“Dear Sweet Jesus!” Amy exclaims in her southern accent as we reach the entrance where she’s waiting. “Are you okay?”
“It looks worse than it is,” I say, although the way Cam keeps popping Advil, I’m not so sure. The doctors gave him Vicodin, but like me, it puts Cam to sleep, so it’s useless at school. All the more reason he shouldn’t be here. “Are you sure you don’t want to go home and rest?”
“I’m fine,” he snaps. “Let’s just go inside.”
“Should have known you wouldn’t be missing school for less than having your skull smashed in,” Amy says. She’s smiling, trying to coax a smile out of Cam.
He glares lasers at her, so hot and sharp, her smile melts. She turns to me and then Justin, confused. Cam is rarely anything but personable, let alone outright grumpy.
“Sorry,” Amy mutters.
Justin throws his arm around her. “We should get going,” he says “See you in class.”
“Cam, seriously, if you want to go home—”
“Stop telling me what to do,” Cam says. And then he storms off into the crowd pushing his way inside the building.
He has every right to be mad, and he’s in pain. His surliness is justified. But it doesn’t make it any easier to bear.
Melissa nearly has a heart attack when she sees Cam in third period Spanish. She gives me a very pointed look and then surreptitiously passes me a note during Señor Steinberg’s lecture about today’s new vocabulary: travel words, including the verb Aterrizar, which means “to land.”
The note reads, “What happened? Are you guys okay?”
It’s a fair question but as I read the words, my heart pounds and my stomach does its best impression of a washing machine.
I scrawl back. “He got mugged. We’re both fine.” I watch Melissa read it, her frown deepening. She meets my eyes, her brow furrowed. Mugged? She mouths. I can’t tell if she believes it but it’s clear she wants to ask more questions. Only Señor Steinberg calls on her and she has to refocus on the lesson at hand.
I feel nauseated. I hate lying to her. I hate that Cam looks like he was smacked in the face by an oncoming train.
As soon as the bell rings, I dart out of class and into the restroom to get a hold of myself.
The guilt making its way through my insides isn’t just for lying to Mel. It’s my fault Cam is hurt at all and no amount of lies about a mugger will change that. I sent him to get a psychic at the beck and call of a demon when I knew there was another, evil demon out there. I put Cam in danger. And it’s not even the first time. There’s no excuse. I am officially a terrible person. Gabriel was right. It’s hard enough to exist in both worlds and it’s entirely unfair to drag someone else into the weird world of demons with you. I don’t want to lose Cam but I know that was a risk I took when I asked for a job.
The thought of not being with him fills my heart with ice. My throat tightens and it takes all of my will not to start crying in the stall.
When the bells rings, I head to my next class, determined to make it through the school day before I go and find Azmos.
Melissa finds me at my locker before Art. “Are you okay?” she asks. She keeps her arms folded over her blue blouse.
“It’s been a rough week,” I say. Understatement of the year.
“So I see,” she says. She hesitates and then drops her arms to her sides, smoothing her crinoline skirt. “You wanna talk about it? Grab some coffee after school?”
It’s a peace offering. I stare at my best friend. Former best friend? She’s looking at me like I’m a stray dog she wants to help but doesn’t know how. Even so, a part of me wants to accept her invitation. It feels like months since we last hung out and I feel the rift between us growing wider every day. Besides, it’d be nice to talk to someone who isn’t caught up in this mess. I can vent in veiled ways. And other than making the costumes for the Chorus to wear in the Winter Concert, I have no idea what’s going on in her life. I’ve been a horrible excuse for a friend.
But I need to check in with Azmos. Vessa has to be stopped. My dad is gone and I’m no longer grounded, so there’s no more time to waste.
“I can’t,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugs like it doesn’t matter, but a flash of hurt on her faces betrays her. “You know I’m here. If you need me.” And then she walks away and I wonder how many mistakes a person can make in the span of a week. And then, just to make sure I break the record, I head to the demon’s warehouse.
I call the warehouse on my walk down the hill but surprise, surprise, no one answers. I make a mental note to talk to Azmos about hiring a receptionist.
A block away from the square building, I run into Gabriel. His eyes are strained and red behind his glasses. He has a handkerchief in his hand. His face is swollen on one side, not unlike Cam’s, the purple bruise flowering along his jaw. His tattered olive trench coat billows out behind him as he walks with a limp he didn’t have before.
“Oh my god,” I say, examining his face.
“You should see the other guy,” he says, repeating his joke with a slight smirk. “Come on. We’re all going to different places I’ve had visions of in hopes of finding Vessa.”
I look over his shoulder. I can see a sliver of the warehouse beyond the brick building blocking most of the view. “I wanted to talk to Azmos.”
“He’s heading to the more likely location. I had a vision of a bank robbery where ten people are fatally wounded. We’re heading to a bicycle crash where only two people die.”
I hesitate. I haven’t gotten face time with Azmos in too long and I want to know what he’s doing about Vessa specifically, but at the same time, I remember Cam’s utterly haunted and broken expression and decide I’m safer sticking with the least likely accident scene. Besides, maybe somehow I can help stop the accident. I fall into step with Gabriel.
“How does the vision go?” I ask.
“Two bicyclists are riding down the hill. One of them loses control and smacks into the other, sending him hurling into the path of an oncoming SUV.” He speaks with forced casualness about it. These are just facts, not people. Maybe that’s how he copes with the visions, by reducing them to the sum of their parts.
“How would Vessa know?”
Gabriel shrugs. “Sometimes Az knows. He gets visions, too, but of course, they don’t hurt him. It’s part of his magic.”
He mentioned that in the coffee shop but now a thought occurs to me. “So why does he need you?”
“Even demons can’t control their visions. He only gets one or two a month, if that. So in order to know more possible deaths, he utilizes the unique skill set of people like me. Our visions are the same sometimes, but often they’re different, so they cover a greater number of people. Vessa may be seeing the same things, at least some of the time. Or she may have found someone with my power, although it’s pretty rare so that’s unlikely.” He rubs his jaw. “That’s why she attacked me, I think, to get my power on her side. Luckily for me, I’ve been taking sword lessons from Miranda for over a year.
“Or,” he adds, grimly, “she may be causing some of the deaths I’m seeing, and therefore she’ll know what’s going to happen by sheer virtue of being the catalyst.”
He gives me a dark look. I swallow.
“How many people has she hurt?” I ask. “How many does she have on her side now?”
“Azmos estimates she’s gotten to at least a hundred, although Xanan is tracking them all down and dispatching them as fast as he can.” Ice slides down my spine. I feel nauseated. It’s not her victims’ faults, and yet they’re going to be punished anyway. “How many did Az ever have at once?”
I consider. I only delivered about two or three envelopes a month until near the end of that arrangement, at which point it was a couple a week. But Az said he’d been in Seattle for about a decade meaning a lot of his first deals were expiring. But those were only people who’s time was up. Doing some quick counting in my head, I decide I deliv
ered roughly thirty-five envelopes. I have no idea what percentage of his total deals that represented, but Xanan had to sever the rest of his contracts prematurely and there wasn’t a rash of deaths reported in the local news. “Maybe fifty,” I say. “Possibly a hundred. But that’s the upper end of what I’d guess.”
“Based on what?”
I huff out a breath. “Very little.”
Gabriel nods. “Well, whatever the number, Vessa’s taking it too far, too fast. There are rumbles in the arcane world about cracks in the barrier between all three dimensions widening. Holes appearing. And if people are gossiping about it, that’s bad. It means they’re noticing. Which means people in the Vacuus Realm are probably noticing, too.”
I shiver, remembering Xanan’s warning that others like him will put a stop to whatever’s causing the holes in the Spirit Realm, which as far as they’re concerned, includes me.
“Yeah, that’s bad,” I agree, thinking of the silver hole in the back of the theater. I consider, our feet pounding against the sidewalk. The sky is the perpetual cloudy gray of the Seattle winter and the air is brisk but not freezing. “But if the holes in the Spirit Realm are appearing on our side, why would anyone on the demon side notice?”
Gabriel considers. “Myron could explain it better, but the two realms are connected. Just because something is shifting in our realm doesn’t mean it won’t have consequences in theirs. We’re two sides of the same coin and the Spirit Realm is the pocket the coin is in. It’s why people—demons, humans—can move in-between. The cracks between the two realms don’t really hurt anything as they’re already part of a larger whole.”
“Have you ever been to the Vacuus Realm?”
Gabriel barks out a laugh of surprise. “No. I’m a little bit reckless, but I’m not suicidal.”
We reach downtown and hop on a trolley bus up Queen Anne Hill. It’s extremely steep, the kind of hill you picture cars sliding down out of control. The kind of hill that feels suicidal to bike down, not that it stops people. I text Cam to tell him where I’m heading up Queen Anne Hill and asking what he’s up to. He doesn’t reply. I hope it means he’s home sleeping.
We get off half-way up the hill, on Highland Drive, and wait. Gabriel’s phone rings. He checks the time before he answers.
“The accident should happen this afternoon, if it happens at all,” he tells me, and then he hits the ‘receive call’ button.
“In Queen Anne,” he says harshly to the person on the other end of the line. “Why do you care?” I assume it’s Myron, especially because Gabriel rolls his eyes dramatically. Then Gabriel swears. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll be right there.”
“What?” I ask.
“Someone set fire to Stone Grounds.” He taps his good foot on the sidewalk. “There were no fatalities but…” But, that means it could be Vessa’s doing which means none of the survivors are true survivors—they now owe fealty to Vessa and have a giant target on their backs. “Shit. My favorite barista was working today. I hope she’s okay. I should get down there, assess the damage.”
“I’ll stay here.”
Gabriel gives me an appraising look, one of his eyebrows quirked. “You sure? I’m betting the fire was her, which means she’s not coming up here.”
“I’ll just hang for a little while. Then I’ll head back to the warehouse. I’d like to stay. Maybe I can help.”
He shakes his head, catching my meaning. “You probably won’t be able to prevent it, you know. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”
“I know,” I say, even though part of me doesn’t believe that. Why would someone who nearly died be given visions of other deaths if they weren’t meant to stop them? Of course, that’s assuming there’s a rhyme and reason to anything, which may just be hopelessly optimistic of me.
“And there’s a possibility it won’t happen,” he adds. “The visions don’t always come true. People change their minds or get side-tracked and save their own lives on accident.”
It’s strange to think of coming so close to death and never knowing that a flat tire or a wrong turn saved you. “I won’t wait long. I just want to see if I can help someone this week.”
“Suit yourself,” Gabriel says, and starts walking down the hill.
He catches a bus going the other direction. I stand and wait.
About forty-five minutes later, just as I’m about to give up and call it a day, I see the first cyclist coming down the hill at a suicidal pace. Honestly, standing on the steep slope, I can’t imagine why anyone would willingly bike down here without a death wish.
“Hey, stop!” I yell as soon as the bike comes into view. I stretch out my arms into the street, blocking what would be the biking lane if this road had one. It doesn’t. The cyclist swerves around me and gives me the finger. The other cyclist comes out from an alley between houses, a space that separates the properties but is too narrow to be a driveway. This cyclist is smarter, going across the steep slope rather than down it. But that doesn’t save him. The guy flipping me off isn’t looking and slams right into the second cyclist. They both fly into the other lane. The SUV that swings around the corner doesn’t have enough time to react: it skids and tries to swerve into the sidewalk but it’s too late.
Metal crunches. Bones snaps. Metal scrapes against pavement.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I open my mouth but only a sob comes out. Someone else screams and I realize it’s the driver of the car. People are staring out their windows, running out of their houses and apartments. I turn away, unable to look at the blood smearing the pavement, the mess of limbs and metal. I move into the shadows of another alley, to work my way down the hill and avoid the firetrucks and ambulances that people are calling. I pause at the corner, trying to catch my breath. I feel like the wind was knocked out of me. My cells vibrate and my blood thrums through my body.
My mind can push out thoughts of my mom’s fatal accident but the visceral, physical memory is in my bones. They ache with it.
My heart is going a million miles an hour. Gabriel had a vision of the crash which brought me here. But then I distracted the first cyclist in an attempt to stop them. I caused it. Did it happen because I tried to stop it or did it happen despite me? Then again, if Gabriel’s vision had included me, wouldn’t he have known? Or did he know and just didn’t bother to tell me, because he was resigned to things happening as he’d pictured?
My head hurts. I need a giant can of something caffeinated and a week in bed under the blankets.
The rag comes over my mouth and nose before I realize anyone is behind me. A hand presses it to my face. The smell of something acrid curls into my nostrils, my mouth. I struggle, but it’s no use. I inhale noxious fumes and everything goes black.
I jolt back to awareness. The sinking feeling that something is horribly wrong crawls around in my gut. It’s like waking up after a nightmare, until memories flood back. I’m groggy and my chin hurts.
I’m sitting upright and I can’t move my arms, which are restrained behind my back. I open my eyes. I’m in an apartment, and not one someone currently lives in from the look of things. There’s no furniture besides the metal chair I’m tied to and the air is choked with dust. The light in the apartment is on in the kitchen portion of the room and it spills over the invisible boundaries into the main room where I am. With the open floor plan, the kitchen and living room are part of the same square of floor, a common layout from what I’ve seen delivering letters.
My legs are zip-tied to the legs of the chair. I rock a little but the chair doesn’t budge, and I get the impression it’s nailed to the floor.
There are four other people in the room: one next to me, two near the window across from me but in opposite corners, and another leaning on the kitchen counter. None of them are talking but at least one of them shifts when they notice I’m awake. Curtains are drawn over the large window. A small gap in the center allows dim light to pour in but I can’t tell if it’s late evening or just cloudy. Th
at, along with the low watt bulb overhead, is the only light.
I roll my shoulders. My neck is kinked and turning my head is painful. My chin feels bruised from where the rag was held against my mouth. The people in the room wear a hodgepodge of outfits. If this was a movie, they’d be in matching uniforms, something to identify them as a team, not this combination of t-shirts and blazers, jeans and slacks.
But they all have guns. At least two of them look like they aren’t sure how to hold them. That’s scarier than anything else.
My mouth tastes like it took a chemical bath. “Where I am?” I croak. The words scrape against my dry throat and I cough. The man leaning on the counter straightens and points his pistol at me. I know very little about guns but I know that if it’s loaded, I don’t want it aimed at my head. “Please don’t,” I say, the words like gravel in my throat.
“Kai,” the woman on my other side says sternly. “She’s tied up, man.”
He hesitates and then lowers the weapon. I glance over at her. She’s probably in her twenties with dark skin and short black hair in braids against her scalp. She’s holding a rifle like she knows how to use it, down at her side but ready to bring up and fire. When she sees me looking, she turns her face away.
The guy named Kai is middle-aged, one of my dad’s contemporaries. The woman against the window is pale with dyed red hair, also middle-aged. The woman on the other side of her has paint-splattered clothes and tan skin, with graying brown hair.
The women by the window don’t look at me. They stare straight ahead.
“Can I get some water?” I ask. It can only help to make them see me as a person, and anyhow, I’m parched.
In the Demon's Company (Demon's Assistant Book 2) Page 13
