The Hearts We Sold(54)

She balanced with one hand on his shoulder. He was still wearing that plaid flannel, the material gone soft with wear. He tugged her sock back on, straightening it so the seam lined up perfectly with her toes. The boot was next. He carefully pulled it into place.

The gesture was such a small thing, but it touched her.

When he stood, he was smiling. “All right. So today is Friday. You’re skipping school. Anything you want to do while you’re being a delinquent?”

She considered; something had been nagging at her, something she hadn’t allowed herself to truly think about until now.

“Can we go to a library?” she asked.

He laughed.




There was a public library. It was well cared for and clean. Everything smelled of old paper and clean carpets and people—students and adults alike, deodorant and sweat and perfume. It was a very lived-in scent, and it was comforting. Dee asked a librarian for the computers and found herself directed around a tall series of shelves.

James trailed behind her, curious but agreeable—his default state, as she thought of it. She went to one of the computers and opened up a web browser. “That female d-thing,” she said, stumbling over the word demon. There were too many normal people about—students and seniors, browsing the shelves. “She said something. A word I didn’t recognize. I wanted to look it up.”

“You do realize we have phones for that, right?” said James, smiling.

Dee threw him an annoyed look. “Maybe I feel like not staring at a screen the size of my palm.”

That got her a laugh. “What did the demon say?”

“Burrower,” she replied. “She asked how we would do up against a burrower.”

James’s brow creased. “So the demons’ mortal enemies are… gophers?”

Dee held back a snort. Her fingers typed the word and at once—sure enough, the first hit was a page on vermin control. “What a terror,” said James drily as a picture of a mole came up. “Look at those whiskers. Truly a thing to be feared.”

“There’s got to be more than one meaning,” said Dee as she scrolled down the search page. Pest control, wildlife, a brand of shovel, and then—

Her fingers came up, touched the computer screen. Left little smudgy fingerprints in their wake.

It was a picture of a beast, inhuman, with many legs, rising from the depths of an ocean.

She heard James swallow.

Dee clicked on that page and up popped an info site on Lovecraft.

For a minute, neither of them spoke.

“Old gods,” said Dee quietly. “A burrower is a type of old god.”

James laughed nervously. “But—but this is fiction, right? I mean, I read that ‘Cry of Cathalhoo’ thing when I was in high school. The only thing I remember was that everyone who learned about the creature ended up being murdered by some cult. Oh, and Lovecraft was kind of a racist.”

Dee pointed at the computer screen. “You mean ‘The Call of Cthulhu’?”

James blinked, unashamed. “Literature was never my thing. Name three Impressionists, and then you’re allowed to criticize.”

“Fair point,” Dee said, unable to hide her smile. “But I mean, think about it. The Daemon said that this wasn’t the first time demons had revealed themselves. What if… we aren’t the first generation of heartless?”

James considered. “That would explain a lot about Bosch’s paintings.”

“There are tales going back thousands of years about deals with demonic creatures,” said Dee. “Faust, Rumpelstiltskin, meeting creatures at crossroads, even blues singers claiming to have sold their soul for talent.”

James looked impressed.

“But the thing is, the demons of today aren’t buying souls. They want limbs—which they make into homunculi, and use to destroy the voids.”

She gave James a steady look. She trusted him. “I saw something,” she said quietly, “the first time I was in a void. At the hospital. It was only a moment—and it didn’t look entirely like that picture, but it wasn’t… well, it’s not entirely off. And when we were in that last void, when I saw the homunculus—it had something in its hand. A freshly bleeding leg-like thing.” She leaned forward. “Is there anything you haven’t told me? About what happened in Rome?”

She wasn’t sure what to expect. Perhaps he would look offended or angry, or maybe he would push his chair away from the table and stride out of the library. But he did none of those things. His shoulders slumped, and he let out a breath.

“Rome wasn’t like Portland,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t friends with anyone in my troop. We were simply all thrown together, told what to do and how to do it. The Daemon kept us on a tighter leash; we all lived in the same apartment for a while—except for the Daemon himself. He just popped into the kitchen when he needed us. It was… well, it was one of the best times of my life—but also the worst. I spent my days painting like I’d only ever dreamed of, and I started getting attention, but then at night me and the three other heartless would be in dark alleys, kicking rats out of the way as we tried to find voids. And for a while, it worked. But things… didn’t go well.

“We lost one guy inside a void. Something… grabbed him. I never saw what it was. I was in the mouth of the void, keeping it open. The girl who was with him swore she saw a monster, but she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—describe it. I would’ve gone back for him, but the charges were set and the timer was ticking down.” Something like shame crossed his face. “Another girl decided that the knitted hearts were the key to the Daemon’s power, so she dissected hers. But the moment it unraveled, she just died. Like Cal. You saw what happened.