Devils & Thieves (Devils & Thieves #1)(29)

“Let’s go check it out,” I said. “I’m bored.”

Before Hardy could issue an opinion on the matter, I got up and staggered a little as I made my way over to the lawn-sitters. Once there, I plopped down next to a few girls wearing Curse King colors—orange and black.

“—and when she woke up to find the sun shining, she thought she had broken the curse!” the old guy was saying. “But then she ran back to her village and discovered that only a few houses were standing. The rest were overgrown with weeds, thatch caved in.” He glanced back at Jane. “With time.”

“That’s why you never cross a Vetrov,” said Jane with a tiny, dry smile. “Some of us can steal minutes, days, even years.”

“Not the only reason you never cross a Vetrov, from what I understand,” the man said, smiling. “But that’s what it was. The crone had stolen forty years from the girl! Her sisters were old women and her parents were dead. The girl was crushed. She went to go find the old woman whose bread she’d stolen, but of course she was gone, too. So the girl wandered for the rest of her days, calling for her lost years, unable to bear the burden of the future.”

“How fucking depressing,” Hardy muttered as he scooted in behind me. “Do I really have to listen to this?”

Old Lady Jane stood up. “Time to hear the tale of the girl who bound the devil,” she said, and Hardy shut up fast.

Jane’s long white hair swished as she turned her head slowly and took in each person in her audience. “This one is a part of our ancient heritage, and it was told to me by my grandmother, whose grandmother told it to her. She begged me not to ever let it die. She promised me that if I told this tale at our gatherings, the magic of it would live forever. So here I stand.” She paused to sip her beer, then raised her cup. “And here’s to Granny Vetrov!”

Several people raised their cups and drank with her. I drained my own cup and set it in my lap.

“The tale is this,” Jane continued. “Centuries ago, in Scotland, the devil came to call in the village of Dunkeld. The moon hid its face from him, and so did the sun, and the whole town fell into the deepest kind of darkness. No lantern or torch could stand against it. No one in the village could see, and they stumbled about, crying out in fear. None of them could feel him creeping closer—until it was too late. And when he put his arms around one of them, they clung to him, so glad they weren’t alone anymore. They thought he was a hero, come to save them.” Her eyes met mine, and a chill slid right down my spine.

The corner of Jane’s mouth twitched, maybe with amusement. “So he took each of his victims in his red embrace, and none of them could escape his hold once he had them. No matter what power they had on this earth, he knew how to turn it against them. One by one, they fell. And that devil, he loved every minute of it. He wanted to devour the world.”

I rubbed my arms, trying to smooth sudden goose bumps even though the air was warm.

“Is she always this freaky?” Hardy whispered.

“Shut up,” I whispered back.

“But there was one villager who wasn’t caught in the darkness,” Jane continued, now lost in her story. So lost, in fact, that she wasn’t holding her cup upright anymore. It hung from her fingers, dripping beer onto her scuffed motorcycle boots, but everyone was too rapt to call her attention to it. “Her name was Nora, and she had been banished from this village by the sea for stealing crabs from the fishermen’s nets. The people of Dunkeld wouldn’t stand for such thievery, and they’d cut off her hands and sent her into the forest to starve.”

Old Lady Jane was wearing a big smile now, and it was straight out of a freaking horror movie. “But Nora did not starve. She was a willful girl who refused to relinquish her life, and she lured little beasts with her singing and then caught them in her teeth.”

“The fuck?” muttered Hardy.

“Shhh.” I glared at him over my shoulder.

Jane’s teeth were bared, yellowed by years of chain-smoking. “As the sun rose, she saw that a strange darkness had fallen over the little town that the light couldn’t pierce, but instead of staying put or running away, she walked right toward it. And there was the devil, sitting in the village square with his victims laid out in a circle.”

“How could she see him, if it was so dark in the village?” asked one of the Curse King girls with a smirk, clearly thinking she was poking holes in Jane’s story.

“She could see through that dark,” Jane answered. “Nora was aware of the murk around her, but her eyes were especially keen. Too keen. She saw the devil for what he was. She saw the trails of love and hate and lust and power dangling from his mouth, and she knew she’d caught him at his breakfast.” Her eyes met mine again. “He was eating their souls, you see.”

My stomach turned.

“Nora had been horribly mistreated by these villagers, and the devil knew it. He invited her to join him at his feast. And because she had no hands, he even offered to feed her.”

Now the silence around Jane was complete, and her cup was empty. It fell from her knobby fingers and landed on the grass next to her boot. “Nora was tempted. These were the people who turned her out to die. These were the people who had cut off her hands. They had hurt her. But she knew the devil was no hero. She could see him eyeing her dreams and her will and her bravery and her rage like a starving man. She could see that he would eat her soul, too. She could also see there was no escape, for he was well fed and fast on his feet. So she did the only thing that was left to her.”