Chapter 26

 

Georgia came with us, but when we hit the stairs, Nick suddenly sagged to the side as if his legs didn’t work anymore.

I went to him and tried to hold him up. “What’s wrong? Are you sick or something?”

“Something,” he said bitterly. He tried to pull away from me, but he just slipped again and I had to prop him up.

“What’s the problem? Can’t stand a woman being stronger than you are?” I teased, trying to get him to smile.

“No, I always knew you were stronger than I am. It’s being completely incapacitated that I don’t like,” said Nick.

“What do you need?” I asked him. “Have you eaten recently? I could get you a candy bar or some chips from the machines,” I said. That wasn’t much, but lots of people preferred to eat from the machines rather than eat the food from the kitchen. At least then you weren’t facing some terrible illness spread by bad good preparation.

“It’s not a food problem,” said Nick, and he laughed. Or he started to. Then it got choked off, and he made a face of terrible pain, and clutched his chest.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You really are stupid sometimes,” said Georgia, as if she were enjoying this. “He’s dying. The demon’s bargain has come due.”

“But—but—Nick can’t be dying. He’s not that old,” I said. Still, he wasn’t doing well. His face was pasty and he was trembling all over. His lips were chattering together and he was sweating as if he were too hot. But to the touch, he was clammy.

“I traded my youth,” said Nick, so softly that I could barely hear him. “I knew that I would die sooner than I would have. But I didn’t think it would be this soon. We always think we will cheat the demons. But it’s always the demons who cheat us instead.” He glanced up at Georgia.

“Yeah, I get it,” she said.

“Nick, you’re not going to die,” I insisted. “We’ll take you to a hospital and they can treat you there.”

“Treat me for what? Old age?” asked Nick.

“It’s not just old age. It’s—you’ve got to die of something.”

“No, not really. Some people, the lucky ones, just die of being too old to live. I never thought I would be one of them, with my habit of hunting demons. But it seems that despite the best of intentions, I will not die with my boots on.”

“You can’t die,” I said fiercely. And I tried to think of the demon summoning words in my mind. I thought I had them memorized, but now that I wanted them, they were floating just out of my reach.

“It’s all right,” said Nick. “I’m OK with it.”

“How can you be OK with dying? You’re seventeen years old!” I shouted at him. My fear and love for him were coming out as anger, and it wasn’t the way I wanted it to be. I knew the truth about him now, and that should mean that everything was good between us. I’d accepted I loved him back. Wasn’t this supposed to be the best part of the movie, where we kissed and then the music played and we had our happily ever after?

“You figured that out, eh?” said Nick.

“I told you she’s smart. Usually,” said Georgia.

“You could have told me.”

“Could I?” asked Nick. “When was that? When you thought I was a janitor? When you saw me at Mr. Barry’s? When I came here and burned his room and all his books?”

“How about when you told me about the girl you found out you loved and you could never have?”

Nick sighed. He looked gray now, gray around the lips, his eyes fluttering. “But I couldn’t have you. I still can’t. I’ll never have the one I love the most. That’s the way it works with bargains. You give away what you have to get what you don’t, and you discover that you’ve only made it absolutely clear how much you had before.”

And now I knew the truth. I was the one he had been talking about. He was Nick Kostol, the same Nick Kostol who had gone missing in the first rash of demon bargains, the Nick Kostol who had been Mr. Barry’s student and had somehow found the spell from him. He was Nick Kostol who had been dating two other girls and wanted to know which was his real love. And found out it was me instead. But he couldn’t tell me because he’d given up his youth and so he pretended it was someone else. He pretended he was someone else. Only the real Nick Kostol kept coming through.

“Nick, I love you,” I said. It didn’t seem the right time for a clench and a kiss, so I hovered around his face for a long moment, then finally ended up placing a kiss on his forehead. It was lame. It didn’t make me feel better at all, and it probably didn’t help him, either.

“Yeah? Good. I’m glad. Now go on with your life and fall in love with someone else,” he said, his eyes all the way closed now. He spoke as if in a dream.

I shook his shoulders and his eyes started open again. Then the pain came into his expression, too, and I wished I hadn’t done it. “I’m not going to love anyone else,” I said. “You’re it, Nick. That’s what you found out. You’re my true love.”

“No. I found out you’re my true love. But you could fall in love again, Fallin. And you will. You’re too giving, too generous. And you’re too strong to grieve for long,” he said.

“Don’t tell me that,” I said. “You don’t choose for me how long I grieve. And strength has nothing to do with it.”

Nick didn’t answer me this time. His eyes were open, and he was still breathing, but only just barely.

“Nick!” I shook him again, but he just flopped around. “No, Nick!”

“You’re going to have to do it now,” said Georgia. “If you’re going to make a bargain with a demon.”

“But—” I said.

“You believe all that stuff he said about how you can never win a bargain with a demon?” asked Georgia.

“I think I do,” I said. “No one has ever won that I’ve seen.”

“But you’re different. You’re special. You’re smarter than they are, all of them,” said Georgia.

Did she really believe that? I wasn’t sure that I did.

“Do it. Summon the demon now. If you really love him forever. If you really want him to live.”

This wasn’t just her trying to make me weak, was it? Trying to win that stupid contest between us she’d seen before? “But he wouldn’t want me to,” I said.

“And are you going to let him decide your whole life for you? If he’d just told you the truth instead of trying to make sure he did what he thought you should do, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

I wasn’t sure that was quite true, but it was along the right lines.

I looked down at Nick. He looked older than ever, the lines carved deep into his cheeks, his gray hair matted against his skull, his body curled in pain. But underneath it, I could see the boy from the yearbook picture who was younger than I was, who had done everything he could to find the woman he loved, and then had decided to do what was best for me. He’d spent his remaining time fighting demons, trying to stop other people from making the same mistake he had. And when he met me again, he’d shown me how to be stronger than I’d been before. And all that time, he’d loved me still, without any hope of that feeling being returned.

He was one of the stupidest people on the planet, and one of the bravest, and I couldn’t help but do everything I could to get him back. It wasn’t really for him. I won’t pretend it was. It was for me. It was purely selfish. I wanted more time with Nick, even if it meant I had less time total. It would be worth the trade. In the end, I guess that was why everyone did the bargain with a demon. I knew a little more going into it than other people.

“OK,” I said. “Let’s do it.”