The Hearts We Sold(24)

There were still old tires, flat and useless, piled around the room, and boxes of old steel bolts and shelves of other detritus not deemed valuable enough to be stolen.

And there was a void. A shimmer, a ripple, like heat rising from the pavement on a hot summer’s day. It hung just a few inches off the grease-stained floor.

The others saw it, too, and they moved forward with an ease born of practice. Cora knelt before the shimmering patch of air and reached into her pocket. She came up with a small aerosol can of spray paint. And before Dee could ask why Cora was suddenly into tagging, Cora shook the bottle once, twice, then sprayed the air just in front of the void.

The paint misted through the air, then swerved right. Before Dee’s eyes, the red paint simply vanished—but not before she saw the clear outline of the void’s mouth. Well—it was certainly a more precise way of finding the void’s entrance than tossing an empty bottle at it.

Dee glanced about the room, trying to take in everything at once. It seemed there was only one way in or out—the door they’d walked through. The broken windows were too high up for escape. She turned in a circle, and her foot hit something.

She stumbled, her flashlight falling to the concrete floor. She scooped it up, hands shaking, and aimed the beam down.

The light fell upon a rat. Unmoving, still, and dead.

It had been impaled—a thin metal rod shoved through it the way a child might pin a butterfly to a corkboard.

And then she saw what the creature had been killed with.

It was a knitting needle.

“He’s been here,” said Cora quietly.

Dee jerked in surprise. The other girl had approached while Cal and James talked between themselves.

Cora’s cool gaze slid over the needle. “You see what he is, right?” There was a low, almost confidential tone to her voice. As if she were sure she spoke to an ally. “The others forget that he’s a demon, but you don’t. I know you’re scared of him—and you should be. They’re not right; they’re not like us. We have to stick together.”

Dee looked at Cora and for the first time wondered what she was doing here. Cora belonged in some high-powered internship, holding a clipboard and ordering people around—not standing over the body of a rat. “You made a deal with him, too,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but at the same time, it was.

Cora looked away. “I made a mistake,” she said curtly.

Before Dee could ask what she meant, James called over. “Charges ready and timer set!”

“You mean, I readied the charges and set the timer,” said Cal. “While you stood there and critiqued how fast I did it.”

“Well, my part comes now,” said James, smiling.

Cora straightened, ran a hand over her perfect hair, and said, “Dee, since you’re the newbie, you watch. Cal will keep the void stable while James and I go inside.”

Cal squatted down, then did a sort of crab-walk into the void.

Dee watched with fascination. She hadn’t seen what being the human doorstop looked like from an outside view. Half of Cal simply vanished, like he had been sliced down the middle by a mirror. He glanced to his left, one eye seeing something Dee couldn’t. Then he nodded, gesturing, and James and Cora stepped forward. James first, angling sideways to slip past Cal, and then Cora. They vanished, one after the other.

And then there was silence.

Dee felt her fists clench. She was too hot; whatever magic kept her in stasis did nothing for the feverish sweat that broke through her skin. She could feel it dampening her shirt.

She had not counted on the seconds dragging by like hours, the agony of waiting for the others to reappear. Cal appeared calm, crouching with his elbows on his knees and gaze resolutely forward. With only half of him visible, he reminded her of one of those statues with pieces missing, the eyes old and face worn.

Dee paced back and forth, checked her cell phone for the time. “How long does this usually take?” she asked.

One of Cal’s eyes—the only one visible to Dee—flicked toward her. “Depends,” he said. His voice warbled oddly, an echo of an echo.

“On?”

“If there’s trouble.”

At once, she remembered that creature. None of the other heartless had mentioned seeing anything like that, and she had not dared to mention her own glimpse of it—for fear of drawing attention to herself. She was still new to this, after all.

But still—the thought of what might lie beyond that flicker of unreality…

She needed to see.

“Could I look inside?” she asked.

She expected Cal to argue; it was what Cora would have done.

But Cal smiled slightly. “You won’t like it.”

“I want to look around,” she replied. “I’ll just be a moment. You can watch me the whole time, right?”

He nodded. “Go on and try it.”

She ventured closer, hand reaching for the void. It felt like touching the surface of water—a slight resistance against her fingertips before it caved inward.

Fingers extended, she stepped past Cal and into the void.

It was like stepping through a door into a sandstorm. Wind flung her hair out of its ponytail and she found her breath yanked free of her lungs.

She stepped into this non-space, this half-formed world and—