In the Demon's Company (Demon's Assistant Book 2) (5 page)

“So, what
is
the deal with you and Mr. Lip Ring?” Melissa asks. I was hoping she’d let it go but I guess it’s a better topic than our dead teacher. She’s been staring off into space, wrapping her arms around herself instead of getting a sweater out of her car. I get the impression she’s just asking to make conversation about anything other than our dead teacher.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugs. “It’s weird that he’s here.”

“Coincidence,” I say.

“If you say so,” she says and looks down at her Mary Janes.

“What’s that mean?” I ask, unable to keep the frustration out of my voice. I’m too exhausted by everything to rein it in.

“Are you two dating or something? Having some illicit affair?”

“At a teacher’s house?” I ask. Melissa doesn’t look at me. “No, Xanan and I are not dating. Also, I have a boyfriend. I can’t believe you’d even ask that.”

She sighs and finally meets my eyes. Hers are brown and full of grief. “Honestly, Nicki, I don’t know what to think anymore.”

The words cut through me.

An ambulance pulls up in front of the house. The EMTs get out. Both of us stand so we can tell them our made up story about how we found our teacher dead.

In the middle of explaining all of this, I suddenly remember I was supposed to meet Gabriel an hour ago. As soon as they finish asking us questions and taking our information in case they have further questions, I ask Mel to drive me to the Pioneer Square. In the car, she finally lets loose a torrent of tears, smearing her makeup across her face. She doesn’t even bother to ask to why I need to go there. She just drops me off and pulls away.

Stone Grounds is just as busy as it was on Saturday night. Laptops and textbooks occupy the smaller tables. A group of women in yoga pants gather around tables they’ve pushed together in the front corner.

Gabriel sits at the same table he was at last time, reading the same book. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s wearing a blue-green sweater vest today instead of the plain black one I first saw him in, I might think he’s been here the whole time. He still looks bedraggled, with dark splotches beneath his eyes and stubble covering his face. His glasses are smudged in one corner, the kind of thing that would drive Cam nuts, but Gabriel doesn’t seem to notice.

I wave as I enter and nod at the coffee stand. I rush to the back and order a caramel mocha. I need sugar and caffeine to hold me together. As I collect my drink, I realize my hands are shaking.

Even though I never actually saw her body, I can’t stop picturing Mrs. Crane sprawled on the floor of her bathroom, pills scattered all over the floor, like in a scene from a movie.

Mocha in hand, I sit down across from Gabriel.

“You’re late,” he says, a little sharply.

I burst into tears. Onlookers glance over. Gabriel’s eyes widen. “It’s okay,” he says, tone softening. He hands me napkins from the dispenser on the table. “Really. Please don’t cry.”

I shake my head because it’s not him and I can’t explain. The lump in my throat is too wide to let words pass. I take a sip of my coffee to swallow it down and then wipe at my eyes with the rough paper napkins. “I came from my teacher’s house. She died.”

“Oh my god,” he says, “I’m so sorry.” He wears the same haunted expression I must wear: the look of someone who bears the scars of loss across their bones. “Can I ask what happened?”

“I don’t know,” I say, which is mostly the truth. I know that she died after making a demon deal, and how, but not the real story behind it. I pull up a photo of her from the school website on my phone and push it across the table. “I don’t suppose you had a vision of her.”

Gabriel glances down at it, and then reaches across the table and takes my hand in his. His hand is warm and he squeezes mine gently. It’s reassuring. “No. Sorry.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, because he barely looked at the picture and let’s face it, school portraits rarely do any of us justice.

He lets go of my hand and taps the table with his long fingers. “Positive. When I have a vision of someone’s possible death, I don’t merely watch them die. I
see
them with complete clarity. I know their names. Their faces are burned into my mind. I’m their last witness. Sometimes the only one they get. And I never forget any of them, whether the vision comes true or not.” He glances back down. “She’s not one of them.”

I nod, some part of me deflating in relief. If he’d had the vision and I could have known in advance, could have stopped her, it would only hurt more. It already hurts so much. I should have followed her out of the classroom immediately. I never should have let her leave campus alone.

“She took pills,” I say. “She’d made a deal with a demon but then she killed herself anyway. It doesn’t make sense.”

Gabriel frowns. “She made a deal with Azmos?”

“No. A different demon. I don’t know.”

His eyes widen. He looks scared.

“What?” I ask.

“I was under the impression his power was pretty rare, that’s all,” Gabriel says. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“So was I,” I say.

“Maybe she made a different kind of deal?” he suggests. “There are a lot of different types of demons.”

I shake my head. Xanan seemed to think it was the same magic as Az.

Gabriel shrugs. He pulls an envelope out of his satchel. It’s small, the kind grandmothers who write notes on tiny stationary might use. It has my name scrawled on the front. He taps it against the wooden table. “I could give this to him myself, you know. Track him down. You could walk away.”

I stare, confused. “Why would I do that?”

“You’re a kid. You shouldn’t be mixed up in demon affairs.”

I bristle. I may be young but there’s no way Gabriel is more than a couple of years older than me, tops.

“How old are you?” I demand.

“Nineteen, but my circumstances are different.” He looks out the window, staring off into the darkened streets. It’s barely five o’clock but it gets dark early this time of year. “My sister was almost your age when she died.”

Now the tiredness in his face and the mirrored expression of grief make sense. He looks physically exhausted, too, but there’s a haunted quality to him beneath the lack of sleep and agitation.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say, repeating his words.

He taps his foot under the table, making it shake. He fidgets, sips coffee. “It was a house fire. I lost my whole family.”

“That’s awful,” I say, knowing it’s a major understatement. There aren’t words for that kind of loss.

“I almost died, too,” he says, and he meets my eyes, giving me a meaningful look.

“You made a deal with Azmos?” I ask. My sadness at his loss turns to horror at his situation. Anyone who makes a deal with Azmos only gets a few years. Ten is the maximum and ten isn’t common. It’s better than nothing—I’d have taken any amount of time granted to me in that situation and anyhow, I only got to grow up with my mom because of those ten years after she made a deal with Az—but it’s living with an expiration date over your head in a very real way.

“No,” he says. “But he was there. He offered me a deal. Five years. I refused.”

“Then how are you alive?” I ask.

“Azmos dragged me out, I think, but I was close to asphyxiating. The poison was already in my lungs and my blood. If the Firefighters and EMTs had arrived a few moments later, I would have died. I should have died. Azmos certainly thought I was supposed to, which is why he was there.” He lets out a long breath. “Some cruel joke of fate, huh? Turns out I didn’t need the demon’s deal but he was too late for my family. Only Jasper and I got out.”

“Jasper?” I ask.

“My cat.” He smiles weakly. “Well, he was my sister’s cat. Hated my guts, was a total jerk to me. But after the fire, I guess we both realized we were all we had left. Now he tries not to let me out of his sight.”

I smile back just as weakly, but I’m thinking about Azmos’ deals. The way it’s always seemed to me, the deaths he put off were set in stone, and yet if Gabriel survived, how many other people signed away their lives for a few years when they didn’t need to bargain for them? Or did the contract get voided if they didn’t get close enough to death? I make a mental note to ask Az. “Does that happen a lot?” I ask.

“Cats being jerks? All of the time.”

“No, I mean, does Az offer deals to people who don’t actually die?”

“How would I know? I’m just the vision guy. You’re his partner in crime.” The hair on my arms stands up. Assistant, sure, but partner?

“I can tell you that my visions aren’t set in stone,” he adds. “From what I’ve gathered, about half of them come true. But I don’t exactly have statistics. I scan obits, I read police blotters. It’s hard to be sure if that car wreck I see in my vision one day is the same one in the traffic report the next day, you know?”

I ignore the shiver that trails down my spine. My mom died in the car accident that nearly killed me. But she was at the end of her borrowed time and I wasn’t supposed to be in the car. It’s why I’m alive without a ticking clock hanging over me.

“Speaking of visions…” He hands me the envelope. “That’s two names.”

“You said three.”

“I know.” Gabriel swigs the rest of his coffee. “But I only had two visions. Well, two clear visions. I keep having this half-vision but it’s muddled and hazy.” His tone is grave and uneasy and I get the impression hazy visions are not normal. He sighs. “I can’t control them. So that’s what he gets.”

I put the envelope in my bag. “Okay,” I say, because I can’t exactly force the guy to have more visions.

I catch sight of something electric blue out of the corner of my eye and turn to see a woman walking out of the coffee shop. I only see her from the back: her bright blue hair cascades down her back, stopping short of the waist band of her leather pants. She wears a tight top with mesh sleeves. She’s a little taller than I am, but I see she’s also wearing heeled boots. It’s a look I’d love to try but Dad won’t let me dye my hair and I don’t own leather pants, fake or otherwise. The rocker-goth woman doesn’t really stand out here in Seattle, where dyed hair and leather pants are common, especially in this club-filled neighborhood, but something about her bothers me.

She’s wearing sunglasses even though it’s pitch black and rainy outside.

There are plenty of people who do that for mundane reasons, or so I tell myself as the door closes behind her. Maybe she’s legally blind. Maybe she just doesn’t want to be recognized.

I turn back and see Gabriel’s eyes tracking the woman as she walks by the window of the shop. “Do you know her?” I ask.

“Not really. She came over earlier, asked if I was the psychic she’d heard about and then wanted to hire me. But working for one demon is enough.”

I frown. “She’s a demon?” He nods. “And she wanted names?”

Gabriel’s eyes widen in realization. I turn back to the window but the woman is gone.

”Shit,” Gabriel says. “There are a thousand reasons demons might want the names of the soon-to-be dead. It didn’t occur to me she might share his magic. But if your teacher made a deal with another demon…” He stares out the window after the blue-haired demon frowning.

The hair on the back of my neck stands up. My heart hammers. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m out of my chair. “Be right back,” I say. I leave my messenger bag on the chair and race out of the coffee shop. The woman could be the demon who made a deal with Mrs. Crane.

But by the time I’m outside, she’s vanished into thin air. There’s no sign of her in any direction. I glance over at a guy at an outdoor table, sipping his coffee in a scarf and hat. “Did you see which way that blue-haired woman went?” He shakes his head and his hat falls off. He fumbles to get it back on but before he does, I notice he has pointy elf ears. My heart hammers, but there’s no time to dwell on it.

I swear and walk to the end of the block. No luck. Just for good measure, I go the other way, but she’s gone.

Back inside, I take a good look at the clientele. Some people look perfectly normal—perfectly human—but others don’t. A couple at a small table in the middle have green reptilian scales on the backs of their necks and hands, one woman at the yoga pants table has green cat eyes that I’m betting aren’t contacts, and I’m starting to suspect the barista’s blue lips aren’t colored with lipstick. I don’t know how many of these people are demons but clearly this is a popular demon hangout and I hadn’t even noticed.

Gabriel is nodding off at the table. I sit back down, blood thrumming in my ears, and take a shaky sip of my mocha to steady myself.

“Did she give you a name?” I ask. “Any contact info?” Gabriel shakes his head as he stifles another yawn. “Maybe you should get some sleep.”

“I don’t sleep well since the fire,” he says.

I can understand that.

“I’m sorry about your family,” I say. “I lost my mother a few years ago, but I can’t imagine what you went through.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it? One day you’re upset about all these little things that don’t matter and then suddenly the people you love are ripped out of the world and you wonder why you didn’t cherish every goddamn second you had.”