Chapter 3 Maybe This Isn’t So Awful
Maybe This Isn’t So Awful
I locked the door and leaned against it, straining to hear any sound of Blake returning. At one point, I heard distant sirens, but they didn’t come closer.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed before a knock made me jump out of my skin.
“It is I, Siyavash,” said the demon slayer whose name I’d neglected to ask.
I unlocked the door, noticing that my hands were shaking. I felt cold and clumsy.
Siyavash closed the door behind him and set down his lead box and a backpack. He took my chin in his hand and turned my face one way and then the other.
“Just shock, I think,” he said. “But I had better check your head. Sit down, please, Doctor Denby.”
“Reason,” I muttered.
“Reason?”
“My name. My friends call me Reas.”
“Ah. You may call me Siya, then. Reas.”
My name was softer in Siyavash’s accent. I liked it.
He drew me to the couch and settled me on the arm so he could examine my head.
I flinched, more at the unaccustomed contact than from pain. His fingers were gentle as they carded through my hair and probed my scalp.
“You don’t have to do that,” I whispered.
My cheeks felt warm. Adrenaline, I told myself.
A biological reaction to the danger that had just passed.
I dug my fingers into my thighs and tried to think about scary monsters instead of what my guest would be like in bed.
I really wanted a hug, which was even more unusual for me than wanting a fuck.
“I had to learn to patch myself up,” he explained. “You’re bruised, but I don’t think you have a concussion.”
I swallowed. “What about you? Any scratches? I have Bactine.”
He shook his head. “Not tonight, but I’ll keep it in mind. Lidocaine makes me loopy as fuck.”
I was probably imagining that sounding like an offer to get fucked up with me at some safer time.
“Right,” I said. “Aspirin? Tea? Or do you need to get after the… things? Daeva.” It was so weird talking about demons as if they were real. “Where do you live, anyway?”
“Turan.”
I thought I saw a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. “The mythical kingdom north of Iran? Cute. I assume you’re not heading back there tonight, so where are you staying while you’re in California?”
His smile widened. “I hadn’t made arrangements yet. I left Iran as soon as I heard about Bryant’s theft. I’m lucky to have found him so quickly.”
I dropped my eyes. “I still have lots of work to finish tonight. If you want, you can take my bed. I promise not to sneak out without telling you.”
He smiled. “A generous offer, but it is the winter solstice. It’s traditional to stay awake all night tonight. And I’m used to it. Demons don’t like sunshine.”
“Oh, right, I’ve read about the solstice holiday. Yalda, right? Bonfires and music to keep evil spirits away?”
“That’s right. At home, we’d keep the fire burning all night, but I don’t think that will work in your apartment.”
“No. The smoke alarm goes off if I make toast. You can put on some music, though, if you want.”
“It won’t interfere with your work?”
I felt a pleased flicker at his consideration. “No, I’m only grading. It doesn’t require that much concentration. I just need to get it done so I can upload the exam scores to the university’s records.”
He nodded and took out his phone, opening a music app and selecting something old and unfamiliar, featuring a chordophone of some type. A tanbur? An oud? I was better at identifying instruments in worn carvings than by sound. It had strings, anyway.
“This music is nice,” I said, wishing I had something intelligent to say. “Is there anything else you do for this holiday?”
He shrugged. “If I was at home, there’d be a lot of food. Especially red foods. And people would read poetry.”
Having food was not one of my strengths, but I got up to poke around the kitchenette.
It seemed like the least I could do. My total attempt at red foods amounted to Raspberry Zinger tea and stale strawberry Pop-Tarts.
I also had an apple. It was green, but I sliced it anyway.
I added the chocolate I had been saving and had something that looked like a snack tray for first-graders. Oh well.
I carried the food to the coffee table. I had been grading at the rickety breakfast table, but it was too small to hold both papers and plates, so, feeling self-conscious, I settled on the sofa next to the demon hunter.
I wished it were larger. It wasn’t quite a love seat, but there certainly wasn’t room for a third person between us.
A cat would fit, but I’d never had a pet.
My parents said there was no reason to keep animals in an urban context.
A cat or dog would have made tonight cozier…
In a burst of inspiration, I fetched my laptop and put a video of a bonfire on loop, setting the device on the far side of the table across from the couch. It was nice, making the space seem small and separate from the rest of my dreary unit.
I was immediately overcome with embarrassment at my gesture. How trite. I cringed.
But Siya was smiling at me.
I smiled back before I realized I was doing it.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’re kind.”
“It’s nothing,” I mumbled. “I mean, you did just save my life.”
“It’s my duty,” he replied. “That the evil entered your life is no fault of yours.”
I frowned. “It’s no fault of yours, either. Just because you’re a demon hunter doesn’t make you responsible for what they do.”
He went still, staring at me. “But I… no one has ever said this to me.”
“Well, they should,” I snapped, angry on his behalf. “Demons could be anywhere, right? You couldn’t possibly be everywhere at once to stop them.”
“No.” He sounded puzzled. “No, of course I can’t. I… hadn’t thought about it that way. Only that sometimes I fail, and others pay with their lives.”
I reached out and put a tentative hand on his wrist. “Bad things happen to good people every day, Siya. You can’t blame yourself.”
“Thank you, Reason.” His wide mouth crooked at one corner, perhaps at the aptness of my name to the conversation.
I felt myself smiling back and turned away to pour the tea.
Grading didn’t take so long, after all. I was in a mood both distracted and generous after my brush with death, and I skimmed the essays quickly, marking them less stringently than usual.
Happy holidays to my students, who were mostly getting half a grade higher than expected.
I held my red pen over the last exam. One of my few students who were actually aspiring to archaeology careers, but she was focusing on the American Southwest, so what did it matter if she’d confused a few ancient Babylonian motifs?
I gave her an A and put the cap back onto the pen.
Then I entered the scores into the university records application, waiting with bated breath until it decided that I formatted everything correctly and processed the grades.
And with that, the semester was over, and I could turn my attention to demons and assassins.
Siya was intent on his phone, poking the keys with one finger and frowning at the results. He wasn’t conventionally handsome—bone structure too sharp, and his nose had been broken at some point—but I liked looking at his face. I would sit on it, no question.
I mean hypothetically. If anyone asked.
“So,” I said. “Tell me more about the dew and your plans.”
He studied me over the rim of my one nice tea cup for guests. “Where do you want me to begin?”
There was so much, and I wanted to know everything at once. “The dew, I guess. You said they possess people but also eat them? Or are there two types?”
“More than two. Many more, probably. Ones that wear the bodies of the dead, ones that possess the living. Ancient texts show dew who come from their world in their own forms to torture or devour or corrupt humans. But you see, we only fight them. Our knowledge is based on observation, like hunters tracking wild animals, not like naturalists. We don’t question them or study them in laboratories.
Perhaps there are even entities who come from other worlds and do no harm, and therefore call no attention to themselves. ”
“How do you find them? How many of you are there? Demon hunters, I mean.”
“I don’t know. It’s only since the internet that we network with each other outside of our families. A retired demon slayer in Egypt was watching over the ancient sites near him, but Bryant went to the airport and Adah didn’t have a visa. I was available.”
He slumped back and swigged cold tea as if it were whiskey. “In my family, a few each generation. But there are other families and other monsters in other lands. There’s no end to evil, Reas; that’s what makes it so hard.”
He sounded so dejected that I reached out and put my hand over his.
After a minute, he said, “I don’t mean to complain.”
“This sounds like something anyone would be justified in complaining about,” I said. “How do you get picked for this duty?”
He inhaled through his nose, staring ahead.
“There is a time in life, when we are no longer small but not yet grown, I forget the English word. I was twelve. You start to feel different from the child you were, but not like all the other young people. You feel things they don’t feel, you hear things no one else hears.
An instinct that pulls you to the place where the dew come and warns you when they are near.
When we fight them, we are stronger and faster.
So we train and study, to be better fighters against evil… ”
He trailed off, sounding melancholy.
“That seems difficult and lonely,” I said.
“Yes.” He laughed softly. “Don’t mind me, Reas. I always go sad at holidays.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “And I don’t have as good a reason.”
“I notice,” he said, polite and oblique, “that you are here alone. Are you leaving soon for a celebration? Perhaps tomorrow?”