Mocha in hand, I sit down across from Gabriel.
“You’re late,” he says, a little sharply.
I burst into tears. Onlookers glance over. Gabriel’s eyes widen. “It’s okay,” he says, tone softening. He hands me napkins from the dispenser on the table. “Really. Please don’t cry.”
I shake my head because it’s not him and I can’t explain. The lump in my throat is too wide to let words pass. I take a sip of my coffee to swallow it down and then wipe at my eyes with the rough paper napkins. “I came from my teacher’s house. She died.”
“Oh my god,” he says, “I’m so sorry.” He wears the same haunted expression I must wear: the look of someone who bears the scars of loss across their bones. “Can I ask what happened?”
“I don’t know,” I say, which is mostly the truth. I know that she died after making a demon deal, and how, but not the real story behind it. I pull up a photo of her from the school website on my phone and push it across the table. “I don’t suppose you had a vision of her.”
Gabriel glances down at it, and then reaches across the table and takes my hand in his. His hand is warm and he squeezes mine gently. It’s reassuring. “No. Sorry.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, because he barely looked at the picture and let’s face it, school portraits rarely do any of us justice.
He lets go of my hand and taps the table with his long fingers. “Positive. When I have a vision of someone’s possible death, I don’t merely watch them die. I see them with complete clarity. I know their names. Their faces are burned into my mind. I’m their last witness. Sometimes the only one they get. And I never forget any of them, whether the vision comes true or not.” He glances back down. “She’s not one of them.”
I nod, some part of me deflating in relief. If he’d had the vision and I could have known in advance, could have stopped her, it would only hurt more. It already hurts so much. I should have followed her out of the classroom immediately. I never should have let her leave campus alone.
“She took pills,” I say. “She’d made a deal with a demon but then she killed herself anyway. It doesn’t make sense.”
Gabriel frowns. “She made a deal with Azmos?”
“No. A different demon. I don’t know.”
His eyes widen. He looks scared.
“What?” I ask.
“I was under the impression his power was pretty rare, that’s all,” Gabriel says. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat.
“So was I,” I say.
“Maybe she made a different kind of deal?” he suggests. “There are a lot of different types of demons.”
I shake my head. Xanan seemed to think it was the same magic as Az.
Gabriel shrugs. He pulls an envelope out of his satchel. It’s small, the kind grandmothers who write notes on tiny stationary might use. It has my name scrawled on the front. He taps it against the wooden table. “I could give this to him myself, you know. Track him down. You could walk away.”
I stare, confused. “Why would I do that?”
“You’re a kid. You shouldn’t be mixed up in demon affairs.”
I bristle. I may be young but there’s no way Gabriel is more than a couple of years older than me, tops.
“How old are you?” I demand.
“Nineteen, but my circumstances are different.” He looks out the window, staring off into the darkened streets. It’s barely five o’clock but it gets dark early this time of year. “My sister was almost your age when she died.”
Now the tiredness in his face and the mirrored expression of grief make sense. He looks physically exhausted, too, but there’s a haunted quality to him beneath the lack of sleep and agitation.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say, repeating his words.
He taps his foot under the table, making it shake. He fidgets, sips coffee. “It was a house fire. I lost my whole family.”
“That’s awful,” I say, knowing it’s a major understatement. There aren’t words for that kind of loss.
“I almost died, too,” he says, and he meets my eyes, giving me a meaningful look.
“You made a deal with Azmos?” I ask. My sadness at his loss turns to horror at his situation. Anyone who makes a deal with Azmos only gets a few years. Ten is the maximum and ten isn’t common. It’s better than nothing—I’d have taken any amount of time granted to me in that situation and anyhow, I only got to grow up with my mom because of those ten years after she made a deal with Az—but it’s living with an expiration date over your head in a very real way.
“No,” he says. “But he was there. He offered me a deal. Five years. I refused.”
“Then how are you alive?” I ask.
“Azmos dragged me out, I think, but I was close to asphyxiating. The poison was already in my lungs and my blood. If the Firefighters and EMTs had arrived a few moments later, I would have died. I should have died. Azmos certainly thought I was supposed to, which is why he was there.” He lets out a long breath. “Some cruel joke of fate, huh? Turns out I didn’t need the demon’s deal but he was too late for my family. Only Jasper and I got out.”
“Jasper?” I ask.
“My cat.” He smiles weakly. “Well, he was my sister’s cat. Hated my guts, was a total jerk to me. But after the fire, I guess we both realized we were all we had left. Now he tries not to let me out of his sight.”
I smile back just as weakly, but I’m thinking about Azmos’ deals. The way it’s always seemed to me, the deaths he put off were set in stone, and yet if Gabriel survived, how many other people signed away their lives for a few years when they didn’t need to bargain for them? Or did the contract get voided if they didn’t get close enough to death? I make a mental note to ask Az. “Does that happen a lot?” I ask.
“Cats being jerks? All of the time.”
“No, I mean, does Az offer deals to people who don’t actually die?”
“How would I know? I’m just the vision guy. You’re his partner in crime.” The hair on my arms stands up. Assistant, sure, but partner?
“I can tell you that my visions aren’t set in stone,” he adds. “From what I’ve gathered, about half of them come true. But I don’t exactly have statistics. I scan obits, I read police blotters. It’s hard to be sure if that car wreck I see in my vision one day is the same one in the traffic report the next day, you know?”
I ignore the shiver that trails down my spine. My mom died in the car accident that nearly killed me. But she was at the end of her borrowed time and I wasn’t supposed to be in the car. It’s why I’m alive without a ticking clock hanging over me.
“Speaking of visions…” He hands me the envelope. “That’s two names.”
“You said three.”
“I know.” Gabriel swigs the rest of his coffee. “But I only had two visions. Well, two clear visions. I keep having this half-vision but it’s muddled and hazy.” His tone is grave and uneasy and I get the impression hazy visions are not normal. He sighs. “I can’t control them. So that’s what he gets.”
I put the envelope in my bag. “Okay,” I say, because I can’t exactly force the guy to have more visions.
I catch sight of something electric blue out of the corner of my eye and turn to see a woman walking out of the coffee shop. I only see her from the back: her bright blue hair cascades down her back, stopping short of the waist band of her leather pants. She wears a tight top with mesh sleeves. She’s a little taller than I am, but I see she’s also wearing heeled boots. It’s a look I’d love to try but Dad won’t let me dye my hair and I don’t own leather pants, fake or otherwise. The rocker-goth woman doesn’t really stand out here in Seattle, where dyed hair and leather pants are common, especially in this club-filled neighborhood, but something about her bothers me.
She’s wearing sunglasses even though it’s pitch black and rainy outside.
There are plenty of people who do that for mundane reasons, or so I tell myself as the door closes behind her. Maybe she’s legally bli
nd. Maybe she just doesn’t want to be recognized.
I turn back and see Gabriel’s eyes tracking the woman as she walks by the window of the shop. “Do you know her?” I ask.
“Not really. She came over earlier, asked if I was the psychic she’d heard about and then wanted to hire me. But working for one demon is enough.”
I frown. “She’s a demon?” He nods. “And she wanted names?”
Gabriel’s eyes widen in realization. I turn back to the window but the woman is gone.
”Shit,” Gabriel says. “There are a thousand reasons demons might want the names of the soon-to-be dead. It didn’t occur to me she might share his magic. But if your teacher made a deal with another demon…” He stares out the window after the blue-haired demon frowning.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. My heart hammers. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m out of my chair. “Be right back,” I say. I leave my messenger bag on the chair and race out of the coffee shop. The woman could be the demon who made a deal with Mrs. Crane.
But by the time I’m outside, she’s vanished into thin air. There’s no sign of her in any direction. I glance over at a guy at an outdoor table, sipping his coffee in a scarf and hat. “Did you see which way that blue-haired woman went?” He shakes his head and his hat falls off. He fumbles to get it back on but before he does, I notice he has pointy elf ears. My heart hammers, but there’s no time to dwell on it.
I swear and walk to the end of the block. No luck. Just for good measure, I go the other way, but she’s gone.
Back inside, I take a good look at the clientele. Some people look perfectly normal—perfectly human—but others don’t. A couple at a small table in the middle have green reptilian scales on the backs of their necks and hands, one woman at the yoga pants table has green cat eyes that I’m betting aren’t contacts, and I’m starting to suspect the barista’s blue lips aren’t colored with lipstick. I don’t know how many of these people are demons but clearly this is a popular demon hangout and I hadn’t even noticed.
Gabriel is nodding off at the table. I sit back down, blood thrumming in my ears, and take a shaky sip of my mocha to steady myself.
“Did she give you a name?” I ask. “Any contact info?” Gabriel shakes his head as he stifles another yawn. “Maybe you should get some sleep.”
“I don’t sleep well since the fire,” he says.
I can understand that.
“I’m sorry about your family,” I say. “I lost my mother a few years ago, but I can’t imagine what you went through.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it? One day you’re upset about all these little things that don’t matter and then suddenly the people you love are ripped out of the world and you wonder why you didn’t cherish every goddamn second you had.”
“Exactly.” I swallow back a lump that tries to form in my throat. “It’s like you’re thrown into another reality where they no longer exist and you’re expected to go on like it’s normal.”
“Maybe that’s why I keep company with demons. Humans make no sense.”
I lean in close. “This place… is it a…?” I don’t really know the word so I wave my hand in a circle.
“An arcane hangout? Yeah. You didn’t notice?” He smiles a little sheepishly. “Demons, witches, people like me, we cluster together. Find comfort in solidarity or whatever. There are bars and clubs around here that specifically cater to us. Including this place.” He takes off his glasses, cleans them on his sweater vest, and puts them back on. “It’s funny though. I never see Azmos at any of the regular haunts.”
Before I can ask what he thinks that means, he stands. And then he does something unexpected. He extends his hand to me. I take it and he helps me up. “Sometimes I think people like us are lucky. We’ve already learned the hardest lesson of all.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re not in control of anything.”
CHAPTER SIX
By the time I get back to the warehouse, I feel like a wrung out rag. My body’s sore and my eyes ache. It’s pitch black around the stone structure, save for a streetlight at the corner of the parking lot that casts a sinister yellow light over the empty pavement and the small light near the gray door.
I called on my way over here but there was no answer, so I hit the red button and wait, pulling my coat tight. The air is freezing, the chill pushing right through my clothes. My lips are chapped.
Azmos comes to the door what feels like an eternity later. I push past him, but it’s not that much warmer inside the warehouse. I dig out the small envelope. “Two names,” I say. “Is Xanan here?”
I didn’t know Az’s eyebrows could go so high. He looks utterly stunned that I would ask for the other demon. “No,” he says. “Why?”
I lean against the wall, too tired to hold myself up. It feels like this morning’s chemistry class happened days ago instead of mere hours ago. I tell him about Mrs. Crane and what Xanan said about another demon making her a deal. He frowns. Then I tell him about the demon woman who wanted names of the possibly-doomed from Gabriel.
“I don’t know if the coffee shop demon is connected to my teacher, but if not, it’s a pretty big coincidence,” I say. Azmos’ expression is unreadable, a blank canvas.
“That it is,” he agrees, voice perfectly level as though he’s trying to keep his tone even. “Xanan was sure about your teacher? That she’d made a deal for more time?”
“He seemed sure. And he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who takes shots in the dark.”
“He’s not,” Azmos says. His folds his arms over his chest. “Describe the demon you saw.”
As I tell him about the blue-haired lady, his lips press tightly into a thin line. When I’m done, he doesn’t speak. He stands perfectly, inhumanly still.
“Az?”
“There are lots of people with blue hair, especially in this day and age,” he says quietly, as if he’s talking more to himself than to me.
My frown deepens, alarm bells ringing in the back of my mind and making the content of my stomach slosh like a ship in a storm. “Do you know her?”
That jars him and he drops his arms. “Possibly. But she—” He shakes his head once. “If it is the person I’m thinking of, she shouldn’t be here. In fact, I believed she was dead.”
Goosebumps erupt on my arms. There’s an uncomfortably long silence. I stare into the shadows of the storage space beyond, where menacing shaped sculptures loom in the shadows. Azmos stands so still he could be one of the stone statues looming in the shadows beyond.
Finally, Azmos speaks. “Nicolette, I appreciate you relaying the message and getting the names from Mr. Price. That’s all I require of you this evening. You may go.”
I furrow my brow. “Are you dismissing me? Because I have a lot of questions. My teacher is dead, Azmos. Something happened to her. And she—she had a gun.” Ice creeps down my esophagus and drops into my stomach as I picture her haunted expression and try to fit the pieces together, but there are too many missing to get a complete picture. “What’s happening? Who is this other demon like you?”
“There are many other demons. The cracks between the Demon Realm and this one are rare but they’re certainly not impossible to find. Perhaps a demon pretended to have my abilities or perhaps it’s something else entirely. It’s unlikely that it’s… anyone I know, but it if is, then they are dangerous and you should keep your distance. Whatever is happening, Xanan and I will sort it out.”
“And what about me?”
He smiles wryly. “You have school tomorrow. Good night, Nicolette.”
I leave, but only because it’s clear he’s not going to tell me anything else.
The minute I get home, Dad accosts me. He jumps up from the sofa, clicking off the television. “Where have you been?” he demands. I check my phone. It’s barely after eight, hardly late enough for him to be in full-on panic mode.
“Out,” I say. It’s flippant but I’m annoyed at the inquisition.
All I want to do is take a long shower, scrub myself clean, eat something chock full of carbs, and fall into bed. I’m not used to him demanding explanations of my whereabouts. I’m not even used to him being home so often.
“Out where?” The lines around his eyes and mouth look more pronounced and his hands shake. He was worried. I ignore the spark of guilt that ignites inside me.
“I just went to grab coffee with a friend,” I say, wishing I’d held onto my cup from Stone Grounds as proof.
“What friend?” he asks. “Why would you go anywhere after you found your teacher…?” He trails off, unwilling to say the word “dead.”
“How do you know about that?” I ask. In truth, it doesn’t even feel like that happened today. So much has happened, it feels like there’s no way it could still be the same day.
“Lisa called.” Lisa Devereaux is Melissa’s mom. “She wanted to make sure you were okay, after you and Melissa—” The words catch in his throat. He can’t bring himself to say “found your teacher dead.” I wonder if he thinks we saw the body. Part of me wishes I’d gone upstairs and examined the scene myself. Not to see her corpse, but to look for clues. Although what kind of clues, I’m not really sure. “Are you okay?”
I take a deep breath and let it out so I don’t burst into tears again. “Yeah. I’m okay. Kind of freaked out,” I admit. It feels good to look my father in the face and tell him the truth for once. “That’s why I went for coffee. I needed to decompress.”
Dad hugs me, hard, and I hug him back. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he says, pulling away.
“I was worried. She was acting weird and I just wanted to check on her. But I was too late.” Tears threaten and the lump in my throat reforms. I slip into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water.
“You did what you could, kiddo,” Dad says, clapping his hand on my shoulder. I nod. Sip the water. Breathe. “Just… call me next time, okay? I’ve been worried sick.”
In the Demon's Company (Demon's Assistant Book 2) Page 4