The Hearts We Sold(43)

And then they were running. Cora was making little sounds on every exhale, a whine in her throat. Dee’s attention was yanked back to the hulking creature. It was still on the ground, like some half-fallen statue from ages past. Only it watched them, gaze following the three teenagers as they sprinted toward the mouth of the void.

Dee tried to count the seconds as they ran, but she couldn’t tell how much time was passing. It felt like moments were slipping by too quickly.

Then they were at the mouth of the void and Cal was gesturing them through.

Cool air brushed across her face and arms, and Dee gasped, the night air like a knife in her lungs.

They were out.

Out.

Dee tripped and Cora fell, slamming into the grass. James leaned on his own knees, a man trying to catch his breath after a long run. Cal yanked himself free of the void, staggering back.

Dee glanced over her shoulder; sure enough, not five seconds after they emerged from the void, it began to collapse in on itself.

They’d done it.

But there was none of the victory of the last time they had closed a void; rather, a grim silence settled over the group.

The female demon stood over Dee, staring down at her as if she were vermin. Dee scrambled back, tripping over her own feet in her haste to get away. She half expected James or Cal to step in front of her, to take up the role of amateur bodyguards like they had done in the past.

But it was not one of the heartless teenagers who put himself between Dee and the demon.

The Agathodaemon stood there. From what Dee could see of his face, his beautiful features were hard. His umbrella, which was always tucked carelessly beneath his arm, was in his left hand. He held himself loosely, and it put Dee in mind of the fencers she had seen when she passed by a gym at Brannigan—legs spread apart, ready to lunge.

Did demons fight demons? She did not know.

“You will let them be,” said the Daemon very quietly. “They are not yours.”

“They left my servant behind,” the female demon snarled. “Do you know how many years it took to build that homunculus? No, of course you wouldn’t.” Her face twisted in a sneer. “Heart-Monger.”

“Better a monger than a cobbler,” replied the Daemon. “And at least I give back what I take.”

The female demon’s gaze slid past him, to Dee and the others. “Your servants are weak.”

“And yet they can hold a conversation,” replied the Daemon, “whereas yours… well, it’s difficult to do such a thing without a mouth.”

The demon rounded on him. “There is too much at stake to rely on inferior models. How would your servants do up against a burrower?”

“So I should rely on your methods?” replied the Daemon silkily. “Of cobbled-together monsters and half-formed creatures? Tell me, how well did you fare in Pompeii?”

The demon took a step back. “The others will hear of this.”

“Oh, I’m sure they will.” But the Daemon was relaxing, shifting back into a stance of nonchalance. “But the difference between my methods and yours is that everyone will now still be alive to hear about it.”

The demon retreated, keeping her gaze fixed on the Daemon. Then she turned on her heel and walked away. She took two steps before Dee’s ears popped and the demon simply vanished, leaving the four teenagers on the ground and their keeper standing before them.





TWENTY-TWO


F or a long minute, nobody moved.

Dee remained still; she felt that if she moved, the world would shatter. The female demon would return, the void would reopen, that nightmarish thing of cobbled body parts would crawl back into existence—

The quiet seemed tenuous and Dee dared not break it.

It was James who spoke first.

“What,” he said, “the hell?”

Which seemed to sum up the situation quite well, in Dee’s opinion.

Cora rose unsteadily to her feet. She was visibly shaking, her gaze fixed on the place the void had been.

The Daemon did not answer. And somehow, his silence gave Dee the courage to move. She pushed herself upright; dirt clung to her jeans and she could feel tangled pieces of dead grass between her toes.

“What was that thing?” said Dee. “That giant… thing.”

The Daemon slid a look toward where the female demon had gone, and his lips pressed into a thin line. “The voids need to be destroyed,” he said. “We living, feeling beings cannot enter them. We have found ways around it. And trust me when I say your kind would fare no better than ours, should one of those doors open fully.”

“She called it a homunculus,” said Cal. “But—I know what that word means. It’s a miniature human construct, but that thing was enormous…”

“Well,” said the Daemon, “we built them smaller at first.”

Cal let out a snort.

“Come now,” said the Daemon, looking at all of them. The betrayal they felt must have been clearly written on all their faces. “Nothing has changed. Surely you must realize that.”

He was wrong, though. Dee felt in her bones—everything had changed.

She half expected the Daemon to use his magic to teleport them all home, but he did something far more mundane: He led them back across the field, to the large strip mall parking lot, and then he broke into a car. Well, breaking in sounded far more physical than what he actually did, which was to twitch his fingers at a Mercedes and the car came to life.