The Dark World

by Cara Lynn Shultz

  “You heard me.” He tapped the sword in my hand with the one he was holding, and a wind-chime-like ringing echoed around the rooftop.

  “What are you waiting for, Paige? Take that bad boy and try to ram it through me.”

  He tapped the blade again, and the handle slipped from my fingers, the sword falling on the ground.

  “You want me to attack you? With a huge sword? I’m not going to do that!” I cried, staring at him in shock. “What, do you have a death wish?”

  “You’re not going to hurt me,” he said confidently.

  “How do you know? Maybe I’m a secret ninja.” I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow at him. “Maybe I took fencing lessons. You don’t know. I could be lethal.”

  Logan flipped the sword upside down, crossing his ankles and balancing his palm against the handle like the blade was an old-fashioned cane.

  “Oh, so you took Secret Ninja Fencing Classes?” He gave me an impish grin. “Haven’t heard of those.”

  “Fine, I have no formal training,” I huffed, “but you didn’t know that.”

  “Look, Paige, it’s not an insult to your skills. It’s impossible to hurt me with my own sword. Magic sword, remember?”

  “Seriously?”

  Logan nodded. “There’s no way in hell I’m going to lose my weapon in a battle and get killed with my own sword. That would just be...insulting.” He shuddered in disgust. “It almost happened once. That’s when I came up with the idea and had Rego charm the sword.”

  “What happened?”

  Logan shook his head. “Story for another time. But it’s a good tactic for battle. Pretend to drop it, demon grabs it—you don’t know how many demons try to take my head off with my own sword—only to let it be the last thing they do.”

  He chuckled at the memory, as I just smiled uneasily. Demons trying to behead you? Yeah, that’s hilarious.

  “Seriously, try to hurt me. You won’t be able to.”

  I held the sword aloft and gently rapped it against his shoulder. It bounced harmlessly off his sleeve as if it were rubber.

  “See? It’s like attacking me with a teddy bear.”

  “A giant, magic, bloodthirsty teddy bear,” I clarified, then shut my eyes, sighing heavily. I bet those exist in the Dark World.

  “Now that you know you can’t hurt me, try to get a good hit in, and I’ll block you.”

  He waved the sword in the air with a flourish and held out his other hand, crooking a finger at me.

  “I mean, if you think you’ve got what it takes. I know we’re on a roof, and you’re afraid of heights....”

  I knew he was doing his best to taunt me, but still, I narrowed my eyes and held the sword with both hands, swinging hard at Logan’s side. With a barely perceptible flick of his wrist, he blocked me, the swords crashing with the sound of shattering crystal mixed with wind chimes.

  Raising the sword above my head, I tried again, and Logan stopped my blade with a minute twist of his hand. After about twenty more tries, my arms were getting tired, and the ground around me was a tapestry of my frantic footprints in the snow. Logan, on the other hand, had barely moved from his spot.

  “I thought you were serious about this,” Logan deadpanned, pretending to yawn as he simultaneously blocked what I thought was my best move yet.

  “I am,” I insisted, a little breathless. “I can’t help that you’re some kind of superstrong demon-fighting hero.”

  “Not a hero. Just well trained, that’s all,” Logan replied, a faint blush coloring his cheeks. He cleared his throat and assumed a more serious tone. “I think we should focus on how to block. It’s not like you’re going to be infiltrating hives of demons anytime soon—you just need to know how to defend yourself.”

  He took a step back, biting his lip as he studied me.

  “You’re holding the sword all wrong,” he finally decided, slipping my sword into the invisible case behind his back before crossing the few feet to stand in front of me.

  “Do you mind?” he asked, holding his palms up.

  “No,” I replied, not quite sure what he was getting at. And then he stood behind me, placing his hands on my hips. I was surprised that he asked for permission to touch me, considering all the hand-holding we’d done yesterday—but then I reminded myself that he’d merely been trying to keep me from bursting into flames. Still, I jolted slightly at his touch.

  “Relax, Paige. Your stance is too rigid,” Logan said, his voice in my ear. “Bend your knees.”

  I did as I was told, and Logan put his hands on my elbows, sliding his palms down my arms, until his hands covered mine, lacing his fingers through mine.

  “You’ve been holding the sword over your shoulder like it’s a baseball bat. You’re not trying to hit a home run.” Logan chuckled, and his breath tickled my ear. He pulled my hands lower in one decisive move.

  “You want to protect yourself. The goal is to deflect my blade. You don’t have to do big, elaborate gestures, okay?” He guided my hands, slicing the blade through the air with deliberate, swift movements.

  “Got it?” Logan asked, and I nodded stiffly, hyperaware of his chest being pressed against my back. Logan stopped moving the sword but didn’t step away, keeping his arms around me, his hands over mine. I felt my heartbeat quicken, not sure if I liked him being so close—or if I was unnerved by it. The relief and disappointment I felt when he stepped away told me it was a little of both.

  “Now, try to block me.” Logan was facing me again, holding his weapon in the same deadly stance I’d seen him take in the classroom the day before.

  “Don’t worry—this is your sword, so the same rules apply,” he reassured me before lightly whacking my arm. The blade painlessly bounced off my arm, and I yelped.

  “Are you okay?” Logan asked, his eyes wide with concern.

  “Yeah—just surprised,” I admitted, embarrassed.

  “I’ll go slower,” Logan promised, but I shook my head.

  “No—a demon wouldn’t. Don’t go easy on me.” I held my sword in the position Logan had taught me, and struck out at him. He blocked it, of course, but offered an approving, “Very nice.”

  “I’m a quick learner.” I smirked, striking again as our blades collided with a deafening crystalline crash.

  * * *

  Several hours later, we were sitting side by side at the picnic table, eating take-out pizza as Logan offered up demon-fighting tips.

  “Your sword is tangible as soon as you touch it, so don’t tip your hand by reaching for it until you need it,” he cautioned. “You don’t want them knowing that you’re armed.”

  I bit into my cheesy slice, mulling over everything I’d learned about these mystical weapons—and realized something wasn’t adding up.

  “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

  Logan’s warm brown eyes widened in mock terror. “Uh-oh, you’re asking again. This can’t be good.”

  I gave him a withering look, and he bowed his head, holding out his slice of pizza as if to say, “Proceed.”

  “If I can’t hurt you with your own sword, then why didn’t you just take it from me yesterday in detention?” I asked, wiping pizza grease off my hand with a napkin. “It’s not like I could have hurt you.”

  “That’s true, but to just grab my sword from you? That would have been...I don’t know—” he turned to face me, straddling the bench as he searched for the word “—rude. Yeah, I think it would have been rude.”

  “Rude?” I repeated, surprised. I had been expecting something a little more magically cryptic as an answer—certainly not something polite.

  “Not chivalrous. I don’t know.” Logan sighed. He took off his hat, rolling the worn blue brim between his palms as his hair fell into his eyes. “You had just been attacked. You were so upse
t, and you were injured. You were also on fire,” he reminded me, then paused. “And it’s all my fault you were in that situation because I made you think you were crazy, and I didn’t get there in time, and...”

  Logan ran his fingers through his messy dark brown hair before setting the cap back on his head.

  “I don’t blame you. At all,” I said.

  Logan smiled a small, but genuine smile, before it spread into a more playful one.

  “Don’t tell your dad that. I think he wants to believe that you secretly despise me,” he teased, and lightly kicked my sneaker with his.

  “Shut up and eat your pizza,” I said, wrinkling my nose at him.

  “That’s not a threat. This is so good,” Logan moaned, giving his pepperoni slice a loving look. “You have no idea how so many places just get pizza wrong. Like cardboard covered in salty ketchup. It’s practically abusive what they do to it,” he added dramatically before taking a massive bite.

  “The farthest I’ve ever been is Florida—and that was when I was a little kid,” I admitted. “I don’t remember the food, just Disney World.”

  “Chicago pizza is good,” Logan said thoughtfully, peeling a piece of pepperoni off his slice and popping it into his mouth. “But just an average, everyday New York slice...damn, there’s nothing like it.”

  “When were you in Chicago?”

  “About two years ago, I think it was.” Logan’s brows pulled together in confusion. “Or maybe three. It was after we were in Texas.”

  “You don’t remember when you lived in Chicago?”

  “I’ll be honest, time kind of runs together when you do what I do.” Logan brushed crumbs off his jeans as he spoke. “It gets boring.”

  “Boring?” I gaped, nearly dropping my slice in surprise. “How is what you do boring?”

  Logan shrugged out of his hoodie and turned around so he could rest his elbows against the table behind him. His current pose put the more aesthetic benefits of demonslaying on display, Logan’s thin black T-shirt showing off what hoodies and his bulky uniform sweater hid. That evil, terrible, selfish sweater. I averted my eyes quickly before Logan caught me checking him out, busying myself with retying the broken lace on my otherwise perfectly tied Converse.

  “It’s just boring. Killing demons gets repetitive. If I have any kind of social life, it’s because I’m tracking a demon to a party or whatever.” As he spoke, Logan pulled at the tufts of brown hair sticking out from underneath the brim of his hat. “It’s not like Ajax and I go clubbing. It’s not like I make friends in every city and keep in touch with them after we move.”

  “Right. Of course not,” I said hastily. I took another bite of my slice and chewed it silently, but I’d lost my appetite, now that I’d been reminded that this friendship had an expiration date.

  Logan was quiet for a moment before shifting on the bench to face me.

  “Look, Paige. I didn’t mean it like that,” Logan said. “It’s more that I’m usually a ghost in people’s lives. The person who comes in—and then disappears. I never spend more than a few months in any place. I can’t keep in touch. There are no visits over Christmas break. There’s no point in making friends.”

  “I can understand that—sort of.” I pressed my finger on a bead of condensation on the outside of my soda cup, swirling the liquid in loopy, abstract patterns as I spoke. “Why bother getting close to someone if you’re just going to get hurt, right?”

  “When I leave, you mean?”

  I stole a glance at Logan, and wondered if he was speaking in the abstract, or specifically about me.

  “I’m just saying, I understand the impulse.” I sidestepped his question, pretending not to notice how the thought of him leaving—the first living, breathing person to know the truth about me—truly stung. “I don’t bother trying to get close to people, because they leave me or turn on me because I can’t tell the difference between the living and the dead.”

  “There’s something to be said for being self-sufficient, isn’t there?” Logan shot me a sideways glance as he picked up his soda, and I nodded.

  “It’s safe,” I admitted. “And smart.”

  “At least for the time being, we can be self-sufficient with each other,” he said, holding out his cup in a toast. Our knuckles brushed as I tapped my cup against his, the ice slushing softly against the sides. Our eyes locked for a lengthy moment—too lengthy—in a gaze fraught with the kind of delicious tension and chest-warming rush of adrenaline that sets your heart pounding and your lips turning up into a smile of their own volition.

  The kind of gaze that inspires trite songs that usually piss me off, because songwriters always rhyme “eyes” with “surprise,” and I always considered it lazy songwriting.

  Until now. Because I could have sworn I saw deep affection and sadness in Logan’s eyes, and that surprised the hell out of me.

  I stood up abruptly, nearly knocking my soda over. Logan reached out to steady the cup at the same time I did, and our hands touched—which made both of us jerk our hands back, leaving the soda to spill all over the bench.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, flustered.

  “It’s fine—I was done with it anyway,” I lied, equally as flustered as I busied myself by cleaning up, stuffing our garbage into the empty pizza box and mentally fighting with myself.

  What was I doing?

  What was he doing?

  Had he just felt whatever moment passed between us—or was it all in my head?

  These moments only happen when he’s trying to calm you down. You’re overreacting.

  If I am, so is he. We keep having moments, voice-in-my-head! You can’t deny it.

  Doesn’t matter: he has a clear and defined exit date from your life, so admire those warm brown eyes and that smile—and those arms—from afar and that’s it.

  I needed to take my own advice and listen to what I’d told Logan earlier: Why get close to someone when you’re just going to get hurt?

  “Let’s practice some more,” I suggested brightly. Logan nodded and quietly returned to the center of the roof where our earlier sparring had left slushy gray footprints in the otherwise pristine snow. We wordlessly fenced for almost another hour, the only noise breaking the increasingly overbearing silence being the discordant jingling of the swords clashing during our frenetic fight.

  “Stop!” I finally called out, dropping my sword and resting my hands on my knees, breathing so heavily I was practically panting like a schnauzer on a treadmill.

  “I just need a break.” I held up a wobbly hand. “We don’t exactly work out the sword-wielding muscles in gym class.” And not talking to each other was really starting to grate on my nerves.

  “It’s getting late anyway.” Logan looked up at the darkening sky. “It’s going to be too dark to get much more practice in.”

  “Okay.” I nodded.

  “So, how did I do today?” I asked as Logan and I exchanged weapons.

  “Honestly, you did good,” he said, giving me an approving thumbs-up. “I wouldn’t want you running off into battle against a demon just yet, but you could hold your own in an attack, at least for a little while.”

  “Maybe I’ll practice a little more tonight,” I said, swinging my sword around before sliding it into its invisible case on my back, which Logan explained manifests when the sword is near—further proving that magic is a thousand kinds of awesome.

  “No plans? It’s Saturday night,” he said, surprised.

  “I thought we covered this yesterday. Bellevue Kelly, remember?” I circled my face with my hands. “No one knows just how sane I really am,” I added dramatically, throwing the back of my hand over my forehead.

  I expected him to laugh, but instead Logan had his lips pressed in a hard grimace.

  “What? You look like something�
��s wrong,” I said.

  “I was invited to a party tonight,” he began reluctantly.

  “Oh. Someone from school?” I did my best to sound casual, picking at a light blue string that hung off the seam of my cuff.

  “Yeah. That girl Andie? She invited me to some party on Friday.” The string snapped in my hand.

  “Are you going? Her parties are supposed to be fun.” I tried my best to sound detached, as if I didn’t care what Logan did with the social life he suddenly cared about over demon killing. I guess when Andie Ward and her double Ds literally came bouncing by, your priorities shifted.

  “Well, that girl demon—” He snapped his fingers as he tried to recall her name.

  “Della,” I offered, and he smiled, snapping his fingers again and pointing at me.

  “Yes! Della. That’s it! Anyway, I noticed she’s zeroed in on a guy who hangs with that crowd. Lust demons get distracted easily, and it looks like she’s found a diversion. I’m hoping I can kill her tonight.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, do you want to do this again tomorrow?”

  “Okay. Same time?” I asked, and he nodded. We picked up our trash and began walking to the door of the now very dark roof, illuminated only by the midtown skyscrapers just a few blocks away. Once we were back in the stairwell, Logan pulled the door shut, whispering yet another litany of words I couldn’t quite understand. I heard the door lock click into place, and stepped down off the landing to make my way downstairs.

  “Have fun tonight,” I said as we arrived at my apartment, hoping I sounded friendly and casual and not at all jealous and ready to claw Andie’s Logan-adoring eyeballs out.

  “Paige, is that you?” I heard through the door, and I tried not to groan as I rested my forehead against the frame.

  I took a deep breath, exhaling the words, “I should go,” in one big, breathy, irritated sigh.

  “Paige?” my dad called again. His voice was the urban equivalent of flicking the porch light on.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Logan mouthed, ducking behind me to head down the stairs as I put the key in the door.