A Demon for Midwinter

by K. L. Noone

  “You’re like the Swiss army knife of demons.”

  “Lots of useful features. Not pocket-sized. But I’ve got some interesting attachments.” That had to be flirtatious. Had to be. Kris couldn’t think of any other direction for that comment, not with those eyelashes, that small smile.

  Justin was flirting with him. Maybe only out of reflex, maybe out of a need for comfort—forgetting pain in teasing—but the comment had been made. And now he was thinking very hard indeed about certain attachments.

  He knew Justin wasn’t ready to fall into another relationship. He knew he had nothing to offer even if so. He knew Justin had no reason to want him as more than a shoulder to lean on.

  His heart shouldn’t twist and shout inside his chest. It should know better. It should.

  The twins were putting away newly cleaned forks without being asked. One of them inquired, “By attachments do you mean that drawer under your bed with the big pink—”

  “I will personally banish you to the same place I sent the dish dirt,” Justin said, “and I won’t bring you back, either. And that’s not even this house, when were you going through my stuff in the apartment, and why?”

  “Don’t worry,” said the other twin, “we’ve known about that stuff for ages, since we helped you move out of the old place, we even looked some of it up to make sure you weren’t going to hurt yourself,” and patted him on the arm, and picked up a plate.

  Justin sighed.

  “At least they care?” Kris suggested.

  “What point were you and Dad making about me, earlier?” Justin said. His tone did not entirely expect an answer, and held affection along with minor annoyance. “Don’t tell me he told you I’m too nice to people and need looking after.”

  “Ah,” Kris said.

  “I’m twenty-eight,” Justin said to no one in particular, “and a demon, and I’m the one who set up the anti-demon protections on this house, thanks…”

  “Which we appreciate,” Kelly said firmly. “Dress warmly if you’re walking down there. Both of you.”

  “Justin,” Bill called from down the hall, “can you grab a copy of Kieckhefer’s Magical Categorizations when you come in, thanks, I can’t find mine…”

  “You don’t have it,” Justin yelled back, “you let Professor Valéry borrow it, I can see it on his desk, here, I’ll throw it at you, catch!”

  “Now you’re showing off,” said a twin.

  “I am not,” Justin said.

  “You’re showing Mom you’re fine—”

  “—and you’re showing off for him.”

  Kris felt his eyebrows go up.

  “No ice cream for either of you,” Justin announced. “I’m going to go help Dad outline an article about rock music and sociopolitical cross-currents. Kris, give me a few minutes and I’ll come up and get you, and you’ll probably want a warmer shirt…”

  Thus dismissed—he knew it wasn’t, precisely, but nevertheless—Kris headed upstairs to investigate clothing. Halfway up the stairs he felt a presence at his back, and turned to find identical inscrutable expressions two steps below.

  He looked at them. They looked back.

  He eventually said, “Plans?”

  They shrugged. And then followed him into Justin’s bedroom, under the eyes of bookshelves and framed magazine covers, and started poking at Kris’s knapsack.

  “Hey,” Kris said, but mildly. He didn’t have anything objectionable in there. More on principle.

  “We want to talk to you,” said half of them, diving onto Justin’s bed. The other half had found a few bracelets and a leather wrap-around necklace that Kris had quite genuinely forgotten was in the bag. “About what happened.”

  “About being nice.”

  “He thinks he’s okay.”

  “He’s not.”

  “But he’s more okay than we thought he’d be,” they concluded, and then stared at him, hard as mirror-image cats with sleek black bangs.

  Kris said, “I’m not going to tell you what happened.” He had not ever spent much time around adolescents, not even when he’d been one; when he visited Reggie he gave the grandchildren a wide berth. He was fairly sure these two weren’t old enough to hear his unfiltered opinion of David Ross and what’d been done to Justin. “But…it wasn’t…good. And it’s over. Is that what you wanted?”

  “Mostly. At least it’s over.” This twin rested chin on hands and wore a pensive anxious expression, one that Kris recognized because he’d reacted much the same way. “It is, yeah? And Justin’s not…”

  “Not permanently hurt,” put in the other one, now exploring his eyeliner and lip balm. “At least we don’t think so.”

  “No.” Kris perched on the corner of the bed, let one leg swing, felt simultaneously thirteen years old and gossiping and forty-three and needing everything to be all right. “He was hurt. But he’s doing better. He wanted to come home and see you.”

  “We never liked David,” said the first twin. “He wasn’t nice.”

  “He wasn’t ever mean to us exactly—”

  “But he didn’t like us. We could tell. And Justin felt—”

  “—always felt worried. Around him.”

  This was new information. Kris gave the twins his best look of tell me more captivation, and he meant it. He meant it with his entire heart.

  “Stressed,” clarified Andy-or-Eddie. “He felt like someone about to fall off a tightrope.”

  “And he couldn’t relax.”

  “Or do the fire trick.”

  “So we didn’t like David,” they finished, looking meaningfully at Kris.

  Kris said, “You two are bloody powerful empaths, aren’t you, do you not want anyone to know? And—not that you heard it from me, but I didn’t like David either. He was a massive fu—prat. He used to bring Justin tea he didn’t like, I mean tea Justin didn’t like, just to make him drink it, you know.”

  “We believe it,” Eddie-or-Andy said, sitting up on the bed. “We like knowing secrets. The empathy thing only works when we’re together. Why’d Justin like him, anyway?”

  “Ah,” Kris said. These were deep waters. And teenage boys. And he didn’t have the right to speak for Justin, not now, not on this subject. “I…think…sometimes when two people, ah…get together…”

  “We know about sex,” eye-rolled the second twin. He was testing Kris’s eyeliner, making dark intense wings, checking the tall freestanding mirror for a verdict. “We know what sex feels like, anyway. Not a big deal—”

  “Emotions are more fun, more complicated, you get to go deeper than—”

  “—yeah, but okay, so David was great at the sex?” Andy-or-Eddie made a face. “Justin’s smarter than that.”

  “I think…” Tiptoeing through a minefield. “…yes, Justin’s smarter than that, but—it’s not that simple, either, guys. Justin—I mean, he’s part—part demon, you know how people think about demons, and—”

  “People are wrong,” mused the other twin sagely. “Mostly they just don’t. Think.”

  “And,” Kris tried, “maybe he liked having someone around who didn’t know he was a demon? You lot know. It’s always there, sort of. Even when you don’t care. You have to think about it. And someone like David’s good at…taking care of things. And maybe Justin likes. Um. Being taken care of.”

  “Justin’s too nice,” said the twin with the eyeliner. “He’s, like, not even a demon. Only—”

  “—only half anyway. He needs us to watch out for him. And he could totally get anyone to take care of him.” Possibly-Andy smirked at Kris. “Like you.”

  “Me—”

  “He likes you. He feels all pink and happy—”

  “—around you. And he doesn’t feel all tightrope-y. He likes it when you notice him. You make him think things.”

  Kris demanded, “Things?”

  “You know.” Twin hands waved in unison. Maybe-Eddie finished, “Like he likes your shoulders in that jacket you showed up wearing.”

>   “He had a poster of you on the wall for ages,” contributed possibly-Andy. “And we learned a lot about sex. Listening in. He really liked that poster.”

  “You two are a menace,” Kris said. “I mean that as a compliment. Does Justin know about this?”

  “Do I know about what?” Justin appeared in the doorway. “Eddie, give back the eyeliner, he’s a guest, if you want some you can borrow mine.”

  “Cool. Can I borrow your sparkly princess dress too? The one you wore to that All Hallows party two years ago?”

  “Why,” Justin said, a completely reasonable response given the sibling doing the asking. “And also no.”

  “So I can wear it to school. Why not?”

  “You’re not old enough to know what happened to that dress later that night. Which I never want to think about in conjunction with my little brothers. So, no.”

  “This is why we know a lot about sex,” explained the other twin in Kris’s direction. “He doesn’t think before he talks. And then—”

  “—and then we need to know the stories—”

  “—because he needs someone looking out for him.”

  “Kelly might literally disembowel me if I tell you that one,” Justin protested. “I can heal but it’ll hurt. Don’t ask. Please. I’m supposed to be a role model for you.”

  “You are,” said the eyeliner twin happily. “You teach us about sex positivity and empowerment and guys with really thick—”

  “If we can’t have your dress,” interrupted the one who was almost definitely Andrew, “can we have your back issues of Stone? The contributor ones you got for free. In the big box.”

  “Um,” Justin said. “Fine, sure, yes. I don’t need them. Why, again?”

  “Art project.”

  “Mystery art project.”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Okay…” Justin shrugged, flicked a finger through the air. “They’re on Ed’s bed. Knock yourselves out.”

  In the sudden absence of teenagers, silence flowed in like a tide; Justin’s ears were pink. “I’m not really a—I mean I don’t go around sleeping with everyone I—okay, let’s not talk about the princess dress thing ever—”

  Kris raised eyebrows, set his eyeliner back down, then wished he hadn’t. Nothing to fiddle with. Empty hands. And Justin lingering in the bedroom doorway, hair crackling like distressed embers. “What did happen to it?”

  Justin, despite embarrassment, gave him the older-brother voice and lofty eye contact, not backing down. “You’re not old enough to know that either.”

  Kris stared at him, mouthed a few dumbfounded words, managed, “You—there is no universe in which you can say that—to me—” and then gave up and started laughing. “What the hell.”

  “Oh, you have no idea.” Justin was laughing too. “I’m amazed that worked. I remember when I first met you, that first day, I was so nervous…I’d only had a real job for two weeks. Like, ever. And I was about to have Kris Starr in my office. And I’d spilled coffee on my desk that morning.”

  “I couldn’t tell, you were great, so competent, and I figured you just liked the way coffee smells—” He’d come over to the doorway. So close, inches away, and every atom of his body prickled with abrupt awareness. Justin didn’t move, only met his gaze: beautiful and alight with merriment. Kris could see the shades of ochre and earth in his eyes, the parting of his lips. The inhuman tempting brightness of his hair.

  Justin’s eyes…were red. Not the usual rich shadowy spice-rack sweetness. Tear-scuffed around the edges.

  And he’d been talking to his father, alone, in the study.

  And he’d in the last twenty-four hours rescued a baby and lost a boyfriend: if not someone he’d loved wholeheartedly, at least someone who’d been part of his life for the last six months, who’d wanted him to move in.

  Someone who’d hurt him. Not only that first and last physical time.

  He’d not dyed his hair back into concealment yet. The reminder flickered windily in bedroom light.

  Kris felt his heart crack, then: a painfully welcome fault-line, carved of his own resignation and Justin’s present amusement. “Hey,” he said, “I’m glad I met you, if nothing else because you introduced me to Witch’s Brew lattes,” and put a hand on Justin’s shoulder. A friend. Nothing more. “Are we going to find your lake-merpeople or whatever?”

  Justin leaned into being touched. Then threw arms around him, hugged him—like being hugged by an emotional candleflame, slender and hot and surrounding—and let go. “No merpeople in this one. Thanks.”

  Kris tasted heat and spice and bonfire smoke, felt the memory of demon-hair brushing his cheek, knew the shape of that light body aligned with his. “…no merpeople? Tragic. Might have to reconsider keeping you company.”

  “If it helps, I once tried to convince James that we had tiny selkies and they’d nibble his toes if he didn’t listen to me.” Justin found a striped hoodie, threw it on over the T-shirt, became about fifteen years old and messy-haired, not innocent but heartstoppingly young and heedless of consequence. “Of course in this scenario I could talk to the selkies and tell them what to do.”

  “Of course. Did James’s toes survive?”

  “They seem to’ve, not that I’ve checked lately. Did you bring a heavier jacket? Not that it matters; I can take care of us. It’s more of a pond than a lake. No magical creatures at all.”

  “Other than you, you mean,” Kris snuck in, holding the bedroom door for him. Justin—his demon, his liege lord, the person he’d hold doors for—laughed and fell into step with him, going down the stairs. “Other than me, yes. Which is scary enough…”

  “Demons in the dark. Monsters at bedtime.”

  “Boo.” Justin made claw-hands, briefly: sparks shot up to elongate and sharpen his fingers. They burned scarlet and primrose, and dwindled away. “Here, borrow Dad’s coat, I don’t want you to get cold. And gloves.”

  “Are we going on a hiking expedition?” He put on the gloves. He didn’t mind being fussed over by his demon, who was a big brother at heart and took care of people. “How far is your non-magical lake?” A younger him—a younger and more arrogant him—would’ve hated that thought. Being fussed over.

  “Oh, just down the hill,” Justin said ambiguously, “not that far,” and tugged the hood up to hide most of his hair. A few fiery strands poked out in defiance; Kris chose to say nothing because presumably Justin knew best about hiding and because this was adorable. “Come on.”

  They slipped out the back door and into glimmering night, together.

  Green and grey folded around them like satin: tree-shadows, leaf-rustles, the crunch of boots over dirt. The path wound down the small incline and was a medium-to-short one; it meandered from the house’s back porch down to lazily lapping water and the dark squat shapes of a small dock. New England winter air bit at his nose, his lungs; but each inhale felt like clarity, bracing, vivid. Justin personified warmth at his side, boots and striped hoodie and skinny jeans, showing him a world of starlit emerald and onyx and distant twinkling house-lights.

  “Oops,” Justin said, stopping, “I meant to do this earlier, are you cold, you should’ve said, here, give me your hands—” and a palm-sized ball of witchlight bloomed: round and touchable, a hand-warmer built of otherworldly magic. “Hold that. No, I don’t need it back, it’s for you.”

  Kris cupped fire in both hands. It reflected kittenish heat at his face. “This isn’t the same as your usual fire trick.”

  “No.” With a smile: tinged with admission. “It’s a little harder. I have to keep it going, not let it fade. But it’s fine, it’s not anything big, it’d take a couple hours for me to get tired and we won’t be that long. I used to make these in the car to warm James up after lacrosse practice, when it got rainy or cold.”

  They ambled a few more steps, side by side in conjured fireglow. Their elbows brushed; their shoulders brushed, once or twice. Justin’s smile flickered his way, sweetly ephemeral, and Kris
did not push.

  Justin had been right: the lake was indeed more of a pond. Enough for swimming and a rowboat or two, tied up and bobbing sleepily, and pretty in moonlight, made of layered ink and silver. Trees dipped long branches into water on one side; two other houses sat a stone’s throw away and shared the pool companionably. He could see cars in one curving driveway; some sort of early Midwinter party, maybe, with friends and festivities. But the night and the faint ripples over water and the warmth between his palms, in his heart, belonged to only them.

  Justin took him out to the end of the narrow weathered dock and sat down, back against a post or a pillar or whatever they were called; Kris knew less than nothing about boats and where they went, and sat down next to him after figuring out how to balance a fire-puff in one hand. Justin trailed an ungloved hand downward: sparks evanesced across the lake and vanished from mortal sight. “Dad always worries one of us’ll fall in and drown if we come out here at night. Well, not me. I can get myself out of most things. But then I didn’t grow up here, mostly not anyway.”

  “You didn’t?” He fit. Part of the family.

  “They only bought this place when I was seventeen, after they both got hired at Youngstown as full professors.” Justin’s eyes flirted with enchanted light, scooped it up, gave it back laced with mystery and amber. “I’m technically from Texas. Or the vast and terrible demon plains of the Realm of Perilous Succubi. But I was born in Austin. Dad was doing his PhD at the university there.”

  “Oh. Perilous Succubi?”

  “It was a name on an old map Dad was using, and it sort of turned into a family joke. They don’t exactly name the regions, it’s more, um…understood. Otherworld geography’s fuzzy anyway. Malleable.” The rowboat bobbed up to listen, drawn by Justin’s voice. Kris knew the feeling. “Dad was working on the history of U.S. legal categorization, definitions of human and inhuman, and he found a bunch of old summoning spells from, I don’t know, the Wild West, silver mining days or whatever, and he’s Dad, so he tried one. He got my mom.”

  “I imagine,” Kris mused, scooting a bit closer, “he was surprised.” And, if she’d been anything like her son, instantly in love.