The Hearts We Sold(2)

The demon was still smiling at her. A cool, almost smug smile. Again, Dee felt that little flare of defiance. “I don’t want to make a deal with you,” she said firmly.

The demon returned its attention to the knitting, to the bloodred yarn trailing through its fingers.

“Well, if you do,” said the demon, “you know where to find me.”





TWO


D ee was once an avid reader of fairy tales.

Some of her earliest memories were of her grandmother’s house, of a place that smelled like cinnamon and old books. The house felt like a secret waiting to be discovered, as if she might open a cupboard door and find a whole new world. It was quiet and just a little too small—but in a way that felt cozy, rather than stifling. At night, Grandma would read aloud from one of the many old books—and Dee always picked a tome of Grimm’s fairy tales. She listened to tales of frog kings and magicians, of glass slippers and brave girls in red cloaks.

But as she grew older, as her awareness of the world changed, so did the stories.

She listened to tales of a man who murdered his brother and left the bones to sing to passersby, of talking dogs that were abandoned by their owners, and sorcerers who abducted unwary young women. Her own world had become a more frightening place, and the stories reflected that.

And when her grandmother died, when the house was sold and the books were dumped into a dollar bin at her estate sale, Dee’s belief in magic waned. Her own world became a place of broken promises and whispered apologies.

She learned to believe in tangible things instead: in kind words and filled seats at parent-teacher meetings. Magic was just another fantasy. It was something she created to comfort herself. There were no true fairy tales, no knights in shining armor. Just herself and her own wits. As the years went on, Dee learned how to microwave her own meals, to make excuses, to lie to everyone around her. She became her own knight; she collected those broken promises and whispered apologies and fashioned them into armor.

By the time she was ten, Dee had put away her fairy-tale books and decided she only believed in real things.

Then the demons declared themselves not two months later.





The demons first appeared in Los Angeles.

There were rumors of strange occurrences—an actress getting up and walking off a three-story fall; an explosion in a college campus in Burbank; a sighting of a strange, glowing being that conspiracy theorists swore was an alien.

Pictures flitted across the Internet. Dee hadn’t given them any attention; it was like sightings of Bigfoot or alien-abduction stories. It was human nature—people blew things out of proportion. There were people on street corners shouting about the end of days while others bought holy water in bulk. On the whole, it reminded Dee of stories she’d heard about Y2K—a great deal of fuss over some imagined threat.

To stave off worldwide panic, the so-called demons organized a press conference.

We exist, they said. And we have a proposition for you.

A person could trade away a piece of themselves for a wish come true.

At ten years old, Dee accepted the demons the way she accepted everything else—she hadn’t. When she looked at pictures of supposed demons, all she saw were people. Very beautiful people, but people.

Demons weren’t real, she said. This had to be an elaborate hoax. Like those doctored fairy pictures. Future generations were going to laugh at them for their stupidity. You couldn’t buy luck with a finger. You couldn’t trade a foot for beauty. Just like you couldn’t trade a whole arm for a life.

Her father had agreed.

“Aren’t demons supposed to go in for souls, anyway?” he complained. He sat on their old love seat, the yellow fabric stained so often that it appeared brown. “What would they want with body parts?”

Mrs. Moreno was fumbling in her pocket, pretending to look for her cell phone, but Dee knew she was looking for a lighter. “Maybe body parts are more useful?”

Dee surprised herself by speaking up. “How is a foot more useful than a soul?” she asked, wondering if perhaps this was something an adult would know.

“Maybe hell has an overpopulation problem,” said Mr. Moreno, his voice heavy with finality.

Dee knew better than to push her parents for answers. So she went to the place she always did when she needed to know something—the Internet. After all, it had taught her how to get wine stains out of the carpet, how to fix a clogged sink, and exactly what a period was. It seemed only natural to investigate the demons on her own, too.

She went searching for info—and of course, she found plenty of that. In fact, the demons seemed to dominate the Internet very quickly. In a matter of months, some demons had fan clubs. Not quite cults, but close. There were whole blogs dedicated to tracking their movements, candid photos snapped by daring paparazzi, lists trying to determine which body part what celebrity had sold for their success, even theories about which political leaders were consulting demonic entities.

There were also a great many articles trying to either prove or debunk the demons’ existence. Half of the writers were convinced, saying they just knew the demons weren’t human. The other half said that these were simply people who were using stage magic to trick the world. For every believer, there was someone trying to prove them wrong. And then there were those who believed but disapproved.