Servants of the Storm

  “Dovey, I need—”

  “You need to go inside and get some sleep, if you’re going to steal the show tomorrow night,” I say gently.

  “And fight demons?”

  I smile. I guess I’m glad he drank the red stuff. It’s so much easier when he sees what I see.

  “Yeah. And fight demons.”

  He nods sleepily and yawns. “This isn’t over.”

  “I know it’s not. But it is tonight. Go to bed, Joshua Baker.”

  He cups my face gently, and I blush and playfully shove him away. My feet are light on the steps as he unlocks his front door. When I stop on the walkway and look up, he’s gazing down at me from the doorway with the strangest look on his face.

  “Sleep, you,” I mouth, and he nods and mouths something else before closing the door. It might have been “Dovey,” or it might have been “Love you,” and my lips don’t know whether to smile or frown. My tummy is fluttering sweetly, and I feel like I’m right on the edge of something that’s been there all along, something I’ve managed to miss completely. But I blush and shake my head as I walk back down the sidewalk, even if I can’t make my face blank. It’s a bad time to wrestle with my feelings for Baker.

  I slide into the front seat of my car and stare straight ahead. I can feel Isaac smirking at me, and I mutter, “Drive.”

  “What did he need to . . . say?”

  I give him a drop dead stare and ask, “Is he going to remember this tomorrow?” As much as I hate to say it, for now it might be easier if he didn’t.

  “What’s he had today?”

  “Red stuff, clear stuff, chocolate cake, and more red stuff. Oh, and pills and a slushie at Riverfest.”

  Isaac whistles.

  “That’s a lot. But he seemed to come out of it fine after Riverfest. And there’s red stuff left, if you need it later. From what I know, it’ll depend on how much he wants to remember.”

  “Crap.”

  “You want to take that kiss back, huh?”

  My cheeks burn fiercely. “You want to drive the eff away from here?”

  He chuckles and gives me a dark, taunting look. “Scrappy-Doo’s not going to unmask mean ol’ Mr. Milligan as the Riverfest Phantom. He’s a sweet kid, but sweet won’t help you here. You can’t depend on him.”

  He pulls away from the curb, and my familiar neighborhood disappears in the darkness like something I’m leaving behind forever. My face heats up, but it’s not from my car’s faulty heat vents.

  “Baker’s been a lot more help than you have! He’ll do anything I ask.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s helpful. It means he’s stupid. And you don’t know everything I’ve done for you,” he snaps.

  It’s true. I keep forgetting that he was doing something very helpful for me right when I busted in and got my pinkie bitten off. So I change the subject.

  “So who’s the guy we’re going to see?”

  We’re back on Truman Parkway now. It’s always desolate here, and the streetlights give the road this postapocalyptic glow, like it’s lit by the fires of smoldering ruins after a nuclear war. Tree-tops rustle like low, round hills right beyond the concrete barrier, and it’s easy to forget that entire half-abandoned neighborhoods are far below us. As we ride to an uncertain future, people sleep in their beds or watch their reality TV as dark things like Grendel sniff around their windows. Some of the neighborhoods below were hit hard by Josephine, and there are holes in the tree canopy to mark her path. But Isaac’s presence makes it easier to be here somehow. Like he’s in control, while the rest of us are just spinning around. He makes me angry. But he also makes a lot of sense.

  He sighs deeply and shakes his head. “So the guy we’re going to see. The cambion.”

  “He’s that bad?”

  “His name’s Gavin Crane. Or he says it is. About seventy-five percent of what comes out of his mouth is lies. He’s completely worthless and lazy as hell, and he took the first deal the demons offered him. And he hates me.”

  “So why will he talk to us? And why should we believe anything he says?”

  He shoots me that grin, the one with a dimple, and says, “Because if he thinks you’re my girlfriend, he’ll want nothing better than to steal you away from me. And Kitty’s more powerful than his demon, so he’ll want to impress you. Which means he might actually tell you some true things, to reel you in.”

  “So I’m being used as a piece of meat?” I say.

  He gives a one-shoulder shrug. “To the demons you are a piece of meat.”

  I’m at a loss. It’s too weird. Like one of the soap operas my grandmother used to watch, a world of evil twins and dead people coming back to life and women too beautiful to be real. We’re going to see another demon baby, one that apparently revels in his dark side. And before I even know how to be in love for real, just when I think I’m ready to try, I have to fake it. With Isaac.

  “So what—I’m supposed to flirt with him and hope he’ll tell me all his secrets?”

  “He’s a straight-up bad guy. He does bad things. But he thinks he’s badder than he is. He might know more about dybbuk boxes and distal servants, about other ways to free them. His demon is more yappy than Kitty, apparently, and she thinks Crane is trustworthy enough to tell him secrets. But the bastard loves to brag.”

  I sigh and snuggle deeper into my dad’s old coat, breathing in the scent of his pipe and gunpowder and the slightest tang of eucalyptus. There are a couple of bullets rattling in the pocket; this is the coat he takes to the shooting range. I feel like if I could just talk to him, no pills and nothing but the truth, he would listen and believe me and help me. But I haven’t seen him in days. It’s just another reason I’m scared right now.

  Following Isaac to the club and going to Riverfest I can handle, I guess. But pretending to be the hot guy’s girlfriend while we talk to a bad guy is making me seriously uncomfortable. I’m not wearing makeup or cute-girl clothes. And I’ve never actually had a boyfriend. What just happened between Baker and me was my second kiss, which barely lasted longer than my first kiss, which occurred during a game of spin the bottle. I take off my knit hat and start unbraiding my pigtails and finger-combing my hair into place by the light of the passenger-side mirror.

  “What makes you think he’ll actually tell me anything? Won’t he just think I’m some normal, stupid girl you’re using?”

  I almost mention Gigi’s hex, but I’m keeping that tidbit in my pocket until I know where Isaac’s loyalties truly lie.

  When he glances back at me, his eyes are black. And determined.

  “How old are you?”

  “How does that matter?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Seventeen,” I say, feeling like I’m actually nine. “Why?”

  “You look older. You act older.”

  “I get that all the time. So?”

  “So I’ve been doing some research, and I think there’s a good reason that you’re caught up in the middle of this.”

  “I’m in this because of Carly,” I say firmly.

  “No,” he shoots back. “I think she’s in it because of you.”

  I breathe out through my nose and glare at him like a bull about to charge.

  “You need to pull over.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m thinking about punching you.”

  He chuckles softly, and my car coasts to the side of the highway. He leaves it running with the heat on full blast and the lights on, and mist glimmers in the high beams. He stares at me, eyes pitch black. Waiting.

  “You think Carly died because of me?” I ask.

  Each word is soft and cold and hard, a warning.

  “Not because of you. Because of what I think you are.”

  I want to call forth my mother’s stare of death, or Carly’s sass, but all the acting strips away. All that’s left is me.

  “What I am. And what’s that? Crazy?”

  “No. A cambion.”

 
He says it like it’s that simple, but my world turns upside down. I can’t breathe again, and I feel that thick, murky swamp water rise in my throat, like I’m choking in my dreams. My pinkie finger pulses and burns like it’s still there, and I ache to scratch it. But I won’t let him see me do that, scrabble for what’s gone.

  “No way. I’m not a cambion. I can’t be. I’m totally normal, and I look like both my parents. Baby pictures in the hospital and everything. And I’m not evil.”

  “So maybe you were in the hospital awhile with breathing problems as a baby. Maybe somebody slipped your parents the clear stuff to make them forget about being seduced by demons. It would have been simple enough for a succubus to go to your father and—”

  “Don’t you even go there!”

  “I’m just saying it’s possible.”

  “It’s not!”

  He sighs and gives me a dark, dangerous stare. “Remember who you’re talking to, Dovey.”

  All I can do is shake my head.

  He talks fast, like he has to get it all out before I bust his lip open. “You’re still half your mom and half your dad. They just had some unfortunate succubus and incubus interference. It happens more than you’d guess. Most cambions find out when they’re seventeen or so, but if the demons that helped make you die or lose track of you, you can slip through the cracks. So maybe that’s why you can see through so much of the illusion, how you saw the distal servant at Paper Moon and the photos on the photo board. How you got into Charnel House. How you saw what was really in Carly’s casket. Why you remember things you shouldn’t be able to and why you never do what I tell you to, even when I’m trying my damnedest to influence you.”

  He’s kind of excited now, which I guess is understandable. He’s not quite so alone if I’m a half-evil freak like him. But he’s forgetting how insulting it is. He’s forgetting the implications.

  “So you’re saying I’m going to go bad when I turn twenty-one?”

  “Maybe earlier.” He pauses, stretches his hands out to the heater. Stares at me like I’m a gun he might or might not use, like a tool that’s just waiting there, but one that could also explode in his face. “Anybody can go bad. You just might have a predisposition. Do I seem evil to you?”

  “Sometimes,” I grumble, but my heart’s not in it anymore.

  The things he’s saying—they add up too much. But I’m not about to stop and think about it. I’m on a mission. I’m in the thick of things. And the reasons behind what I’m seeing don’t matter. What’s important is the same thing that has always been important: saving Carly.

  “Get back on the road and take me to your evil twin. Some drunk dumbass is going to hit us, parked like this. My car’s bigger than the shoulder.”

  As he drives, our silence draws out into a sort of calm. A quiet acceptance of maybes.

  Maybe something did happen when I was a baby. Maybe I was switched in the hospital or had weird breathing problems that they just don’t talk about. Maybe there is a reason I keep seeing the things I’m seeing. Maybe there’s a reason Baker will do anything I say and Mrs. Rosewater gave me Tamika’s role so easily. Maybe there’s a reason it was so simple for me to sweet-talk my mom, to lie, to face Josephine’s gator party and live.

  Maybe I was already starting to guess it for myself.

  And maybe I can get more information out of this Gavin Crane guy if I believe it.

  My will has always been a bitch of a thing, but now it’s starting to harden up. I promised Carly years ago that I would always be there for her. This far I’ve been flying by my ass, scrabbling to keep up. Maybe if I have the magic and persuasiveness and devil’s luck of a cambion, I’ll have a better shot at actually helping her. Like acting, that’s one more power in my toolbox, and I’ll use it if I have to. To save Carly, and to save myself. As much as I need to find her dybbuk box, I need to find a way to kill Kitty and get my own distal back. I slip off my mittens and hold my pinkie up to the light. How can a little chunk of finger mean so much?

  “So how’d Kitty know I was a cambion?”

  He looks uncomfortable and shifts in his seat. “See, that’s the thing. Maybe she doesn’t know for sure. It might just be a good guess on her part. From what I understand, demons only know about the cambions they personally helped to make, and they keep it very secret so other demons can’t steal them away. All I can figure is that you didn’t belong to Kitty, that she didn’t help make you. When she took your distal, she might have been making a move on another demon’s property, using Carly to draw you out. Or she might have just been putting your distal away to make sure you’re a distal servant when you die, just in case. Or she might’ve just done it to piss me off.”

  “But at the club. She said you were supposed to dose me. So she knew I was seeing things.”

  He shakes his head, angry. “Just because she helped make me doesn’t mean I know what she’s thinking or why she does what she does, okay? I try to stay as far away from her shit as I can. Once I’m twenty-one, I might not have much choice.”

  Isaac takes a road I’ve never been on, out into the country. We pass a few trailer parks, including some FEMA trailers left over from after Josephine. My family lived in one in our driveway for a short while; pretty much everyone did, while we argued with the insurance companies and made our houses livable again. But I hated the plasticky smell and the closeness and the way that every gust of wind felt like it was going to rip the top off like a can of cat food and destroy everything all over again. But the trailers I’m looking at now are more than temporary shelter. They have clotheslines and dog runs attached to them. These trailers have become homes.

  “Demons not treating Gavin so well?” I ask.

  “Not so much, no.” Isaac shakes his head and chuckles wryly. “They don’t have to, no matter what they promise when they’re whispering into your ear. If you don’t demand a contract, you’re bound to get screwed.” I want to ask him why he sounds so bitter, but he’s pissed, and we’re here.

  He pulls up outside a FEMA trailer attached to a single-wide by a duct-taped awning. A beat-up car even older than mine squats out front next to some rusty truck corpses on cinder blocks, and dogs start barking inside. The door bangs open, and two pit bulls scramble down the stairs and fly at the car, growling and snarling. I lock the door and scoot away from the window, remembering all too well what Grendel did to his fence and the opossum.

  And of course I’ve scrambled right into the center console. And Isaac. My back is pressed up against his warm side, and he leans close to whisper into my ear, his voice a sinuous and seductive purr.

  “You’ve got to act like a cambion. Don’t show fear. Be cocky. Show him your pinkie like you’re proud of it. And drool all over me.”

  “What about the dogs?” I say, panicking a little. But it’s not the dogs freaking me out.

  “Ignore them,” he breathes. His arms go around me, and he nuzzles my neck. “He’s watching from the doorway. Quit freaking out and start acting, if you want this to work. I know you can do it.”

  He kisses me behind my ear, and I almost swallow my tongue and melt into the seat. I’m aware of every cell in my body, every nerve, and for just a second I forget my pinkie and the demons and the fact that none of this is real. I forget that we’re just pretending. I forget that Baker just kissed me, sweetly and with years of open, honest longing. None of that matters. Suddenly I am completely on fire.

  “Relax. I’m not that scary. Promise,” Isaac murmurs.

  I’m frozen and stiff and swooning and completely unaccustomed to having hot guys breathing in my ear, and he’s wrong. He is that scary. Whether it’s real or not, I’m feelings things I’ve never, ever felt before. Baker’s kiss was warmth and comfort and possibility, but Isaac’s touch is like lightning, hot and unexpected and far too exciting for me to pretend anything. I can’t even control my breathing. But I need to get myself together.

  I am strong, and I am an actress, and maybe I am a cambion. Whether
or not it’s true, I’ve damn well got to act like it right now if I want to figure out how to save Carly. And myself. And maybe Isaac, if he behaves himself.

  Not that I really want him to, just now.

  I take a deep breath and relax back into him, letting my head fall back on his shoulder. I think about Jasmine, watching her slobber all over Logan backstage. I can do this.

  “I love it when you do that,” I say, turning my head to whisper into his ear, and I’m gratified to hear his breathing speed up too.

  “Do you now?” he murmurs.

  He tilts my chin up just the slightest bit, and his other hand strokes my throat. I can barely breathe, and I feel open and hungry and soft. I look up over my shoulder, and our eyes meet, and I get lost in the blackness and want to wander there forever like it’s a forest of dark trees with velvet leaves where wolves hide, and there’s longing and wanting and kinship, and then his mouth seals over mine softly, and it’s a real kiss after all.

  I close my eyes and turn to find a better angle, and his hand cups my jaw, and his lips are the softest thing ever. His other hand finds my hand, and our fingers entwine like our missing pinkies are yearning for each other, and it feels like we’re a solid circle, a complete connection. It’s electric and dark and deep all at once, and when his tongue parts my lips, I meet him willingly.

  Something slams into the window glass behind his head, and we startle apart. One of the dogs is biting at the glass, its teeth scraping as it slobbers. I try to retreat to the passenger side, and Isaac pulls me back against him. But the moment is lost; I feel awkward and ashamed and silly now, and guilty, like I’m betraying Baker, even though I didn’t make him any promises.

  Isaac is too good an actor. And I forgot and let him get to me.

  “It’s just a dog,” he says.