TWENTY-EIGHT

Days passed and the weather went from fair to foul. Sunlight was chased away by clouds, and the light took on a grayish quality. Torrents of rain lashed at the windows, making it look as though the entire building was being put through a car wash. But no one paid the rain any real attention; the teacher went on talking about irregular polygons—half of the students were taking notes and the other half were passing them.

Dee was averaging out the two heights of her polygon when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She jumped; she usually kept the thing turned off—but Gremma had overslept and Dee had ended up rushing her morning routine. As subtly as she could, Dee reached into her pocket and withdrew her phone. She tucked it behind her geometry book and eyed the screen.

James: have you heard from cora at all?

Dee’s lips pressed together in a frown. She glanced up at the teacher; his back was to the room, his attention on the whiteboard as he sketched out a new polygon. Hastily, she typed a response.

No. Why?

His reply came a moment later: she’s gone quiet for a week. making me nervous, tbh.

A cool tendril of dread seemed to settle in her stomach. This wasn’t anything out of the norm, she reasoned. Cora might have given up or become busy with other responsibilities. She had sisters, if Dee remembered right. There were plenty of reasons that Cora might have relinquished her vendetta against the Daemon.

But then Dee remembered the look on Cora’s face: bedrock certainty, accompanied by an unhealthy amount of righteous fury.

No. Cora would not have given up.

Perhaps—

No.

Dee refused to even let herself think the words.

But they rolled around in her brain until she typed them out.

You don’t think, she texted, that Cora did something. Interfered somehow. And the Daemon got angry.

James’s response took a good minute to come and that was enough to make Dee jittery with nerves.

maybe.

Her lips formed a silent curse and she picked up her pencil and shoved her phone beneath a stack of graph paper. She couldn’t think about this right now. Cora was strong-willed; she was independent; if she was going to do something stupid, it would take more than the likes of Dee or James to stop her.

Another thought occurred to her—one so horrible that Dee immediately reached for her phone again.

How angry do you think the Daemon would be if we interfered?

Another long pause; another frightful minute of her teacher droning on about x-coordinates. The sound of the rain on the windows almost drowned him out and he was having to speak more loudly.

U saw him after Cal died, came James’s reply.

And abruptly, an old memory came back to her. A party in the Grover dorm, a handful of pretzels, and a very drunk girl with a prosthetic arm saying, They won’t kill people. Not can’t, but won’t. My demon, she said that it’s too much trouble for what they get out of it.

Not can’t—won’t.

Dee texted James one last time before jamming her phone back into her bag.

We should check on Cora tonight.

Sneaking off campus was becoming frighteningly easy.

She told her dorm monitor she was off to the library. As a junior and a known quiet student, she was given more freedom than perhaps she should have been.

Dee hurried to where James was waiting in his Mom Car. The wind tore at her hair and she slid into the car with undisguised relief. “It’s getting bad out here,” said James, by way of greeting. “You sure you want to come along?”

Dee gave him a look. “You think I should stay at home while you go tracking down Cora?”

He was trying hard not to smile. “You look as though I’ve slipped from gallant to patronizing.”

“Maybe you have.”

“Or,” he said, abruptly serious, “it’s possible that I’m worried about what we’re walking into, and I’d rather not see you get hurt.”

Surprise made her pause. She couldn’t remember the last time someone worried over her. Perhaps it was when she was young, much younger, but no true memory came to mind. It was… she wasn’t sure how it made her feel, to be honest.

She regained herself. “So if you’re worried, that means you’re not being patronizing?” But she said the words with a smile, to let him know she wasn’t offended.

“Oh, it’s very likely I’m being patronizing,” he agreed. “But I’d rather have you be offended than dead.”

A sudden chill swept through her and it had little to do with her damp clothing. James had been doing this longer than she had—he knew the dangers more clearly. And if he was worried, then perhaps there was a reason for it.

But when she considered getting out of his car, going back into her dorm, and remaining quiet and waiting, her stomach turned over.

Whatever this was, she didn’t want James walking into it alone.

James took them into a part of the city clustered with old apartment buildings and college dorms. Probably for PSU. James found a parking spot entirely by accident and hurriedly parked before anyone else could take it.

The two of them ran from the car into a nearby apartment building. It wasn’t a nice one; there were broken grates and the distinct scent of mold permeated the air.

A girl answered the door when they knocked. It swung open and Dee caught a glimpse of the interior. It was clean and neat, and it smelled of green apple air freshener. A bright blue rug covered most of the hardwood floor.

The girl at the door couldn’t have been more than thirteen. When she saw James, her eyes widened slightly. But then she looked at Dee, in her school uniform, and relaxed slightly. “Can I help you?” she asked, her tone suspicious.

“Hi,” said Dee, taking the lead. “I’m a friend of Cora’s. Is she around?”

The girl didn’t open the door any farther. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Dee, and this is James.”

The girl’s gaze alighted on James. “Oh. You’re that dick artist,” she said.

James blinked.

“It’s what my sister calls you,” said the girl. “She’s not here, you know. She said she was going to a farmers market or something. I told her it was raining, but she said there was something she had to pick up there.”

And then she shut the door.

“Dick artist,” said Dee. Her voice actually trembled with suppressed laughter. James looked so thoroughly wrong-footed, as if his charm had never been deflected with such ease.

Dee burst out laughing; she had to press a hand to the wall to keep herself upright. Even James smiled.

“Well,” he said, recovering himself. “I have been called worse things.” But his humor melted away. “I know where Cora’s gone.”

Dee looked at him. “Where?”

James didn’t smile. His gaze had slid out of focus. “It makes sense. I mean…” He seemed to come back to himself. “There are places, in every major city, where demons are known to frequent. The place you go to sell a limb. In New York City, there is a bar. In Rome, there was a church. In Vegas, there is a casino.”

“And in Portland…?” Dee prompted.

James let out a heavy breath. “There is a farmers market.”

 

Mephisto Market didn’t advertise its presence.

The market was tucked away on the edge of the Willamette, removed from the bustle of the city. To get there, James had taken his car down a gravel road; more than one raccoon had scurried out of the path of the car, eyes reflecting green in the headlights. The car jerked and wrenched though water-filled potholes, and the curve of James’s mouth drew tight, anxious. His Mom Car wasn’t equipped for off-roading and Dee wondered if they would even make it to the market, or if they would find themselves trying to call a tow truck.

The market was just barely visible. Tents and tarps had been set up on a flat space of gravel and dirt just before the river. Clumps of trees blocked out the lights of the city, and Dee had the sudden sense that they were in the middle of nowhere, that if something went wrong, there would be no help for them.

James unearthed an umbrella from the trunk and Dee drew her coat tightly around herself. They tried to fit themselves under the single umbrella, and ventured toward the cluster of tents.

Candles guttered in the wind and the tarps flapped loudly. Rain spattered along the muddy path; figures were wearing plastic ponchos and hoods.

“Why isn’t this place closed down?” said Dee, barely able to make herself heard above the sound of the rain on the umbrella.

James grimaced. “Because the weather doesn’t care if people are dying in car accidents or if people need jobs or help or even a nose job. The desperate don’t stop being desperate just because it’s raining.”

It was true. And more than that, the rain seemed to have sluiced away any pretense—no one was here to flirt with danger or seduce a supernatural being with pretty limbs. The only people here were those with haunted eyes, who gripped at plastic ponchos with shivering fingers or clutched at umbrellas. They came because there were no other options.

Fairy tales with all the shine taken away from them were simply stories of desperation. Of hungry wolves devouring children and jealous stepsisters who hacked off their own toes to fit inside a glass slipper.

James and Dee shuffled beneath the umbrella like two particularly uncoordinated competitors in a three-legged race, and once they found themselves beneath the first tarp, the scent of moisture and heat and bodies was stiflingly close. Dee stumbled and was grateful when James pulled her against him, his arm tight around her waist.

Dee glanced through the multitudes of people for Cora—the one-armed grocer with the raspberries, the old woman with the tarot readings, and a young black man who moved with a slightly awkward step. Dee thought she glimpsed a flash of metal in the gap between his shoe and the hem of his jeans. A pretty girl with nut-brown hair was speaking quietly with the man, but when Dee saw it wasn’t Cora, her gaze moved on.

“Maybe she isn’t here,” said James. He sounded uncertain, but hopeful.

“Maybe,” replied Dee. She was still eyeing the passersby, peering through the plastic hoods and umbrellas. It was difficult finding anyone in this mess, never mind a petite teenage girl. But perhaps they were wrong—perhaps Cora was simply at another market, buying normal things. Perhaps the Daemon was in his bank, counting his hearts or whatever demons did in their spare time.

James jerked hard on her sleeve and said hoarsely, “He’s here.”

A slender, elegant figure strode through the crowds. He wore a heavy woolen pea coat over his suit, and for once, the umbrella in his hand looked utterly normal.

And then Dee saw the figure prowling behind him. Cora moved with significantly less poise. Her unzipped coat flapped in the wind, and as a gust lifted the fabric, Dee caught a glimpse of something silver tucked into Cora’s back pocket. For a moment, she didn’t recognize it—but then years of movie watching came back to her and she recognized the shape of the object.

“Cora’s got a gun,” said Dee. Her voice slid up a few octaves.

“What?” James’s jaw clenched. His next words came out through his teeth. “How—where would she even get a gun?”

“She’s eighteen, isn’t she?”

James cursed quietly. “And the Daemon’s found his target.”

Sure enough, the Daemon walked up to a produce stand and the teenage girl Dee had seen earlier, the one with the nut-brown hair, gazed up at him, mouth slightly agape.

Dee took a step forward, trying to see better, but the crowds flooded in before her. She grimaced, dodged the sharp edge of someone’s umbrella, but in the chaos she found herself pushed back. When the crowds parted again, she blinked.

There was no sign of the Daemon or the girl.

“Where’d they—” Dee began to say, but James was already moving.

“He’ll need a moment of privacy, or this mob would… well, mob him,” James said as he walked. “Where’s Cora?”

A scan of the crowd. “Gone,” said Dee. “This—this isn’t good.”

They fought their way to the edge of the tarps, where the market ended. Together, they stood on the cusp of darkness, and Dee felt her breath freezing in her lungs. This was the moment when the wise would turn back.

“James.” She breathed his name and he turned to face her.

Her every instinct told her to run, that people were not good, that letting him in would only lead to more hurt.

She hated that part of herself, hated that little voice that told her that anyone who might want her was either flawed or insane.

But James was neither. He was kind and brave, and he had the fashion sense of a raccoon that had blundered into a discounted bin of used clothes. But it was just another part of him, and she found she liked that part of him as well.

Standing on the edge of that darkness, she felt the stirrings of reckless want. A wild sort of bravery beat within her, taking up the hollow space in her chest where a heart should have resided.

She might not be alive—but she wanted to live.

“Can I try something?” she asked. The words spoken aloud helped drown out her inner voice.

James looked at her. His face was serious when he answered, “Anything.”

Her fingers fumbled for his shoulder, and she angled him toward her. He looked confusedly at her, but then Dee rose on the tips of her toes. She grabbed his jacket in her fist.

When she kissed him, his mouth tasted of rainwater, fresh and sharp, and the heat of his mouth was a startling contrast to the chill along her skin. He made a soft sound of surprise, but then a groan rose in his chest.

This was nothing like their first kiss—all hesitancy and fumbling attraction. It was raw and needy, a desperate desire for reassurance before stepping off a ledge into the unknown. His left hand, the one not holding the umbrella, found the small of her back and pulled her closer. He felt sturdy, warm, and solid. She tried to draw some of his wild courage into herself, and he responded in kind, his lips moving hungrily against hers. It was heady, this knowledge that he wanted her, that he had seen all of her broken edges and still thought her desirable.

When they parted, their breath fogged the air beneath the umbrella. James looked slightly dazed and a flush crept along his cheeks.

“I just wanted to try that,” she said, “in case we both die horribly tonight.”

He laughed, and it was a quiet, comfortable sound. “Well, if that isn’t the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

But his hand found hers, and their fingers twined together as they stepped out of the circle of light.