The Hearts We Sold(17)

Dee rolled over, eyes drawn to the ceiling, where she caught sight of the smudge. It trembled, turned in on itself, like the last of bathwater being drained away.

“What was that?” said Dee.

“What was what?” James rubbed at his chin and his fingers came away bloody. He grimaced and reached down with his clean hand, offering it to Dee. She hesitated, then let him pull her upright.

She looked around the room, but it was empty.

No demon.

“That,” said Dee. “In there—it’s not like our world. And what was that thing—”

“Doesn’t matter,” said James.

Dee breathed hard. Now that the numbness was entirely gone, fear twisted her insides. “But what about—”

Cal shook his head and she fell silent. “Don’t ask now,” he said, but he said it gently. “It’s too new. No answer we can give you will satisfy. Wait a week, then ask us.”

Dee was shaking, and it took her a moment to steady herself. “What—what am I supposed to do now? Where’s the demon?”

James ran a hand through his hair. Sand fell through his fingers, scattered along the fabric of his parka. He shook himself before looking at Dee again. His face was more composed than hers. “Go home,” he said. “Things will look more normal after you’ve gotten a night’s sleep.”

She gaped at him. It felt as though her life had begun anew here in this basement, and she was unsure of how to move forward. Leaving, stepping into the world without a heart—how did a person do that?

James’s expression softened. “Look, I get it. You’re panicking right now.” He edged closer, until she had no choice but to look him in the eye. He made a motion as if to touch her arm, but then his hand fell away. “A demon just ripped your heart out. By all rules of the universe, you should be dead. I should be dead. But you know what we’re going to do in the meantime?”

“What?”

“Live,” he said.

He reached down and took her hand. Gently, he pried her fingers open and placed something soft in her palm, closed her fingers around it. “Keep this on you at all times,” he said quietly. “Don’t lose it.” He gave her hand one last squeeze, then he was straightening his parka, turning to stride through the basement doors. Cal nodded to her, smiling encouragingly, then he left, too. Dee found herself alone; she shifted and found the concrete floor slick with grains of sand.

Her gaze fell on the object in her palm.

She didn’t realize what it was—not at first. It was a lump of bloodred yarn. There was a scrap of paper with an address scribbled on it, but that wasn’t what had caught her attention. Her fingers stroked one soft edge. She’d seen this before, tangled around the demon’s fingers. Now she saw exactly what he’d been working on.

Resting in her palm was a knitted heart.

And that’s when she finally realized why the world was so quiet.

There was no pulse in her ears.





TEN


T he first time James Lancer lost his heart, he was in Rome.

He thought it a bit of a cliché, if he were being honest with himself.

It was early summer and the streets were flooded with tourists. James had been living in an apartment with a friend for several months, paying his way with the crumpled euros he made as a street artist. He joined the other flocks of painters carting their wares to the top of the Spanish Steps, to the view of the modern and the old—the carts selling roasted hazelnuts near thousand-year-old ruins. After setting up his paintings for tourists to browse, he would begin work on a new piece; it was always better to be working on something in view of potential customers. It made him look less like a merchant hawking his wares, and more like an artist who just happened to have his work for sale.

Being an artist was one part talent, two parts illusion.

He had come to Rome on vacation, or at least that was what he told the bored-looking customs official, and he had simply never left. Whether this was legal or not, he didn’t know. But he was pretty sure that the Italian authorities had more important things to worry about than a seventeen-year-old crashing on a friend’s couch.

And he liked it here; he liked the four buildings that made up the apartment complex, towers with a small courtyard in between. He liked the clotheslines that hung between windows and how everyone seemed to use them; he liked the smell of rain on wet cobblestones, how storms seemed to blow in and out in a matter of hours, how the sunlight cast long shadows across ruins older than anything he could imagine. He even liked how he had to count out his money in coins, how he fumbled through the language and was nearly brained once by a tourist with a selfie stick.

There was a romance to this life, a brilliant chaos, and he embraced it.

But today was about business. James made sure his pieces were carefully settled before unfolding a tiny three-legged stool and seating himself upon it. He had a half-finished piece from last week—a small watercolor the size of a postcard. He returned to the piece, his gaze reaching across the horizon, trying to find the right lines and colors to capture. That was the most difficult part. Knowing what to include and what to leave out, how to take reality and condense it into something eternal. He dipped his brush into the water, then swirled it through a blue paint, and set bristles to canvas.

He painted like he did everything else—with fervor. He thought his own impatience bled into the lines of his work, and that was why he favored watercolor. It was more forgiving than oils. It was less precise, looser. The flaws could be explained away as part of the medium.