The Demon's Deal

by H. D. Gordon

  But another part of me had to know.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  And wished I’d stuck with my gut.

  Chapter Four

  I sat back, three glasses of iced tea drained on the table in front of me, my fingers numb from clenching them.

  “That’s some nefarious shit, you guys,” I said.

  I wasn’t usually one for profanity, but sometimes the words just fit.

  Nick snorted while Vivian nodded.

  “I’m convinced that their goal since the very beginning has been the same all along,” Vivian said. “They work in the shadows—making us do their dirty work—but they’re always there, have always been there.”

  “But why?” I asked, trusting their testimonies and yet still unable to believe it.

  Nick spoke for the first time since we’d sat down. “Why does anyone do such things? Money and power. Always money and power.”

  “But to manipulate entire populations,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Not just populations,” Vivian added. “Markets and industries…. Their reach is unlimited.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this, so I just stared at them for several moments. Around us, the other patrons of the coffee shop carried on in their activities as if my brain had not just exploded all over the walls.

  “And the lab of Halflings…That’s what led you here.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Vivian nodded.

  “Yes. I brought them the information about the lab, and they immediately reassigned me. Sent me halfway across the planet to friggin’ East Asia. The day I was supposed to leave, I bailed.” Vivian reached over and took Nick’s hand. I kept my face smooth as he gripped hers back. “Nick came with me.”

  “We’ve been running ever since,” Nick said.

  So I’d been right about their relationship. I reminded myself that this was by far not the most important thing I should be focusing on, but there was nothing I could do to keep the pang of jealousy from surfacing. What made it worse was that I knew Nick could read my emotions like a book, what with my aura ringing me like a full body halo.

  I’d chosen Thomas, so I had no right to feel this way, and yet, there it was.

  Swallowing, I said, “This is really crazy, and I’m glad to see you both…but I don’t understand. What do you expect me to do about this? The Peace Brokers are an enormous organization. Their network spreads across the globe—across the realms. Even if we wanted to stop them, what could we do?”

  The grin that spread over Vivian’s face now revealed her fangs in full. “I’m really glad you asked, Aria, because we’ve found the source of their power. It’s called the Relic, and we’re going to steal it…. We just need your help for the job.”

  I told Nick and Vivian that I would need a day or so to make any decisions, leaving out the fact that depending on the timeline of their mission, I might not even be around to help them.

  They needed a place to hide out, so I told them they could go to the abandoned warehouse that Sam, Matt and I had turned into our home base. I had to work, and since they didn’t want to head over to the warehouse without me, they waited until I got off.

  Upon exiting the restaurant later that evening, I found the Halflings perched on the docks just outside. Their backs were to me, their legs dangling over the bay, and Vivian’s head was resting on Nick’s shoulder. I cleared my throat as I approached, and they stood.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  Twenty minutes later, we were entering the warehouse.

  I thought it would be empty, but paused in my tracks when I saw that it was not. Sam was there, and one glance at her aura made me want to turn on my heels and run.

  I didn’t know how, but she knew.

  Her face was streaked with tears, her strawberry blonde hair a mess on her head. Behind her, Remy and Raven stepped out of the shadows, and the apologetic expression on the Demi-god’s face told me all I needed to know.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, jerking his chin at Raven. “She used her feminine wilds to get it out of me, and then she told Sam.”

  Raven didn’t look apologetic in the least. The Succubus only folded her arms over her chest.

  “When were you going to tell me?” Sam asked, drawing my gaze back to her.

  I wanted to get defensive, the way I had with Thomas, but there was so much hurt in Sam’s aura that I could do little other than swallow my tongue.

  “I was going to,” I said quietly. “I just didn’t know how.”

  Sam scoffed, anger flashing over the pain. “How about, hey Sam, I sold my soul to a Demon to save your life and now that Demon is coming to collect so I guess I’ll never see you again.”

  “Wait, what?” Nick asked.

  I bit my lip. I couldn’t think of a single word that didn’t sound lame.

  “What were you going to do?” Sam continued, ignoring Nick. “Just disappear and leave me wondering what the hell happened to you?”

  Again, I had nothing.

  It had been so easy to justify keeping my secret while it was still a secret, but looking at my best friend now, I could see that I’d been wrong. Thomas had been right all along. Of course he had. Wasn’t Raven the one who’d called him Mr. Perfect?

  “Sam, I’m sorry,” I said. It was all I could manage.

  Samantha shook her head, her mouth falling open and her aura lighting up in a way that I knew meant whatever words were about to come out of her would hit me like a ton of bricks.

  But before she could speak, Matt entered the warehouse, bouncing in with his usual good mood. Headphones in his ears as he hummed along to some funky oldies.

  He saw all of us standing around and looked at Sam with raised brows. Taking the ear buds out, he said, “What’s going on?”

  Sam’s eyes were narrowed to slits. “Why don’t you ask Aria?” she snapped, stalking toward the exit.

  The door slammed shut with a hollow bang as she walked out on me, much in the same way I’d walked out on Thomas.

  I supposed that was how karma worked.

  “You sold your soul to a Demon?” Nick asked.

  I sighed.

  “That was stupid,” Vivian mumbled.

  Whatever look was on my face made the Vamp snap her mouth shut. Then she squared her shoulders, raising her chin. “Well, it’s pretty simple,” she amended. “We just have to find a way to break the deal.”

  Nick shook his head but didn’t add anything. He knew as well as I that this was impossible. If not for the swirl of distress in his aura, I would not have been able to tell that he cared much at all. He seemed utterly distracted, and I reminded myself that I had no right to be upset about that.

  “How do we do that?” Sam asked, drawing our gazes over to the entry to the warehouse.

  A weight fell off my shoulders with her return. I’d wanted to follow her when she’d left half an hour ago, but knew when to give someone their distance.

  “Because as pissed as I am at you, Aria Fae,” my best friend continued, “I refuse to sit by and let you die on my behalf—on any behalf, actually. So we have no choice but to figure out how to break the deal with this Demon and save your soul. That’s all there is to it.”

  In all the beautiful moments Samantha Shy and I had shared over the past two years, I could never love her more than I did right then. She was a slight girl, with small bones and delicate features, but her shoulders were squared, her chin jutted out as if in defiance of the Fates themselves. Beneath the thick black rims of her glasses, her eyes were a little red, her cheeks puffy from crying, but her aura shined bright with the determination I’d always admired in her.

  Despite the fact that most in the room could not read auras and did not have the empathic abilities I had, Sam’s certainty had an effect on everyone present. It warmed my heart to see that these people—all from different backgrounds and races—were willing to fight to save me.

  Then Sam threw her arms around me, crushing me in a hug that was impressively s
trong for such a little human. I held her back, my throat as tight as my jaw as I bit back the emotions that tried to rise up in me. I didn’t want to cry, because if I started, I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop.

  Sam sobbed into my shoulder once my arms encircled her, and I rubbed her back, offering comfort even though I didn’t have any for myself. My shirt was soon wet with her tears, her sniffles sounding so close to my ears, my heart.

  The others all looked away, but I could see in their auras that they were inspired to help, that they had hope.

  All of them, except for Nick Ramhart, my oldest friend and one time lover, the first man I’d fallen in love with, the boy who’d watched me go from child to adult. Only Nick met my eyes across the warehouse, his brown ones as stoic as they’d been when we’d taken punishment for one infraction or another growing up under the iron fist of the Peace Brokers.

  Nick held my gaze and didn’t bother to hide his aura, not that it would have mattered if he had. Nick and I had worked a case once, a case where a rather powerful Genie had gone rogue in an attempt to retrieve her soul from the Demon she’d sold it to. That was the thing I hadn’t told anyone—not even Thomas. It wasn’t just that I would be forced to leave my friends and this realm behind. Selling one’s soul to a Demon did not just mean mortal death; it meant an eternity of servitude, granting wishes of the worst kind.

  We’d tried to help the pour female, had spent countless sleepless nights looking for a way to give her a second chance.

  We’d worked right down to the moment when the Demon came and claimed her, dragging her down to the Hells, where she would be broken and destroyed and reborn into something that didn’t even resemble her former self.

  If there had been a way to save her, we would have found it then.

  Nick didn’t say any of this to the others, likely because he knew there was no point, knew that it would only bring misery to the final months I had left. I’d always love him, and I loved him more for this small favor.

  But it was all in his eyes as I looked at him over Sam’s shoulder, running my hand through her strawberry blonde hair as she sobbed into my shirt.

  In his aura, there was already the grief of a great loss.

  Chapter Five

  I was thankful when the hour got late enough to be an excuse for escape.

  I hated the way they all kept looking at me, with such sorrow and hope. Those looks were exactly the reason I’d withheld the information in the first place, but the cat was out of the bag now, and there was no stuffing that kitty back in.

  When I finally got back to my apartment, I was exhausted enough to collapse, but I knocked on Thomas’s door first, anyway.

  There was no answer.

  A bit of worry spiraled through me, but I reminded myself that Thomas was a highly trained operative, a secret agent for the United States government who dealt mostly with extraterrestrial affairs. I didn’t know too many details about what he did, as I’d never asked, but I knew that it was dangerous work. The only reason I hadn’t pried was because as a former operative of a highly secret organization myself, I knew that asking him to talk about it would only put him in a tough position.

  Instead, I’d let him tell me whatever he saw fit, hanging onto the tidbits he’d offered up.

  Thomas disappearing for a couple days was not unusual, sometimes he’d even be gone for weeks. But he always told me before he went on a mission, so that I wouldn’t worry.

  Then, again, we didn’t usually have fights that ended in me walking out on him.

  I kicked myself for what had to be the hundredth time and went into my apartment. Once there, I unfolded my bed from the wall and collapsed onto it. I slept like the dead…or maybe the doomed.

  When I awoke, the sun had not yet risen. I jolted up in my bed, wondering what had pulled me from slumber. My eyes went to my apartment door, which was closed and undisturbed. I reached out with my empathic sense in that direction, breathing a sigh of relief with what I found.

  Tossing off the covers, I padded over to the door and opened it.

  And found Thomas standing on the other side.

  The words were out before I could draw a breath. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Thomas’s handsome face was smooth, but his aura spoke for him, as it always had. He opened his strong arms to me, and I fell into them much the same way Sam had fallen into mine.

  Thomas was my soft place to land when life just seemed too hard.

  I breathed in the scent of him, the feel of him, holding him tight enough to earn a low chuckle. “You’re gonna break my ribs, beautiful girl,” he whispered.

  “Oh!” I said, loosening my hold but not letting go. “Sorry.”

  Thomas pulled back a bit so that he could tip up my chin. “You don’t have to be. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I shook my head, my stupid eyes burning again. “But I do. I shouldn’t have walked out like that. And you were right.” I sniffed. “You’re always right…. Everyone knows now, anyway.”

  Thomas released a low breath, and I felt bad when I saw how relieved he was in his aura. “How’d she take it?”

  I didn’t have to ask to whom he was referring. “At first, she was really pissed.”

  Thomas quirked an eyebrow.

  I ignored it. “Then, she was…Sam. All determined to save my life and stuff.”

  “Mm,” Thomas hummed.

  I swallowed. “I thought you were mad at me.”

  Thomas brushed my hair back from my forehead, bending down to place a warm kiss there. My stomach flipped with the contact. “Frustrated, maybe,” he said. “But not mad. I’m not sure I could ever be mad at you.”

  I rested my head on his muscular chest, my strong ears listening to the steady rhythm of his heart. “I don’t deserve you,” I mumbled.

  Thomas’s hold on me tightened, and I melted into it. “You’re wrong about that,” he said. “It’s the world that doesn’t deserve you.”

  Of all the things I had to feel angst about, Thomas was not one of them. When I counted my blessings at the end of each day, his name was always at the top of the list, and it was not hard to see that it was rightfully so.

  When I was sure that I could speak without my voice breaking, I said, “So what now? We rev up the engines and get to work on figuring this out?”

  Thomas surprised me by shaking his head, one of those rare smiles turning up his lips. He was such a stoic man, that I cherished those smiles. I lived for them.

  “Not yet,” he said. “I’ve got a different idea…. Do you trust me?”

  I tapped a finger on my chin, pretending to consider. When his aura spiked with nervousness, I chuckled and pulled him closer, aligning his hard body with mine.

  “Of course I do.”

  He lowered his hand to my rear and tugged me even closer. Heat spiraled low in my stomach. “Then come away with me,” he said.

  “Where are we going?”

  Thomas’s smile then was beautiful enough to break a heart…or to heal one.

  “To my favorite place on earth.”

  I stood on the tarmac, gaping at the private jet poised before me.

  “Um, okay Jay-Z,” I said. “You want to tell me where we’re going now?”

  Thomas strolled past me, looking way too good in his casual clothing, an army green backpack slung over his shoulders. “Nope,” he said.

  I scoffed, following the beckoning of the pilot as Thomas waited at the bottom of the steps leading up to the aircraft for me to board. Thomas lived so simply that it was easy to forget that his family was among the wealthiest in Grant City. It wasn’t something he flaunted, or even took advantage of to the best of my knowledge, but he’d sure pulled some strings for whatever he had planned now, and there was nothing I could do to keep myself from staring.

  As I climbed the steps and took sight of the inside of the private plane, I could only gape some more.

  I’d never been on a plane in my life, as the only time I’d tra
velled was for the Peace Brokers, and they’d always had me go places by magical portal. But even if I’d experienced flying, I doubt it would have been like this.

  The interior was spacious and smelled like a new car. The seats were large and spread out far enough to give each passenger plenty of legroom. Other than the pilot and flight attendant, it looked like we were the only ones.

  I forgot to move until Thomas quietly cleared his throat behind me. Shaking my head, I took one of the several open seats and gripped his hand when he sat beside me. Thomas’s brows drew together as he looked over at me.

  “You’re not afraid of flying, are you?” he asked.

  “With wings?” I said. “Not a bit. In a human-made aircraft?” I shrugged, trying to ignore the turning of my stomach. “I don’t know. I’ve never been.”

  My fear was lost in the hazel of Thomas’s eyes when he winked and brought our hands up to kiss the back of mine. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “Trust me.”

  I nodded. A few minutes later, the pilot’s voice sounded over the intercom, announcing that we’d been cleared for landing. Then, we were taxiing down the runway, the jet’s engines revving and gunning. Leaning back in my seat, I looked out the window and watched in wonder as the ground receded below.

  We flew for hours, passing the time with card games using the deck Thomas was insightful enough to bring. When we grew bored of that, he pulled out a stack of books and spread them out before me.

  “Pick one,” he said.

  “Just one?” I asked, grinning.

  I looked down at the hardcovers before me, and had to draw a sharp breath when my throat went tight.

  The closer I got to my deadline, the more these bouts of sadness seemed to come in waves. Something as simple as the five books lined up in front of me reminded me of the situation, that I would only get to read a handful more books before my time was up, and sent me careening into darkness.

  My eyes started to burn when Thomas moved the books aside and took both of my hands into his. “Aria,” he said gently, “just push it from your mind for now. For just a little bit, let’s live like no one is dying.”