“If the demon who made the original bargain is dead before the gift has been given, the bargain is null and void,” said Nick.
“Only before the gift has been given?” I asked, feeling suddenly heavy. My whole body ached, and my eyes stung. I didn’t think it was just because of the fight with the demon, either.
“Only then,” said Nick. “The gift is magically tied to the price offered. Once one has been given, the other must come eventually. There is no escape from that.” He looked up at me and I could see the hopelessness in his eyes.
“Promise me you won’t try this again, Georgia. Don’t try to summon a demon and if one happens to find you again, just say no.”
“You think that’s so easy,” said Georgia.
“I didn’t say it was easy. I just said to do it.”
“Because you always know the right thing to do,” said Georgia.
“Georgia, I’m trying to do what’s right for you. I’m trying to help you?”
“And if I want to make my own mistakes?”
“Then make them. But not with a demon involved. No bargains.”
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough. If a demon comes to me again—”
“Then call me. I’ll help you.”
“I don’t want you to do it for me.”
Right. That was what got us here in the first place. “Fine. Then I trust you, Georgia. I know you’re strong enough. Or at least, you’re going to be.”
Georgia shook her head at that, but I thought I could see some fire in her eyes. I’d seen that in her before, lots of times. She just had to believe in it.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Nick, glancing at the demon remains.
“I second that,” I said. So we headed out.
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.”
Chapter 27
I wasn’t going to wait around for a demon to come to me, so I started speaking in German the words of the summoning that I’d seen at Mr. Barry’s house. Funny thing was, I hadn’t forgotten any of it. And I didn’t have any trouble trying to remember it. As soon as I reached for it in my mind, it was there. I started to say the words, aware that Georgia was there with me. If she remembered the words as well as I did, then there was no way I could stop her from calling back a demon, if she wanted to. I had to depend that she wouldn’t. Or accept that it wasn’t my choice to make.
Nick was dying, but I could still hear him breathing, a slight sound that no one else would have noticed, but all of me was straining for.
When the demon appeared, it looked like a little old lady this time, grandmotherly, with glasses perched on the end of her nose, dressed in a long coat for winter and a warming muff around her neck. I wondered if she was there to remind me how I would look, if I went through with the bargain and gave up my youth for Nick’s. But that wasn’t going to be how it worked. I had other plans for my bargain, and something else to give. At least it was worth a try. It couldn’t be any worse than what Nick had already done, could it?
“Tell me what you wish for, my dear,” said the little old lady.
I felt like I was in Little Red Riding Hood. In fact, the story made a lot more sense if you thought of it as a demon dressed as a grandmother than as a wolf dressed as a grandmother. It was also a lot scarier. Wolves can be killed by normal knives. Demons can’t. Plus, demons are smarter than wolves. But in the end, I guess the woodsman can still get them with the right axe aimed for the eyes, which makes it a good story for how to deal with demons. You don’t bargain with them by offering the goodies in the basket.
“I want to save the life of this man,” I said, pointing to Nick. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time talking about my choices. This time, I was absolutely clear on what I watned.
Nick looked lax and still, his face gray, his lips the only color. His eyes were closed and his chest did not seem to be moving. But Georgia had moved away from me and was standing over him, as if to protect him.
“Life? Not much of that left. A minutes or two,” said the little old lady dismissively. “What is that worth to you? You should think of another bargain, my dear. I can give you anything you wish for. Anything at all. What would you give for that?”
“I want his life,” I insisted. “If he dies, there will be no bargain.”
“Then speak quickly,” said the little old lady, glancing back at Nick. “So you do not waste my time or his.”
“Keep him alive,” I suggested. “I will make it worth your while.”
“You ask me to grant you a gift without offering anything in return?” she said, her eyes flickering with suspicion.
“I ask for nothing,” I said. “But if you choose to keep him alive until we finish speaking of our terms, I promise you will not regret it. What I offer you is far greater than what it would cost you to keep such a man living a few more hours.” I struggled to keep my voice from cracking. I didn’t want to let on how desperate I was.
“And if I don’t?” asked the little old lady. “If he dies?”
This was the moment I had to choose. I could throw myself on Nick, put my arms around him and kiss him this one last time. Then I could give myself up for him. He’d live and I would be the one dying instead. It was tempting. When you love someone, you don’t care about yourself anymore. You want to give to them whatever they need to be happy. You want to make sure they are safe and well, even if that’s not what that they would choose for themselves.
I let a tear fall onto Nick’s face. Only one tear.
Then Georgia put a hand on my back and I glanced at her. “You’re the strong one, remember?” she said.
She thought I was strong. I wasn’t sure if she was right.
I turned back to the demon. “If he dies, then there will be no bargain. But it is up to you, demon,” I said casually.
I wished she would change her appearance. It was really hard to imagine stabbing a little old lady with the knife I still had in my hands. No doubt that was why this wily old demon had chosen this form. There were certain taboos in our world and the demons used them against us.
The little old lady moved closer to Nick. She sniffed the air above him, then leaned over him. “I sense nothing special about this one,” she said.
Did she not? Well, I did. “He knows something that is of value to me. But I will find another way to it,” I said. “If necessary.”
She put a hand to Nick’s heart.
I tensed.
“Are you sure about this?” Georgia asked. “She looks pretty creepy.”
What other choice did Nick have?
“I know what I’m doing,” I said softly. I hoped it was true.
The demon put her lips to Nick’s. She gave him a wicked parody of a kiss, and in a moment, Nick gasped in pain and his chest heaved as if he’d been touched by a heart defibrillator in a hospital bed. Or at least the way they look on television. I’d never seen one work in real life.
His whole body thumped back on the carpeted floor of the empty commons area of the school, and then the demon smiled at her handiwork and looked up at him.
“He will live for a few minutes longer,” she said.
Georgia moved to Nick’s side.
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I simply waited for her to tell me how he was.
“He’s breathing easier,” she said.
“This is no cure,” said the demon. “But if necessary, I can do it again. It will keep him breathing. But it is painful.”
I had seen that, in the brief flash from Nick’s eyes. There had been pleading in them. Don’t do this. And then his eyes had closed again.
I was glad about that part. Everything would have been harder if Nick could talk and was alert enough to complain about what I was doing. I hadn’t had a chance to tell him about my plan. Mostly because I had only just come up with it. I had no idea what he would have thought about it, if he had known. He would probably have given me a thousand reasons it wouldn’t work, given his vast experience with demons. I didn’t want to know about that. Because in the end, it didn’t matter what other people had done with other demons. It only mattered what I would do with this one.
“Good enough,” I said. “For now.”
“If you do not want him to be cured, then what is it you wish for?” asked the little old lady demon.
“To undo his bargain,” I said. “Made some months ago with a demon far more
powerful than you.” This was the important part. I had to sell this. I didn’t know which demon Nick had bargained with, but I had to make assumptions.
What was it like to be a demon? You spend time in hell, or wherever it is, some other world. And then you get the chance to take on human form and make bargains with humans. I assumed that demons preferred to be here, in our world, in our form. Otherwise they wouldn’t bother to come at all. They had to know there was a danger of being killed and sent back. It had to be painful, but they came anyway. So their own world couldn’t be that pleasant.
Which sounded a lot like high school to me.
Oh, sure, everyone pretends that high school is really fun. Adults always say they wish they could go back. They say that we should enjoy it while we can, because we’ll look back fondly on high school in later years.
But when adults wanted to insult something they said it was “so high school.” And when you graduated from high school, no one bothered to come back. It was see you later, and then they went on to real life.
If the demon world was like high school, then I thought I had a good idea of how demons felt about each other.
Georgia had almost given up everything just because she thought we were in some kind of weird competition. Does that tell you what kind of a pressure cooker high school is? Everyone is comparing themselves to everyone else. And no one ever wins at that game. You can always see that someone else is better at most things than you are. No one can be good at everything. Though of course it always looks like one special someone is. And you alternately hate and admire that one person.
“More powerful than I? What demon is this?” asked the little old lady.
“I think you must know,” I said. “How many more powerful demons are there?”
The demon squinted at me. “Hmm,” she said.
“Do you have the demon in mind?”
“I might,” she said.
“The most powerful demon in hell?” I said. It didn’t really matter if this was Nick’s demon or not, at least not to begin with. Though I hoped it was, so this would be resolved quickly for us. Still, I had to be patient if I was going to succeed long-term here.
The Gift of the Demons Page 20