The Hearts We Sold(11)

“So I asked for my parents not to divorce,” she continued. “And guess what happened—there was a loophole found in my granddad’s will. Turns out that my dad only inherited if he was married… to one woman. No second marriages for my dear old granddad.” She laughed again, and it sounded as if it stuck in her throat. “It was so stupid. Like something out of a romantic comedy. I don’t know how the demon did it, but that will made sure my parents never divorced. They’d have to give up over a million dollars to do it.

“The demon kept her word,” she said, smiling so that her eyes crinkled at the edges. It was a hard, determinedly happy face. “My parents are together. But they still hate each other, you know?”

“Do I ever,” said Dee. Her heart was beating too quickly, and she found herself almost wishing to take a drink from her red cup, if only to settle her nerves. Demons. Demons were supposed to be nearly invincible, capable of granting the most impossible of wishes. People joked about making deals the way they joked about winning the lottery. It was idle fantasy to imagine what a supernatural creature might grant you. She’d never really considered making a deal; she was rather attached to her limbs.

Dee tried to keep her voice steady. “But—was it worth it?”

The girl swayed. “People always warn you about demons, tell you it’s wrong and dangerous. And yeah, that’s true, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part. You know what the worst part is?”

“No,” said Dee.

The girl smiled harder. “You get what you ask for,” she said.

It would have been quite the philosophical note to end on, had the girl not leaned over and thrown up in someone’s hamper.





SIX


T here were two kinds of bad decisions, in Dee’s experience.

The first was due to a lapse in judgment. These were momentary slips brought about by simple emotions—distraction, anger, sadness, impatience. Dee wasn’t even sure if they could be truly called decisions, these actions made in a moment of error.

But the second kind of decision was far worse.

Actions fueled by desperation. They were the worst kinds of decisions, because desperate people could see the error of their ways and simply not care. They would rush headlong into a bad situation because they could see no other options.

She took the bus to the hospital. Normally, it was a short commute, but today the bus kept stopping and starting, traffic clamping down all around them. Perhaps this was the universe trying to forestall some terrible mistake on her part, Dee thought, then shook her head.

The closer they came to the hospital, the more the cars around them slowed to a crawl. Dee rose from her seat and strode to the front of the bus. “Is there an accident?” she asked the driver.

Then Dee smelled it: the stench of metal and plastic, hot in her nostrils. It reminded her of when a nearby house had caught fire when she was twelve—ash and the stench of burned plastic. Houses were filled with objects that didn’t easily catch fire; they melted and smoked and made the air reek.

It turned out, hospitals burned the same. A billow of gray ascended from the hospital’s campus, and Dee drew in a sharp breath.

“Let me out here,” she said, and without waiting for the driver’s reply, she pushed the doors open and squeezed through. A car honked but Dee ignored it, darting across the bike lane and running for the hospital.

A squirming, selfish part of Dee was panicking—and not just for the hospital’s patients and doctors. If there was a fire, the demon probably wouldn’t be here. Fires meant newscasters and cameras, and demons tended to avoid that kind of attention.

But still—she had to try.

Crowds had gathered on the lawn, gazing up at the smoke billowing from the auditorium. For the first time, she felt a swell of relief that this was a teaching hospital; the fire must have started in one of those teaching buildings and hadn’t spread to threaten any patients yet. Dee couldn’t see flames, but firefighters and EMTs were rushing about, talking amongst themselves. Dee rose to tiptoe, trying to peer over taller people. With a grimace, she tried to find a way through the crowd—the smokers’ grass was on the other side of the hospital; perhaps that area was untouched, perhaps…

Someone took a step back and Dee stumbled, her toe catching their heel. She fell to hands and knees, a curse caught behind her gritted teeth. Anger welled up within her, but then she shook her head, that anger dispelling into familiar anxiety. She looked down at the grass to see if she’d dropped her purse, and that was when she saw it: a strand of bloodred yarn.

The soft material held between thumb and forefinger, she rose to her feet. She glanced about the crowd, taking care in looking over all the faces.

A demon stood beneath one of the trees.

Between the chaos and the noise, the smoke and the din, no one else seemed to have noticed. Not just a demon. The demon, the one she’d seen knitting two weeks ago. Dee’s heart lurched and she took an involuntary step forward.

It wore the same gray suit, and an umbrella was tucked beneath its arm. It gazed at the flames with an expression it took Dee a moment to recognize. Satisfaction, she decided. It looked upon the chaos with a certain fondness, the way Dee felt herself smile on papers she was sure would garner a good grade.

You did this, she thought, utterly certain.

The demon turned and strode away, Dee following in its wake.