Chapter 17
Eden
“Iam victorious!”
The roar cuts through the auditory assault booming from the speakers, and a woman pushing a stroller three feet away nearly tips the thing over, veering left in terror.
He’s standing in front of the basketball booth, chest puffed out like he’s just conquered a small nation instead of a plywood stall manned by a reedy teenager.
“Impressive,” I mutter, the words getting lost in the fibers of my scarf. “You managed to put a ball through a hoop without committing a felony. Gold star for you.”
He pivots toward me, beaming, his two fangs proudly on display.
“Look at the prize, Eden!” He beams, and then he’s shoving a heap of pink fluff into my chest. “I have won a beast of burden!”
I’m forced to catch the synthetic nightmare, the cheap, greasy fur slipping against my frozen fingers.
“It’s a bear, Malachi,” I say, staring into the bear’s lifeless plastic eyes. “A teddy bear.”
“It is a trophy of my dexterity,” he corrects, already snatching up another ball before the teenage attendant—who’s vibrating with the urge to run for his life—can even think about asking for another two dollars.
A puff of white fog escapes my lips as I sigh, disappearing into the smog hanging over the fairground.
This whole thing was a catastrophic mistake.
We were supposed to be laying low. Blending.
Walking nicely through the city. But then Malachi found a crumpled flyer on a lamppost advertising the “City Winter Carnival: Thrills of a Lifetime and Fried Dough!” He almost giggled with excitement.
He saw ‘thrills.’ I saw a logistical nightmare squeezed into a concrete parking lot between two skyscrapers that look like giant, soot-stained tombstones.
But I suppose he’s promised not to slaughter anyone on-sight today. Or smash any phones. So that’s progress, right? The bar is in Hell. Literally.
He turns to the terrified kid behind the counter after dunking the second ball with the force of an earthquake. “Another beast! Give me the blue one. And be quick about it, boy, before the frost takes us all.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter as the kid scrambles to obey, his hands shaking so hard I’m surprised he doesn’t drop the prize.
Malachi takes the pink bear from me and shoves both of them under his arm with the grace of a brick.
Before I can so much as breathe, his free arm slams over my shoulders like a bar of lead, dragging me into the crush of the midway.
People in puffer jackets scatter like ants in a rainstorm as he plows a path through them.
I stumble under his hold, my boots catching on the thick black cables that writhe across the asphalt like slick, industrial eels.
And despite the fact that it’s a disguised demon in my dead boyfriend’s coat, the heat rolling off him is actually rather pleasant.
It burns through the wool of my coat, searing right down to my frozen skin, sending a shudder down my spine.
A cloud of hot, oily fumes hits my tongue as we pass a rattling generator, before the air shifts, wet with the scent of onions, stale beer, and boiling sugar. Then, he stops, and brings both synthetic monstrosities to his eye level, gaze drilling into the unblinking plastic buttons.
“We must designate them,” he announces with a decisive nod.
I wipe a smudge of generator soot from my tacky, cold cheek. “Designate? You mean name them? They’re just stuffed animals, Malachi.”
“Everything has a designation,” he snaps, looking genuinely insulted. “These are spoils of conquest. They require titles.”
The pink bear’s head lolls uselessly, the cheap stitching frays at the neck as he gives the thing a punishing shake.
“Look at this creature,” he sneers, a long finger digging into the bear’s plush gut. “Zero structural integrity. A flaccid spine. Yielding. And these eyes? Beady, soulless, and searching for a bribe. This one is The Tax Collector.” He shifts his gaze to the blue bear. “And this one… The Auditor.”
He waits for me to weigh in, expectation practically radiating off him.
“Sure. Why not,” I sigh, all semblance of logic having long gone out of the window.
“Excellent.” He beams, then rams the bears into the deep coat pockets, forcing the polyester bodies down with unnecessary violence until only their round, synthetic ears stick out.
“Now, we shall eat dough.” He hauls me toward a wooden shack of a stall bleeding orange light and the cloying scent of cardiac arrest.
“You,” he barks, slamming a hand onto the rickety counter. “Give us your finest circles of fried sin. The ones coated in the white dust of gluttony.”
The man behind the counter stops mid-flip. He’s a mountain of damp cotton and stained denim, sweating over a deep fryer that’s popping and hissing like a live wire.
“Skath?” The man’s voice is a gravelly rasp. “Is that you, you old bastard?”
Malachi’s head cocks to the side.
“It’s me—Valak! Shit, man, I haven’t seen you in months.” The man wipes his greasy hands on a rag and lets out a wet, wheezing laugh. “How are you holding up this side?”
“I am... functioning,” Malachi says, his voice taking on a stiff, formal edge.
Valak leans over the counter, his face splitting into a wide, leering grin. “Who’s the companion? She work for the Company?”
“No,” Malachi says quickly, pulling me tighter against his side, his grip bordering on painful. “She is a local. A resident. This is Barbara Winbeck. She is my companion for the duration of my… field work.”
Barbara? Who the fuck is Barbara Winbeck?
Valak nods appreciatively, giving me a greasy, slow-motion wink. “Alright, little lady. You watch yourself with Skath here. He’s a slippery one. Don’t let him borrow any money or any vital organs.”
He turns back to Malachi, propping his elbows on the counter. “So, how are the quarterlies going? I heard you moved over to the Environmental Team. Still hitting your quotas?”
A cold spike of panic drives through my chest.
Valak looks utterly, painfully normal—a heavyset human in a stained white tank top, dripping sweat into the vat.
But then the details start to bleed through.
His eyes track the movement of a passing fly with a predatory, high-speed twitch.
A glob of bubbling oil pops out of the fryer, landing square on his bare forearm, and he doesn’t even blink.
There’s a cockroach underneath that flesh, and he must think Malachi’s the Harvester.
Fuck.
I grip Malachi’s arm, my fingers digging into the woollen sleeve, silently begging him—screaming at him—not to start a scene.
Please do not kill this thing in front of the family eating corn dogs five feet away.
“The work is... consistent,” Malachi clips out, his jaw is so tight I can hear the bone creak. “The environment provides plenty of opportunities for... optimization.”
Valak snorts. “Optimization. Corporate-speak for making ‘em sigh louder, eh? Well, keep at it. Management likes initiative. Keeps the gears turning.”
“Indeed,” Malachi drawls, his focus entirely on the sizzling vat with pure hunger. “Now. Give me the fried circle. Heavy on the white dust.”
Valak grunts, fishing a golden, dripping disc out of the bubbling fat with a pair of rusted tongs.
As he flops the funnel cake onto a flimsy paper plate and buries it under a landslide of powdered sugar, I reach into my pocket, pull out a crumpled ten-dollar bill, and toss it across the sticky counter.
I don't want the change. I don't want to linger long enough for Valak to remember my face.
Malachi snatches up the warm paper plate and steers me away from the stand, back into the bustling crowd.
“Don’t worry,” he whispers. “There is no way for him to have effectively poisoned the dough. You are statistically unlikely to die.”
My eyes widen, looking from the sugary disc to his very serious face.
“Statistically unlikely?” I hiss. “Malachi what? Why would it be poisoned?”
“Low-level demons love giving mortals dysentery,” he says, looking down at the funnel cake. “However I am confident the thermal output of that fryer was sufficient to sterilize whatever biological agents he might have sneezed into the batter.”
“Sneezed into...” I choke out, my hand flying to my mouth. I wasn’t planning on touching it anyway, but now it looks even more like a biological weapon. “I... I think I’m going to pass.”
“Suit yourself,” he shrugs. Then he tears off a massive chunk and shoves it into his mouth, groaning immediately.
“Your loss,” he mumbles through a mouthful of grease and sugar. “It’s fucking delicious.”
As he attacks the pastry with the focused intensity of a starving wolf, oblivious to the powdered sugar dusting the lapels of Matthew’s coat, I look away, my gaze drifting over the kaleidoscope of the carnival.
It’s a gaudy, screaming mess of neon lights and peeling paint.
Around us, teenagers are shrieking on the Tilt-A-Whirl and parents are dragging sticky-faced toddlers toward the exit.
It’s lunchtime on a weekday.
I should be at work. I should be rotting in a beige cubicle, bathed in the migraine-hum of fluorescent lights, deleting passive-aggressive emails about quarterly projections.
I should be worrying about rent. About laundry.
About whether I remembered to defrost the chicken for dinner or if I’m just going to eat cereal over the sink again.
Instead, I’m standing next to an overflowing trash can at a county fair, watching a demon from Hell dissect a funnel cake while wearing the stolen skin of another demon he murdered in an alleyway last night.
“Observe,” he says suddenly.
“What?” I groan. “What is it now?”
He lifts a hand and points a sugar-dusted finger toward the end of the midway. It’s a dilapidated structure, painted black and covered in fake cobwebs, with a sign that reads THE CRYPT OF TERROR in dripping, red paint.
“A simulated haunting,” he announces, his eyes gleaming with a malicious, electric delight. “Shall we enter? Perhaps your Corpse-Boy’s—sorry, Matthew’s—ghost is hiding out in there.”
The air punches out of my lungs and I freeze, the smell of diesel fumes and deep-fried dough turning sour in my nose. I just stare at him.
He chuckles to himself. “Maybe I can give him his coat back if we find him.”
“That isn't funny,” I whisper, my voice trembling under the noise around us.
He dumps the empty paper plate into the trash, and before I can protest, his hand clamps around my wrist.
“Come along, baby girl,” he commands, dragging me toward the neon-lit entrance. “Let’s go see what you mortals consider 'scary.’”