Chapter 19
nineteen
. . .
Present Day
Kit was an actual, alive human. He looked so young. When I saw him before as a demon or when he constructs himself in my mind, I suppose he looks the same, but his eyes…there is so much more behind his eyes now than then. His eyes then knew pain, sure, but not all the pain my Kit knows.
The most surprising part about his memory was that it didn’t seem to be that long ago. I figured Kit has been dead for hundreds of years, but seeing the technology scattered around his office, it can’t have been more than a decade ago.
Also, I didn’t acknowledge it before, but he’s handsome.
Really handsome. Like, those dark-blue eyes are to die for, and he has this little sharp white scar right above his lip that I wish I could trace with my finger.
His dark hair looks soft, long enough for me to run my fingers through, to grasp onto.
When he was at his computer, a stray strand had fallen over his forehead, and I found myself with a desire to brush it back.
I swallow. Enough of that.
“Kit…” I say softly, not knowing what else there is to say.
“No,” he says quickly. “I didn’t show you that for sympathy.”
I shake my head, wishing I had more than just his voice with me. “Then why?”
“Because I still remember. I still remember what it’s like to be human.
I’m not human anymore. I don’t want you to forget that, either, but I remember what it’s like.
I need you to know that so you can understand that I understand you want your freedom.
I get it. And you need to trust that I will give it back to you.
Lace, I don’t want to hurt you, but you need to give me a little time. I promise to keep you safe.”
I nod, resigned. What else can I say other than, Okay? I want to be free, he knows that, but he also needs me. I can keep plotting my escape. Perhaps Matthias will catch wind of the fact that I’ve been possessed again? He has the tools he needs to save me.
I say, “If you’re going to stay here, you have to give me a little control. Or at least promise to answer my questions. I have more than a few.”
“All right,” he says.
I get up and walk to my window. “Go to a mirror,” I direct.
He goes to my bathroom and locks eyes with me.
“I don’t understand how you died.”
“My heart stopped.”
“But why? You knew it was coming, down to the exact second.”
His eyes drop so we’re staring at the bathroom counter.
“When I was sixteen, I made a deal with a demon I met. That I called. I wanted something. The demon gave it to me with a ten-year timer that started counting down the second I signed the deal with my blood. When my time was up, my heart stopped. A reaper came to collect my soul and drop me in Hell.”
“Twenty-six is too young to die,” I state.
His focus finds mine in the mirror again. “Any age is too young to die.”
“You know what I mean, Kit. Or should I say, Christopher?”
“That’s not my name.”
“Yeah, sure, anymore, but it was. Kit is a nickname for Christopher.”
“It’s short for Tonkitgrol.”
“Which is literally the most ridiculous name I’ve ever heard.”
He scrubs the back of his neck. “It’s a video game character. A random side character from a game I liked as a teenager.”
I laugh, surprising myself. “Of course, it is. Fine, that makes it a bit better.” I purse my lips. He’s not going to like this question. “What was the deal?”
“That’s none of your business, babe.”
I hitch my jaw. “Fine. I’ll ask another question. When did you die?”
“When I was twenty-six.”
“I mean, how long ago?”
“Oh, uh, ten Earthly years, I guess.” He leans forward with his hands splayed on the bathroom countertop, head dropping so we’re gazing into the sink.
“It’s…time is hard. It’s a hard concept now.
If I didn’t die, I would be thirty-six. But I’ve lived hundreds of years being tortured in Hell.
” He shakes his head, peering back up to meet my eye. “I don’t even know how many hundreds.”
My heart aches. I desperately want to give him a hug. He looks like that’s all he needs, just a nice, long hug. Some real human contact. “God, I can’t…I can’t imagine. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was my choice. I knew what was coming.”
I rest my chin on my palm as I lean against the windowsill. “You’re surprisingly well-adjusted for all that torture.”
That cracks a smile out of him. A horrible thing to joke about, but sometimes that’s what’s needed, right? A little humor in the darkest of places.
“I know time is long and screwy, but how long have you been a demon? Because, I mean, you spent all those years getting tortured as a human soul. Was the demon thing inevitable, or a choice?”
“A bit of both, I guess. Not everyone gets turned into a demon, especially as quickly as I did. My torturer took a liking to me, I think for the reason I was in Hell in the first place. He became set on pressing all the right buttons to contort my soul in a very specific way, shredding it to bits and sewing it up again, Frankenstein-style. There came a point where he gave me an option: keep getting tortured or completely lose myself. I could hardly think straight at that point, myself already mostly lost. He offered me an out, and I took it.” He clicks his tongue. “I’ve been a demon for four years now.”
I cock my head to the side. “That Garficious guy said you haven’t been to Hell in four years. Did he mean Earth years or Hell years?”
“Earth years. I pretty much went through orientation, and as soon as they let me back up here, I stayed.”
“Why?”
“Hell is Hell, Lacy. I cannot go back there.”
Kit keeps saying he has no humanity left, but all I can see in him is the humanity grasped firmly inside. He’s not nearly as lost as he thinks he is. I wonder if there is a way to find him again. A way to find Christopher and hold on to him as tightly as I can.
But no, that’s impossible. Kit is a demon. Maybe one day he’ll have a body of his own again, but from what he has said, he’ll be so far gone into demonhood by then that any trace of my Kit will be long gone.
“I have one more question,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you from?”
He smiles softly. “Sacramento. Ever been?”
“No. I haven’t even been to California.”
“Well, I’m full of recommendations if you ever decide to go.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I drum my fingers on the glass, unsure of where to go from here. “Want to watch Friends?”