The Demon's Deadline (Demon's Assistant Book 1)

by Tori Centanni

  Cam’s car rolls up eight minutes later. I get in. Music is blasting, a horrible band I think is called Moon Landing or Moon Invasion or something silly. The singer’s voice sounds like he hasn’t hit puberty and the lyrics are about how love sucks. Cam makes no move to turn it down, so I let it go. The car smells like peaches, but not real ones, the fakey peach smell that comes in cheap lotion bottles. I cough and wrinkle my nose.

  “Nice air freshener.”

  “Katrina spilled her body spray. Actually, her backpack got the brunt of it, but I may have to sell the car if I ever want to eat peach cobbler again.” A joke. Jokes are good.

  I force a laugh, even if I don’t find the idea of Cam’s car permanently smelling like Katrina Roger’s body spray the least bit funny. I resist the urge to ask why she was in his car or make some comment about her. Whatever’s going on between us isn’t about her. It’s about me.

  “Where to?” Cam asks tersely.

  “It’s up in Lynnwood.”

  He gives me a look that says he definitely thinks I should be in a straitjacket. “Great. This’ll be fun.”

  I can’t help sneaking glances at him. He has a five o’clock shadow of stubble dusting his chin and cheeks and there are bags beneath his eyes. Has he been as miserable as I have, lying awake at night and wondering how to fix things? Or does he wish he’d never asked me out in the first place? I thought I knew him so well, but at this moment, I haven’t got a clue what’s going through his head. Is he doing me this favor out of some weird sense of chivalry or because he’s hoping we’ll make up? Or worse, because he wants to be alone with me so he can end things?

  It’s so hard not to reach over and touch him, and at the same time, it feels like he’s too far away to reach if I tried.

  “I’ll pay for gas,” I say, because it’s the only olive branch I have.

  Cam doesn’t acknowledge the offer as he pulls the car onto the road. “Do I want to know why you have to go all the way up there this late at night on a Tuesday?”

  “Probably not,” I say. Cam sets his jaw and tightly grips the steering wheel. Whatever his reasons, he’s doing me a huge favor, so I add, “I have to talk to Xanan.”

  “That guy from the coffee shop? The one who was looking for Azmos?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Cam shakes his head. “Right. Because you can’t let it go, can you?”

  “It’s complicated,” I say. My voice is barely audible over his music. It’s so much more complicated than he can even imagine and I don’t know how to begin to explain it.

  “Yeah, I bet,” he mutters. “You know, delivering letters for a sadistic demon is not a sport.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, if you were half as dedicated to a real extracurricular activity, you wouldn’t be so desperate to hold on to some dangerous, demonic job.”

  Ouch. He could have kicked me in the chest and broken all of my ribs and it would hurt less. If he really thinks of me as lazy and useless at everything he deems worthy, it’s no wonder the demon duties always made him cranky. But what does he expect me to do, go out for volleyball? It’s not exactly the same skill set. “You know he’s the reason I’m alive. I owe him everything.”

  “You owe him nothing. Not if he fired you.” We hit a red light and Cam stares at the ceiling of the car, not meeting my eyes. I would kill for a magic word that would end this fight.

  “Why does it bother you so much? He’s not a bad guy and I was good at my job. Are you jealous of him or something?” Cam snorts. “Or are you just pissed that there’s one thing in this world I’m better at than you.”

  The light turns green and Cam peels out into the intersection. “Yeah, I’m completely jealous that you’re good at delivering letters. Maybe you can get a paper route, too, and show me up at that.”

  The car is going way too fast, even if the road is pretty deserted this late at night. “Slow down!” I yell. Cam eases off the accelerator. I take deep breaths, in and out, in and out. My heart is still slamming into my ribcage, but the breathing helps. “You have no idea what I’m dealing with.”

  “Because you won’t tell me!” He swerves, only slightly, but enough to make my stomach lurch as if we were on a roller coaster. He grips the steering wheel until his knuckles are white.

  Between the waves of anger wafting off of Cam, the peachy smell, the wild driving, and the music, a headache pounds behind my eyes. I reach for the stereo and turn it off.

  “You really don’t like my music, do you?” Cam asks, still hostile. I don’t know how to defuse his anger, which only makes me angrier. It’s a vicious cycle.

  “No, I really don’t.” Not that it’s news. He doesn’t like mine, either. We agree on, maybe, three bands. It’s just something we’ve come to accept.

  “Sometimes I wonder if we have anything in common.”

  The world shifts sideways. I feel nauseated and my stomach is ready to evacuate its contents. I swallow down the bile. Cam keeps his eyes forward, on the road. His jaw is set, his eyes hard. I want to reach over and pull him back to me.

  “Spare me the break-up speech, okay? I get it.”

  Cam briefly glances over at me. He reaches for the radio, but stops short, a gesture of habit. Fill the silence.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “No, you have a good reason to hate music in cars.”

  I meant the other thing, that he wants to dump me, but decide not to say so. I turn back to the window and try to find the scenery off of the freeway interesting, but it’s dark, and mostly, I just see lights and a shadow of my own reflection. My short hair is messy and my lips look chapped.

  We don’t speak again until we reach the city of Lynnwood and I give him street-by-street directions. We pull into a suburban neighborhood, one where all of the houses look the same and are practically built right on top of each other. It takes us a few times around the block to find the right house. Cam parks on the street in front.

  I unbuckle my seatbelt.

  “I don’t suppose I can come in with you,” he says. It’s more an accusation than a question.

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  “No. Of course not. I’m just the driver.”

  “Cam.”

  “I know. You’re sorry.” He says the last word mockingly, like it’s meaningless. I guess it sort of is.

  “I am,” I say. “For everything.” I grab my bag and get out. “You don’t have to wait. Thanks for the ride.”

  Cam rolls his eyes. “Like I’m leaving you stranded out here. Don’t be an idiot.”

  I shut the car door, more relieved than I care to admit at knowing he’ll be right outside. I’m tempted to tell him to keep the car running, but that’s probably pushing the paranoia. I don’t know if we’re finished as a couple, but at least he’s here when I need him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The house is normal enough from the outside, an average two-story with a white garage door and a neatly trimmed lawn with brown leaves raked into a neat pile at one end. I knock. Xanan opens the door and immediately goes back through the large living room to the kitchen. The house is nicely furnished and even a little messy. A coffee mug sits abandoned on the coffee table. If it weren’t as cold as a walk-in freezer in there, I might expect a normal person to walk into the room at any moment.

  A stack of “Sports Illustrated” magazines sits on the coffee table and there’s a Seattle Seahawks jersey signed and framed over the sofa. So Xanan is a sports fan. Who’d have guessed?

  I stop dead in the kitchen. Next to the table in the dining nook is something very lumpy and person-shaped covered by a sheet. “What is that?” I demand, wishing I’d brought Cam in with me after all.

  “A body,” Xanan says, as if it’s completely normal. “The corpse of Martin St. Davies, to be exact.”

  “Oh my god.” My stomach churns and I reflexively cover my mouth.

  “I covered him with a sheet for you. What more do y
ou want?”

  “Not to come into a house where there’s a body.”

  A wave of nausea crashes into me. I swallow back bile and stare at the sheet, trying not to picture what’s beneath.

  “People die,” Xanan says.

  “They’re not usually kept around, under a sheet.” My voice is higher than normal.

  Xanan’s inky hair is spiked up in a way that looks messy-messy, not stylishly-messy. He wears a black hoodie and black jeans, and his pale skin is so white and smooth it could be made of wax. If he told me he was a vampire, I wouldn’t even demand proof of fangs.

  “I told you I was busy,” he says, as if that explains everything.

  “With a body?” My pulse races and blood thrums in my ears.

  “Stop being so dramatic. This is why I don’t work with mortals when I can avoid it.” He runs his hand through his hair in a gesture that reminds me of Cam, casual and stoic in the face of weirdness.

  I walk into the kitchen-half of the room, where a counter obstructs my view of the sheet, and stand over the sink for a moment, making sure I’m not actually going to vomit. Xanan taps at his phone and shoves it in his pocket. “What do you need?” he asks.

  “I need to know why there’s a dead person in your house.” My breath hangs in the air like frozen fog.

  “It’s not my house. It’s his.” He unceremoniously points to where the corpse lies out of sight. “I’m here cleaning up the mess Azmos left behind.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Xanan scrutinizes me. Under his icy gaze, I feel underdressed or, somehow, unworthy. I shiver and try to shake it off, but I can’t. “What he does, offering people more time, creates imbalance in the Realms.”

  “Imbalance?” I ask, my mind racing.

  Xanan doesn’t bother to explain. “My job is to balance the scales.”

  The words smack me in the face like a snowball as I realize what he means. He kills them. I am standing in a dead person’s house with his murderer. Most people would be halfway out the door already, so why aren’t I? Maybe something’s wrong with me, because instead of leaving and heading straight for the nearest police station, I take a steadying breath and brace myself against the counter. “So, what, you kill innocent people?”

  “Of course not,” Xanan says, and he sounds offended. “This guy’s time is up. It was up five years ago. Azmos gave him seven years, but someone is throwing off the balance, hence—“ he sweeps a hand toward where the body lies, “—my intervention.”

  “That’s not fair. He made a deal. He should have gotten what he was promised.”

  “If the balance remains out of whack for long, it will tear open the barrier to the Spirit Realm.”

  “There’s a Spirit Realm? Like… Hell?”

  “No.” When I continue to stare, waiting for further explanation, he sighs, annoyed, but resigned. “My Realm, the Demon Realm, is probably what you humans based your concept of ‘Hell’ upon. The Spirit Realm is separate and divides the living from the dead. What Azmos does is shift the balance in the Realms, and doing so too often or with too many spirits throws things out of whack. If the barrier breaks open, it’s the end of life as we know it.”

  He says it casually, like one might say running out of gas causes the car to stop, but he’s not joking. He gives me a withering look that sends chills down my spine. I wonder if I’m upsetting the balance, or if Azmos was serious when he said I was free and clear, no strings attached.

  I suck in a deep breath of icy air. My stomach churns and my pulse quickens.

  “You’re not here to talk about him.” Xanan opens the fridge and stares in. It’s packed full, way better stocked than I think my fridge has been in years, even after Dad’s online grocery splurges. It strikes me that all of this food will go to waste now, all of Mr. St. Davies’ plans for it abandoned.

  Xanan reaches in the back and pulls out two of those fancy, microbrew root beers and shuts the door. He hands one to me, and I figure if life is going to hand me a dead man’s gourmet soda, I might as well drink it.

  I take a sip of the root beer. The bubbles help push down any lumps of panic that are trying to barricade my throat. I pull out the envelope.

  “This was under my door.” I smack the letter with Cam’s name on it down on the counter. “But this can’t be right. Azmos told me that you can’t bargain for another person.”

  Xanan looks at the letter. “It’s his handwriting.”

  “I know that.”

  Xanan puts down the root beer and picks up the letter and its envelope. He stares at each for a few moments and then shakes his head, growling in frustration. “I bet someone forced his hand. Rule number three is that another mortal can’t pay for one’s bargain. It complicates the equation.”

  I consider asking if I can get a copy of these rules. “How could anyone force his hand?” I ask instead.

  He shrugs, twists the cap off his bottle, and says, “Magic.”

  “There’s no such thing as magic.”

  Xanan laughs, but it comes out more like an exhale that took a wrong turn. “Right. So how did you survive that car accident?”

  I hesitate. “Magic,” I say, realizing it’s true. Only I’ve never thought of it that way. Miraculous, sure, demon-powered, definitely, and I’ve spent hours wondering if those two things were possible at the same time. But the word “magic” never came to mind. I guess Cam’s right. I don’t think things through, not even my own magical escape from death.

  “There aren’t a lot of mortals who can muster up enough magic to create a spark, let alone trap someone like Azmos and keep themselves alive under these circumstances, but there are a few.” He taps his fingers against his jeans. “This isn’t good.”

  “What does it mean for me?” He gives me that look you see on murder mystery shows when the detective has an epiphany because someone just said something that makes it all click into place. I swallow hard.

  “This,” he taps the letter, “is just paper. Other people aren’t fair game. So this isn’t an invoice with any weight. It’s a threat. Someone is trying to scare you.”

  “What? Who? Why?”

  Xanan shrugs again and takes a large swig of his root beer, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “No idea. But it’s good.”

  “How? I mean, other than Cam not being in immediate danger.”

  “It means we know who it is.”

  “Okay. Care to enlighten me?”

  He rolls his eyes again, like I’m too stupid to live. Given the fate Mr. St. Davies met, it’s more than terrifying. “I don’t know exactly. But we know it’s someone who’s trying to weasel extra time and someone who doesn’t like you. I’m willing to bet that’s not a long list.”

  I sip more root beer and will the sugar to help the synapses in my brain fire. And then it hits me. It’s so completely obvious that I feel as stupid as Xanan clearly thinks I am. Heather Bancroft. She was furious, she tried to use salt and holy water against me, and then she attacked me with a dagger. She had that circle in her apartment like she was casting witchy spells. And she was not happy to learn I don’t have an expiration date looming over my head. She might not have been the first person to figure out what the letters meant before I did, but she was the first to set up a demon trap and attack me. Of all the people I’ve delivered letters to, she’s the most obvious suspect.

  I tell Xanan.

  “Excellent. You should be quick about it.”

  “About what?”

  “Finding her and releasing Azmos from whatever spell she’s got that keeps him trapped and hidden.”

  “Why me?” I demand.

  He doesn’t roll his eyes again. He just stares at me like he cannot believe that someone this clueless can possibly be breathing the same air. “The longer she lives beyond her contracted time, the more she upsets the balance and the more people’s contracts I have to prematurely terminate.”

  “She’s only been skirting the line for two weeks. How many pe
ople does it take to even up the score?”

  “It’s a complex equation you can’t hope to understand. But the longer she continues to exist, the more I need to remove to keep the delicate balance.” His eyes meet mine, blue as the ocean and filled with the same quiet intensity that lies beneath the waves. “I will keep the balance at all costs. Do you understand?”

  I open my mouth to say no, but his meaning slowly takes shape in my mind. “Are you threatening me?”

  He shrugs and sips his root beer.

  “You are.” I edge past him along the counters and fridge, keeping as much distance in the cramped kitchen as I can between the demon and me.

  “I’m telling you a possible consequence if she’s not found and Azmos is not released.”

  “My contract is complete and Cam is safe,” I say. “This isn’t my problem.”

  “No? Funny. I thought I just made it clear that it is. Contracts are just paper, after all.” He smirks. I resist the urge to throw my bottle at his head, as I don’t think that would end well for me.

  “This isn’t fair.”

  “This is about balance. Fairness doesn’t enter into it.”

  There’s nothing else to say, so I walk back out of the house, careful not to look at the sheet again. I’m pretty sure it’s already going to haunt me for years to come.

  Cam’s car is idling. I want to hug him and kiss him and never let him go, not just for being there, but because the letter doesn’t mean he’s going to drop dead at any second. Me, on the other hand, well, I don’t want to think about it.

  I get in and he shuts off the stereo.

  “Get what you needed?” The question is sincere.

  “Yeah,” I say. It’s half-true.

  “Good.” He puts the car in gear. “Because this is the part where you fill me in. You tell me everything, no matter how small, got it?”

  “Cam—”

  “Nicki. I mean it.” He sighs, puts the car back in park, and then turns to face me. In the dim streetlight, his face is shadowed, his eyes obstructed by the glare on his glasses, but his expression is clear. “I can’t do this if you keep things from me. You get that, right?”