26 Elle To Demand
Elle
To Demand
I step into the same room as when we closed my first contract.
The edges drip eternally. Stalactites of red wax drip into stalagmites below, yet they don’t lose their original length.
Hundreds of small flames flicker on every wall.
Despite their light, the room’s gloom covers Mr. Pratterman in dark crimson.
Only his pale eyes are untouched by the red.
He sits at a writer’s desk made of cherrywood. It’s lacquered so smoothly that my figure reflects in it as I approach. Scrolls, ledgers, and inkpots litter the surface.
The first time I called on the Devil, he made this room a welcoming place of hibiscus tea and pleasantries. A trap of good manners for a desperate young woman. Now there’s only the cursed business of sacrifice between us in this forever-melting room beyond the world.
“Good evening, Elle. Or perhaps Il is more appropriate, given the attire?” His tone is dry as bone. He doesn’t look up from a large book. He scratches his chin with one long, dark fingernail. A fire crackles in a fireplace beside him. Why a fireplace when the whole room is burning?
He wanted ferocity last we met. I stride forward and stand behind the chair opposite him. I start with the boldest ask. What I don’t think possible to request, if only to know I tried to stop an innocent death.
“Pick anyone else.”
He taps his chin three times. The book isn’t a bound tome. It’s a piled collection of torn paper, black and curling at the edges. “Is something wrong with Miss Coleman?” False innocence coats his words.
“Look at me.” My voice pierces through the blood-tinged fog around us.
“When you’ve done something interesting, then I’ll—”
He wants a strong will, fine. I can’t threaten him physically. So how? He came searching for me today, before I reached for him. He needs me. I can use that. I’ve learned how to withhold.
“Choose me instead.” What could be worse? More personal? “Or I’ll end it myself. Plenty of knives in the kitchen downstairs.”
He doesn’t look up, but that won’t dissuade me.
Terror doesn’t require cruelty, only conviction.
I turn on my heel and stride back to the hall, a curtain between the dark dream and the earthly doorway.
I don’t pause. My foot is already halfway through the threshold when his clawlike hand grasps my arm and tugs me back.
I stumble, his chest against my back and his arms around me. His scent surrounds me. Memories of taste, of tongue.
“I could,” he says, soft and slithering at my ear. “But why would I? I already have you.”
He doesn’t let go. I grasp his arms, gripping them tight.
“Did you cheat?” I ask. “Did you send her?” One wrong word is the strand in our dark tapestry that may fray into chaos should I not catch it in time.
We stand in this impasse, squeezing each other like a pair of snakes.
Does this endless creature of darkness feel some form of closeness to me?
His breath is hot on my neck, nearly burning—but not quite.
My body has learned how to survive greater blazes.
“I’ve never lied to you,” he says slowly. “I didn’t cause Miss Coleman’s survival.”
I turn in his grasp. His hands spread across my back. We’re inches apart. Him, biblically damned. Me, lost sinner in need of more damnation.
“Then why stick with her?” I ask, my voice edged with fear. “She’s a stranger to me. Wouldn’t my death be more devastating? Isn’t that what you’re looking for? The most pain, the most efficiently? Or am I too tempting for you to lose?”
His eyes burn moonlight. There’s no smirk on his face.
Instead, a sneering scowl has spread across his gaunt features.
I know that feeling, that defense to cover the burden of fear.
I mirror him, but can he see it in me? Fire and desperation fight in my veins to control me.
I don’t want to die. Not only because of what surely awaits me on the other side of the knife.
To see Liney again, to hear her laugh, to cook for her again?
Those mundane moments are diamonds to me now.
Tears might’ve betrayed me if they didn’t sizzle in my ducts.
“There is no mortal who cannot become mine to claim, Eleanor. You are useful. Do not misunderstand that to mean necessary.”
I lean forward, until my nose nearly grazes his sharp chin. I’m taking too great a risk. I should’ve groveled. Yet he’s never responded to anything but a show of strength before.
“If I’m to survive and do what you ask, how do I get rid of the rot?”
His hands release from my back. He wants space, room to breathe and think.
But he’s never afforded the same to me. I bring my hands up to either side of his head, keeping him in place.
His jaw sizzles against my palms, but I keep hold.
I don’t show any hint that I know he could rip himself away from me.
“How much longer do I have?” I press. “Is it your influence or something else?”
“You can’t object to my nature, Eleanor,” he says, ignoring my questions. “Our nature. Did you not trick the girls yourself?”
“Because of you!” I shout in his face, baring my teeth. “None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you!”
He blinks at me. He doesn’t need to say it. Suffering is his design. It’s not him who became too comfortable. I did. My heartbeat quickens, fills my ears.
“What did you think would happen? You’d knock on my door and leave unscathed? That’s not how this works.” He grasps my arms and wrenches them away, dislodging me. “You can keep having a tantrum, or we can plan. Your choice.”
My choice. Everything is my choice. Between terror and sorrow, between violence and ruin. I can never blame him because there’s always, technically, a choice. Kill my sister’s heart or her soul.
He breathes in through his slim nose, glaring at me. I’ve rattled him, despite how much power he wields over me.
“There’s something different about you,” he mutters as he turns around, sitting again at his desk and motioning me to join him. “Something’s rubbed off on you.”
The Devil’s lapdog. Ever ready to bite. Rotting inside for lack of power. Contracted to a Prince of Hell to be rid of every other man who hurt me.
For all I despise it, I’ll fall to dust before I give this up.
“I’ve been in the city all day and not yet bathed,” I say instead, sitting.
He laughs. Rubs at his temples. I take the break in tension to peer at his desk. The papers look familiar, small-lined text in columns.
“No. An influence. There have been no others, have there?”
My heart clenches for a split second. Douglas. But he’s dead. He doesn’t count. As though he’s reading my thoughts, Mr. Pratterman’s eyes widen.
“The lighthouse keeper?” His grin returns. “I’d thought he was keeping scarce of you, given your…circumstances.”
“He hates me.” That’s as far as I’ll allow him into my ghost’s world.
“He’s good at that,” Pratterman mutters, a look crossing his face that I can’t parse. Does he have a history with Douglas? “Fascinating.”
“Can we focus?”
I hate the glint in his eye as he tosses the papers into the fire. Instead of curling further into black, they straighten, lighten. They lie on the red logs of the hearth for a moment, then disappear up the flue.
“Can you focus?” he repeats, no longer harsh.
Our roles constantly shift. A planet and its moon, always in his orbit but rarely in the same position.
“The rot is a surprise, I’ll admit. The response of a mind and body too weak to process my continued influence.
I’ll investigate any other similar cases from my archives.
I don’t foresee a cure. If anything, it’s your heart that needs fixing. ”
I can’t give up my own life. Nor can I convince him to change my target. The rot will surely consume me without his help. I must kill Bridget before Liney can disown me.
“Give me the strength I need to sacrifice her.”
The desk melts into a new form between us. The books and scrolls disappear. A display box full of knives emerges. Large, small, glinting, rusted, straight, wavy.
“First you choose a weapon. Then we imbue it.”
I scan the knives. Some are beautifully crafted while others are crumbling.
“Where are they from?”
“Across history. Each was used under contract, so they have the capacity for pure power.”
“Which should I pick?”
Mr. Pratterman shrugs, opening the case so I can have a closer look. “Whichever calls to you. It’s a vessel for what I can give.”
One of the blades stands out as soon as my gaze falls on it.
It’s nearly hidden against the dark velvet, like it doesn’t want to be found, but my hands crave to hold it.
I pick it up. It’s not flat like my kitchen knife but a long, slender cone with a thin needle point.
It’s heavier than my knife, dark with a carefully crafted hilt decorated in symbols I don’t recognize.
“This one,” I whisper. More to the knife than to him.
“Are you sure?”
More than anything. A potent mixture of longing and fear flows from my hand to my heart. “What is it?”
“A stiletto. Fifteenth century, created based on the misericord. Do you know what that is?”
I shake my head. The blade and hilt are entirely black, glinting gently in the firelight.
“It refers to the method for which it was originally used. A mercy strike. On a battlefield, a knight could use it to ensure a swift death for the suffering by piercing their heart.”
Mercy. It sticks in my mind as I turn the dagger over. If I’m to use anything to end this girl, it seems the right tool.
“It became more of an assassin’s tool than a knight’s over time. It can pierce through fabric and leather. Good for a quick, clean kill.”
Clean. What I couldn’t give Douglas.
“When I use this against Bridget, it will kill her? How will it overcome my”—I stumble on the word, humiliated I need to admit it—“weakness?”
“Give it to me.”
I hand the blade over carefully, but the edge pricks his finger. While he doesn’t physically react, a spot of dark red beads on the pad of his pale thumb. The Devil bleeds?