The demon removed his hands from Michael’s throat and started a slow stalk in my direction. His face rippled as he howled a challenge, the sound echoing off the trees and distorting into screams of what sounded like horrendous agony. The noise assaulted my head with an almost physical force. I fumbled the key chain out of my pocket and almost dropped it.
“Stop that!” I shouted.
The noise cut off as if someone had pulled a plug. I felt the same buzz in my spine that I’d felt when I’d thrown my necklace at him; it tingled up through my skin and made my hair stand on end. My hand went numb, as if I’d been sitting on it and now it was all pins and needles. Then the feeling was just gone, like someone had flipped a switch.
693 snarled like he’d been stung. Now he looked really angry instead of just playing at it.
For the first time, I began to wonder if that necklace fried demons because it was mine, not because the priest had murmured some mumbo jumbo over it. Maybe I really could touch the Between like Michael had said. It felt like I could turn this to my advantage if only I knew how to make it work at will, but my only potential source of information was lying motionless on the ground. I stared down at my hand. Was the key chain growing uncomfortably warm, or was I hallucinating? Everything kept whirling around in my head, the way my necklace had scared 693 off when we met in the alley, the mysterious rules that bound Michael but didn’t seem to apply to 693, the fact that 693 had known to attack me in the first place. It didn’t make sense. But maybe I didn’t need to understand it. Maybe it was enough to believe in it. And in myself.
I was not going to let Michael down. And as I took my first determined step to confront the demon, the key chain began to burn with the same white fire that made up Michael’s wings. It didn’t exactly smolder; it vibrated, so hard and so fast that my teeth chattered.
It felt like an eternity had passed, but it must have been only a second or two, because when I looked up from the glowing key chain, 693 had just begun to reach for me. He pulled up short, wincing away from the light. I took another step forward, and he shrank before me. This was easier than I’d expected; I’d take him out quickly so I could tend to Michael. This whole demon-hunting thing was a piece of cake.
Then the demon’s eyes met mine.
Black wings crept into my field of vision, cutting out all light. I heard his laugh, the one that felt like fingernails screeching down a chalkboard, only it was inside my head, and I couldn’t make it stop. I felt him then, a pulsing, venomous presence inside me, unearthing every negative thought I’d ever had. The thoughts that said I didn’t deserve to live when the kids in rooms next to me died. The ones that said I was a mistake. The ones that said I was a waste of a miracle.
Pain I could take, but this went beyond that. Every middle-of-the-night fear I’d ever had flashed through my mind in one agonizing second, and I fell to the ground with a shriek, dropping the key chain. My fingers clawed at my face; I would gladly have ripped it off just to make the agony stop. I deserved to die. I should have been dead.
Then I heard the demon’s voice. “All you have to do is give up and all of this will end. I’ll take it all away. It’ll be like it never happened.”
“No,” I whispered, but it came out as more a question than a statement.
His voice was intimate and slickly smooth. It gave me goose bumps. “No more people staring at your head. No more wondering why. No more guessing how much time you have left. I’ll take it all.”
I found myself nodding, but that didn’t feel right. I was the girl who picked fights with death. Yeah, maybe I felt a little guilty some days and angry on others. It was hard to be the miracle girl and walk out of the hospital, past the rooms of friends who you knew weren’t going to make it. But I’d dealt with that. I could keep on dealing.
I pushed up from the ground as the word came screaming out of my throat. “No!” I yelled.
I reached out blindly for the key chain. And when my fingers touched it, the darkness dissolved. My vision cleared.
The demon loomed over me, his words blending into a stream of babble.
“I’ll give you money. Power. Strength. The girl with the red hair, the one who hates you? She’ll be on her knees at your feet. The team will accept you for real. Your friend and your sister? They’ll give you the credit you deserve. I can give you Michael; I know you want him.”
“No …” I shook my head. “I’m not dealing.”
His voice came even more quickly. “Your body. I can heal it. I can make sure you never spend another night in the hospital, never worry if this is your last healthy day. I’ll give you your hair back. I’ll take your scars. You could wear a bikini in public without everyone looking at you like you’re a circus freak. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t tempting. It was. But this demon thought that having cancer had made me weak.
He was mistaken.
“I don’t want what you’re selling,” I said, the words coming easier now. “Get your sorry demonic ass back to where you came from, and don’t ever come back!”
There was no other choice. My fist jerked toward his neck, the key chain once again clenched between my stacked knuckles. The strike was nothing special, but it did the job. The fiery metal hit the demon and sank in as if he were made of Jell-O. The flames spread through him, and I felt them burn him into nothing, his voice fading away to silence. His body dissolved, the white clothes blowing away in a convenient gust of wind.
That was when Michael whooped so loudly, it scared the crap out of me.
“Yes!” he yelled, still lying on the ground. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
My arms gave out, and I lay back on the ground, overcome by a heady wave of relief and delayed adrenaline. That could have gone wrong in so many ways. I could have died. I could have gone over to the dark side. Holy crap, what had I been thinking?
“What’s wrong?” Michael scrambled to his feet, gravel crunching as he hurried to crouch by my side. “Casey, are you okay?”
“Look at me,” I demanded in a shaking voice.
He did. His eyes were wide and blue. No more red flickers that made me feel like running off into the trees. “Are you hurt?” he demanded.
I shook my head. And then began to cry.
Once I started, I couldn’t stop. The demon had stirred up so many feelings that I had kept struggling to bury, and I was so tired that I didn’t know if I could bottle them up again. Michael sat down next to me in the middle of the path and slung his arm over my shoulders, pulling me to rest against him. I don’t know how long we sat there, but eventually my sobs turned to hiccups and finally to hitching breaths.
Then my stomach growled.
“You need to eat,” Michael said. “I’m taking you out, and we can talk then. Is there somewhere close?”
I wiped my face on my sleeve, snuffling. “Smuckers. Right down the street. It’s the best greasy spoon in town. But you don’t have to pay for me,” I added hastily. “I’ve got money.”
“You agreed to go on a date with me. You’re not going to go back on your word, are you?” He looked at me sternly, but from the way his lips twitched, I could tell he was kidding.
“I guess not.” I took in a shaky breath and wiped my runny nose on my sleeve.
“Good,” he said. “Because demon slayers eat for free around here.”
“Oh, joy. And by the way? If my performance of a few minutes ago is any indication, I might need a little more info on this whole demon-fighting thing.”
His mouth twitched. “First food. Then explanations. I don’t want you fainting on me. I might have to give you mouth-to-mouth.”
I couldn’t help but flash back on that image of the two of us together, and I knew my face was bright red. So I ducked my head and said, “Okay. Help me up.”
Instead of giving me a hand like I’d expected, he crouched down in front of me, presenting a very nice set of shoulders for inspection. His hair was wavy an
d kicked out in the back. I wanted to run my fingers through it.
“Get on,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re tired, so I’m giving you a piggyback ride to the bike. Get on.”
I almost protested, but I really was exhausted, and there were worse things than being toted around on the back of a studly not-quite-mortal. He wrapped muscular arms around my upper thighs before standing easily. Then he started off at a light jog, which you’d think would have bounced me around like a ball but didn’t. His stride was so fluid that I almost felt like I was floating.
“So do you know why this guy was after me?” I blurted out. “If I’m going to get attacked once every few days, I’d like to know why.”
His shoulders tightened under my arms, and for a second, I got jostled around uncomfortably as his stride faltered, but then it smoothed out again.
“You’re a threat to demonkind. Your brush with death changed you. A lot of people fold under that kind of pressure, but you just got more stubborn, as far as I can tell, and I mean that as a compliment.”
“Thanks,” I said dryly. “But I still don’t get it. What does having cancer have to do with fighting demons?”
“It’s not the cancer; it’s how you reacted to it. Most people are stuck in the physical world; they’re fixated on money and beauty and all kinds of physical things. Being sick forced you to confront the spiritual and come to terms with it. You’ve achieved sufficient balance that you are able to pull power from the Between like you just did with—what was that thing you hit him with, anyway?”
“My key chain?” I held it over his shoulder for inspection.
“Yeah. Anyway, weapons like these, charged with the Between, are the only way to kill a demon.”
“And you can’t fight them yourself because you’d become a demon in the process. That’s what was happening to you back there, isn’t it?” It felt so strange to say it that way, all calmlike. But there were no words to describe how horrible the thought made me feel, and I knew if I tried, I’d break down again.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “It was pretty close back there. If you hadn’t interrupted when you did, I probably would have been a goner. And I can’t stand to think about what I would have done then.”
“What do you mean?”
He set me down next to his bike, answering quietly. “New demons tend to devour the things they love first. It would have been bad.”
Did that mean he loved me? I wanted it to, but I worried about what that would mean. It was selfish to want him if those feelings were likely to doom us both. But that didn’t make it any easier to stop feeling the way I did.
But I still couldn’t help stepping forward and resting my cheek on his chest for just a second, thinking about how it would feel if we could just be together without all this demon crap getting in the way. His arms went around me in response. I knew if I kissed him, he’d kiss me back. We could shut out the world, just for a minute. I pulled back just far enough to look into his eyes, our lips only inches apart. Slowly, inexorably, we began to drift closer. But then, moments before our lips touched, I started to worry. Was I hurting him? Would the demons use me to make him fall like 693 had tried to?
He must have had the same misgivings, because he paused too, our lips barely grazing. My heart hammered, and I could feel my hands tremble against his waist. I was torn between what I wanted and the responsible thing to do. One little kiss couldn’t hurt, right?
If I really cared about him, I’d set those feelings aside and take care of business. I swallowed hard, trying to summon the willpower to pull away. His mouth quirked up in a wry grin that I felt more than saw.
“Crappy timing, huh?” he murmured.
“You can say that again.”
“Crappy timing, huh?”
I let out a laugh that finally broke the tension between us, and we released each other. I knew it was a good idea but couldn’t keep from regretting it. It would happen between us someday, but that wasn’t soon enough.
He took a deep breath and let it out.
“Yeah,” I said. “I totally agree.”
This time he laughed. I rode the wave of it and then tried to come up with something constructive to say.
“So … about those demons …” I trailed off because I didn’t know how to end the sentence.
“Yeah?” He arched a brow.
“What now? I learn how to hunt them myself?” I paused as a sinking thought occurred to me. “Were those other two derby girls demon hunters? Is that why 693 killed them?”
He shook his head, handing me a helmet. “You’re the first fully manifested hunter I’ve seen. I thought they’d be so much easier to find.…”
“Well, the roller derby isn’t the first place I’d look.”
“I needed ways to meet people, and I thought athletes might make more likely hunters, since athletic training is a fairly strenuous process. I’m also playing in an Ultimate Frisbee league, and I coach high school soccer. And I take guitar lessons, but that’s just because I want to.”
“You have a very busy social calendar for someone who’s only been alive for a year,” I said faintly, climbing onto the bike behind him.
“Yeah, I take a class or two at the university each semester so I don’t seem too suspicious. Plus, I live with a senior Sentinel who poses as my brother. He doesn’t leave the apartment, but he’s really good with technology, so he searches for and mentors hunters online.”
“Oh,” I said. Then I finally worked up the courage to ask the question that was really on my mind. “So why did 693 kill those girls?”
“He’s trying to either recruit me or get me to give up and leave. I’m not sure the why matters; I’m more interested in how to stop him.”
“Good point.”
He fired up the bike, cutting off any further conversation for the moment. It was a good thing too, because all my witty banter had been designed to keep both of us from realizing that I was about two centimeters from complete hysteria. I needed the jokes to distract me or I’d be cowering in a corner. Good thing the ride wasn’t long enough for me to really get thinking; we quickly pulled up in front of a fifties-style diner, one of those places where all the corners are curves and every surface is covered in spit-shined metal. I climbed off the bike and almost knocked heads with him.
“We should go inside,” he said, taking me gently by the elbow and steering me toward the door.
“Yeah, that would be good.”
It took us a few minutes to get seated; Smuckers might have looked like it was upholstered in disco balls, but they had the best fries in the city. The seating area was always packed. Finally we ended up in a saggy-springed booth in the corner underneath the brooding gaze of James Dean. It wasn’t the greatest poster in the world; the camera angle made him look kind of like a bobblehead. But at least it wasn’t dogs playing cards.
The bobblehead thought made me frown, my mind circling back to try to make sense of all the weirdness. Very unsuccessfully.
“What are you thinking about?” Michael asked, leaning toward me over the smooth expanse of pink Formica.
“Bobbleheads.” I paused. “I found one in my friend’s hospital room. She’s miraculously back in remission, but her mom won’t get out of bed. Could she have …” I couldn’t say it.
But Michael could. “Sold her soul to save her daughter? I’m afraid it’s possible, but there’s no way to know for sure without getting a good look at the bobblehead. Demons are eternally hungry. If left unchecked, they’ll consume entire solar systems. Soul jars are like little to-go boxes to them.”
“I keep waiting for you to tell me this is all a joke and you’ve got a camera hidden in your hair or something.”
“I wish. Black holes—you know how they suck everything in around them?” I nodded. “That’s what happens when we miss a demon. They just keep eating until there’s nothing left.”
“So if there’s a soul in the bobblehead, some demon’s goin
g to steal the bobblehead and eat it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know how it works, and I don’t think I want to. They seem to be able to collect without having physical custody of the bobbleheads, though. I tried locking some of them up in our apartment, but one day, the souls were just gone.”
“Oh.” It came out as a whisper.
“Are you okay?”
“Well, I’m trying not to freak out.” My eyes flicked back to the menu. “I’m also torn between the waffles and the chicken strips.”
Of course, our waitress picked that very moment to scurry over and demand our orders in a voice so breathless that it was nearly unintelligible. Michael ordered a cheeseburger with a level of reverence normally reserved for the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and holy relics. Between his extra-polite demeanor, his overall hotness, and that voice of his, the waitress was practically purring by the time she left the table.
After she left, Michael just stared at me. I was pretty used to being stared at, but usually there was a good reason behind it. Pre-cancer, it usually had something to do with the fact that I was either hanging upside down from or jumping off something. Post-cancer, it usually had something to do with the fact that I was bald and marker-scribbled. But he wasn’t staring at my scalp, and I wasn’t performing any stunts. And it was hard not to stare back.
“So, what do you want me to do?” I asked. “Take my necklace and go out hunting?”
“Objects like your necklace are called Relics. I can teach you how to reach into the Between and make them at will,” he said. “They’re anathema to demons.”
“Am I going crazy?” I asked. “Is this some elaborate practical joke? I’ve got to know, because I’m really starting to doubt my sanity. Like maybe I have a brain tumor, and this is all a hallucination. How do I know this is real?”
Of course, the waitress picked that moment to sashay over.
“Here’s your coffee, honey,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him so fast that I swore I could feel a breeze. “Cream?”
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