Melissa smiles and holds up two gloved fingers. “Two cupcakes.”
I nod. “Fine, it’s a deal.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“This is pointless,” Melissa says, parking her car on the street in front of a cheery blue A-frame house nestled between two larger single-family homes.
“I just want to make sure she’s okay,” I say for probably the tenth time.
Cam managed to get Mrs. Crane’s home address after sweet-talking the receptionist in the administration office. I swear, he has a superpower where he can convince anyone to give him anything for the sake of his academic future.
“She’s fine,” Melissa says. “She’s recovering from a freak accident. That sort of thing changes people.” She clamps her mouth shut, like she’s said too much, and with a shock, I realize she means me. “Especially something that big,” Melissa adds quickly. “I mean, the entire Ferris wheel fell over.”
Melissa clearly doesn’t understand my concern but she was willing to come for the sake of cupcakes, which is as much as I could hope for. I can’t exactly explain that I think Mrs. Crane made a deal with my demon boss. I wish Cam didn’t have after school obligations and could have driven me instead.
“Maybe, but it’ll bother me if I don’t at least check. You can wait in the car if you want.”
I walk up onto the narrow porch and knock. After months of delivering letters for Azmos, I’ve lost all compunction about marching up and banging on people’s doors. When there’s no answer, I look for a doorbell and when I don’t find one, I knock again. Mel appears beside me and lifts a gloved hand to shield her view from the glare as she peers in the window.
“Wow, it’s a disaster area in there.” She smooths her pink-cherry-dotted skirt. “When I have a house, I’ll never let it get so gross.”
I lean over and look through the dirty glass. Inside, the living room is littered with take-out containers, pizza boxes, and empty wine bottles. There are blankets tossed on the sofa, like someone’s been sleeping there, and there are crumpled tissues all over the place.
I knock a third time. Nothing. I try the door handle but it’s locked.
“What are you doing?” Melissa asks, eyeing me strangely.
“What if she’s hurt?”
“She’s probably upstairs. Maybe she’s in the shower and can’t hear you. We should go.” She shoots another disgusted look toward the window and heads back to her car.
Except I can’t let it go, especially now that I’m here and something feels off. I can understand her place being messy if she’s been too hurt or drugged out on painkillers to clean but I have a bad feeling that something’s wrong.
“Let me try the back real quick,” I call. I catch Melissa rolling her eyes in my periphery but she doesn’t protest.
The yard around the house is a patch of grass surrounded by a knee-high wire fence that’s decorative rather than intended to keep people out. It’s easy enough to step over. The back porch is bigger, with a barbecue and outdoor dining set, both in pristine condition and possibly unused. The back windows reveal a kitchen that’s as messy as the living room: the sink is piled high with dishes, take-out containers cover the counter, and wine and vodka bottles spill out of the recycle bin.
I see a shadow behind the dining table, looming in the hall, and swallow. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. A cat? A dog? Mrs. Crane? I knock again. I don’t hear any sounds like water running through pipes that might indicate she’s in the shower, like Melissa theorized. I twist the knob on the back door. It’s locked, but the way the door moves inside the frame, I can tell the dead bolt isn’t set. I’m seriously considering attempting to pick the lock—not that I know how—when a face appears in the window.
I jump back, heart hammering.
It’s the pale face of death. I gasp, swallowing a scream as my brain recognizes Xanan. The glass fogs up around his face. He glares at me and then opens the door.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, in his familiar monotone, like he doesn’t really care but figures he might as well find out.
“This is my teacher’s house. What are you doing here?”
“She’s dead.” He says it like one might say “it’s sunny,” or “grass is green.” Like it’s merely a fact of no consequence. I remember why I’m not overly fond of him.
“How?” I ask, my voice pitching up an octave. “She was just at school this morning.”
“You want details?” His lips curve into a small, crooked smile, the tiny silver lip ring on the left side of his mouth jutting up. “That’s a little morbid, isn’t it?”
“She’s my teacher, Xanan.”
“She was your teacher,” he corrects.
I clench my fists. “I came here because I was worried about her and now I’m too late.” The impossible gap between life and death is too broad to span a couple of hours. But I also know Xanan isn’t lying. He’s a lot of things but he’s not a liar. “How did she die?”
“You don’t need details.”
I only remember Melissa is with me because she steps over the fence. She spots Xanan and her hand immediately flies to her hair, tugging on one of her pigtails. I mentally groan, because the hair touch is the thing Mel does when she likes a person. I don’t think she even realizes she does it, but it happens every time she finds someone attractive. And the last thing I need is for her to have a crush on a demon. Especially the cranky people-hating one.
Xanan leans against the door frame, muscular arms folded over his chest. Cold air seems to waft off his pale skin. I swear I see tiny dots of ice in his long lashes. His black hair is shaggy, like a mop, and his blue eyes are piercing. I guess he’s handsome, in a slightly older goth-guy way, if that’s your type, and for Mel, it totally is. She chews her lip, something she avoids doing since it messes up her perfectly blended lipstick. I swallow another, different kind of scream.
“You’re the guy from the coffee shop,” she says to Xanan, bouncing her heels so slightly it’s probably imperceptible to the casual viewer. She looks equal parts pleased to see him and confused by his presence. “What are you doing here?”
“Investigating,” Xanan says dryly.
“Oh,” she says, shifting her body so it’s angled toward him. “Are you like a P.I. or something?”
“No,” he says.
“A cop?”
“No.”
“Mrs. Crane is dead,” I say. It comes out as flat as Xanan’s announcement and I wish I’d chosen my words more carefully, but it has the desired effect. Melissa’s face caves in on itself and she peels her eyes away from the demon.
“What?” she asks. It comes out more like a screech. “How can she be dead?”
“Suicide,” Xanan says. “Pills.”
“Oh, so you tell her?” I ask.
He shrugs, a slight lift of his shoulders.
“That’s terrible,” Melissa says, all of the cool calm bleeding out of her. She collapses onto one of the chairs, her normal perfect posture melting into a ball as she hugs her knees. “She was getting better. Why would she do that?”
I don’t have an answer. Surprisingly, Xanan doesn’t have a snide remark for that, either. Melissa doesn’t cry. She just sits and stares into space, flabbergasted and speechless. Seeing Melissa look lost is so jarring that it puts the reality of the situation in sharp focus. Mrs. Crane is dead. She was alive this morning and talking about regrets, and now, she’s gone.
I stand there, useless, doing guilt cartwheels in my mind. I run a whole guilt marathon. What if I had skipped school and come sooner or chased her out of the classroom? If I hadn’t sat there in class like an idiot and let her walk out of the building, she might still be alive.
Melissa lets out a shuddering breath. “Are you related to her?” she asks Xanan.
“No,” Xanan says.
I watch the wheels turn in Melissa’s head, putting two and two together. “Then what are you doing here?” Her tone is demanding, but she has the lost look of the grieving, the
one that implores anyone to give them something solid and logical to hold onto as they ride the waves of incomprehensible loss.
Xanan hesitates. That’s a first. “I came to speak to her. Her loss is a tragedy in more ways than you can imagine.” Bowl me over with a feather but he actually sounds sincere.
“Is she still in there?” I ask, not entirely sure I want to know. Xanan looks at me like it’s the most idiotic question he’s heard today.
“Upstairs,” Xanan replies. “Would you like to see?”
“No,” I say quickly.
“She’s in there?” Melissa asks, her composure slipping completely as she trembles and folds her arms over her chest. “We should call someone.”
“Xanan will take care of it,” I say.
“No, I won’t.”
I sigh. “Can’t you be helpful, like, one time?”
“It’s not my job to help you.”
Melissa pulls out her phone and stares at it. “Who do you call for this sort of thing?”
I don’t know so I just shake my head.
“Since you’re here,” Xanan says, “there’s something you should see.”
He goes back into the house. I hesitate and then follow him inside. The living room smells like Chinese food and I spot an open container next to a mostly-empty bottle of vodka.
“Well?” I ask, looking around. The place is a disaster area but unless Xanan wants to teach me about the importance of housekeeping, I don’t see anything relevant.
“There’s nothing to see. I thought perhaps we should talk away from your friend.” Xanan, being somewhat considerate. Who’d have believed it? “Leslie Crane was under a demon contract.”
“I knew it! Wait.” A horrible thought occurs to me. “Did you kill her?” I whisper. Xanan’s job is to keep the balance of souls between the realms of the living and The Spirit Realm. Azmos offers the dying and nearly-dead more time but he has to be careful not to overdo it in order to keep the balance. Xanan has no qualms about putting an early end to contracts he deems “excessive.”
He shakes his head. “She was already straddling the line between life and death, but no. I came here to ask her questions about who made her deal. If she cooperated, I was going to let her keep her borrowed time.” In other words, if she talked, Xanan would let her have the years she bargained with the other demon for.
I feel my face scrunch up in confusion. “Wait, Azmos didn’t do it?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around the idea of another demon making deals and offering years to people.
“No. It doesn’t smell like his magic.” I didn’t know magic had a scent. Azmos only ever smells like soap and some mild cologne.
“He told me his power is rare,” I say. “That most demons can’t do what he does.”
“Very rare,” Xanan agrees. “And extremely dangerous. The balance has been wildly off lately. I’ve tracked down a few people who had made deals with someone else, but none of them would talk. They were too afraid.”
Acid crawls up my throat. Because if they didn’t talk, they probably died anyhow. Xanan would have cut their deal short, so to speak, in order to preserve his precious balance.
Things are too heavy and I lean against the wall to hold myself up. “But if she made a deal with a demon for more time, why would she kill herself?”
“Who can say why you mortals do anything?”
I look over toward the stairs. My gaze lands on her purse, which is sitting there, abandoned as she marched upstairs and to her end. I wince at the thought and try not to picture Mrs. Crane’s body, lifeless wherever it dropped, laying around up there with no one the wiser, except a demon and two students from her Chemistry class. Does she have family somewhere? What about friends?
“You should go to Azmos,” Xanan says. “Tell him about this.”
“Why can’t you tell him?” I ask. I don’t mean to be petulant, but Xanan sees him more often than I do.
“Because you’re his assistant now, which means it’s your job to give him bad news.”
“Of course it is.” I let out a breath and temper my frustration. “It seems like my job is to do the crap neither of you wants to.”
Xanan shrugs and leaves. I make a circle around the living room. I don’t know what I’m looking for but I’d like some hint or clue as to what was going through her head. As I glance down at her purse, something shiny and silver inside catches my eye. The letters I used to deliver for Azmos were silver. I tug the purse open further and see a pistol. I know nothing about guns except what I’ve seen in movies. This is a handgun and it’s polished. My stomach churns, remembering her reaching inside her purse this morning and meeting my eyes. And then withdrawing her hand empty. She had a gun at school. She was reaching for it. And then she changed her mind and asked for forgiveness. Because she was going to use the gun. But why? Who was she going to shoot? Cold runs over me.
Outside, Melissa is still sitting on the deck chair, tapping her pastel-striped fingernails on the table. “I called non-emergency. I said we came to check on her and found her…like that. They’re sending EMTs in case. Should be here any minute.”
I nod. Melissa looks dejected. “That was smart,” I say.
Xanan, who’s been waiting outside with Melissa (worrying), nods at me. “I have things to look into. Talk to Azmos.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” I say. When he’s gone, I turn to Mel. “Are you okay?”
“No.” Melissa swallows. She looks like she might throw up. “Did you know she was dead?”
“Of course not,” I say, wondering when things got so bad my best friend thinks I’d drag her to find a body. “I was concerned. I had a bad feeling—”
“Did that goth guy kill her for like, drugs or something?”
“No,” I say, surprised again. I guess he wasn’t out here exuding warm fuzzies after all. “Xanan didn’t kill her. She killed herself.” Xanan wouldn’t lie about that. He’s perfectly happy to admit when he ends someone’s life.
Melissa lets out another breath so heavy it shakes her upper body. She processes this and then nods. “He’s sweet,” she says.
I can’t help but look at her like she’s speaking Martian. “Xanan?”
She lifts a shoulder and stands. “He made sure I was okay. How old is he? Is he single?”
“Too old, and no,” I lie, although if Xanan has any interest in romance, I’ll eat my socks.
“Figures. If he and I got together, maybe you’d finally let me into your little club of secrets.”
“There’s no club.” The words come out a little defensive, but it’s not like I haven’t tried to tell her the truth. I wish she believed me about the demons and things could go back to some semblance of normal.
She sighs and glances uneasily back at the house. “We should go up front and wait for the ambulance.”
And wait we do, sitting on the steps of the front porch. It’s starting to get dark despite the early hour. That’s how it works in the Pacific Northwest. It’s light until nearly ten in the summer but it’s dark by four in the fall and winter. I text my Dad, tell him I’m with Mel and will be home soon. I consider texting Cam but decide I should tell him in person. He really liked Mrs. Crane.
Sirens ring in the distance. All I can think is, if only I’d gotten here sooner, they might have been able to do something. But then I remember the gun and there’s a part of me that wonders if I’m lucky not to have arrived sooner.
“So, what is the deal with you and Mr. Lip Ring?” Melissa asks. I was hoping she’d let it go but I guess it’s a better topic than our dead teacher. She’s been staring off into space, wrapping her arms around herself instead of getting a sweater out of her car. I get the impression she’s just asking to make conversation about anything other than our dead teacher.
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “It’s weird that he’s here.”
“Coincidence,” I say.
“If you say so,” she says and looks down at her Mary Janes.
/>
“What’s that mean?” I ask, unable to keep the frustration out of my voice. I’m too exhausted by everything to rein it in.
“Are you two dating or something? Having some illicit affair?”
“At a teacher’s house?” I ask. Melissa doesn’t look at me. “No, Xanan and I are not dating. Also, I have a boyfriend. I can’t believe you’d even ask that.”
She sighs and finally meets my eyes. Hers are brown and full of grief. “Honestly, Nicki, I don’t know what to think anymore.”
The words cut through me.
An ambulance pulls up in front of the house. The EMTs get out. Both of us stand so we can tell them our made up story about how we found our teacher dead.
In the middle of explaining all of this, I suddenly remember I was supposed to meet Gabriel an hour ago. As soon as they finish asking us questions and taking our information in case they have further questions, I ask Mel to drive me to the Pioneer Square. In the car, she finally lets loose a torrent of tears, smearing her makeup across her face. She doesn’t even bother to ask to why I need to go there. She just drops me off and pulls away.
CHAPTER FIVE
Stone Grounds is just as busy as it was on Saturday night. Laptops and textbooks occupy the smaller tables. A group of women in yoga pants gather around tables they’ve pushed together in the front corner.
Gabriel sits at the same table he was at last time, reading the same book. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s wearing a blue-green sweater vest today instead of the plain black one I first saw him in, I might think he’s been here the whole time. He still looks bedraggled, with dark splotches beneath his eyes and stubble covering his face. His glasses are smudged in one corner, the kind of thing that would drive Cam nuts, but Gabriel doesn’t seem to notice.
I wave as I enter and nod at the coffee stand. I rush to the back and order a caramel mocha. I need sugar and caffeine to hold me together. As I collect my drink, I realize my hands are shaking.
Even though I never actually saw her body, I can’t stop picturing Mrs. Crane sprawled on the floor of her bathroom, pills scattered all over the floor, like in a scene from a movie.
In the Demon's Company (Demon's Assistant Book 2) Page 3
