The Demon's Deadline (Demon's Assistant Book 1)

by Tori Centanni

  The door leads to a hallway. The only light filters in from small windows high in the ceiling. I shut the door behind me and then listen for signs of life. There’s the sound of what I think might be rats or other small animals, but nothing human. The thought chills me and I pull my coat tighter.

  I walk down the hall and push a door open. Inside is an empty office with built-in bookshelves covered in dust and cobwebs. I reach a set of double doors. I inhale a breath of the musty air and fling them open.

  This is the heart of the church, with wooden pews and a stand for the choir. It’s only about a quarter of the size of my school gym, but it was probably a thriving neighborhood church once. Azmos is on the dais, next to the pulpit, duct taped to a chair. His usually spiked, auburn hair is flat, and his collared shirt is unbuttoned. One of the sleeves is rolled up and the other is just missing, like it was torn off at the shoulder. He has two gashes in one of his arms and a cut on his chin. He’s surrounded by a burned and blackened circle with a bunch of symbols chalked around it. Little gold bowls are placed every two feet or so around the circle’s edge.

  He looks up when I come in. His snake-like eyes seem full of some message, maybe a desperate attempt to tell me that it’s a trap (duh), but he doesn’t speak.

  The air crackles with electricity like it does right before a thunderstorm. When I touch the handle to pull the door shut, it shocks me. The air smells like must, copper, and two kinds of smoke: The spicy, sweet smell of incense and the toxic smoke of cigarettes.

  Heather is sitting below in a pew with an ashtray and a cigarette in hand. She has a bottle of something dark, probably bourbon, and she’s surrounded by empty bottles. She practically cackles when she sees me. I’m surprised she’s not wearing a pointy hat and holding a broomstick. Her eyes are bloodshot and her clothes are rumpled.

  “Nicolette,” Azmos says.

  “Hi, Az,” I say, trying not to let my voice quaver. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  He starts to laugh and coughs. His voice sounds craggy and rough.

  “You came!” she says, sounding genuinely surprised. She jumps up, but almost misjudges her landing and has to catch herself to avoid falling. Her eyes snap to Azmos, wide and frighteningly off, like she’s not entirely there. Her makeup is crusted near her eyes and her hair is a wild mane of black and blue around her face, unwashed and unbrushed, sticking up at odd angles. Her dark red blouse is covered in splotches and stains, and the vinyl of her skirt looks misshapen, stretched out.

  “Do it!” she demands.

  Azmos sighs, the sound of someone who has been over the same thing a few hundred times. “It’s not possible.”

  “Do what?” I ask.

  Heather looks at me like I’m a piece of meat. Dead meat. Her grin is malicious. She snaps her jaw at me like an angry dog. I flinch. “I said, do it!” she screeches at Azmos. She ascends the stairs up to the pulpit. “Now!”

  She knocks over an iron candleholder and it clatters to the floor. The sound echoes. She pulls the familiar, dull dagger from her belt. I put my hands up, because it seems like the smartest thing to do even though a dagger isn’t really a long-distance weapon, and unless she’s sharpened it recently, it can’t do much damage.

  “I said, do it!” she yells again. She reaches what used to be an altar. A moldy, frayed altar cloth is draped over it, and a cross is nailed to the wall behind it.

  She lifts up a lumpy candle. It’s swirled crimson in places like a candy cane. She chants something, lights the wick, and rakes her fingernails through the soft wax.

  Azmos screams. Four gashes slash down his right arm.

  “Stop it,” I say, but my voice shakes. My heart is racing and blood thrums in my ears.

  She ignores me. “Now, damn you.”

  Azmos opens his eyes and looks at her with sheer hatred, and then his gaze swings to me. He gives me a sad look that makes my stomach drop, like he might actually do whatever it is she’s demanding of him. “As I’ve told you, it simply isn’t possible. And no amount of parlor tricks will change that.”

  Heather finds a piece of silver paper and a pen and holds them out to Az. “Switch our contracts! Kill her and give me her time! I know your demon magic can make it happen.”

  I swallow, letting the weight of what she wants register. Not that it’s surprising. Back at her apartment, if I’d told her the way to live was to set the whole city ablaze, I have no doubt she’d have run out to buy a gas can.

  I should be terrified, and I am, in this tiny tinderbox church with a woman who has clearly left reason and sanity far behind and a demon-like creature who holds my life in his hands. But she’s screeching like a petulant child and it’s ridiculous. Fear and disbelief bubble up my throat and come out as a burst of nervous laughter.

  Her hateful gaze swings to me. She walks toward me, trying for “menacing.” It doesn’t work, especially when she stumbles, rolling her ankle a little. “What’s so funny? You’re going to die.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But so are you.”

  Her eyes wildly dart around, like she expects a raiding party to burst in, guns blazing. Nothing happens. I don’t have an army. But I don’t think I need one.

  “You were supposed to die,” Heather tells me. “If you get to cheat death, so do I.”

  “You already have. You got ten years you weren’t supposed to get.” I’ve only had three so far, but it doesn’t seem like a good time to point that out.

  “It’s not enough. I need more. My sister is only nineteen and she’s getting married and I have to be there.” She holds her Zippo lighter beneath the lumpy candle in her hand. “Switch our places or I will burn every drop of demon blood in your body.”

  Azmos winces. The red in her candle is brownish and I realize it’s probably blood. Did she make a bloody candle? The idea is so disgusting that it distracts me for a second. Heather continues to make demands of Azmos, who keeps quietly saying, “No.”

  I compose myself as much as I can, although my heart is still doing its hummingbird impression. My hands shake and I ball them into fists to hide it. “The longer you live, the more people who have to die unfairly to keep the balance, Heather.”

  “People die all the time.”

  “But these people are dying because of you.”

  She shakes her head vigorously. “It’s a lie,” she hisses. “He’s told me the same lie. Demons are made of lies. Now, do it.” She shoves one nail into the top of the candle and a gash opens on Azmos’ cheek. The smell of copper and smoke tickle my nose. The air feels thick. Magic, it turns out, is pretty nauseating.

  “Can you do it?” I ask Azmos, my heart slamming against my ribs as if trying to escape before I agree to anything stupid. “Trade our lives?”

  “Nicolette.”

  “Can you?” He doesn’t answer. I assume that’s a “yes,” but I can’t be sure. Azmos has never been easy to figure out. “Az?”

  I’m so focused on him, the desperation and sadness in his face, which are totally alien to me, that I barely see Heather moving toward me until she reaches the edge of the dais.

  “He can’t do what you ask,” I say, not sure if it’s true. At this point, what he can do is irrelevant. What he can’t do, apparently, is untangle himself from Heather’s dark magic. “If he could do it, he would have. He doesn’t want you to die.”

  Heather’s shoulders slump. She sits on the edge of the dais and lights another cigarette with the candle before setting it behind her. I reach out to touch her shoulder, to tell her it’s okay. The motion jars her. Her head snaps up. She jumps down from her perch. Her eyes are red with black bruises beneath them. Her breath smells like liquor and rot. She looks broken, defeated, even with the hatred burning in her expression.

  So I don’t expect her to be fast.

  She swings at me with her free fist. I back up and dodge it, by sheer luck more than skill.

  “You are going to die,” she says. I always laugh when movie villains say it. Now, with h
er hatred hot and fierce, fear courses through me. She drops the cigarette. It extinguishes itself. She strikes out again, hitting me in the jaw. It’s not a forceful blow, but it’s still a blow. It snaps my head to the side. I put my hands up in surrender. The world spins around me. My jaw throbs.

  She swings at me a third time. I falter, trying to avoid the blow, but trip over my own feet and fall forward. I jerk back and she grabs my shoulder. I have time to open my mouth—to spit in her face or thank her… I don’t even know which—and then I feel the stab. It’s a hot, sharp pain. I think it’s a knot in my side at first. I get knots in my side when I run. I look down and see the handle of the dagger sticking out of my midsection. A dark stain spreads across the ugly purple band shirt I’m wearing. I didn’t even see her pull the dagger out, and now Cam’s shirt is ruined.

  My only other thought is: I guess she sharpened her stupid dagger.

  It’s not far in. The blade is still mostly visible and it’s not a long blade. But it hurts, and I don’t know how far is too far.

  Azmos says my name. The air is hazy with smoke. I feel dizzy.

  “Now,” Heather says, turning away from me and back to Azmos, “transfer her contract to me.”

  “You idiot,” Azmos hisses. “She doesn’t have a contract.” At least he doesn’t mention that I had one, but I was let out of it. That would definitely send Heather into another rage.

  I hold the handle of the dagger. I can’t remember if you’re supposed to pull it out or leave it in. Leave it, I think. But I need a weapon. So I yank it out. It doesn’t hurt. I must be in shock. Blood spreads out from the wound, dampening the t-shirt. Blood pounds in my ears, my pulse racing.

  I am going to die in a tiny, old church with a crazy woman, who should be dead, and a demon. In Cam’s ruined band t-shirt.

  Life really isn’t fair.

  I stumble forward, tripping up the stairs. Heather is ranting again, making demands. Azmos sits there, a single drop of blood trailing down his face from the cut in his cheek.

  I take a steadying breath. I try to judge the distance, assess my own strength.

  I take one more silent step. Then I jam the dagger into her back. It plays in my mind in slow motion, but happens all at once. I hear the sound of sinew and flesh slicing open. I feel the blade hit her rib cage. I push it in and up. She screams and then falls face-first on the dirty, wood floor. She manages to turn her face to the side, her cheek pressed against the splintered wood. Blood trickles from her mouth. She tries to speak, but words don’t come.

  I fall to my knees, the weight of holding my body upright finally becoming too much. She smirks, probably satisfied that at least I’m going to die, too. And then she stops moving. Her jaw slackens. Her eyes go dead.

  A thunderclap roars through the air. It shakes the tiny church. Candles topple over. Energy surges. The gold-colored bowls around the circle split open, cracks spreading down their sides. Their crimson contents spill onto the floor. Azmos stands, the chair still taped to him, and begins off tearing the duct tape.

  One of the candles ignites the moldy altar cloth. The fire stays on the altar for now, so I put it low on my list of things to immediately worry about.

  Azmos steps over Heather and bends down. He pulls the dagger from her back. I ride out a wave of nausea, remembering the sound it made as it tore through her flesh. He presses his hand to the wound. The small inch of it I can see vanishes.

  Then he kneels by my side. He pulls up my shirt. It sticks to my skin, slick with blood. He sucks in a breath. He moves my hands to the wound, as if they can hold in my blood and guts. He presses them there and I hold them against myself as hard as I can.

  “Are you going to heal me, too?” I ask.

  “I cannot,” he says. “She was still under my contract, giving me the power to manipulate her wounds. You no longer are.”

  I suck in a breath and nod. I look down at the bloody t-shirt again, afraid to pull it up and examine the wound.

  “Do you have your phone?” he asks me.

  “You gonna call the cops?” I ask. I’m trying to be funny, but I’m pretty sure I just sound like Cam when he’s really drunk. My tongue feels thick.

  “I’m going to call an ambulance,” he says, but then his eyes meet mine. Something in his face shifts. Despite the fire burning a few yards away, the room gets cold, like someone opened a window and sucked out all of the warmth. Fear overwhelms me. My palm is sticky with blood. I understand Heather’s desperation as I struggle to hold onto something I’ve already lost.

  “It’s not fatal,” I hear Xanan say from behind me. For the first time ever, he doesn’t sound annoyed. “Mortals are so dramatic.”

  Azmos frowns. He pulls my hands away. It’s hard to make out the wound with all of the blood on my skin, but from what I can see, it’s not very deep or big.

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  “It’s my job to know,” he answers simply.

  “It doesn’t look too deep,” Azmos says. He looks relieved. I know the feeling. “But you still require medical attention.”

  “No,” I say. I hate hospitals. Besides, medical attention means explanations to the authorities, to my dad, to everyone. No thanks. “I’ll get some bandages and…”

  Azmos stands. “Take off your shirt.”

  I start to pull the t-shirt off when another shirt flies over my head. Azmos catches it. I turn my head and see Xanan standing there, shirtless. He has well-defined muscles and a cut body. Who knew? Azmos rips the shirt and wraps strips of fabric around me. And then he circles the fabric with duct tape.

  “This is temporary,” he says. “You need to disinfect it and keep it bound with clean bandages.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” I say. I laugh again. I’m starting to feel unhinged. My gaze lands on Heather’s lifeless body. “I killed her.”

  “She was already dead,” Xanan says. “You did what had to be done.”

  “He’s right, of course. She was using magic to keep me from my own and prevent Xanan from finding either of us. But she should have died two weeks ago.” Azmos stands and rolls his shoulders. The fire behind him is starting to spread up the wall. This tinderbox of a church isn’t going to last long. “I do apologize that you had to come to my rescue. That was never in your job description.” He smiles faintly.

  “Even if it was, you sort of fired me,” I say. “Maybe I should bill you for freelance work.”

  No one laughs. I stare at Heather’s body, feeling my own stab wound throb like it has its own heartbeat, until Azmos gently pulls me away and leads me outside.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Azmos stands with me across the street as we watch flames lick up the sides of the church and climb to the roof. The afternoon light is fading into a dark gray and the autumn air is frigid. I pull my coat tight, but the breeze picks up and sends another chill through me.

  Xanan steps up behind us, startling me. The windows of the church burst out, shattering glass all over the ground. “We should get out of here,” he says.

  Sirens wail in the distance. One of the neighbors must have called the authorities. Hopefully, the firefighters will get the fire out before it spreads to any of its neighboring buildings.

  I am weak and exhausted. My body and my eyelids are like lead. It’s hard to walk, but I let Azmos lead me away, since standing at a crime scene isn’t a good idea.

  “What if we were seen?” I ask. The last thing I need is the cops showing up at my apartment, accusing me of murder and arson. I doubt they’d buy the whole “she was a walking dead girl” defense, no matter what Xanan and Az say.

  “We weren’t,” Azmos says.

  “How do you know?” I ask. He lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “That’s reassuring.”

  Azmos lets go of me and I walk under my own power. My feet are tired and my head is throbbing in time with the wound in my gut, but I manage to keep myself upright.

  “This certainly got out of hand,” Azmos says.

  �
��Out of hand?” Xanan asks dryly. “You let a witch capture and torture you and evade her own death for eighteen days.”

  “She caught me off guard. I believed she’d been taken care of.”

  There’s no accusation in his tone, but Xanan huffs out a breath like he’s offended. “Yeah, well, if you didn’t insist on contracting so many people, they’d be easier to keep track of.”

  “I do what I can.”

  “You do more than anyone should. And for what? Thankless little rats who would kill you ten times over for another year of their wretched existence.”

  “Hey, I’m right here,” I say.

  Xanan grumbles something unintelligible.

  “The other contractees?” Azmos asks.

  “Taken care of, as necessary,” Xanan says.

  Azmos sighs. “I suppose you had no choice.”

  “She was screwing up the balance. You know how it works.”

  “And how does it work?” I ask. They both look at me, startled, as if they forgot I was there. We stop at the corner of a busy street. Xanan isn’t wearing a shirt in the middle of a frigid October evening. But people bustle by without so much as a glance back. Guess Azmos’ magic is still on.

  “That is none of your business. As you said, you are no longer indebted to me,” Azmos says.

  “Right,” I say. My heart slams into my ribs and I can feel the world shifting beneath me. Azmos and Xanan are going to walk away and never look back. They’re going to go on with their lives and demonic magic and I’m going to be left wondering about all of the things I don’t know. I’ll be stuck trying to live a normal life without staring into the shadows, looking for magic or demons, and that is the scariest thought in the world, even after everything.

  I can’t do it. I’ll never be able to go on like none of this happened. I don’t want to. Now that I know these things exist, I can never be satisfied at some desk job, pretending that they don’t.