The Hearts We Sold(55)

“After that,” he said, “there were only two of us. The last girl’s two years were up, and she got her heart back. I saw the Daemon do it—that’s how I know it’s possible. He just… pushed it into her chest. Like popping a socket into place. And then I was the only one left, and the Daemon said that Italy wasn’t a territory he needed to worry about anymore. He said Portland was the new hotspot, and he told me we would be going there instead.

“When I got to Portland, the Daemon had already made his deal with Cora. Then he recruited Cal, and then it was the three of us for nearly two years.” His mouth twitched. “That is, until that void opened up in a hospital.” He regarded her almost fondly, as if this twist of fate had been a welcome one.

But she barely heard the last bit; her attention was elsewhere. Nearly two years.

“When is your deal up?” she asked. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or frightened to know that he wouldn’t always be heartless with her.

James’s smile seemed to vanish. “Soon enough.” He turned his attention back to the computer screen. Without meaning to, Dee had left the page open on a painting of what must have been Cthulhu. It was a roiling mass of tentacles and teeth, frozen forever in the act of rising from some great depth.

“Old gods,” said James quietly. “Here’s the thing I’d like to know. If demons are, well… evil, then how bad are the things they’re fighting against?”





TWENTY-SIX


D ee had never skipped school before. She’d never gone on a road trip with a boy, never slept in a hotel room with anyone besides her parents.

Turned out, it wasn’t all that scandalous. That night, they found a boutique and bought overpriced clothes—which James insisted on paying for, saying that the painting of Dee at the river would keep him fed for a year, so he was indebted to her. It was roundabout logic. “I’ll accept that,” she said, “but only if I get to pick out your clothes.”

He agreed.

And they walked out of the boutique wearing clean and vaguely vintage clothing. She’d put him in jeans and a cashmere sweater, and his orange jacket was shoved in the bottom of their shopping bag. He looked—well. He looked good.

They bought Chinese takeout and brought it back to their room, ate it while watching yet another cooking reality show. Dee fell asleep before it was even ten, the TV still flickering in the background.

They spent most of the next day at the library.

If there truly were old gods and demons, there had to be some record of them. Perhaps a clue in one of Lovecraft’s stories on how to defeat them.

“You really do not know how to be a delinquent,” James told her. But he was grinning and took whatever small task she assigned him.

Mostly, they read. Fairy tales, folktales, Faust, Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft, and the authors who had taken up where Lovecraft left off. They read about myths and legends, of deals made and deals lost, about creatures so old they did not have a name. Dee wasn’t sure if any of this was useful, but they noted anything that might relate to their current situation. They looked for any mention of a Lovecraftian monster, of burrowers, of holes in reality. While Dee browsed the literature, James invaded the art section. There was a surprising number of paintings that depicted world-ending monsters.

If there were other heartless throughout history, they did not openly declare themselves. But Dee still wanted to look, to search, to perhaps find some hint that more like themselves had survived their own hollow state.

I chose this, Dee thought, and picked up another book.




It felt inevitable when it finally happened. They were sitting on a park bench, finishing off hot dogs they’d bought from a stand.

Dee was talking about one of the variations of Snow White she’d found—mostly because it was one of the fairy tales with literal heart connections. She had a theory that perhaps this was one of the folktales with a grain of truth; perhaps the evil queen had been a demon. It would explain her ruthlessness and her beauty.

“People believed in the supernatural back then,” said Dee. “Like werewolves and witches and all that. The queen could’ve been a demon, but over the centuries the retelling of the story was muddled because modern people don’t believe in the supernatural.”

“People believe in the supernatural now,” countered James. “I mean, hello. Demons.”

Dee frowned. “Some people don’t. There are entire websites dedicated to disproving them. Cal didn’t believe. He told me he thought they were aliens.”

James broke into startled laughter. “Yeah. I remember.” His expression sobered and he crumpled up his napkin. “So, tell me. What do you believe in?”

“I don’t know. It could be supernatural, it could be aliens, or I could simply have lost my mind.”

“So you don’t even believe in this old gods theory of yours?”

She looked down. “All right. Fine. What do you believe in, then?”

His voice softened. “I believe we’re not crazy, for one thing.”

“Well, good.”

She was gazing out at the park when his fingertips touched her chin. He slowly tilted her face toward him. “I believe I’m glad I met you.”

Her skin felt warm where he touched her. She had a wild thought that this was when she didn’t miss her heart; because she knew if she did have one, it would have been beating so loud that it would have drowned out the world.