After their coffee, they did not immediately return to
Brannigan.
Turns out, the Daemon really did have a lair. But it was not in the sewers.
Dee found herself standing on the curb, eyeing a dilapidated building with some amount of unease. It stood among several other condemned structures, and the whole street looked like a mouthful of rotting teeth—all gray and caved in, with a few solid pieces still standing. Dee eyed the building that James pointed at. Above the door was a sign, and the only words she could make out were EDIT UNION.
She cocked an eyebrow. “A bank?”
“An abandoned bank,” corrected James. “I doubt a demon would set up camp in a working credit union.”
He walked up to the bank doors—they were chained shut, and a large red KEEP OUT sign was hung in the window. Ignoring it, James slid a key into the lock and the chains snapped free. He dropped them to the ground and pulled open the door.
“What are we doing here?” Dee asked, making no move toward the open door. All she could see was darkness and a thick layer of dust on the floor.
James smiled. “After you,” he said, and held the door open.
She remained rooted to the spot.
There was an awkward pause.
James’s mouth twitched, as if he were trying to hold back a smile. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because,” said Dee, “this is the moment when the girl gets offed by the seemingly nice hobo hipster because she was gullible enough to walk into the creepy building.” She had a flash of mortification, wondering if she’d angered him, but then James burst into laughter.
“Fair enough,” he said. “But I’m the least scary thing in this building. Does that help?”
“It doesn’t,” she told him.
Another rueful laugh. He stepped through the door and Dee had a moment of indecision—to stand on a deserted street corner with a burlap sack, or to follow a boy she barely knew into what looked like the set of a horror movie.
Eff it, she thought, and followed him.
The interior of the bank was about what she expected: rusted-over hinges, layers of footsteps through the dust, and illumination filtered through a dingy overhead skylight. Mold crept along the walls and she covered her mouth with a sleeve, trying not to inhale too deeply.
“This is where an all-powerful demon lives,” she said. “A condemned bank.” Her voice bounced off the walls, coming back to her in eerie little echoes.
“It’s the last place you’d look for one,” said James. He strode through the hall as if he knew this path well, following the line of old footprints. He walked past the clerks’ desks, down a corridor that must have been offices, and finally came to a halt before a large, circular door.
A vault.
“And this is why he took up residence here,” said James. “The decor may leave much to be desired, but the security is unequaled.
“We’ll leave these here.” He placed the burlap sacks before the door. “Everything gets stored here—the duffel bags, the C-4, the rocks. It’s a safe location, no pun intended, and the Daemon probably figures that if something ever goes wrong, nobody will miss this building.”
She gazed at the vault, taking in the clean hinges and heavy lock. She took a step forward, palms out, and rested her hands on the door. She felt its solid weight, the bedrock strength of it behind her fingertips.
“This is where he keeps our hearts,” she said quietly.
James’s small, conspiratorial smile was her answer. “Rumor has it that if you can outsmart a demon, they can’t renege on their deal,” said James. “Meaning, if you could get your heart back fair and square, he couldn’t take away your money.”
“What is that?” said Dee. “The Rumpelstiltskin clause?”
He laughed. “Something like that, I think. It makes sense, though. Throughout history, there have always been tales of deals like ours. Most of the time, the human ends up dead or wishing they were. Fairies stealing firstborns or cursing princesses and all that. But once in a while, the human gets the better of the immortal—and for whatever the reason, they can’t get back at the human. Maybe they respect intelligence.”
“Or maybe the story wouldn’t have as good an ending if the human died,” said Dee.
“Such a cynic.” James gazed at the door, then cocked an eyebrow. “You think you could break in?”
She leveled a flat stare at him. “Do I look like a supercriminal to you?”
He laughed. “All right, then.”
Dee couldn’t help but ask. “Did you bring me here hoping I could break into the vault?”
“Naw,” said James. He looked at the door with a breezy unconcern. “I thought you’d want to know where your heart is, but I’m not all that attached to mine. As far as I’m concerned, the Daemon can have it for now.”
She touched the door a second time, running her fingertips along the seam, as if she could pry her nails into the gap between door and frame and somehow yank it open—the metal was cold, smooth, and perhaps the only clean surface in this whole building. She wondered for a moment exactly how the Daemon kept the hearts. How did one hold such precious cargo?
With her luck, her heart was likely in a red-and-white barbecue cooler, surrounded by cans of Pepsi and melting ice.
They left the bank empty-handed. No rocks, no burlap sacks, and no stolen hearts. Dee stepped up to the edge of the curb, balancing on the balls of her feet while James threaded the chain through the bank doors and snapped the padlock shut. He was whistling some song she didn’t recognize, and when they returned to his car, he unlocked her door and held it for her.
She stared at it.
“Oh, come on,” said James. “You suspicious of gallantry, too?”
“Gallantry is dead,” she replied. “Or maybe you hadn’t noticed the lack of knights and horses running around Portland.”
He laughed. “That would be a sight.” But he continued to hold the car door open until she sighed and slid inside. He carefully shut it behind her before striding around to the driver’s side and seating himself.
“You’re weird, you know that?” she told him. “You dress like a hobo, talk about being gallant, and you act like this is all some kind of weirdly themed party.”
“Life is a weirdly themed party,” he said, with all the solemnity of someone reading from a fortune cookie.
“No, really,” she said. “How are you so… chill about all this? I mean, even Cal and Cora looked a little stressed when I met them.”
James shrugged and slid his key into the ignition.
“I want the life I want,” he said simply. “If that means I’m going to die for it, then so be it.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t agree?” he asked, curious.
“I just want to live,” she said. “That’s why I made my deal.”
“So you took a deal that might kill you,” he said. “You know, you’re kind of a walking contradiction.”
She took a breath. “I made a deal because I—I just couldn’t go back. To the way things used to be.”
“Ah,” said James, as if he understood.
But she had one last question. “You called yourself a transfer. When you introduced me to Cora. Does that mean…?”
“I was with a different troop,” he said. Calmly, but something in his tone set off warning bells. “I started in Italy.”
“Why did you transfer?” she asked. “I mean, going from Italy to Oregon must have been a step down.”
James looked away. “I was the only one left in my troop. Can’t have a troop of one, and the voids were finished in Italy, so the Daemon asked if I would move. I didn’t mind. Portland’s got a good art scene.”
He had been the last person in his troop. For a moment, she wondered who he had been teamed with before, if he had gotten along with them, if perhaps he’d dated one of them, if they’d been anything like Cal or Cora or Dee herself.
She didn’t ask if they’d gotten their hearts back.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.