The Hearts We Sold(83)

FORTY


T here was a demon knitting outside of the beach house.

He was beautiful, because fairy-tale creatures always were. Red yarn tangled around his long fingers, and his features were sharp and pale beneath the moonlight. Dee approached him without fear—a Red Riding Hood who had faced the wolf.

He sat upon the sandy bluff, knitting steadily. Still dressed in a suit, he looked laughably out of place. Dee strode across the sand, her feet bare, past the seaweed and the skeletons of driftwood.

Dee sat beside the demon. He kept knitting.

“You knew,” she said. “That James was dying.”

He did not look at her, nor did he bother with any denials. “Yes. He tried to change his deal shortly after he met you. Asked if he could give back his art talent if I removed a tumor. But once deals are made, they cannot be unmade.”

Her hand drifted to her own chest; he saw the gesture.

“And you have slipped free of your own deal,” he told her. “You are no longer heartless, despite not truly owning your own heart.” A soft sigh. “You have escaped our bargain—as your kind would call it—fair and square. What shall I do with your heart? It is not as if you truly need it anymore.”

The Rumpelstiltskin clause, she thought, with a stab of pain. James had outwitted the demon, and it was she who would reap the benefits.

“Give my heart to Riley—free her from her contract now,” she said impulsively.

He looked at her.

“This troop is finished,” she said. “Either give my heart to Riley or else give it back to me and I’ll do it myself. Of course, I’ll probably end up putting it in upside down or something.”

The Agathodaemon tilted his head slightly, as if in acknowledgment. “Pull the wrong string,” he said, eyes going to his knitting needles, “and everything unravels.”

She didn’t think he spoke of knitting.

Dee watched the play of moonlight on the waves, listened to the metallic clink of his knitting needles, and the sound of the heartbeat in her chest.

“Is it over?” she asked. “Are the voids gone? No chance of alien invasion?”

He looked down at the half-finished heart. “For the moment.”

“Why do you call yourself a demon?” asked Dee. Her voice was toneless, uncaring. “You’re not. Not really.”

He took a moment to reply. “Demon,” he said, slowly, the way people stepped onto thin ice—like he wasn’t sure of his footing. “Daemon. It had a different meaning when I first came to this world. Helpful spirit, one of the supernatural.”

Cal would’ve known that. Dee closed her eyes for a moment, trying to block out a pang of regret.

“What you do kills people,” she said, echoing Cora’s words.

The Agathodaemon lifted his gaze to the ocean waves. “Soldiers die in the name of the greater good every day. What makes you any different.” He spoke too flatly for the sentence to be a question.

“I’m not different,” she said. “But soldiers volunteer.” She shook her head. “You’re doing this wrong.”

The Agathodaemon looked at her in silent question.

“Taking limbs,” said Dee. “Ripping out hearts. It’s all very clumsy, the way you’ve gone about it.”

He narrowed his eyes. “And how exactly would you deem was an appropriate way to keep this world safe?”

She met his gaze unflinchingly. “Tell everyone.”

He scoffed.

But she did not. “If people knew that you weren’t truly demons, that you’re not even of this world—well. If they knew we had similar interests, that we both want to live here, then you could tell people of the threat. If there are more voids, tell people that they should be closed, that our world is at stake.” She shivered. “Don’t trick people into this. If they knew the stakes, they’d volunteer.”

“You,” said the Agathodaemon, “you truly believe humans would risk their lives for both their kind and ours? You think they could be so… compassionate?”

Dee thought about Cora, a gun in hand, ready to take on a demon to protect a girl she’d never met. Of Cal smiling and cheerful and brave. She thought of Riley, stepping into the remnants of a broken building because she would not let her friends venture in alone. Of Gremma, who smiled and snarked, but, when Dee needed her, was always there.

And she thought of James.

James, who had worn a mask of smiles and cheer. Who discovered he was going to die and welcomed it, because in his mind, that was his only chance to live. Who thought he was little more than scribbles and paintings, and was sure that was all he’d ever amount to.

He was wrong, she thought.

He was more than the artist, more than the boy who wore hobo-hipster clothes and loved bagels. He had been kind, and gentle in a way she’d never known before. But he would never be more than a memory, because he’d given up on himself long before he met her.

She loved him.

She’d never told him that.

Pain twisted in Dee’s chest. She would carry part of him with her forever.

Another form of immortality.

And lastly, Dee thought of fairy tales. Of how knights in shining armor could be girls with Molotov cocktails, of how people could fight off monsters, whether those monsters were human or something different altogether.