Gabriel's Demons (Demon's Assistant)

by Tori Centanni

  “You look like you don’t sleep much,” he says. “And you have that haunted look about you. So, what kind of visions? Do you see through another person’s eyes? Someone you were in an accident with, perhaps?”

  “What? No,” I say.

  “Hm,” Myron says. “Dream visions?”

  I shake my head. If they happen when I’m sleeping, the pain jolts me awake.

  “Psychometry?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “When you touch an object of importance to learn information about the person to whom it belonged.”

  “No.”

  He huffs out a breath and puts his hands on his waist. “Well, perhaps you should explain.”

  “I have visions of people dying.”

  He raises a single, pink eyebrow. We stand in silence, a camera flashing to the side as a couple takes each other’s photos with the Gum Wall. The woman holds out her shiny Nikon to Myron. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all,” he says. He snaps their photo and then appears back at my side, threading his arm through mine like we walk together all of the time.

  “Come on, then. We have a lot to discuss. Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah,” I say, automatically. My appetite has been up and down since the fire, but I can usually manage to eat. Besides, he obviously knows stuff about visions. If he wants to talk over lunch, that’s fine with me. As long as he talks.

  Myron takes me to a cafe in Pioneer Square that has outdoor seating. He orders two iced teas and, after asking if I’m a vegetarian (I’m not), two plates of fish and chips.

  “Highly underrated fish and chips here,” he says. “Everyone goes down to the waterfront and it’s not bad but this place uses a real beer batter.”

  I don’t really like iced tea but I’m thirsty, so I take a sip. “Aren’t you going to ask my name?”

  He waves a hand, as if this is of little consequence. “Names are not nearly as important to magic as all of the fictions and films would have you believe.” I open my mouth but find I lack any sort of intelligent response to that, so I close it again. I tear open a packet of sugar and stir it into the tea. “But you can tell me, if you wish.”

  “Gabriel Price,” I say. When he doesn’t offer up his own, I prompt him, even though I heard it in the store.

  “Myron.” No last name. Figures.

  The waitress delivers two plates of fried fish chunks and French fries. My stomach growls at the smell of grease. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until faced with food. I grab the ketchup and pour a gob onto my plate. The fish is really good, crunchy on the outside and flaky, perfectly-cooked white fish on the inside. The fries are standard. I realize I didn’t eat dinner last night or breakfast this morning, and consume half my food in no time.

  “So, my visions…” I start and then trail off, because I don’t even know where to begin. Myron, who’s been eating the fish with a knife and fork, sets down the utensils.

  “These visions of people dying? They come true?”

  “Yes,” I say, but then I consider. “Well, I’ve only been able to confirm a little more than half, but that’s too many to be coincidence, right?”

  He looks me over again. “Right. How did it start?”

  I tell him about the house fire, the result of faulty wiring, and how I almost died. I leave out the part about the red-haired demon with snake eyes, who came to me and offered me a deal in an exchange for my life. It seems irrelevant now and crazy besides. This guy might believe in visions and magic, but demons is probably pushing it. He listens intently, occasionally lifting his silverware to take another bite of fish or potato. I try not to stare but I’ve never seen a person eat French fries with a fork in my life.

  When I finish, I drink down my iced tea.

  “Well?” I ask.

  He pushes his mostly-empty plate aside. “Well,” he says, “it seems as if you have a rare skill, Mr. Gabriel Price. How old are you?”

  “What difference does that make?” I ask, annoyed by the question. After everything that’s happened, not being eighteen yet feels like another hit. I love Uncle Rick, but I need my own space, a place where I can be alone. A place where my visions won’t raise questions or get me hauled off to a treatment facility. A place where I can cry in peace. I need to be eighteen and I need money for an apartment, which means I need a job, which means I need to make these visions stop happening at random if I can’t stop them altogether.

  “It doesn’t,” Myron says. “But you look young.”

  “Almost eighteen,” I say. In about two months. “You look young, yourself.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” he says, which is the least helpful answer he could manage.

  “So can you help me?” I ask.

  “That depends on what sort of help you seek. You were in a bookstore. That tells me you want information. I can help you with that.”

  The server clears out plates and returns with a check. Myron takes it before I can reach for it. I only have ten bucks on me, so I’m relieved, because I’m pretty sure my share is more than that.

  “I’ll pay you back,” I say, as Myron counts cash and puts it into the black billfold.

  He waves a hand in the air. “Not necessary. It’s business.” He puts his wallet back in his pants pocket and I try not to feel stung. Of course it’s business. He’s interested in my ability, not me. Disappointment winds its way through me. I guess it was too much to hope for that the hot punk guy was taking me on an impromptu date.

  “And what exactly is your business?”

  He smiles and turns his head. The sunlight glints off his earrings. “I’m something of an arcane archivist. My sister calls me a demonologist.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The word “demonologist” rattles around in my head as we walk away from the restaurant. Memories of a demon’s face floating over me run through my mind. The way Myron said it, like it was a joke, leads to me believe maybe his sister is really religious and thinks of any kind of weird phenomena as demonic.

  Myron leads the way. We meander along and I get the impression there’s no real destination: we’re just taking a stroll. He keeps firing assessing looks my way, like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve.

  The summer sun beats down on the city. It’s mid-nineties even in the shade. A woman waiting for a bus on the corner fans herself with one of the free alt-weekly newspapers distributed around town.

  “So what do you really do?” I finally ask.

  He shrugs his broad shoulders, making the silken shirt ride up an inch. “I catalog and track demon activity and other arcane happenings in the area.”

  The hair on my arms stands at attention. “Funny.”

  “It’s true.”

  “But demons don’t exist.” I believe in God, but my mom always said the Devil and demons were more like teaching tools than actual things you might encounter in the world.

  “Sure they do.” Myron quirks his lips into a crooked little smile. “Well, demon is a ridiculous word, but the English lexicon is not really equipped to handle things from other realms. It’s a language that evolved with a set of beliefs, some based in fact, some based in absurd stories ancient men told each other. What I mean when I say ‘demon’ is creature from another realm, usually the Vacuus Realm, since that’s the only one I’m aware of with direct passage to this one.”

  I stare at him and barely register that we’ve stopped walking. It’s like he’s speaking another language and while I know some of the words, the sum of them isn’t making sense. “Vacuus Realm?”

  “Another dimension. It’s right next to your realm—this realm—and there are gaps that allow passage between them. Humans have gone there and called it the Underworld.” Myron tugs at a silver hoop on the bottom lobe of his ear. “There’s a lot I’m sure you don’t know. Normally I’m in the habit of trading information for information. Quid pro quo, as they say.”

  “I don’t really have any information. That’s why I was i
n the bookstore.”

  His smile brightens. “Au contraire. If you really have death visions, that kind of information is valuable.” He leans in to whisper conspiratorially. “To the right person? It’s priceless.”

  I scoff. I’m having two to three visions a week and so far the times I’ve tried to intercede, I’ve been called a lunatic, been threatened with the police, and told to “fuck off.” No one listens because when you approach a stranger out of the blue and warn them that if they do X, they’re going to die, they tend to think you’re out of your mind. I can’t blame them. But there’s a part of me that can’t stop trying. I keep thinking that if someone had warned me about the fire, I would have done something. I would have made my dad hire an electrician to check the wiring. I would have insisted we stay in a hotel that night. Even if I thought the person warning me was a total head case and there was almost no chance their prediction might come true, I’d never have taken the risk.

  But it’s easy to think that in retrospect, now, knowing what was lost.

  “They’re useless. No one believes the ravings of a teenager.” I tap my fingers against the leg of my jeans. I smell smoke again and it makes my throat itch.

  “They’re valuable to the right people.” Myron glances around and then gives me that appraising look once more, as if deciding whether or not I’m worth it. He hands me a business card. It’s bright pink and says, “Myron. Seattle Archivist of the Arcane.” There’s no address, only a phone number with a 206 area code.

  “Call me if you want to trade information.” His silky smooth voice makes it sound like an offer of more than data exchange but I remember his insistence that lunch was business. My reading anything deeper into it is probably wishful thinking.

  I start to ask if we can’t just go do that now, since I’m desperate for answers—not to mention a cure—when lightning strikes from a clear sky and seers into my skull. The world spins and I fall to my knees, dizzying nausea making it impossible to stay standing. My palms press against the gritty sidewalk.

  The vision burns through my brain. A young man wearing earbuds is walking down Pine Street downtown near Westlake Center, making it easy to recognize. It’s a block I’ve walked a thousand times. He’s a young business professional with one of those flat, triangular backpacks slung over one shoulder. His name is Evan Hill—I always know their names—and he wears a light jacket over a polo shirt and sunglasses and carries a plastic iced coffee cup. His earbuds snake under his collar to an unseen phone or mp3 player. He comes to a stop on the corner of Fourth Avenue, with a crowd of people, waiting for the walk light. He’s at the edge of the curb. It’s a one-way street. A bicyclist next to him sees her chance and tears across the street in a gap of traffic. This guy, Evan, isn’t paying attention. He sees the cyclist in his periphery and he steps out into traffic, just in time to be smacked into by a bus. The bus comes to a stop but it’s too late. Evan’s insides are smeared all over the road.

  The vision cuts out. My mouth tastes like copper. I’ve bitten my tongue.

  Myron is bending down beside me, hand on one of my shoulders, the other waving off concerned Samaritans. He helps me to my feet. The vision has taken everything out of me and suddenly my limbs feel like they weigh a thousand pounds a piece. I could fall asleep right here, right now, on the dirty pavement if he’d let me. He releases my arm, the feeling of his touch on my skin lingering. I pull off my glasses, rub my eyes, and put them back. A dull ache still throbs behind my forehead. It won’t go away for a couple of hours and no amount of over-the-counter pain killers will do any good.

  I lean against the brick wall and swallow. My mouth still tastes like old pennies. Myron watches me with concern. Whatever he expected to happen when he pulled me out of the bookstore, it wasn’t this.

  “I’m okay,” I lie. I take a deep, steadying breath, and then push myself off the wall. Bile still crawls up my throat and the greasy lunch I ate roils in my stomach. Like the headache, these things will fade in a couple of hours and I’ll be back to normal as soon as I manage to get some sleep. Until the next vision hits. And it will, at the worst time, like in the middle of my first training session at Starbucks. How am I going to explain it to my coworkers, let alone work through it?

  “Is there a cure for these kinds of things?” It feels strange to ask when Myron is probably only interested in me for my ability, but he’s the only person I’ve met who might know. “Or some way of…controlling them?”

  “No idea.” He shrugs and a little twinge of fury ignites in me. He doesn’t care. He’s not interested in a cure. He’s not interested in some bedraggled teen—he only cares about the visions.

  Between exhaustion and annoyance, something snaps. “I should go,” I say, sounding petulant even to my own ears.

  Myron raises an eyebrow. “All right. Take care.” He picks his card off the ground, where I’d dropped it during my attack, and hands it back to me. “Call me.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say. I shove the card in my pocket.

  “I can look into possible cures,” he calls, and I freeze. “I’ve never heard of one but then, I’ve never met someone with your power before.”

  “It’s not a power,” I spit. “It’s a curse.”

  “There’s no such thing as curses,” Myron says gently, as if demons are reasonable but curses are pushing it too far.

  “How can you know that?” I ask, my voice louder than intended. All of my frustration and anger is now aimed at this guy with his pink hair and tight shirt and flippant, know-it-all air. “How can you believe in demons and other realms but draw the line at curses?”

  Some tourists in brightly colored Seattle t-shirts cross the street to avoid our patch of sidewalk. Myron keeps his voice low, his tone even. “I draw the line based on what I know. The line moves. I’ve simply never heard of a curse that was effective.”

  The demon’s image swirls in my brain, slightly out of focus and surrounded by smoke. Every time I remember him, he’s slightly different. If demons are real, he might have cursed me when I survived without his intervention. It makes sense. But I don’t want to tell Myron about the demon, not yet. “It’s a curse,” I mutter. “Why else would I be tortured with images of future deaths when there’s not a damn thing I can do about them?”

  Myron looks confused for the first time during our talk. “I’m sure there’s plenty you can do when you know the future.”

  I scoff again but it’s a mild sound now. Frustration has bled out of me, carving a path for sheer exhaustion. High school is an exercise in constant sleep deprivation so I’m not new to the weariness that sinks into my bones. I give him a quick summary of the vision, of how Evan Hill is going to die. “But I can’t stop it. No one listens. They sure as hell don’t believe me. Maybe four hundred years ago, you could predict tragedies and make people heed your warnings. Not now.”

  “Four hundred years ago, humans burned magic users as witches,” Myron says pointedly. “And no one has to believe you. There are other ways to intercede.”

  “Like what?” I ask, more to humor him than because I think he has a plan. He manages to surprise me yet again on that front.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next day, I stand with Myron on the edge of Westlake Park, a cement triangle in the middle of downtown. We stand several yards from the carousel, trying to look inconspicuous, which isn’t easy for a tall teen and his pink-haired friend. Myron wears a blue t-shirt and black denim jeans that I can’t help but notice do nice things for his butt. I’m dressed in similar clothes: blue jeans, gray V-neck tee. It’s the best one I found in the donation boxes because it lacks any advertisements. People love to donate swag shirts. I desperately need some new clothes, but I barely worked up the courage to ask Uncle Rick for the money for the polos I need for my job. I won’t get a paycheck for at least a couple of weeks, assuming I make it through training, which is highly questionable.

  Tourists crowd the sidewalks and business professionals on lunch breaks weave t
hrough the masses. Bike messengers shoot down the street in the middle of traffic as if they were fired out of a canon. It’s hotter today, the still air oppressive until a breeze picks up, and locals take refuge in the air conditioned shops and movie theaters.

  I buy a bag of mini donuts to hold as we scan the approaching crowds for the doomed guy. I’m not very hungry but I also want to look like I belong so the cops-on-horses don’t trot on by and tell us to stop loitering like the vagrant teenagers they no doubt see us as.

  I scan the crowd for Evan Hill, but keep getting distracted by Myron, who leans easily against the wall, his body only inches from mine.

  “This won’t work,” I say, after a half-hour of watching the traffic light change.

  “Sure it will,” Myron says. He’s convinced knowledge is power, like some kind of motivational library poster come to life. But he hasn’t spent the past weeks trying to warn people who laugh in your face and then die anyway. He hasn’t felt the desperation bleed into helplessness every time another vision comes true.

  An hour later, my feet are starting to hurt and Myron is shuffling in the place. All that’s left of the donuts is an empty sack in my hand.

  “It would be nice if your visions came with a time stamp,” Myron says, a little acidly. His optimism is ebbing and I admit, it makes me like him more.

  I hope we’re not standing here for nothing. I know the events in the vision are supposed to happen today, but I don’t get an exact time. And—the thought unsettles me—it may not happen at all. Maybe Evan Hill will decide not to stop for coffee and then duck down a different street, saving his own life in the process, never even knowing how close he came to death.