TWELVE

The second void appeared on a Wednesday.

Dee was striding out of the science building when she saw the Daemon.

She froze—a deer catching the scent of a wolf, and if she had a heart it would have been slamming against her ribs. The demon was framed in the doorway of a fire exit. He looked as cool and pristine as ever, that umbrella tucked beneath his arm, and he watched her with ancient, far-seeing eyes.

Or perhaps that was just her imagination getting the better of her.

Students milled about, half going to after-school activities and the others heading toward the dorms. She gripped the strap of her shoulder bag, nails digging into the nylon, and forced her feet to move. Dee slipped through the crowds, just another student eager to be done with midweek classes, until she stepped into the shadow of the science building. And then she was standing beside him.

“Yes?” she said.

The Agathodaemon smiled. “Walk with me.”

The Daemon led her away from the buildings and the sidewalks and the comfortably crowded paths. The edge of campus bled into untended trees—brambles and thick undergrowth made passage impossible. Some students thought it might be deliberate, to discourage anyone sneaking away through the trees.

The smell of rain drifted up from the damp grass, and Dee tried to focus on that—on the familiarity of her surroundings. It felt as though she had stepped into yet another fairy tale, but then again, if she could stay grounded in the here and now, perhaps she would remain with one foot in the real world. She tried to look at him as if he were what he pretended to be—a thirtysomething, absurdly good-looking man with dark hair and bright blue eyes. She thought of him as human and nothing else.

“I see you are still functioning,” said the Agathodaemon.

Well, that thought lasted a good two seconds.

She forced herself not to scratch at the back of her neck. “Shouldn’t I be?”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “It does not take, sometimes,” he admitted. “Some people hold their hearts quite closely, and without them they simply… stop.”

His voice carried a trace of admiration, as if there was something noble to be found in the bodies of those victims he left behind. But were they truly victims? If they made a deal, knowing fully what they were trading for a wish—but then again, could a person ever truly know the consequences of giving away their heart?

The Daemon surveyed her with a small smile. “That is why I take the younger ones, you see. You already give parts of your heart away so easily—little fragments attached to celebrities, to hobbies, and to ill-fated love affairs. Your kind have the best chance at survival.”

Dee felt her hand rise to her chest. She had never placed any true importance on bands or television shows or even boyfriends. Her own heart had remained locked tightly behind her ribs—at least, until she allowed a demon to take it.

“You have your knitted heart on you?” asked the Daemon.

Dee felt the lump in her pocket. “Yes.”

“Good. Good. I would hate to lose such an… intriguing investment so soon.”

There were so many questions that Dee could have asked—why a knitted heart mattered, why she was an investment, and an intriguing one at that—but what came out of her mouth was, “Why are you here?”

She wanted to know. Why a demon existed in a place like this—if he was in fact a demon. Why he needed to be in Portland, in Oregon, in this world. But he seemed to take her question quite literally.

“There is a void,” he said. “It is forming on the outskirts of a place called Beaverton.”

That startled a laugh out of her.

He looked at her, a silent question forming in his unnaturally bright blue eyes.

She shrugged. “I know Beaverton. But let’s just say no one would miss it.”

He regarded her coldly. “You would not care for it if a void opened there. Nor anywhere within a hundred miles.” A tilt of his head. “At least, you would not care for it in the few moments you had left to live.”

She didn’t quite gulp, but it was a near thing.

“Here is the address,” he said, and held out a business card. On it was a scribbled address. “Call the others.”

And then, before she could answer, he simply vanished.

If she’d imagined James’s car, she would have conjured up images of a brown clunker—probably held together by paint and duct tape. She would have been wrong, it turned out. When James pulled up to the curb, it was in a very sedate, very normal blue car. A Mom Car.

He met her on the curb, smiling as if this was something they did every day. There were rough edges, a rawness to his face that she appreciated more after seeing the flawless Daemon. She never knew she’d long for rumpled hair or scruff, but James was so human she nearly relaxed.

She didn’t, though.

She was still Dee.

“I can’t leave campus,” she said, glancing up the sidewalk. “It’s not a weekend.”

Cora gazed at her, peering from her seat behind the steering wheel. It appeared that even though it was James’s car, Cora insisted on driving.

“This is kind of required,” said Cal, from the backseat. He had a magazine half-open on his lap, and he’d cranked the window down all the way. “Can’t you just sneak away?”

Dee glanced about the parking lot. Sure, there was no one watching—odds were good that she could get away with it. But the dorm monitor would patrol the halls around seven—and it was five now. Two hours felt like too short a span of time.

And this school was what she’d sold her heart for.

Then again, she had a perfect record. Even if she was caught, she might just get a detention or a warning. And if she was truly late, maybe she could text Gremma, get her to stage a diversion.

She met James’s eyes; they were crinkled at the corners in a gentle smile. “I could call the school,” he offered. “Pretend to be your dad or something, say there’s a family emergency.”

She answered without thought. “Oh, no. That’d get the school’s attention, probably. My dad never calls.”

A lift of his eyebrows; she had said too much. “I mean,” she said quickly, “it’s just—you know—parents are busy and all that.”

Flustered, she hastened around to the other side of the car and yanked the door open. She slid into the backseat quickly. “Drive,” she said, keeping her gaze lowered. “Please.”

Once James was in the passenger seat, Cora hit the gas and yanked the car toward the main road. Dee glanced once over her shoulder, at the shrinking buildings of campus as they drove through the gate.

“Are we all set?” asked Cora. She was looking down at something near James’s feet. “Car, check. Rocks, check. First-aid kit, check. Emergency rations, check.”

“Emergency rations?” asked Dee, alarmed. “I thought we were just going to Beaverton.”

Without so much as looking at her, James reached over and pulled open the glove compartment. Inside was a paper sack filled with half a dozen bagels.

“Check,” said James.

“Cell phones?” said Cora.

“Check,” said Dee, feeling her own phone in her pocket.

“Check,” said Cal.

“C-4?” asked Cora.

“In the trunk,” said Cal.

Dee went rigid. “Is that—is that safe?”

“So long as no one rear-ends us,” said James cheerily.

The drive to Beaverton took about thirty minutes. Cal had a map and called out directions from the backseat, guiding Cora into what looked like a half-deserted neighborhood. Dee caught a glimpse of a wall that was more spray paint than concrete, and newspapers sagged in the sewer drains. Despite her quip to the Daemon, there were good parts of Beaverton. This just wasn’t one of them.

Cora took a sharp right, pulling down an alley. Then another left turn, and she slowed the car to a halt. They parked beside what looked like a decrepit brick building.

Fear fluttered in Dee’s chest like a caged animal, struggling to get out. But something was strange, off; it was because there was no thudding heartbeat to accompany her fear. She was used to feeling it throb, set aflame by adrenaline, and she had never felt its absence more keenly.

James was whistling an off-key tune when they trudged toward the broken building. It was an old garage, if the struts and large glass door were anything to go by. But the place was deserted—the glass glittered upon the ground and a heavy layer of dust covered the interior.

The old building smelled of gasoline and rust, and small flickers of movement darted away from the beam of Cal’s thin flashlight—more rats.

The explosives were in a duffel bag. Cora hefted the bag over one shoulder, ignoring any offers of help as she strode through the broken door without any hesitation. Dee froze.

What would they say if they were caught? Four teenagers, breaking into an abandoned building, a duffel bag full of C-4. They wouldn’t be let off with a warning. They’d be branded hard criminals, maybe even terrorists—

A hand touched her elbow. Dee looked up, saw James looking at her. “We don’t get caught,” he said, so quietly that the others wouldn’t be able to hear. “Trust me. The Daemon makes sure of that. We’d be useless to him in jail.” He held out a thin flashlight, smiling just a bit. Not as if he were mocking her, but as if he understood.

Silently, she took it and switched it on.

The beam of the flashlight swept around another corner, and the sound of small, skittering claws intensified. Dee felt something pass over her foot—luckily, she was wearing her uniform-standard loafers rather than flip-flops, but the sensation made her shudder.

There were still old tires, flat and useless, piled around the room, and boxes of old steel bolts and shelves of other detritus not deemed valuable enough to be stolen.

And there was a void. A shimmer, a ripple, like heat rising from the pavement on a hot summer’s day. It hung just a few inches off the grease-stained floor.

The others saw it, too, and they moved forward with an ease born of practice. Cora knelt before the shimmering patch of air and reached into her pocket. She came up with a small aerosol can of spray paint. And before Dee could ask why Cora was suddenly into tagging, Cora shook the bottle once, twice, then sprayed the air just in front of the void.

The paint misted through the air, then swerved right. Before Dee’s eyes, the red paint simply vanished—but not before she saw the clear outline of the void’s mouth. Well—it was certainly a more precise way of finding the void’s entrance than tossing an empty bottle at it.

Dee glanced about the room, trying to take in everything at once. It seemed there was only one way in or out—the door they’d walked through. The broken windows were too high up for escape. She turned in a circle, and her foot hit something.

She stumbled, her flashlight falling to the concrete floor. She scooped it up, hands shaking, and aimed the beam down.

The light fell upon a rat. Unmoving, still, and dead.

It had been impaled—a thin metal rod shoved through it the way a child might pin a butterfly to a corkboard.

And then she saw what the creature had been killed with.

It was a knitting needle.

“He’s been here,” said Cora quietly.

Dee jerked in surprise. The other girl had approached while Cal and James talked between themselves.

Cora’s cool gaze slid over the needle. “You see what he is, right?” There was a low, almost confidential tone to her voice. As if she were sure she spoke to an ally. “The others forget that he’s a demon, but you don’t. I know you’re scared of him—and you should be. They’re not right; they’re not like us. We have to stick together.”

Dee looked at Cora and for the first time wondered what she was doing here. Cora belonged in some high-powered internship, holding a clipboard and ordering people around—not standing over the body of a rat. “You made a deal with him, too,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but at the same time, it was.

Cora looked away. “I made a mistake,” she said curtly.

Before Dee could ask what she meant, James called over. “Charges ready and timer set!”

“You mean, I readied the charges and set the timer,” said Cal. “While you stood there and critiqued how fast I did it.”

“Well, my part comes now,” said James, smiling.

Cora straightened, ran a hand over her perfect hair, and said, “Dee, since you’re the newbie, you watch. Cal will keep the void stable while James and I go inside.”

Cal squatted down, then did a sort of crab-walk into the void.

Dee watched with fascination. She hadn’t seen what being the human doorstop looked like from an outside view. Half of Cal simply vanished, like he had been sliced down the middle by a mirror. He glanced to his left, one eye seeing something Dee couldn’t. Then he nodded, gesturing, and James and Cora stepped forward. James first, angling sideways to slip past Cal, and then Cora. They vanished, one after the other.

And then there was silence.

Dee felt her fists clench. She was too hot; whatever magic kept her in stasis did nothing for the feverish sweat that broke through her skin. She could feel it dampening her shirt.

She had not counted on the seconds dragging by like hours, the agony of waiting for the others to reappear. Cal appeared calm, crouching with his elbows on his knees and gaze resolutely forward. With only half of him visible, he reminded her of one of those statues with pieces missing, the eyes old and face worn.

Dee paced back and forth, checked her cell phone for the time. “How long does this usually take?” she asked.

One of Cal’s eyes—the only one visible to Dee—flicked toward her. “Depends,” he said. His voice warbled oddly, an echo of an echo.

“On?”

“If there’s trouble.”

At once, she remembered that creature. None of the other heartless had mentioned seeing anything like that, and she had not dared to mention her own glimpse of it—for fear of drawing attention to herself. She was still new to this, after all.

But still—the thought of what might lie beyond that flicker of unreality…

She needed to see.

“Could I look inside?” she asked.

She expected Cal to argue; it was what Cora would have done.

But Cal smiled slightly. “You won’t like it.”

“I want to look around,” she replied. “I’ll just be a moment. You can watch me the whole time, right?”

He nodded. “Go on and try it.”

She ventured closer, hand reaching for the void. It felt like touching the surface of water—a slight resistance against her fingertips before it caved inward.

Fingers extended, she stepped past Cal and into the void.

It was like stepping through a door into a sandstorm. Wind flung her hair out of its ponytail and she found her breath yanked free of her lungs.

She stepped into this non-space, this half-formed world and—

—It knew her.

That was the only way she could describe it. This void knew her, tugged at something inside of her and then she was falling to her knees, sand and grit digging through the material of her uniform and—

—She is ten years old and trying to clean the bathroom. Her legs are too short, arms too stumpy, and she can’t quite reach the mold behind the faucet—

Dee yanked herself free of the memories. It felt as if the void were pulling at her own mind, feeding on her memories.

—She is eight and so excited about a new cartoon, but then there is a voice telling her, “Only losers watch cartoons every day. You don’t want to be a loser, do you?” And she is ashamed because she does want to watch cartoons—

—She is six and the house is quiet, heavy with silence; her mother has told her that Dad is feeling ill today and Dee does not know why—

She scrambled back on hands and knees. She hit Cal’s leg and scooted to one side, until she felt cool pavement rather than hot sand, and she was panting as if she had just run a mile.

Cal looked down at her, smiling ruefully. “The void has hallucinogenic properties that kick in when you fully immerse yourself. Which is why I prefer to remain here, as the human doorstop.”

“W-what?” she gasped.

Cal’s face softened. “Voids make you see things,” he said, with the calm benevolence that someone might use when trying to explain calculus to a golden retriever. “We don’t know why or how.”

Scrambling to her feet, she backed away from the void. It felt as if some of the grit were lodged in her throat.

“It’s disturbing,” said Cal. “It’ll show you things you don’t want to see. That’s why the same people usually go into the voids. You get used to it, I guess. Cora and James are the old team. At least until Cora gets her heart back in a few months, and then the dynamic will change again.”

The way he spoke was so normal, as if this were just another after-school job to him.

“W-what did you trade for?” she said raggedly. It was probably a rude question—she shouldn’t have asked.

Cal shrugged. “Someone’s life. It seemed fair.” The words came so easily to him, as if he were utterly at peace with the fact he stood half in, half out of some piece of unreality. He checked his watch and then let out a sigh. “I hope this is all the Daemon needs done tonight. I’ve got an eight a.m. class tomorrow.”

She blinked. “Aren’t you still in high school?”

“Grad school, actually.” When he caught sight of Dee’s stare, he let out a little laugh. “Prodigy,” he said, as if the word embarrassed him. “Studying physics—although I might fall back on astronomy if I get bored.”

Her jaw dropped. “You’re some kind of science genius?”

He flushed. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that—but yeah.”

“How do you…” Dee gestured at the void, at Cal himself, and then her hand dropped to her side. “How do you reconcile all this? Magic portals?”

Cal snorted. “It’s not magic. It’s… just something we don’t understand yet. Which is why I’m going to unravel it.” He said the words so matter-of-factly, as if explaining the unexplainable were something mundane. “Once I get my heart back, I’m writing a paper on this.”

Dee rubbed at her hair. Small grains of sand scattered along the pavement and a moment later, Cora and James sprinted out of the void’s mouth. They were windswept but grinning, and James high-fived Cal as he ducked into the real world.

“See?” gasped James. “Everything’s good.”

Dee watched as the void flickered. It curled in on itself, like water draining from a tub, and then it was gone.

As if it had never been.