And then something happens, and it’s just Luis standing there, looking very confused.
“Cynthia?” he says. “How did I . . . I don’t remember coming out here.”
“Huh. That’s weird,” I say, pretty much on autopilot because my brain is still busy trying to keep me upright and not screaming or sobbing or vomiting. “Here, let me walk you back to the dining hall.”
I escort the still-confused counselor back to the doorway, but I don’t go inside. I can’t. I can’t go running back to Ryan in front of everyone, even though I want to do that very, very much. And I can’t go running to Peter, either, since that would also necessitate going back in there and possibly over to that same table.
Instead, I will walk calmly and slowly over to Blake and wait for Peter to arrive for morning rehearsal.
Peter will help me figure out what to do. He’s a demon. He’ll know. And he’ll help me.
Because Ryan was wrong about one thing. I definitely don’t want to be working alone.
Not on this.
When Peter arrives, he’s clearly prepared for me to be mad at him for enjoying my personal drama this morning, but there’s no time for that. Instead, I fill him in on my dream (only the part about Mr. Gabriel, obvs) and then on my real-life encounter with Mr. Gabriel in Luis’s body.
“Well that’s not good,” he says when I am finished. We are sitting on the floor near the loading dock, where we can talk privately. Behind me, the doors are open to the beautiful summer day that I can’t in the least appreciate at the moment.
“So he’s the one who climbed up your tether to get here,” I say. “He must be, right?”
“It appears so,” Peter says. “You’re sure it was really him?”
“Totally. Except for the part where it’s impossible, obviously.”
“Okay,” Peter says, mostly to himself. “Okay. So, this is even worse than I imagined. But . . . okay. What really matters now is what we do next.”
I look at him expectantly.
“I didn’t mean that I know what we should do next,” he clarifies. “I just mean . . . that’s what matters.”
“Great,” I say. “Very helpful.”
“Can we expect any assistance from Ryan?” Peter asks me. I give him a dark look, and he holds up his hands defensively. “Hey, I need to know what our assets are before I can help you devise this brilliant plan we’re going to come up with.”
My dark look dissolves, no match for my resurging sadness. “I don’t think so. At least . . . not right now.” I look up at him half hopefully. “Did anything else happen after I left?”
He shakes his head. “Not really. Jules told Ryan he’s doing the right thing. Ryan didn’t say very much. Everyone else tried to pretend nothing weird had happened. Oh! But Belinda said there was some new escalation in the Darleen and Celia situation, so I’m hoping for something to happen during today’s rehearsal.”
I feel a sudden suspicion. “Did you arrange it so that they’d both be in your show?”
He grins. “Luckily, they were both right for different parts. Much easier to make use of existing drama than to try to stir up new drama. I figured the two of them together would be enough for basic sustenance, and then anything extra would just be a nice bonus. Like this morning!”
My dark look is back with a vengeance.
“Hey,” he says, “still better than killing people, right?”
I can’t really argue with that. But: “Speaking of killing people . . . we need to stay on topic here. I don’t want anyone else to die. And Mr. Gabriel is going to have to kill someone to get stronger, right?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“Did you contact any of your . . . friends?” I ask.
“I sent some messages,” Peter says. “And I had Hector do the same, through other channels. But these things can take time.”
“What about Aaron?” I ask. “Could you contact him? Maybe he could help us.”
Peter looks very skeptical.
“He helped us with breaking the tether,” I point out. “And he didn’t leave me to be killed by the demons when I was down in the demon world.”
“He probably didn’t leave you because he knew the queen would be pissed,” Peter says. “And I’m not entirely sure the tether breaking was meant to be helpful. I mean, that’s what led to us breaking the tether with Mr. Gabriel stuck on the wrong side.”
“But Aaron couldn’t have known you’d use the shears right away. And . . .” I think back, trying to remember the exact course of my conversation with Aaron. “I’m actually not sure I mentioned the other demon to him. I told him you thought someone was interfering, making it hard for you to break it . . . and then he went to look stuff up and then horrible demons started coming through the window and there wasn’t a lot of productive talking after that.”
“Oh,” Peter says. “If he didn’t know, then . . . hmm.” He thinks that over for a minute, then sighs. “Well, regardless, this probably isn’t the most helpful line of reasoning. We can sit here guessing all day, but I don’t think it’s going to get us any closer to a solution.”
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go back to how Mr. Gabriel is still alive. Because, what the actual fuck, Peter?” The crazy terrible impossibleness of Mr. Gabriel being here is still trying to sink in, but I think my brain is, understandably, resisting. “He was dead. I swear he was dead. Very, very dead. Lying on the ground with his limbs spread all around and the demoness stabbing him and stabbing him with her stinger things long after he stopped moving.”
“I do have a theory about that,” Peter says, pushing up his glasses. “It’s possible, if someone was prepared and waiting, that his spirit could have been captured and preserved at the moment that it left his body.”
“That’s going to take some more explaining.”
“If Mr. Gabriel had some ally waiting, just in case he didn’t win, that ally could have trapped his spirit before it dissipated. So his body would have died, but his spirit would have remained behind.”
“Mr. Gabriel was sure he would win,” I say. “I can’t imagine him preparing a plan B.”
Peter shrugged. “Well, maybe someone did it without his knowledge. They wouldn’t need his active cooperation in order for it to work. All they would need was an appropriate container and to be present at the time of death within a reasonably close distance. Any of the demons watching the battle would have had the opportunity to get close enough. Then they could have captured his departing spirit in the container, stopping him from truly dying a complete death.”
“Okay . . .” I say. “First of all, why didn’t someone tell me that could happen?” Because that seems like really, really important information that everyone left out. That killing a demon doesn’t always mean they are one hundred percent dead. “Does this kind of thing go on all the time?”
“Oh, no,” Peter says. “It’s pretty rare. But it does happen. Every once in a while a demon ends up near death with enough time to make the arrangements. If he can find someone he can trust, willing to help. Which is what makes it so rare, since there’s not a lot of trusting and helping among demons, generally.”
My brain hurts.
“Okay, let’s say that your theory is correct. He still has no actual body, though, right?”
“Right. He has to borrow other bodies, like you observed today, until he either finds someone willing to give up their body permanently or builds up enough strength to create his own. But re-creating his own physical form from nothing would take a tremendous amount of energy.”
“But didn’t you —”
Peter shakes his head. “I came up physically; I just had to build myself back up to full size. And maintain my human appearance, obviously. But Mr. Gabriel is nothing but spirit right now. He would have to actually create a new physical body. Huge difference, and much, much harder. No, I’m guessing he’ll go for taking someone else’s permanently. He’ll still need to build up strength for that, but not nearly as much
.”
“And now we’re back to the part where he tortures and kills people.”
“Yup. I think —”
Suddenly Peter’s eyes go very wide. He appears to be looking at something behind me.
It’s really just never, ever a good thing when someone does that. It’s even worse than the corner-of-the-eye thing.
I turn slowly around.
The spider-bull-bug demon is looming in the loading-dock doorway.
I didn’t really get to take in the full picture of it last night, what with all the fighting and portaling and distracting hand-holding of people who should not be holding hands. It’s enormous. And disgusting. And . . . right there. I should probably move away to some much greater distance. But its repulsive presence is sort of hypnotic, and I’m finding it hard to gather myself together and send the appropriate messages from my brain to my muscles. My eyes keep trying (hopelessly) to make sense of the way its body is put together, like where the spider legs become the furry bull portion of its chest and parts of its head, including thick, dirty, yellowing horns, and then somehow there’s this beetle-ish face with antennae and the front pincers of what might be a stag beetle. I’m not sure about the stag beetle part; I don’t really know my insect types so well. Honestly, it could be anything. If I’m going to keep encountering demons in their confusing mishmash animal-part forms, I might want to start studying up, maybe.
Peter tugs gently on my arm. “Get up, Cyn,” he says quietly. “Right now, please.”
My legs, fortunately, seem to be open to suggestions from others, and I find myself obediently getting up. Peter pulls me backward with him several slow and careful steps. Running seems like a better idea, but that idea is immediately followed by the very terrible and compelling mental image of the demon bounding after us, legs and pincers outstretched, provoked by the sight of fleeing prey. So I content myself with the slow and careful backing away.
For a moment the demon just stands there glaring at us. Then its insectoid mouth opens.
“Stay away from my brother,” it says in a horrible gravelly voice that sounds like broken machinery trying to claw its way through a block of concrete.
I turn to stare at Peter. “This thing is your brother?!” I ask.
“No!” Peter exclaims, visibly horrified at the idea. “I swear, I’ve never seen it before last night!”
We turn back to look at the monster. I’m not sure, but I think it might be rolling its eyes at us.
“Not him,” it says with disgust. “The other. The one you call Gabriel. We are brothers.”
There are several seconds during which Peter and I are both absolutely speechless.
I find my voice first. “Mr. Gabriel is your brother?”
The thing nods.
“Really?” I go on. “Because he never mentioned you.”
“I never knew he had a brother,” Peter says. He gives the demon a fairly obvious once-over. “Kind of kept you out of sight, I guess, huh?”
“You would have been Annie’s brother-in-law,” I add, helplessly fascinated by this horrible notion.
The demon is not interested in our commentary.
“Stay away, or I will crush you.”
“Okay, first of all,” I say, getting a little annoyed now, “he’s the one who followed us here and took over poor Luis’s body to threaten me this morning. We had nothing to do with it. Second of all, we are going to find a way to kill him for good this time, so you can take your warnings and threats and shove them up your spidery ass.”
I’m not actually sure that spiders have asses. I guess they must, right? I mean all creatures need to excrete bodily waste and stuff, don’t they? I realize this is not a helpful tangent, but now I can’t stop trying to picture the ass of a spider. I may be slightly hysterical. Or perhaps my brain has finally broken once and for all.
“You,” the thing says, taking a step closer to me. Now I can stop thinking about spider asses. Now I’m back to being terrified, which is very good for clearing one’s mind of all extraneous thoughts.
“You are the one who ruined everything,” it says. “I should kill you right now.”
Peter steps in front of me, which is both sweet and slightly irritating.
“You know what I am, don’t you?” I ask it. “You can’t use your demon magic on me.”
“I can use legs and teeth,” it says, which, unfortunately, is true.
It lunges forward, much more quickly than I would have guessed possible, and Peter rushes to meet it, seeming to grow larger as he does so. I kind of forgot that as a demon, he has the ability to adjust his size and appearance. I am no longer irritated in the least by the way he stepped in front of me a few seconds ago. He blocks the monster’s advance, gripping two of its spidery legs in his hands, but I can tell immediately that it’s not easy for him.
“You know that’s a bad idea,” Peter says to the monster while holding it back, at least temporarily. His voice is amazingly calm. “You know your brother wants to kill Cyn himself. If you kill her now, if you even touch her, how do you think your brother is going to feel about that? I think he’d be pretty pissed off. I think you’d be in deep, deep trouble if you did that.”
The demon backs off, looking, if I’m reading his bug features correctly, a little frightened.
“True,” it concedes. “I must not be hasty. Brother said to wait.”
“If Mr. Gabriel were my brother, I’d be damn sure not to make him angry at me,” Peter goes on. “He doesn’t really seem the type to forgive and forget.”
“He . . . is not,” the demon says. It seems to shrink into itself, thinking about this. Then it straightens up again. “It does not matter. He will share my body and we will kill her together. I will still get to taste her blood. And then we will kill the rest of you. And then we will go after the other.”
“What other?” I ask warily.
The demon smiles a horrible insect smile. “Aaaannnnnnnie,” it breathes. “We will have her together. Brother has promised me.”
With that, he lashes out at Peter with one long spidery leg, knocking him to the floor, then bounds out through the loading-dock doorway.
I run over to Peter, who is back to his normal shape and size and appears a little breathless and in pain but not actually bleeding or broken.
I look down at him. “How has no one else noticed that enormous disgusting thing running around camp?”
“Come on, you remember how these things work,” he says, rubbing his hip where the thing jabbed him. “Most people don’t see what they can’t believe is real. And the demons use their magic to encourage that.”
“Right,” I say. Because I do remember, of course. But not being suspicious of a demon who maybe acts a little shifty but looks human and has a job seems different from completely not noticing a giant spider-bull-bug monster frolicking around in broad daylight.
I help Peter back up to his feet.
“So, point of information,” he says once he’s upright again. “That thing is very, very strong. I would never be able to take it in a fight. Not one lasting more than about two seconds, anyway.”
“Good to know,” I say. Although it’s not good to know, of course. It actually kind of sucks to know. But I guess it’s still useful to know. Despite the suckiness. And Peter did already indicate that he’s not the fighting type. “But, somehow, we still need to kill it. Kill both Mr. Gabriel and his delightful little brother. I mean, I don’t think asking them nicely to stop what they’re doing and go home is really going to work.”
Peter takes his glasses off and cleans them on his shirt. “Well, technically, you can’t kill Mr. Gabriel. Not here.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s not entirely here in this world. Part of him, the core part, his essence, is still back in the demon world in whatever container someone trapped it in. I’m guessing it might have been Mr. Spider-Cow there, or one of his no doubt equally charming friends. But in any case, you can’t truly destr
oy Mr. Gabriel until you destroy both parts — the spirit part that’s up here now, and the core part still hidden away down below. Including whatever is holding it. If you kill him here, you’ll really just be sending him back to the demon world. Which is still good — much, much better than having him running around up here, causing all kinds of harm. But, you know . . . just so you know. To kill him for good, you’d have to go back down there to do it.”
I look at him. “You are full of good news today, Peter,” I say.
“Sorry,” he says. “Just telling it like it is.”
“I am not a big fan of how it is,” I say.
Slowly, by unspoken mutual consent, we start walking back to where set construction is happening and other campers are going about their normal routines, oblivious of the danger in their midst. The whole loading-dock area seems tainted now, pulsing with some spidery demonic residue or something.
“Ugh,” Peter says, looking down at his hands. “I kind of want to take a bath in bleach now. I can still feel it on my skin.”
“Thanks for talking it down,” I say. “I . . . really don’t want to be killed by that thing. Or, you know, at all. But especially not by that thing.”
“Hey, what are friends for?”
I glance at him sideways as he continues to examine his outstretched hands with an expression of extreme distaste. Are we friends? Maybe we are, at this point. I seem to have fully accepted his claims about not being evil, and he did just save my life. He’s not exactly a prince as far as ethical behavior goes, and, yeah, the drama fixation is kind of annoying, especially when he clearly derives so much pleasure from my personal issues involving Ryan, but no one’s perfect. And anyway, I’m rather short on demon-fighting allies at the moment. At least ones who are talking to me. I can’t afford to be overly picky.
“So, now what?” I ask him.
“Now we spend the rest of rehearsal doing what we’re supposed to be doing. We still have a show to work on, and until I hear back from one of my contacts, I’m not sure what else we can do.”
I start to object — we can’t just wait around and act like everything’s normal! — but then Peter staggers suddenly, careening into me. I grab him before he can fall over.
Revenge of the Evil Librarian Page 14
