The Hearts We Sold(45)

“We’re not getting in the car without Cora,” said Dee, but then she remembered the cell phone still in her back pocket. “I—I have a phone. We could call—someone.”

She was not sure whom to call. Her parents were out of the question, and Gremma… well. She had no idea how she was going to explain this to Gremma.

Dee glanced back at Cora and Cal. Cal had taken off his jacket and draped it around Cora. He was murmuring quietly, as if speaking to an injured person. But Cora pressed a hand to her mouth, looked at them. Her eyes were frantically darting between each of them.

“We’re not alive anymore,” Cora said, and her voice was stronger now.

Dee went still. “What?”

Cora rose to her feet. She looked a sight—barefoot, hair still windblown, Cal’s jacket around her shoulders.

“That thing.” Cora spat the word. “That homunculus. It could enter the void. Because it was built of parts, but not human. Rats—rats try to enter the voids but they can’t. Nothing living can enter the voids.” Cora’s gaze whipped to the car. “That’s what the demon said. ‘We living, feeling beings cannot enter them.’ They can’t enter the voids—but we can? What does that make us?”

Dee’s reply died on her lips.

She—she hadn’t thought about that.

She didn’t want to think about that.

She wouldn’t think about that.

“Calm down,” said James. “Nothing’s changed. We’re still here, and your deal is up in two months!”

“And then what happens?” Cora paced back and forth, a caged animal behind bars she had only just discovered. “When we get our hearts back, who’s to say what—”

Her eyes suddenly widened.

“What happened to the rest of your troop?” she said. “You transferred into this one, but you never told us why.”

James’s face was as still as a mask. “I was the last of my troop in Rome.”

“Because they got their hearts back?” Cora’s hands were balled. “Or because they were dead?”

James narrowed his eyes and for the first time, Dee saw a sharp sliver of anger in his gaze. She was so used to thinking of him as harmless and good-natured.

Cora took another step toward him. “That… thing we saw. Have you ever seen anything like it before?”

He hesitated, and Dee went cold.

“James,” said Cal, sounding hurt.

James threw him a look. “I never saw one moving, all right? But—in Rome. There was a void that… there were parts. I saw body parts. Unmatched fingers, holding a crate of explosives.” His gaze darted to Dee, then away, as if he didn’t want to meet her gaze. “I didn’t know why, but I think—I think most demons use those things, instead of people like us. They explode the voids using a Franken-giant, like we saw in there.”

Cora’s lips pulled taut. “Walking corpses. That’s what can destroy the voids. People like us.” She turned on her heel and strode away from him, gazing down at the river below. She shivered violently, then pushed her arms through the jacket, pulling it tightly around her.

Cal took a hesitant step toward her. “Cora…”

“Shut up,” she snapped. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing we do matters, don’t you see? Because it killed us. That thing tore out our hearts and killed us and we’re just walking corpses that don’t know we’re dead yet.

“We gave up our hearts, we sold our souls for wishes, and look where it got us! We’re thralls to a demon.”

“Speak for yourself,” said James, with an obvious attempt at levity. “I’d say I’m more of a willing minion.”

“This is wrong,” said Cora. “All of this. We shouldn’t have to do this.” She shoved her hands in the jacket’s pockets, and her face went strangely still. When her right hand emerged, she held a knitted heart.

Her fingers dug into the soft red yarn.

“I must have left that in there,” said Cal quietly. He held out a hand, reaching for it. But Cora did not move.

She gazed down at the thing with a terrible coldness. “Why do we even carry these around?” she said, her voice shaking.

There was the slam of a car door and Dee looked up. The Daemon was striding toward them, all but skidding down the gravel in his haste.

Dee glanced between Cora and the Daemon, her stomach drawn tight. It felt as though an ax were about to fall, some terrible fate about to come crashing down. “Cora—” she began to say, but the other girl was faster.

With a terrible snarl of fury, Cora pulled her arm back.

She threw the knitted heart. Out over the river.

Dee watched it; the red speck flew high, hung suspended in the air for one impossibly long moment, and then plummeted.

“No,” said the Daemon, and then he just vanished.

Dee blinked—wondered what had gone wrong.

Nothing happened. James breathed hard, his gaze boring into Cora, and Dee finally recognized the strange emotion on his face.

Panic.

Utter panic.

But she didn’t understand. Cora was fine, she was standing there, glaring down at the river, and—

There was a soft thump behind Dee. She heard it the way one hears all terrible things: with childish ignorance, a certainty that Cal must have dropped something, that this odd sound couldn’t be—it couldn’t be—