sorceress, a daemelus in his full strength, and a teenage girl who’s quick with a bow. It won’t be much of a fight, but damn it’s going to be fun.”
To Zach’s amazement, his shoulders didn’t hunch at Daphne’s use of Jermaine’s word for him. From the first time he’d heard it, he’d taken it as an insult. It was a mockery of what he was meant to be but had never achieved.
The game had changed.
He suspected Karl and his fighters had never imagined the consequences of their attacks, and that they would regret pushing Zach as far as they had.
Power filled his arms and wrapped around his heart. He was a daemelus, the perfect balance between demon and angel, good and evil, and these bastards were going to have face what they had just unleashed.
22
Emmett pulled Daphne’s mom’s car to a stop, and Molly shifted her weight in the passenger seat. The clothes Cheryl had lent her were clean and not full of holes, but unfamiliar, and she wiggled her butt to get the band of the jeans to sit comfortably. Daphne was a size smaller around the hips and a little longer in the legs. Cheryl had folded the bottom of the pants up to make them sit at Molly’s ankles, and there was no way her mother wasn’t going to notice.
But at least she was no longer covered in blood, so there was that. The slash on her side had stopped bleeding, and according to Cheryl it wasn’t deep enough to worry about. She’d cleaned it out with some alcohol and bound it with a bandage around her waist.
“Thanks for the ride home,” Molly said.
“No problem,” Emmett replied.
She rested her fingers on the handle, but waited, sensing there was something else he wanted to say.
While he figured it out, she ran through everything she’d brought with her to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything important. Emmett had grabbed her archery case out of Daphne’s trunk, and she’d packed everything away on the drive home.
Her backpack was still with Daphne, but she would pick it up when she went to visit Zach tomorrow. As long as she had it before Monday, she was fine. Hopefully her mother wouldn’t notice the missing sandwich containers.
Everything would appear perfectly normal by the time she went back to school. As though none of this had happened.
Reality seemed so surreal.
“Do you ever wish you could go back in time and not know about any of this stuff?” Emmett asked.
Molly shifted toward him in surprise. She hadn’t known what he was working himself up to say, but it hadn’t been this. The echo of her own thoughts made his question especially strange.
“I can’t say that I do,” she said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“You don’t have any trouble balancing the two side by side? I go to the store now, and I see people arguing with cashiers over stupid stuff like sales prices, and I just want to grab them by the shoulders and give them a shake, you know? There are ghosts out there. There are demons that come and try to steal your souls at night, and you’re worried about getting a lousy twenty bucks off that ugly sweater?”
Molly laughed. “I totally get what you mean. I can’t say I’ve had an easy time with school lately for that exact reason. I sit in class and listen to my math teacher go on about algebra, and my mind just drifts away to the question of why I’m learning about hidden values when I could be learning about a hidden world and how to defend myself in it.”
Her chest tightened as she thought back to the day in the locked room. “I still wake up in a sweat sometimes when I think about the first demon I killed. He was so…civilized. He sat at that table with us and told us the story of his experience with the warlock he’d killed. He had emotions like we do and sounded just like us. The fact that he was a demon didn’t even factor into the reason he’d murdered the guy. He did it because he loved him and he didn’t want to lose him. I mean sure, then he went all evil and tried to kill us, but still. I don’t think they’re as different from us as they think they are. Some are good, some are bad, and some — most — lie somewhere in the middle. Just like us.”
“Do you want to go out sometime?”
The question came so suddenly that Molly’s mouth fell open and her mind went blank. For a moment, the only thing she could do was remember to draw in breath and let it out.
“Sorry,” Emmett said. “God, that was stupid. Sorry. I didn’t mean to just blurt it out like that, I just — do you?”
Molly’s thoughts drifted toward Steve, her best friend and biggest crush for the last three years. Although there was no reason for it, guilt threatened to choke her at the idea of considering someone else for that first date. She’d always assumed that, sooner or later, Steve would admit he returned her interest.
She sucked in a breath and readied herself to turn Emmett down. To break it to him gently so maybe they could still be friends.
Then she stopped.
She’d told Zach she was ready to fight by his side. From the moment she’d learned the truth about herself to the moment she’d left Daphne’s house dressed in clothes that didn’t belong to her just so her mother wouldn’t see her covered in blood, she had pulled herself further into the otherworld. A world Steve didn’t believe in and certainly didn’t belong in.
And based on what she’d learned today, it was a good thing he didn’t. It could be what kept him alive. Considering he was still her best friend, she’d prefer him that way.
But Emmett was a completely different story. He was brave, he was funny, and he treated her like she was…normal. On top of all of that, he knew about this world. With him, she could be open about all the crazy routes her life had taken.
“I’d like that,” she said, and smiled at him.
Emmett released his breath in a whoosh, and the heaviness in the air disappeared. “Good. Excellent. Your silence kind of had me worried. If you had waited an
other second, I might have passed out.”
Molly chuckled. “What’s your phone number?”
He told her, and she plugged it into her phone, then sent him a quick text, the phone announcing the letters as she typed them. “There. Now you have my number.”
“Molly Robyn Harris,” her mother shouted from the doorstep. “Whose car is that? Who are you with? You come inside right now, young lady.”
Molly leaned her head back with a groan, then got out of the car with a laugh.
“I’ll talk to you later,” she said to Emmett.
“You can count on it.”
The engine revved as he shifted into drive and rolled away from the curb. Molly couldn’t keep the smile off her face as she went into the house. Her mother could lecture her as much and as long as she wanted, but it wouldn’t ruin her mood.
A boy had asked her out on a date.
***
Molly counted herself lucky her parents didn’t ground her, though they’d been upset enough. When they’d discovered her backpack and archery case were gone, they’d worried she had run away because of what her mom had revealed.
Molly assured them they had nothing to worry about, that she was really okay with knowing the truth, and that, if she were going to run away, she would have at least thought to bring a few changes of clothes.
Unfortunately, the reference to clothes shifted her mother’s attention to her current wardrobe. The T-shirt was a size too small, which Molly usually would have avoided, and the jeans were squeezing the breath out of her. On the fly, Molly came up with a story about tripping and falling into some mud when she was out with her friends. They’d done her a favor in lending her a change of clothes.
“Where are your other clothes? I’ll throw them in the wash.”
Crap.
“They were a lost cause, I’m afraid,” Molly said. “When I fell, that loose seam in my jeans ripped, and I caught my shirt sleeve on a fence.”
“Molly,” her dad said, exasperated. “You need to try to be more careful.”
“I know, Dad. It was an accident. I promise I’ll pay more attention.”
“And who was the boy who dropped you off?” her mother asked.
“What boy?” her father cut in.
Molly’s cheeks heated. “My friend’s brother. He’s cool. He just gave me a lift home.”
Her father set off on a barrage of questions about how old he was, where he went to school, was he a safe driver? Her mother simply said she hoped to hear more about him later. Apparently something in Molly’s expression had given her away to the woman who knew her best. She just hoped her father wasn’t as quick to catch on.
After Molly was sure she wasn’t about to be locked in her room until she graduated from college, she went there voluntarily, wanting time and space to think things over.
She put her archery case in the corner beside her dresser, then removed the rosewood box from the front pouch. She’d remembered to grab it from Daphne’s car while Emmett got her case.
She dropped down on her bed and ran her fingers over the symbol on top. Daphne had said it was a design of the River Styx. Molly tried to trace the image with her fingers, following the wiggles of the waves and the other shape she thought might be some kind of boat. Around the edges of the box were smaller symbols that she couldn’t make out at all.
She lay back against her pillows and considered what she was going to do with the orb. She’d promised to keep it safe, but she couldn’t guarantee that her house would be the best place to do so. Those demons had seen her face, and if they’d been stalking Zach, they likely had a good idea of where she lived. Without knowing why they were looking for it, she had no idea how hard they would try to find it. Would her family be at risk if she hung on to it?
She couldn’t take that chance. At some point soon, once she’d given her brain a short rest, she’d have to come up with a different plan.
A jaw-cracking yawn stretched her cheeks. She kicked off the uncomfortable jeans and pulled her comforter over her. It had been a busy day. Maybe a quick nap wouldn’t be such a horrible idea.
She removed her cochlears and set them on her bedside table. The room was blissfully silent. After all the screams and even the conversations, her head ached, and she just wanted to be alone with the memory of Emmett asking her out.
But the demons refused to leave her alone. She tossed and turned to get comfortable, but kept thinking something was leaning over her, about to grab her.
In the end, it wasn’t sweet thoughts that pulled her to sleep, but the weight of utter exhaustion.
***
The next afternoon, she got ready to go out.
“Where are you going now?” her mother asked as she headed downstairs.
“Nowhere far, I promise. Steve and I had another blow up yesterday, and I want to go apologize. I acted like an idiot.”
“Are you sure you two are all right? I know I said the other day that all friends argue, but is there something more going on?” A pause, and then she asked archly, “Something about this new boy?”
Molly groaned. “No, Mom. It’s nothing like that. You know Steve’s never been interested in me that way.”
“I’m sorry, honey.”
“Don’t be,” Molly said, and for a change, the truth didn’t make her feel small or overlooked. “This other guy, Emmett, he’s pretty nice. He doesn’t really seem to care that I’m not like most girls my age.” Or to care about the reason for it, she added to herself. Her mother didn’t need to know she was sharing the family secret with almost complete strangers. “I’m all right if Steve and I are just friends.” And if he doesn’t believe the truth about me. “It’s for the best.” It’ll keep him safe. “I just want to make sure we’re cool.”
“All right, sweetheart, but don’t stay out too late, okay? It’s a school night.”
Molly groaned again. “How could I forget?”
Her mom pulled her in for a tight hug. “I’m happy you met someone,” she said softly. “I hope to meet him soon.”
“No guarantees. He’s one of the cool kids. Thirty years old. Covered in tattoos and piercings.”
“Every mother’s dream.”
Molly laughed, wriggled out of her mother’s arms, and headed for the door. “Love you, Mom.”
Outside the day felt dreary. Dampness was thick in the air and it smelled like rain. Even if she’d wanted to spend a lot of time with Steve, she doubted she would be sticking around any longer than necessary. She just hoped the weather cleared up before she sneaked out of her room tonight. The thought of climbing her tree with wet bark sent a shiver down her spine.
She reached Steve’s house and climbed the porch, her movements slower today than they had been yesterday. Her battle wounds were only part of the problem. She had no idea what kind of reception she’d receive, and part of her suspected he would be less than happy for her to visit. She’d have to be ready to eat a lot of crow.
And deny a lot of what she’d said. She didn’t relish the thought, but it had to be done.
To Molly’s great relief, Steve answered the door instead of one of his parents.
“Molly?” he said, surprised. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I wanted to apologize,” she said, and swallowed hard as she formed the words she’d been rehearsing since she woke up this morning. “I overreacted yesterday when I shouldn’t have. The stories I was spouting were absolutely insane sounding, and I should have accepted that you thought I was crazy. And that’s fine. I probably am a little. Maybe more than a little.”
She licked her lips and fell silent, wanting to give him a chance to reply.
“I appreciate that,” Steve said.
The floor of the porch creaked as he stepped outside. He rested his hand on her elbow, and Molly took that as an invitation to drop down into one of the Adirondack chairs.
“I want to say sorry, too,” he said.
Molly’s eyebrows shot up.
&nbs
p; “I should have told you sooner that I didn’t believe you, and probably should have figured that there was more to you telling me those stories than to get my attention. You should know by now that you don’t need to try for that. You’re my best friend.”
“Back atchya,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking about everything you told me. I swore you were making it all up, but when you got so upset, I realized how…sincere you seemed about it all. So it made me think that maybe there is some truth to it. In a weird, spiritualist way. Maybe this Zach guy isn’t as much of a creep as he sounds, and maybe there are monsters that walk the world at night. I still don’t understand it all, and I don’t know that I can believe it all. You understand that, right? It’s pretty extreme.”
“Very,” Molly said. Her insides relaxed with relief as he made the reason for her visit that much easier to accomplish. “And that’s fine. It’s okay if you don’t believe everything.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to lose my friendship with you over this. But you know me. You know I’ve never believed in horoscopes or Tarot cards, witches and demons and all that stuff. It’s too weird for me.”
“Trust me,” Molly said, “I get it.” She really did.
“Good,” he said, nudging her knee with his. “I’d hate to lose my study partner.”
Despite her smile in response, she realized how difficult it would be to fit her mundane life into her new one. She didn’t know what she was going to do with school now. The thought of moving on to college after high school seemed like such a low priority in the face of whatever battle was headed her way. And no matter what Zach said, she didn’t intend to stand by and let him and Daphne fight on their own. She was able to help, and she meant to do everything she could to stand against what could possibly be the next demon war.
It might mean she wouldn’t survive to see graduation, but it would be worth it if she got to protect the world from some destructive big bad.
