The Hearts We Sold(34)

“Naw,” said James. He looked at the door with a breezy unconcern. “I thought you’d want to know where your heart is, but I’m not all that attached to mine. As far as I’m concerned, the Daemon can have it for now.”

She touched the door a second time, running her fingertips along the seam, as if she could pry her nails into the gap between door and frame and somehow yank it open—the metal was cold, smooth, and perhaps the only clean surface in this whole building. She wondered for a moment exactly how the Daemon kept the hearts. How did one hold such precious cargo?

With her luck, her heart was likely in a red-and-white barbecue cooler, surrounded by cans of Pepsi and melting ice.




They left the bank empty-handed. No rocks, no burlap sacks, and no stolen hearts. Dee stepped up to the edge of the curb, balancing on the balls of her feet while James threaded the chain through the bank doors and snapped the padlock shut. He was whistling some song she didn’t recognize, and when they returned to his car, he unlocked her door and held it for her.

She stared at it.

“Oh, come on,” said James. “You suspicious of gallantry, too?”

“Gallantry is dead,” she replied. “Or maybe you hadn’t noticed the lack of knights and horses running around Portland.”

He laughed. “That would be a sight.” But he continued to hold the car door open until she sighed and slid inside. He carefully shut it behind her before striding around to the driver’s side and seating himself.

“You’re weird, you know that?” she told him. “You dress like a hobo, talk about being gallant, and you act like this is all some kind of weirdly themed party.”

“Life is a weirdly themed party,” he said, with all the solemnity of someone reading from a fortune cookie.

“No, really,” she said. “How are you so… chill about all this? I mean, even Cal and Cora looked a little stressed when I met them.”

James shrugged and slid his key into the ignition.

“I want the life I want,” he said simply. “If that means I’m going to die for it, then so be it.”

She shook her head.

“You don’t agree?” he asked, curious.

“I just want to live,” she said. “That’s why I made my deal.”

“So you took a deal that might kill you,” he said. “You know, you’re kind of a walking contradiction.”

She took a breath. “I made a deal because I—I just couldn’t go back. To the way things used to be.”

“Ah,” said James, as if he understood.

But she had one last question. “You called yourself a transfer. When you introduced me to Cora. Does that mean…?”

“I was with a different troop,” he said. Calmly, but something in his tone set off warning bells. “I started in Italy.”

“Why did you transfer?” she asked. “I mean, going from Italy to Oregon must have been a step down.”

James looked away. “I was the only one left in my troop. Can’t have a troop of one, and the voids were finished in Italy, so the Daemon asked if I would move. I didn’t mind. Portland’s got a good art scene.”

He had been the last person in his troop. For a moment, she wondered who he had been teamed with before, if he had gotten along with them, if perhaps he’d dated one of them, if they’d been anything like Cal or Cora or Dee herself.

She didn’t ask if they’d gotten their hearts back.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.





EIGHTEEN


D ee was sprawled on her bed, working on an essay about the New Deal, when her phone made an ugly buzzing noise, like an insect trapped in a jar. She stared at it suspiciously; very few people called her. Everyone texted these days. Calls were reserved for emergencies, for parents, for pranks. None of those appealed to her.

But it was Friday, after classes, which meant Gremma was in the room. And she would notice if Dee suddenly started avoiding her phone. With a mental sigh, Dee picked it up and checked the caller ID.

It was James. Fear made her tighten up; she’d been dreading another void, but she accepted the call. There was no point in hiding. “Yes?”

“Do you have a car?” he asked.

She squinted at her phone. Of all the weird questions, she hadn’t expected this one. “No,” she said.

A pause; a muffled curse. His voice was taut, and for once she could hear none of his usual breezy demeanor.

Dee didn’t like the strain in his tone. “What happened?”

James let out a frustrated growl. “Someone came through the parking lot and slashed my tires, well not just mine, lots of people’s, but I’ve got a show tonight and I was supposed to have had my stuff there by noon.”

“A show?” It must be something to do with his art. She glanced at the clock; it was half past three.

He sighed. “Listen, Dee, I’ll talk to you later.”

And then he hung up.

For a moment, the sound of her own name rang in her ears.

Dee glanced over at the other side of her room. Gremma had a pair of white earbuds plugged into her phone, and she was reattaching one of her teddy bear’s legs with tight, neat sutures.

“Hey,” said Dee. Said it twice more, and then Gremma finally heard.