The Demon's Deadline (Demon's Assistant Book 1) (2 page)

As far as I can piece together from the reactions and what little I’ve managed to get Azmos to tell me, the envelopes are sort of demonic invoices for services rendered. Or past due notices. Bills that have come time to collect, and these people aren’t paying in cash. I’m the “Delivery Girl of the Damned.”

I knock on the door. I don’t hear the telltale signs of someone coming to answer, so I ring the doorbell. It’s an obnoxiously loud chime, but I finally hear footsteps, and then the door opens. The man is probably my dad’s age. He wears grease-stained sweatpants and his hairline is receding. His eyes are glassy and, at first, don’t really focus on me.

“Who are you?” he asks. His breath reeks of alcohol. He looks me up and down, trying to make sense of this stranger on his doorstep. I have no clue what I must look like to him. I’m too short to look threatening, just a curvy teenager of vaguely Italian descent wearing a black skirt, blue tights, and a puffy, black winter coat. Melissa calls my style “casual goth,” for the girl who doesn’t want to commit fully to the look. I have five piercings between my two ears and wear plenty of eyeliner. I probably look like I wandered away from a concert-in-progress. “Do I know you?” he finally asks, trying and failing to focus on my face.

“Special delivery,” I say and thrust the envelope at him. He takes it automatically. Most people do when you hand them something. He blinks at it.

“Do I need to sign?”

I shake my head. “Have a good night,” I say, because it seems rude to simply walk away. The door closes and I get halfway down to Cam’s car when the door flies back open.

“Hey! Come back here!” the man shouts. He doesn’t make an effort to chase me beyond the edge of his porch, but I run to the car anyway. Once I’m in and buckled, Cam throws it in reverse and we hit the road, leaving the man staring after us.

I wonder what he thinks I am. I wonder what, exactly, the letters say.

At a stoplight, Cam reaches over and squeezes my hand. I squeeze back. “Guess that ruined Friday night.”

“Nah. There’s still time for a crappy movie. And we can order a pizza.”

My boyfriend, the optimist. Sometimes, I think we’re exact opposites. Sometimes, I’m eternally grateful for that. If he weren’t driving, I’d kiss him. Instead, I just cling to his hand. Cam may get angry about the demon sending me off on deliveries, and he may worry about my safety, but at least he knows the truth.

When we get back to his place, I strip down to pajamas—my dad thinks I’m sleeping over at Melissa’s house—and then flop down on the sofa. Cam finishes ordering a pizza on his computer and joins me, sitting so close that I can feel his heat through our clothes. He puts an arm around my shoulders and kisses my cheek. “Pizza’ll be here in forty minutes. I got sausage and mushroom.” Cam hates mushrooms, but sometimes he’ll order them for me regardless, and just pick them off his slices.

“You’re the best,” I say.

“I know.” He pulls me onto his lap. His lips find mine and we don’t break apart until the pizza guy knocks on the door.

Dad’s in his room when I get back to our apartment the next morning. I get a can of cola out of the fridge and go into my room, making enough noise so that he’ll know I’m home.

I boot up my computer. Mel’s name shows she’s online, but before I can ping her with a message, Dad is in my doorway. He lightly knocks on the frame. When I see his face, my stomach does back-flips. He wears the same helpless look he wore at my mom’s funeral. His eyes are red and there are dark circles under them. A terrible part of me is glad I wasn’t here last night to hear him crying. Our apartment walls are like paper and other people’s crying makes me uncomfortable and itchy.

“Hey, kiddo. How was Mel’s?” Dad says.

“Great.” I hate lying to my dad. He’s generally pretty cool about the whole having-a-boyfriend thing and he really likes Cam, but he’s not
that
cool. He’d never let me stay over at Cam’s unsupervised. It’s against parental law or something. “What’s up?”

“Nonna’s not doing too well,” he says. He flops down on my daybed like standing is too hard under the weight of all this gravity. Nonna Sorrentino was diagnosed with liver cancer three months ago and it’s spreading fast. “I’m going to fly down there this afternoon.”

“Oh.” I don’t really know what to say. “I’m sorry.” As the words leave me, I realize I’ve been apologizing a lot lately.

“Me, too.” He sighs and taps his fingers on his jeans. “Aunt Mary is meeting me down there. I’d take you with me, but I don’t know how long I’ll need to stay. It depends on how things proceed.” His voice hitches in the middle of the word, ‘things.’

“I’ll be fine,” I promise. He travels a lot for his job anyway, so leaving me alone isn’t exactly new, but I know he worries. That’s the main reason I couldn’t tell him about Azmos, even if I wanted to. Well, that, and I’m pretty sure it might be my one-way ticket into a room with padded walls.

“I know you will.” He smiles. It’s weak, but sincere. “You’re a good kid.”

“Thanks,” I say, but I don’t feel “good.” Chaotic neutral, maybe, like in those role-playing games, but I don’t know if you can be under a demonic contract and still call yourself “good.” “Hug Nonna for me.”

“Of course.” He stands up and stretches. “My flight is at four, so I’m leaving soon. I’ll put some cash on the counter, just in case, but I just ordered groceries, so the kitchen’s stocked. Standard rules apply.”

“No parties. No sleepovers. Keep the place reasonably clean. Do my homework. Brush my teeth.”

Dad laughs and I feel the knot in my middle loosen a little.

Once he’s retreated to his room again, though, I’m simply relieved he isn’t asking me to go with him. We talked about this before, when it became clear there would be a day when things started to get really bad, and he’s said he doesn’t want me to have to remember Nonna as anything but vibrant and lively. Still, I can’t help but feel the relief at being excluded from this death-watch puts me firmly in the “bad” column. Cam would insist on going and being there for his family.

Dad gets into a cab and I wave as it pulls away. Then I walk three blocks to meet Melissa at her favorite cupcakery, Sparkle Sugar. It happens to be close to my apartment, which is good, because Melissa lives in West Seattle and has a car, which means it’s way easier for her to get to me than vice versa.

Sparkle Sugar is decorated like it’s the living room of a country bed and breakfast. Every surface is covered in floral prints, including the tabletops. The exception is the glass pastry case. Even the employees wear floral print aprons. Melissa told me once that the owner sews the aprons herself.

Melissa, in her Gothic Lolita finery, fits right in, like she’s part of the decor. She wears a homemade, sea-foam green maid’s uniform with a white, lacy apron. The dress is trimmed in white lace and accented with tiny silk flowers. The pale colors set off her dark skin. Her silky black hair is up in pigtails, tied with matching ribbons. She looks like she could star in a cool Japanese music video.

In black leggings and an oversized purple sweater, I feel highly out of place. I contrast too much with the atmosphere. Or maybe I’ve been internalizing Mrs. Stanton’s Art Class lectures about complementary colors. I’m like the anti-pastel.

“Hey,” I say. She already has a teacup and a cupcake in front of her. “What’d you get?”

Melissa takes off a pair of white gloves and sets them neatly on the table. “Carrot cake.”

“Carrots do not belong anywhere near cake,” I say, making a face.

At the counter, I order a vanilla soy latte and a Chocolate Explosion, which has a gooey chocolate center. The girl who makes my coffee constantly smiles. I smile back and wonder why she’s so happy. Maybe it’s all the sugar. If I worked in a place like this, I would be on a constant sugar buzz.

She hands me the cupcake on a pink plate and the coffee in a paper cup, and I join Mel. The cake is moist and delicious, as usual. It’s good enough to put up with the floral throw pillows on the window seats and the hideous yellow wallpaper. In English Class, we had to read a story about how yellow wallpaper drove a woman insane, and sitting here, I can totally see why.

I tell Mel about my dad and Nonna, and she offers her sympathies. I ask what she’d do.

“Are you kidding? Stay behind.” I must have given her a funny look, because she adds, “Look, I love my Nana and Papa, but when Grandma Costner was near the end, it was awful. She kept thinking I was my mom or my aunt, and then she kept asking to see Uncle Jack.” Melissa’s Uncle Jack had died very young in a robbery. “How do you keep telling someone their son is dead?” She shudders. “Death is unkind to everyone.” She bites her lip and looks down at her plate, like she regrets what she said.

Then we sit in awkward silence while she picks at her cake. I try to think of things to say, but I can’t think of anything except Azmos, and I can’t exactly talk to her about that.

My thoughts finally land on my mom, and I wonder if Mel’s thinking about her, too. Even now, years later, I notice people shy away from bringing her up, like mentioning her will suddenly remind me of whom I’ve lost. Like I could forget. Like it’s not a constant dull ache in my chest.

“So,” Mel says, looking determinedly out the window despite the fact that the only thing across the street is a condo development that’s been fenced off and unfinished for years. “I hear Cam’s throwing a little shindig tonight.”

“And?” I prompt, pretty sure I know what’s was coming.

“Can you please make sure Brian’s invited?” Brian is a friend of Cam’s whom Melissa has had a massive crush on since school started in September. She’d met him several times before, but the infatuation is new. She claims she’s going through a strong, silent-type phase, and Brian is definitely silent. He rarely says more than three words, unless forced by a teacher.

“Brian’s always invited,” I say. And he is, but he rarely makes it to any parties. I think he prefers his video games and solitude. When I’m the only sober person in a room full of Cam’s friends while they act like drunken idiots and play music I loathe, I totally understand why.

Melissa looks at me. “Have Cam ask really nicely. He likes Cam.”

“No, he
worships
Cam,” I say, taking a large bite of buttercream frosting. Along with being on the basketball team with Cam, Brian is a member of a million clubs, a straight-A student, and Senior Class Treasurer. The only person at school who’s even competition for valedictorian is Cameron Walters, Over-Achiever Extraordinaire. But given the way Brian seems to defer to Cam, I’m pretty sure he’d happily hand over any honors the school tried to thrust upon him. But he always seems miserable at parties, sitting alone while the rest of the guys get drunk, and lately he’s stopped coming all together. I can’t tell if he likes Mel because, besides Cam, I can’t tell if he likes anyone. He barely speaks.

“Please, just try?”

“I will,” I say. “But you have to promise to help me take control of the stereo.”

“Deal.”

I lift my latte to my lips and see the familiar flash of auburn spikes outside. I take a large swig as if the caffeine and sugar will chase Azmos away. When I put the cup down, the demon is still standing across the street, hands in his coat pockets, looking nonchalant. He grins when he catches my eye. I give him my best death glare.

“Crap, I have to go,” I say, picking up my phone like there’s some message calling me away.

“What?” Melissa asks, eyeing my unfinished cake. “What’s the rush?”

I sputter. I’ve gotten really good at lying my butt off, but in that moment, absolutely no excuse comes to mind. After a moment of floundering, I just point out the window. Azmos waves.

“Who’s he?”

“Cousin,” I say. “My cousin. He’s here to check on me while my dad’s in California.”

“Your dad just left. And that guy barely looks older than us.”

“Sicilian blood. We all look young,” I say, pulling on my coat. “See you tonight.”

“Right. Sure.”

I ignore the guilt that snakes its way through me. Melissa’s not an idiot, and I’ve pulled more vanishing acts in the past seven months than Houdini. She knows something’s up. But how do you tell your best friend that you’re only alive because after the accident that killed your mom, a demon offered you a deal and a part-time job in exchange for your life? I know how it sounds. Like maybe I hit my head harder in the accident than anyone realized and the brain damage is just now starting to manifest.

The accident was three years ago, but apparently, demons have a lot of rules. One rule is that mortals aren’t adults until they turn sixteen, so they can’t enter into a contract. I know Azmos broke that rule for me, keeping me alive before the contract came into effect, but I don’t know how or why. All I know is that, for years, I’d thought he was a hallucination born of trauma and medication. Then he showed up on my sixteenth birthday last March and shattered that illusion. It was terrifying, like a nightmare walking right into your reality.

But after spending most of the year delivering envelopes for him, he no longer freaks me out. He’s become a normal part of my life: The demon who shows up and hands me envelopes to deliver like it’s any other after-school job. The ancient part of my predator-versus-prey brain is always urging me to run in the opposite direction, but otherwise, I’m used to him. Anyhow, he’s never tried to hurt me, and he did save my life. His only threats are in the form of insistence that I do my job.