by Jon Skovron
“No?” Jael feels like she’s lost control of the conversation.
“I mean, it’s a little weird,” Britt says. “And kind of uncomfortable at first.” She makes a sour face. “Okay, being totally honest here, it’s a lot uncomfortable. But once you relax into it, you know, it’s really . . .” She shakes her head and sighs.
“I don’t even know how to describe it.”
“What are you talking about?” asks Jael.
“Last night!” says Britt.
“Oh, right,” says Jael. “Deep Prius guy.”
Britt goes into her latest romantic adventure. Hearing Britt talk about sweaty contact in the back of a car is almost more than Jael can stand, so after a while, she stops listening.
Without really deciding to do it, she looks through Britt’s eyes to see what’s behind their cheerful sparkle.
Britt’s soul is different from either Rob’s or her father’s. It flails and quivers like an injured bird, desperate and maimed. As Jael looks deeper, like her father showed her, she starts to see the images encased in the depths of the spirit, stacked up like layers of silver flame. They spill over each other in a confusing welter. She goes for the biggest one and for just a moment she sees the ceiling in a car, a fogged window, and the muffled sound of a girl crying softly into fabric. The sadness cuts into Jael’s heart like a knife. And that’s when she understands that she’s not going to find what she’s looking for here with Britt. No solution, no comfort. Even if she could get Britt past the Bible stuff, there’s no more room for drama in the Brougher house. It’s all booked up.
“That’s it,” says Britt, all bright eyes and smiles. “No more virginity for me! Boy, what a relief!”
Jael pulls away from her soul, and looks into her friend’s cheerful face. “You really did it?” she asks. “You had sex with this guy?”
“J, I know what you’re thinking, but I’m here to tell you that there’s nothing to be scared of. In fact, I can’t wait until we do it again, you know?”
“Really?”
“J, he’s really so amazing and smart and super nice. His parents are totally evil, though. I don’t know how he avoided being all screwed up like them. I think it’s because he does so much in the Church. Anyway, seriously, I think I’m in love with him.”
“Wow,” says Jael. “Love?”
“Just wait until you meet him!” she says. “You’ll totally understand. We’re perfect. Like you and Rob.”
“Yeah . . . ,” says Jael. Is it so hard to believe that Britt has really found someone? Maybe Jael is just jealous because if she moves, she loses Rob along with everything else.
“He sounds . . . great,” Jael says at last. She’s about to say she can’t wait to meet him, but realizes that she isn’t going to, because she’ll be gone in less than twenty-four hours. A lump rises in her throat. It’s best for her to just fade quietly away and let Britt have her normal life with her normal church boyfriend.
To bring her into Jael’s world would just be selfish.
So Jael pushes a smile onto her lips. “I should probably get going. School night and all.”
“Are you okay, then?” asks Britt. “For real?”
“Yeah,” says Jael. “Thanks.”
“Hey, what are best friends for?”
“Sure,” says Jael. “See you tomorrow.”
Jael is about halfway home when she sees the ram. The streetlight shines off its glossy white coat and thick, curled horns. It just stands there, casually, like it’s normal for rams to hang out on a street corner in Seattle. It’s looking directly at her.
She stops and waits to see what it will do. She isn’t scared, exactly. But she also isn’t about to take any chances, even on what appears to be a misplaced farm animal. After a few moments, it begins to walk toward her, its hooves clicking loudly.
“Stop!” she says.
It does.
She isn’t sure what’s weirder, that she talked to the ram or that it understood. But she decides that it’s a good sign that it obeyed.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
My name is Asmodeus and I am here to help you.
“How are you talking in my head?”
I am sorry to be so invasive, but your father made me swear never to possess another man or woman, and this animal is unable to articulate sounds clearly enough for you to understand.
“Asmodeus, huh?” she says, taking a few steps closer. That was the demon her mom asked her dad not to kill. “So you were, like, sort of a friend of my mom?”
Her love for you was something I had never encountered before. I hadn’t realized such fierce kindness was even possible
. . . It changed everything for me. So I vowed to watch over you and aid you in whatever small way I can, warning your father when other demons get too close. I even tried to warn you directly once, when Baal found you. But that was not particularly effective.
“When Baal . . . wait, the bird, right? You were that sparrow that kept chirping at me!”
Yes, in urban areas I often choose birds or squirrels to escape notice.
“So why a ram this time?”
In my true form, which I can only take in Hell, I have three heads. One man, one bull, and one ram. By using a ram for this, our first true meeting, I wanted to be something like myself.
“Well, uh, nice to meet you, Asmodeus.”
I wish this were no more than a pleasant meeting, little one.
But I come to you tonight with a grave warning.
“What’s that?”
Belial is coming.
“What?” she says, something cold and hard settling in her gut. “How did he find me?”
Your uncle disappeared from his post in the middle of a shift. That made Belial take notice.
That must have been the night Jael called him out of the bowl. All for her stupid hair emergency.
Then you made quite a bit of noise while practicing your magic yesterday. It was like a beacon in the skies of Hell.
“So what do I do?”
Run or fight.
“How can I possibly fight this Belial guy? He’s like some super demon and I’m just half demon.”
Not “just.” A halfbreed is not simply half demon and half human. A halfbreed is something else entirely. A rare and potentially dangerous creature. Merlin, Perseus, and many others in your legends were halfbreeds. That is why you are feared and hated so much. The power of the elements is joined with your will. The power of the Earth itself.
“Don’t get me wrong,” says Jael. “Freezing things is cool and all, but I don’t think it’s going to do much for me in a fight.
Especially if this guy is king of the ice or whatever.”
It is true that the elements of Gaia have been passive for a long time. But they don’t have to be. Perhaps they need only the right catalyst.
Jael thinks about that for a moment. She remembers her first night of connecting to the elements and how she wondered why something as powerful as the wind was so timid.
“You’re saying I could get them into action?”
I am saying that if you fight, they will fight with you.
The ram turns and begins to walk away.
“Wait!” says Jael. “How do you know so much about halfbreeds?”
The ram stops and lowers its head.
I used to be one.
“Yeah, you said something like that to my mom, but I couldn’t figure out what you meant. You were a halfbreed, but now you aren’t?”
I was so desperate to be accepted by Belial and the other Grand Dukes, so afraid of the consequences of what I was, that I destroyed my mortal half.
“How did you do that?”
Just as your mother extracted the demon half from you for a short time, I extracted the mortal half from myself. But instead of protecting it as your father did, I cast mine into the Void.
“Oh,” says Jael. She doesn’t really know what else to say.
“Did it hurt?”
<
br /> It is still an agony to this day. It is a wound that will never heal.
“But they still didn’t accept you, even after that?”
Of course not. And even if they did, my power is now so diminished, I am not of much use.
“I’m sorry,” says Jael.
Don’t be, little one. Every success of yours buoys my spirit a little more. You make me proud to be a halfbreed, a feeling I never thought possible. Now I must return to Hell, and you must decide what you will do when the Grand Duke comes for you.
Then the ram shudders and a fine mist coalesces above its head then dissipates.
“Asmodeus?” says Jael.
“Baaa!” says the ram, then runs off into the night, its cloven hooves echoing in the still night air.
As she continues her walk home, Jael wonders if there’s any chance that Asmodeus is right. Could she really turn this all around? To not live in fear or on the run? For the first time in her life, to just be still? The idea buzzes warmly in her chest. She would risk just about anything for that.
Jael decides to let herself in through the front door. It’s pretty late. Her father has probably gone to bed already. But when she gets inside, she finds that he has fallen asleep on the couch, his worn old Bible open on his chest. The candle on the coffee table is still lit.
“Great, Dad,” she whispers. “Real safe.”
She walks over to blow it out, but stops and looks at her father. His head is tipped back and to the side, leaving his mouth wide open. He looks different when he’s asleep. The tension is gone from his face and he looks years younger. Like the man in the necklace who loved her mother.
Who is this guy? she thinks. She’s lived with him her entire life, and yet she feels like she barely knows him at all. She looks down at the flickering candle that watches over him every night.
Does the flame know him? No, not really. The fire is new every night and doesn’t know or remember anything. The candle doesn’t seem to care.
She decides not to blow it out. Instead, she takes it up to her room and puts it on the dresser at the foot of her bed. She could use some distraction, so she asks the fire if it would like to dance for her. It says that as a matter of fact it would. So Jael lies back in bed and watches the flame stretch and shimmy and flicker in a silent dance. It isn’t long before all of the day’s thoughts and worries slip away and she drifts off to sleep.
The flame, of course, wants to be free of its candlewick tether. Now that it’s been encouraged to move in ways that it doesn’t ordinarily, it’s worked itself up into a frenzy of hunger.
It begins to stretch higher. It reaches for something it can hold on to. Something it can eat besides the sluggish wax beneath it. It wants to eat the room, and the house, and everything else it can.
But the air in the room has been hanging around far longer than air usually does, partially because of poor ventilation, but partially because it likes Jael. She’s such a funny little thing. So serious. So stuck. But artlessly charming, like the rustle of tall, wild grass. The air decides that it doesn’t want the fire to eat her, or the room, or the house. It doesn’t have anything against fire in general. In fact, they usually get along rather well. But this time is different.
So the air withdraws itself from the fire.
And the fire slowly suffocates and dies.
Britt sits back down at her desk and stares at the image of the pouty male model on her computer desktop. Something is up with Jael. She knows it. Something that Jael didn’t say. Britt wonders if she talked too much. If she didn’t give Jael a chance to get it out.
She sighs and rubs her eyes. Maybe she should go to bed early tonight. Last night was pretty intense. But instead of shutting down her computer, she opens chat.
blue-eyed_devil: Hey, what’s up?
brittalicious: Hey. Not much. I fail at being a friend.
blue-eyed_devil: why do you say that?
brittalicious: o, my buddy J was trying to talk to me but I just can’t shut up and listen sometimes. Why do I always have to make everything about me?
blue-eyed_devil: don’t b 2 hard on yourself. if it was really that bad, she would have said something anyway.
brittalicious: I guess so . . .
blue-eyed_devil: I KNOW so. you want to grab a bite somewhere?
brittalicious: well, it is a school night . . .
blue-eyed_devil: come on! I need to get out of the house. my parents totally suck. And that chocolate shop on Greenwood is open until midnight! my treat . . .
brittalicious: bribing me with chocolate . . . you really are a devil, Jack.
blue-eyed_devil: >:D I’ll pick u up in 10 minutes.
Britt shuts down her computer. She can’t quite stop the stupid little smile that creeps onto her face. This one really is different. She just knows it.
EXORCISING INDEPENDENCE 16
The rain pours down much harder than usual for October.
Since Jael lost her raincoat to lava, and she doesn’t quite feel comfortable wearing her demon-scale cloak to school, all she has left to wear is her red hoodie. By the time she gets to school, she’s completely soaked. She walks through the front door of the school quickly, grateful for the shelter. She peels back her wet hood and runs her fingers through her spiky hair, flicking water droplets everywhere.
“Miss Thompson, front and center,” she hears Father Aaron say.
Jael stops and looks down at her socks. She actually remembered to pull them up this morning, but they’re so heavy with rainwater that they came down on their own. She slowly turns to face Father Aaron, her leather shoes squishing.
But beneath his usual sour frown, there’s something unfamiliar in Father Aaron’s expression.
“Keep your head about you today, Miss Thompson,” he says. “Be smart.”
She stares at him for a moment.
“What? . . .”
“The bell’s about to ring,” he says. “Better hurry, or you’ll be late for class.”
“But—”
“Miss Thompson, that is all.”
“Y-Yes, Father,” she says. She turns to go, then says,
“Thanks, Father.”
“There’s nothing to be thankful for,” he says quietly, and his tone sends a chill down her spine. “Now, go to class.”
She nods and hurries down the hall to her classroom.
As soon she sits down at her desk, Rob says, “You okay?”
He looks worried.
“No,” says Jael.
“Did you get in trouble for telling me everything?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“So are you grounded or something?”
“No,” she says. “He says we’re moving.”
He just stares at her, like she’s slapped him across the face.
“Sorry, I probably should’ve tried to break that a little more gently,” she says. “I just . . . there’s no one else to talk to.”
“He’s moving you guys just because you told one person,”
says Rob. “Doesn’t he know he can trust me?”
“He doesn’t trust anyone anymore,” says Jael. “I think . . .
not since my mom tricked him into letting her die to save us.”
She puts her head down on her desk. “Maybe it’s for the best.
This demon my mom knew showed up last night. Asmodeus. He said that Belial knows I’m here. That he’s coming for me.”
“Isn’t that the guy that killed your mom?” asks Rob.
“Yep.”
“Oh shit.”
“Exactly.”
“So, I guess that’s freaking you out a little?”
“A little?” says Jael, lifting her head up. “I mean, first of all, here’s this giant demon that is so fierce he makes other demons pee their pants, and he is coming to eat me. But what’s even worse is I keep thinking of all the other people I’m putting in danger just by hanging around. So maybe it’s better that we’re moving. What if he showed up when I was hangi
ng out with you?”
“Are you kidding me?” says Rob. “I want to be there. I’m gonna cheer you on while you kick his ass!”
“But that’s just it. How can I possibly win? My mom and my uncle couldn’t take him and they’re real demons. I’m just a halfbreed.”
“But maybe that’s better,” says Rob.
“That’s what Asmodeus said, but I can’t see how.”
“Okay, check it. Last night after I left your house, I went home and did some serious Google-Fu on halfbreeds.”
“You did what?”
“Online research. On halfbreeds. And the only one I could find any record of in the last two thousand years was Merlin.”
“As in the guy from the King Arthur stories? I think Asmodeus mentioned something about him.”
“Merlin was one of the most famous wizards who ever lived.
So maybe you could take on this Belial guy. I mean, think about it. Why is it the bigwigs don’t want halfbreeds around? Why do they always make a point of killing them when they’re just babies? . . . Maybe it’s because when they grow up, they’re all as powerful as Merlin.”
“Maybe,” says Jael. “My uncle said each one is different.
Just because Merlin was awesome, doesn’t mean I am.”
“Mr. McKinley and Miss Thompson,” says Ms. Spielman from the front of the class. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to begin teaching a little math.”
“Sorry, Ms. Spielman,” says Jael as they both look down at their textbooks.
After a few moments, Rob whispers, “I think you’re awesome. And I believe you can do it.”
Her first impulse is to chuck something at him. What does he know, anyway? But then she thinks, What do I know? Maybe Rob could be right. Is that such a crazy idea? That someone else might be right?
After class, they’re walking out of the room when Ms.
Spielman stops them.
“Jael, would you stay behind a moment?” she asks.
“Uh, sure . . . ,” says Jael, looking at Rob.
“Hey, I’ll catch you after school?” he says.
“Yeah, okay. Good,” she says.