Demon (The Faery Chronicles Book 2)

by Leslie Claire Walker

  In spite of that temptation, Zach refused to get out of the car. I cracked the windows and left him inside. When we stepped away from the car, he whined.

  The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I checked the street. Watched for anything out of the ordinary. Except everything was out of the ordinary. Empty. So why did standing on the porch surrounded by potted plants and wind chimes tinkling in the breeze make me feel like a target?

  I stood behind Kevin while he knocked on the front door. No one came. He tried again. Fidgeted and wiped his palms on his jeans.

  “You have a key?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Break it down? I have to know if she’s in there. If she’s okay.”

  I could try to pick the lock, but I didn’t have a ton of skill in that area. We could go through a window. Or…I reached over and tried the knob. It turned, lock-free. The door swung open.

  Kevin glanced at me over his shoulder. Stepped inside.

  A note had been duct-taped to the wall in the entry. One word, all caps, written in red lipstick. SHHHH!

  Kevin sucked in a breath.

  I passed him. Heard his footfalls on the stairs while I took a look around on the first floor. I found the TV on, showing nothing but snow, just like Oscar’s. Coffee maker on, thin film of joe in the bottom of the carafe burnt and nasty. I flipped the power switch to Off. Master bedroom, empty.

  Upstairs, a long hall led to Amy’s room. The hardwood floor shined. Family photos covered the walls. A small pile of twigs had been swept against the baseboards. Weird.

  Kevin had knelt to look. Not twigs. Bones. Small ones. Like from an animal. It occurred to me that we hadn’t seen either of Amy’s cats yet. The thought made me shiver.

  I looked up. The door to attic. It’d been rigged with a string wrapped around the neck of an empty glass soda bottle. If the door came down, that bottle would smash against something—the back of door itself. Or the nearest wall. An early warning system. It made no sense.

  Kevin rose and stepped around me. Went straight to Amy’s closed door. He curled his fingers around the knob and turned it. Sunlight flooded the hall. Lit dust motes floated in the air.

  I stood and followed Kevin inside.

  The bed had either been made pathologically early or it hadn’t been slept in. Amy’s unopened backpack sat on the desk chair. Tiny pots of purple, yellow, and green cacti lined the windowsill. Lights flashed on the big, old-school stereo. No sound. A cord was plugged into the headphones port. A really long cord. That stretched across the shaggy red rug and into the walk-in closet. Closed door again.

  Kevin opened that one, too. All the clothes had been pulled off their hangers and piled into a heap in the farthest corner. The cord fed into the pile.

  We pulled the clothes away. Amy was under them, dressed in a pink T-shirt, black jeans, and boots like Malek’s. She’d pulled her knees pulled to her chest. Her whole body shook. Eyes closed. Headset covering her ears. Her long blue-black hair hid half of her face.

  Kevin wrapped her in his arms.

  That only made the trembling worse. She pressed her whole self into Kev’s chest. He opened his mouth to say something.

  She clamped a hand over his lips.

  Shhh.

  Kevin helped her unfurl and stand. Her legs didn’t want to hold her, so she leaned against him. Her face was a lot paler than usual. No color in her cheeks. Even her eyes looked as if they’d been bleached.

  Out, I mouthed.

  Kevin nodded. After a second, so did Amy. She pointed to her pack on the chair. I slung it over my shoulder.

  I thought she might say something as soon as we were out of the house. She cocked her head toward the Explorer.

  Kev slid into the back seat with her. Zach jumped up front.

  I turned around in the driver’s seat so I could see her clearly. She shook her head. Looked at the ignition. So I turned the key. And I drove. Turned the wheel in the right direction to get us to a hospital. The girl was in capital-S shock.

  Shock was a good word to describe everything. The world had turned upside down, and I hadn’t seen a single cop or fire truck or ambulance. What would the hospital be like? Would there even be any doctors there? Or would they have disappeared like nearly everyone else?

  Amy spoke a single word. Her voice shook so bad, she could barely get it out. “Okay.”

  “Okay what?” I asked.

  “Stop the car.”

  I pulled over. Turned around again.

  Kevin brushed the hair from her eyes. “What was all that, Amy? Are you all right? What happened? Is that blood on your shirt?”

  Blood? I hadn’t noticed. How could I not have noticed? “Are you hurt?”

  Amy leaned forward. Dug her nails into my headrest. “No, I’m not all right. Yes, it’s blood. No, it’s not mine. Hurt doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

  “Whose blood?” Kev asked.

  “Some of it’s my mom’s. Blink scratched her.”

  Blink the tabby cat. The one who spent all his time looking out the windows. “Why?”

  “He didn’t want to be eaten. Too bad for him, right?”

  “The bones in the hall?” I asked.

  She wiped at her eyes.

  Kevin sucked in a breath. “Both of them?”

  She spat the words out in a rush. “It started last night. In the middle of the night. Mom screamed. I bolted out of bed. Ran to see what’d happened. That’s when I saw her with Blink. She looked out of her mind. She had to be out of her mind. What she did—what they both did. They went up into the attic. Dad—he said there were birds up there. Nesting birds. And squirrels. I slammed the door behind them. I thought they’d come down. Come after me.”

  “So you booby trapped the door,” I said.

  “Stupid, huh?”

  “No.” Kevin took her hands in his. “But why didn’t you get out of there?”

  “I tried to call you,” she said. “No signal on my cell. And the house phone didn’t work.”

  “I would’ve come.”

  “I know. I thought about going to your house.”

  Kevin wouldn’t have been there. I didn’t feel compelled to say that. Neither did he.

  “Why didn’t you?” he asked.

  “You mean why did I hide in the closet like a five-year-old?”

  “No. Yes.”

  “I was afraid of running into crazy on the way there. Afraid if your dad answered the door, he’d act like mine. Or that I’d start acting like that.”

  “So you hid in the closet and waited for it to start?” Kev asked.

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

  “You knew I would come,” he said.

  She said nothing.

  “You knew, right?”

  She looked at him. Pasted on a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Sure.”

  He shook his head.

  “Really,” she said.

  He matched her grin. Then added a dose of I believe you to his expression. She breathed out. Her shoulders dropped.

  Good. “Now that we’re cool, I think I should drive some more,” I said.

  Amy snorted. “Not until you tell me what the hell is going on, Rude.”

  So much for cool. I filled her in. From the minute Melody walked up to me outside the pub to the minute we found her. Every detail, down to my eyes and my working theory about why they’d turned all-pupil and black. Kevin’s wings weren’t mine to tell about, so I waited for him to say something.

  He opened his mouth. And closed it again.

  Amy didn’t notice. She seemed to pull herself together a little. She slipped her hands from Kev’s. Straightened in her seat. Combed her fingers through her hair. We had a problem to solve, and Amy had proved she could be counted on to help solve a crisis. She’d done it before. She’d do it again.

  “We need a plan,” she said.

  “Besides flying by the seat of my pants?” I asked.

  “Dude,” she said. “Your pants ar
e not enough.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  Kevin nodded. “I need to check on my dad.”

  “We,” I said. “We stick together, remember?”

  Amy pulled her hair back and tied it in a knot. “And Stacy and Scott. Mr. Nance at school. And as much as I hate to say it—because you know I hate her guts with a fiery passion of hate—the Singer.”

  Kevin cleared his throat. “The Singer’s okay. For now, anyway.”

  “You went to see her first? Before you came to me?”

  “Not first. You heard Rude. We came here first.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “I was at the bus when the shit hit the fan. I was checking in.”

  “You mean checking her out.”

  “She’s fae, Amy. She’s a contact. I have a job to do. You know that.”

  She looked at him like he’d slapped her. “Rude, drive.”

  Face-forward. I put the car back in gear.

  We had to stop three times on the way to Kevin’s to move cars. I couldn’t help thinking about the motorcycles at the bar across from Snake Bite. Or how absolutely dead we’d be if the three of us tried to drive those things. The learning curve. And the probable lack of, you know, ambulances with EMTs and doctors and nurses in hospitals. Because we would totally spill. And with our luck—at least how it’d played so far—someone would end up with a fractured skull. Or worse.

  ‘Course, Kevin might get one without hopping on a Harley. I glanced at Amy through the rearview mirror. She’d crossed her arms over her chest. Pulled as far away from Kev as she could, practically plastered herself against the door. She stared out the window the whole way. When we got out of the car at Kevin’s, she slammed it so hard the window glass rattled.

  With a look, she dared me to say something about that. I kept my mouth shut.

  Kevin’s place was one of the few one-story frame houses left in the whole neighborhood. Red with white trim around the windows and the door, all of which were wide open. The breeze blew back the curtains. A cop car had been crookedly parked in the driveway, engine ticking as it cooled.

  “What are the odds?” Kev asked. “Dad called the police because I’m missing overnight and they actually came in the middle of world-ending horror?”

  “Or it’s your two best faery police friends,” I said.

  We piled out of the car, Zach on our heels.

  Officer Burns stepped outside to meet us. “We figured you’d be back here soon enough.”

  Kevin shrugged. The movement exaggerated the shape of the wings under his jacket. “You want a gold star?”

  “Not you.” Burns pointed at me. “Him.”

  “I don’t know whether I should feel grateful or insulted,” Kevin said.

  Burns turned on his heel and tossed the reply over his shoulder. “We don’t have time for either.”

  “What about my dad?”

  “He’s fine.” Burns disappeared inside.

  We followed him. It took us a minute to realize Amy wasn’t at our heels. We turned at the same time to see her frozen in place by the cruiser, staring at Kevin.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Your back. Your shoulders,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  Kevin bit his lip. “The magic that changed the city…it changed some of the people, too.”

  “Like my parents.”

  “And mine,” I said. “You know how they didn’t see me? Or hear me? How they didn’t notice I was even there? Half the time, they never notice anyway. Makes it easier for me to be out all hours of the night, I guess.”

  She nodded. “But it still sucks. It’s the same thing as your eyes, then?”

  “I think so.”

  “And my parents? They don’t usually hole up in the attic and eat small animals. That’s monster stuff, Rude.”

  I didn’t know her folks well enough to begin to figure it out. If how they acted before the magic suddenly became literally true? That made them, at the very least, not nice people. It made me wonder exactly how not nice.

  Not a good idea to ask that question. So I didn’t answer her.

  Amy made a strangled sound, so soft I almost didn’t hear it. Then she caught her breath and looked at Kevin. “And you?”

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I have wings.”

  “Like an angel?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Because you’re the go-to guy for the fae. You have faery wings.”

  He nodded.

  “Does that make you one of them?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Not that I know of. I haven’t exactly had a chance to ask anyone yet.”

  Amy rubbed the bridge of her nose. “This whole thing makes my head hurt.”

  Kevin held out his hand.

  Amy shook her head. But she started walking. She motioned for us to go ahead. She took two steps to our one until she came up behind Kev. She took hold of the hem of his jacket. He blew out a long breath.

  Me, too. I stole a glance at her. Looked her over for—I don’t know—bruises or sadness or something that went deeper than the last twenty-four hours of insanity. It was possible that she’d escaped the magic unscathed. After all, Malek had.

  But those two were already magical beings. And I hadn’t seen a human yet who hadn’t been affected. Then again, I could count on one hand the number of humans I’d seen since it all went down.

  I studied her harder. For a second, I thought I saw fraying around her edges. Like she was starting to come undone. I blinked and she looked just like she always did. Like Amy.

  She and Kevin stepped inside.

  I did the same. And smacked into them because they’d stopped cold in front of the entry table. Which was cluttered with what looked like every sharp knife from the kitchen, along with a cup of water with a rosary dunked in it. Under the table? A lockbox. The kind people sometimes kept guns in.

  Mr. Landon had been amassing an arsenal behind the front door.

  Kevin’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Paranoid much?” I asked.

  “He’s got reason to be,” Kevin said.

  A reasonable voice belonging to Mr. Landon cut in from the room in front of us. The kitchen. Where a deep, rich coffee smell wafted from. “He’s right here.”

  Kevin’s dad came to meet us in sweats and a pair of sneakers, one of them squeaky. Even in workout clothes, he looked like an accountant. And sober, thank God. Not that I expected him to be drunk, not since the thing with the Faery King a year ago. But a lot had happened all of a sudden. And with all the weapons? And with faeries in his house?

  Why had he let faeries into his house?

  He waved for us to follow him.

  Officers Burns and Reid occupied two of the four foam seats at the breakfast table, steaming cups of joe in front of them. Burns used his foot to push one of the free chairs out from under the table.

  “Ma’am,” he said.

  Amy was the only one of us who came close that description. “I’m not old enough to be a ma’am.”

  “Seat’s yours, all the same.”

  She let go of Kevin and perched on the edge of the chair.

  I leaned against the nearest wall. Zach sat at my feet and surveyed the scene.

  Mr. Landon took a couple of mugs off the shelf and poured more coffee. “You were out all night.”

  “Not for the first time or the last,” Kev said. He folded his arms across his chest. Because of the wings, his shoulders puffed huge. It made him look like a very skinny linebacker.

  “No note?”

  “I haven’t left one of those in six months.”

  “I’d still feel better about that if I could reach you on the phone,” his dad said. “Not that they work anymore. The, um, officers told me what happened to the best of their ability.”

  “Including what they are and who sent them?”

  “Yeah. The what and the who would piss me off a lot more if the why didn’t scare the crap o
ut of me, Kevin.”

  “I’m just having a hard time with the part where you let them in the house, Dad.”

  “They said this is going to affect Faery. And if it gets bad there, we have no hope in hell of fixing things here.”

  Kevin met his father’s gaze. “Wait. What?”

  Officer Burns answered. “This magic—the spell that changed your world? Something like it has been done before. The last time two of the tribes in Faery were at war. A group of humans with a vested interest in the outcome cast a spell to open the way between the human realm and ours. They wanted to join the battle. Bring human weapons into the mix. An ‘assault rifles are better than swords’ kind of thing. It got bad.”

  The way he said that made my skin crawl. “Define ‘bad’.”

  “Besides automatic gunfire? How about, they brought an infection with them. Not like the flu or the plague—may as well have been the freakin’ plague for what it did to us. It made some of us insane. Made some of us monsters.”

  “How?” I asked. “How did it turn a bunch of normal fae into monsters?”

  Burns glanced at Reid, who scratched the spot beneath his nose. “I wouldn’t go so far as claiming they were perfectly normal to begin with,” Reid said. “Everyone’s got issues.”

  Issues? “You’re kidding, right? You’ve got—what?—neurotic fae? You got shrinks, too, to help you with all that?”

  “We’re not perfect,” Burns said.

  “You act like you are.”

  Kevin held up a hand. “Rude, give it a rest.”

  “I’m just getting started.”

  “You’re mad. I get it.”

  Mad didn’t begin to cover it. “You two left me outside the bar with a ticking bomb of a girl. About to explode. I have no idea why I’m even alive.”

  “I checked your pulse personally before we went back through the portal to inform the King,” Burns said.

  “Personally?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You had one. I figured you’d come to eventually, but we couldn’t wait.”

  I didn’t want to believe him. But I did. I had the feeling that if he’d lied, I’d have known. It felt like part of me, but also not. Like the new blackness of my eyes. I was torn between feeling even more freaked out and really getting exactly how useful a bullshit detector like that could be.