by Lori Devoti
“Didn’t you wonder why Kobal agreed so easily to your demand that he not send a demon any more dangerous than I am? Don’t you see what that means?”
I stared at him refusing to believe what he was trying to tell me.
“I am dangerous. Way more dangerous than I appear. That’s why Kobal sent me. He knew you’d trust me. He knew Nellie and I wouldn’t appear scary. He thought being around us would lull you into thinking you could handle whoever else he wanted to send.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Then why send Holmes?”
“He was a red herring. Kobal needed someone who would fit the image of demon in your head and make Nellie and me look more acceptable. And he did. You even took us with you to fight him.”
“And you helped. Both of you did.” This argument was so insane I couldn’t believe I was having it.
“Demons don’t always look evil, and their powers can be used for a good purpose, but there’s always something in it for the demon, and whatever demon is above him.
“Yes, Nellie helped you. But why? What did she get out of it? Do you really think she was just being a Good Samaritan?”
“Of course not, she used her powers….” I stopped, realizing I didn’t know exactly what Nellie got out of what she did, except, I assumed, pleasure.
“And when she uses her powers, when any of us use our powers and get a human to succumb, we grow stronger. Because of you, I’m growing stronger. I can feel it.” He straightened out his fists. “Which means Kobal is growing stronger. It’s a giant pyramid. Humans use a demon in a way they think is innocent, smart even, never understanding any opportunity a demon has to use his power in the human plane increases his power overall.”
“So, that’s why Kobal wants me to release more demons.” I’d wondered about that. Kobal hadn’t struck me as the tour guide type. “The more demons under him who are out on this plane, the more powerful he gets.”
Oscar didn’t nod or reply. He didn’t have to.
“So, what should I have done? Let Angie, Joshua and Charles stay there? Left them behind?” Because there was no way I would have been able to get them out of that warehouse without Nellie’s help.
“I’m not saying that. I’m just showing you how demons suck humans in. How easy it is to convince yourself that we aren’t dangerous, but we are. We all are. Don’t forget it.”
I sat down on the bed and bent to retrieve the afghan from the floor. “So then we go on like this. I call Kobal once a day. You and Nellie stay here. You help me with this.” I gestured to the mark on the back of my neck with sick resolve. “And Brittany and I figure out a way to keep Nellie from destroying lives. We’ll make it work.” I smiled, but I knew it was weak; tears formed behind my eyes.
Oscar knelt down in front of me. “You know it isn’t that simple. You made a deal with a demon. Until you help transport the two demons Kobal has chosen, there will never be a moment when you are safe, and even when you do transport them, you won’t be safe, not really. Do you think Kobal will leave when you die to chance? Allow any possibility that you might die when you aren’t under the contract? Do you?”
I blinked. I hadn’t thought of that. Hadn’t considered that Kobal would play dirty. Kill me, or have me killed when the timing worked best for him.
I was an idiot.
“He will have four demons under his control walking around this world. Any one of us, at any time, would be powerful enough to kill you.”
“But you, even Nellie, wouldn’t. It’s not what she does.”
“Could she make you want someone so badly you go insane? Do something insane? Get you killed? What about me? What if what I’m feeling for you now isn’t real? What if Kobal is behind it? What if I stop caring and take your caring with me? What then?
“You’re playing a game you cannot win.”
I gripped the afghan in my fingers. The yarn was coarse, cut into my skin. “So, I can’t win, and I can’t trust you or Nellie. Thanks. You’ve been a ton of help.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry, but you had to hear the truth, and I don’t know one day to the next if I’ll be able to say it, if I’ll care enough to say it. But right now I do.” He brushed the back of his fingers over my cheek. It wasn’t until I saw the moisture there that I realized I was crying.
“You have to get out of this contract, and you have to send Nellie and me back. It’s the only way.”
I laughed. “Great then, let’s do that. No, wait. I don’t know how.”
“You have to get another demon to help you, one more powerful than Kobal.”
I blinked. “Call a more powerful demon?”
Oscar placed his hand on mine. His skin was darker than mine. That didn’t seem right, but then nothing about being a demon seemed right. “You made your deal with Kobal without a plan, in the crush of what was happening, and you still managed to work in a loophole. If you take more time, really think things out, I believe you can make a deal that gets you out of this one and doesn’t get you in any deeper.” He squeezed my fingers. “You’re smart, Lucinda, and calling demons is in your blood. You can do this.”
“Who?” I asked. Inside I was shaking, but he was right I couldn’t live like I was, not for long. And it wasn’t like things could get any worse. My soul was already dangling by a gossamer thread.
His thumb caressed the top of my hand. “I know a demon lord who is stronger, not a lot, but enough. He won’t like Kobal having demons in this plane and he won’t want Kobal getting you. You can use that.”
Make a deal with a demon with my payment being that I wouldn’t make a deal with another demon. It sounded crazy, but not doing anything? Sticking with what I had? That was even crazier.
I stared at his hand on mine for a moment. Could I trust Oscar? I knew the answer, or two answers, one from my head and the other from my heart.
I looked up. “I’ll think about it.”
It was smart not to commit. But as he walked back to the window and slipped out into the night, all I could hear, all I could feel was the beating of my heart.
o0o
When I told Brittany about Oscar’s visit and his offer to give me the name of another, more powerful demon, she dropped her lipstick onto the bathroom floor. “What? Another demon? More powerful than Kobal? How is that going to do anything except get us in deeper?”
“Oscar thinks I can word a deal that will get us out, not deeper in.” I picked up her lipstick. It had probably cost more than my coat.
I pressed my lips together.
She took the tiny chrome tube and dropped it in the trash. “So, Oscar believes in you.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Do you have another idea?”
With a sigh, she leaned against the sink. “Well, none of this makes sense. He tells you you can’t trust him. Then he tells you to do something that sounds like suicide.” She screwed up her face like she smelled last night’s fish.
I leaned against the sink next to hers. “I trust him, Brittany. I know he’s basically told me I can’t, but I do. I can’t help it.”
She looked down at her shoes. “There are a lot of things we know we shouldn’t do or feel that we do anyway.”
Her words reminded me of our other, more immediate, problem. “What’s going on with Nellie? Have you talked to her?”
Brittany focused on the sea-foam green bathroom stall in front of her. “She hasn’t talked to me since the factory. I know I shouldn’t care. I mean, I’m not a moron. I saw what she did to Mr. Fennley and Shane.”
I stood there all awkward and stupid. It’s hard to comfort someone when you think what they’re mourning is best lost anyway.
She looked up. “I know you don’t like her. I know me liking her in the way I do probably shocks you.”
“She’s a succubus, Brittany. You can’t help liking her. I even felt her—” I slapped my palm against the sink, not willing to vocalize what Nellie had made me feel.
“No. Lucinda. No. I don’t like her b
ecause she’s a succubus. This isn’t some ‘demon thing.’ I like her because I like her. That’s what I do. I like girls.”
She jerked up the sleeve of her gray cashmere sweater and held out her arm. The bruises were nothing but faint yellow stains, but she waved them at me anyway. “Know how I got this? I didn’t go to the doctor that day. I met Nellie at my house. My dad came home. He found us.”
I sucked in a breath.
She laughed. “Luckily he didn’t see Nellie, at least not enough of her to know who she was, but he caught me and wouldn’t let go. I thought he was going to hit me. I’ve skipped school. I’ve lied. I’ve done all kinds of things, Lucinda, and he never twitched an eyebrow. But he thinks I’m kissing a girl, and he flips out. Tells me to quit being stupid. That I’m doing it for the attention, because it’s ‘cool’ right now.” She held out her arm again. “This isn’t cool, Lucinda. Hiding who you are isn’t cool, and being me, the real me, isn’t cool either. But it’s the one thing I can’t stop doing.”
She shoved herself away from the sink and ran from the bathroom.
And I stood staring after her, knowing that I’d fucked up royally, but once again not having a clue how to fix it.
o0o
I found Brittany at the smoking rock. She was sitting with her back to the school, her chin on her knees, peering off into the woods. When I walked up, she started talking.
“You remember that time back in middle school, when we went to the observatory? You walked up to me to let me know the bus was leaving? Do you know why I told you to go away?”
I’d thought I knew the answer, that Brittany had thought she was too good for me, but now I knew I’d been wrong. So I didn’t answer. I’d said enough stupid things for one day.
“One of those girls was flirting with me, or I thought she was. That’s when I realized I liked it, liked girls. After that….” She pulled her knees closer to her body. “I couldn’t hang around with people from here.” She nodded her head toward the school behind us. “Someone would figure it out. At least, I was afraid they would. But with the college kids, I wasn’t me anyway. I was playing a part. It made it all easier to hide somehow.”
I pressed my fingers to my temples. I’d never seen Brittany as anything except one-hundred-percent confident. Now she was telling me everything she did was an act. It just didn’t compute.
I didn’t even know what to say.
She spun on her butt, and jerked her crucifix out from under her shirt. “My family is Catholic. Do you know what that means? I can’t be gay. I just can’t. The Catholic Church, they call it a disorder, an abuse of human nature. My dad—he thinks it’s a choice—that people choose to be gay. Who would choose to be an outcast, an abuse of nature? What does that even mean?”
My hands began to sweat. Brittany was supposed to be strong and confident. She was a fixer. She helped fix me, not the other way around.
When I didn’t answer, she moved to turn away. I stepped forward and put a hand on her arm. My touch was firm. Maybe a little too firm; the whole thing was pissing me off. “You’re not an abuse. You know that. This entire thing is just…ridiculous. For God’s sake, we unleashed demons on the world and you’re worrying because you think Nellie’s cute. Get some perspective. We have real issues.”
She stared at me and for a second I thought I’d gone too far. Then she grinned, and the knot in my stomach loosened. “Real issues. Yeah. You think a few demons are more important than my fixation on Blake Lively’s hair?”
I wasn’t sure who Blake Lively was. My blank stare must have given that away. Brittany started laughing. “You’re a jewel, you know that? Totally not my type, but still a keeper.”
She hopped down from the rock, and for a second everything was normal. I smiled; then I looked up and saw Nellie walking from the main school building to the lunchroom. Brittany saw her too. I grabbed her by the arm, my fingers pressing into the fluffy wool of her sweater.
“Just because you’re gay, doesn’t mean you’re in love with Nellie. You know that, right? She’s played with all of us.”
Brittany nodded. “And just because you’re straight, doesn’t mean you’re in love with Oscar. You know that, right?” She turned her gaze on me, solid and serious. “He’s a demon, just like Nellie, just like Holmes. He told you not to trust him. I think this may be the one time you should listen to a demon.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer because deep inside I knew she was right. I also know I was going to do everything I could to prove both of us wrong.
Chapter 21
At school things were weird. During lunch, none of the usual groupings seemed to be in effect. Nellie sat on a table at the back of the lunch room, where the pops normally sat. A mix of angry and stunned faces stared up at her from their benches below.
The table’s usual occupants, the pops—cheerleaders, some football players, and a few super smarts—were scattered around the room, staring at empty trays or worse, eating. One cheerleader, who I hadn’t seen eat anything more calorically-dense than a diet pop and a mini bag of pretzels, was mindlessly munching on a corn dog.
Performing her normal uninterested stroll through the lunch room, Brittany ground to a halt and stared openly. The girl just dipped her dog into melted cheese and chomped off another hunk.
“This is so not right,” Brittany mumbled.
I turned to the left, looking for my favorites, the lit chicks. They were together. Astral, she of the poetry, was sitting with her back to me. A pile of books was spread across their table. As I walked closer, I could see the titles. Everything from some obscure French phrase I couldn’t pronounce to skinny romance novels with words like “virgin” and “sheik” displayed prominently on the cover. I picked up a mystery with a bowl of spaghetti decorating its front and pretended to page through it. “You finally decide to read some real books?”
I expected some response, like they were collecting them to save the world from our own lack of taste and sophistication, but they each just picked a book at random from the stack and started reading. When I saw Astral had selected one of the romance novels, I almost dropped the book I was holding. The lit chicks didn’t read popular fiction. In fact, making fun of those who did was one of their favorite pastimes.
In our English class last year we got to suggest books for everyone to read. My list had been full of fantasy and paranormal romance titles. The lit chicks had practically rolled in the aisles with amusement.
“Astral, did you reschedule your reading? I’d like to go,” I said.
She blinked, her face bland. “Sure, why not?” Then she stood, flipped to the center of the book she held and began to read aloud. “His lips captured the tip of one breast. She let out a sigh and wove her fingers deeper into his hair, held his head against her. She’d never been touched like this, never realized how wrong and yet good it could feel.”
Her voice was flat, as if she was reading the back of a cereal box, not explaining in detail how a virgin bride ached for her deflowering. I jerked the book from her hand and shoved the mystery into her grasp instead.
Without missing a beat, she started reading. “The kitchen was splattered with red. Blood I thought at first, then the enticing scent of oregano calmed my beating heart.”
I waited for her to laugh, to start with the cutting jokes, but she didn’t. She kept reading, just as seriously as if it was one of her valued literary classics.
Unable to stand anymore, I walked on.
Brittany had made her way to the outcast table. One boy, a cutter, was reading People magazine. Another had on a bright purple tee with some tween idol on the front.
“It’s his sister’s,” Brittany mumbled. “It was on top of the laundry basket.”
“Astral is reading romance. The kind where no one dies,” I replied.
“Things really are fucked up here. What happened?” Brittany asked.
A chair flying across the room cut off my response.
Shane Boll
ock stood with his hands over his head and his chest heaving. Two guys, a geek and a way-smart, twirled around Nellie’s table their hands wrapped around each others’ throats. Shane spun and grabbed a fourth boy, this one an outcast, by the front of his gray T. The boy’s sullen face furrowed in rage. He picked up a bowl of melted cheese and smashed it into Shane’s face. Shane retaliated with a fist to his nose.
Blood and cheese were streaming, chairs were flying and through it all, no one not involved in the brawl said a word. Every student sat at their respective tables watching the action with absolutely zero alarm and only a modicum of interest. You’d have thought we were enduring an in-depth analysis of depression-era economics rather than a raging food fight.
Then there was Nellie. She sat as she had when we entered, on the top of her table. She had kicked off her heels. The balls of her bare feet were balanced on the bench below her, and she was smiling.
I cut through the middle of the brawl, smacking Shane with the heel of my hand when he teetered toward me.
“What did you do?” I asked her.
Her eyes alight, she kept her gaze on the fight. “I think it’s more what you’ve done, or haven’t done.” She turned to me then, her eyes tilting like a cat’s. “My power is growing.” She cocked her head toward the outcast table a good twenty feet away. The boy in the purple tee stood, knocking against his People-reading friend as he did. His gaze never wavering, he walked toward us.
Like me, he tromped through the middle of the fight. Unlike me, when Shane bumped into him and the boy bumped back, Shane charged him like a bull. The boy’s body folded over Shane’s back as the wrestling star raced forward. They collided with a table and sent it sailing across the room.
I narrowed my eyes. “This has nothing to do with me.”
“Ah, kitten. For someone who insists on playing with demons, you are so uneducated. Oscar visited you last night, didn’t he?
I stiffened. Oscar had spoken of what happened between us to Nellie. I had told Brittany, of course, but that was different. Brittany was my friend and not Nellie.
