Chapter 4 #2
It was only now sinking in that Tim was dead.
They hadn’t been close. He wore a little too much aftershave, and he used the phrase “low-hanging fruit” way too much, and he’d seemed to lack any spine at all.
She was pretty sure Brad kept him around as his pet yes-man.
But he hadn’t been a bad guy, and he’d gotten her a Starbucks gift card on her last birthday.
She didn’t think he’d been particularly passionate about HR solutions, either, but she knew he had a lot of alimony and he’d clearly been doing his best. He deserved a better rest than giving himself a heart attack at work after hours.
“It’s weird,” said Lucareoth, who kept running a hand through his hair in a way that suggested that he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
She wondered if he could feel the hair himself, or if he felt the scales and horns but saw the hair in reflection in the window.
Either way, it was bothering him. “But that sounds really familiar.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “My life is familiar.”
“Talking to strangers, pretending what you’re selling is good, being behind quota, boss getting mad.” He snorted. “It’s not so different, really.”
“It’s totally different,” she said flatly.
“Is it, really?” he asked. “If you were friends with someone, would you call them about your thing?”
Well, no. “It’s just their company’s money, not their soul.” You could talk about selling souls on the subway. No one would guess it was literal. Hell, anyone listening to two junior salespeople complaining would probably say they’d both already sold their own souls.
Shit. Maybe they did have something in common.
She had to remind herself that this… person…
next to her would have taken Tim’s soul, if he hadn’t died.
He would have taken hers as well, and Vijay’s, and the panhandler’s.
And he’d have been happy then, because he was finally hitting his quota.
She shouldn’t be identifying with him. Even if she felt bad for him. Even if he was cute.
Another one of the teenagers danced past her and part of her—the part of her that was less worried about a black eye—was impressed at their breakdancing skills.
Spinning on your head while the train shifted around a bend was a feat worthy of admiration.
She would never admit it because it would make her look like a tourist, but she kind of loved Showtime.
Instead, she stared resolutely at the floor, determined not to break the code and encourage them.
Or give them more money she couldn’t afford.
“You want to watch the dancers, but you don’t want anyone to know you want to watch the dancers, and it doesn’t make sense,” Lucareoth observed.
How did he know that? She wanted to demand answers, but she couldn’t do that here.
She glared at him while the dancers started moving up and down the car with a hat out for tips.
He seemed to get the message to stay on less magical topics. He said, “I wish I just could do your part.”
“What do you mean? It’s the worst part,” she said.
“Marketing does all the creative stuff to get people’s attention, and then I have to do all the stressful boring parts that make people hang up on me and curse me out.
Then, whenever I succeed at all, Sales gets all the credit and most of the money. It sucks!”
“No, it’s way easier. I wish all I had to do was find the people who want to make a Deal and then it became someone else’s problem,” Lucareoth said.
“Figuring out what people want is the fun part. But then you have to negotiate, and they always have ridiculous ideas of what they’re worth, and they always try to wriggle out of things, and then most of the time they freak out and back out at the last second, and then you have nothing. ”
“Or die,” Morgan pointed out.
“Or die,” he agreed.
They were pulling into a station. One of the kids started a final tumbling pass down the full length of the now nearly empty car.
“Does that happen often? Someone dying?”
“No!” he said, looking appalled while tucking in his knees like a good New Yorker.
“It’s never happened before! It never even occurred to me that it could happen!
I’m a junior agent. I don’t get sent the life-and-death scenarios.
I don’t even know which form you’re supposed to fill out for this situation! ”
The panhandler stepped toward the door as the train slowed. Somewhere on the train, the conductor pulled the brakes a little too hard and the car shuddered to a stop. The dancer, already in the air as the panhandler staggered, slammed into him. They both went down in a tangled heap.
“Oh my god, are you OK?” Morgan shot to her feet.
The panhandler groaned as the teenagers scrambled off the train, babbling apologies. Morgan crouched down next to him as he sat up. “Do you want me to call someone?”
“No, no,” he waved her off, holding his head. Of course, she wouldn’t want an ambulance in his place. Neither of them could afford that.
“Do you want… uh… I’ve got some painkillers in my purse?
” she fumbled through the random detritus in her bag.
Could he get some ice somewhere? No one was going to give him ice.
She looked at her nearly empty wallet and then pressed her last twenty dollar bill into his hands, feeling obscurely guilty she couldn’t do more.
“Thanks, lady,” he said, giving her a crooked grin as they pulled into the stop before Morgan’s.
Should she stay with him? Convince him to get off the train with her at the next stop?
He pulled himself to his feet, and took the opportunity to grab her ass on the way up. As she gaped, outraged, he lurched off the train. The doors closed in her face.
She turned back to Lucareoth, fuming. The only person left in the car was an old woman snoozing in the far corner and the teenager who hadn’t even looked up.
“So, if you want to punch him, why was I not allowed to try to buy his soul?” Lucareoth asked, somehow aware that she was willing to talk.
“I didn’t say I wanted to punch him,” she protested. She also hadn’t said that she liked watching the dancers. She lowered her voice. “Are you reading my mind?’
“No, just your desires.”
The train pulled into her station and she nearly dragged him off after her.
She’d spent relatively little time thinking about the wisdom of bringing a demon home, and now implications started to hit.
They weren’t like vampires—she was pretty sure they didn’t need a specific invitation once they were on the plane.
But they weren’t supposed to be wandering around this plane at all.
If you were stupid enough to summon one, you kept them safely in their little warding circle until you’d worked out your Deal, and then you dismissed them back to their realm.
She’d been told the importance of never letting anything break the circle, but not what would happen.
She’d had the impression that it would involve being ripped limb from limb, and then the demon painting the walls with her blood or drinking it or whatever, and then it going on to do the same to as many neighboring humans as possible until it took over the world or was stopped.
She couldn’t guarantee that Lucareoth wasn’t going to try to take over the world, but it would be a fairly long con, since he was passing up opportunity after opportunity for blood painting or drinking.
How could you tell with someone who read your every desire, though? “Wait. That’s how you knew what my mother was doing.”
“Well, yeah. I can tell what everyone wants,” he said.
He followed her up the stairs into the Washington Heights night, dodging a woman with a baby in an umbrella stroller.
“I can get down to the really deep-seated stuff if someone’s actively negotiating.
But if I’m passing by, it’s only what they want at the top of their mind.
Most of the train wanted dinner and beer and more comfortable shoes.
I liked the dancing kids, they wanted money, but they also wanted to move their bodies just because they enjoy being good at it.
I’ve never felt anything like that before.
Didn’t love how everyone else wanted them to stop, though.
I have to say, I’m not really enjoying this plane. You all want so much.”
“And your people don’t?”
He looked around and she wondered what he was seeing.
A pizza joint, a bodega, a shiny new condo building spangled with ads for luxury apartments, a darkened clothing store with signs promising to help people keep up with a TikTok trend.
People flirting on corners with music blasting, a late-night paleta vendor trying to make a last sale.
“It’s not safe to let yourself want much when everyone can instantly tell.
How often do you let yourself talk about what you truly want with your coworkers? ”
Never. She wasn’t an idiot. They got a few looks as they walked, mostly because his suit screamed “new resident.” The neighborhood was shifting, with the older, mostly Dominican, residents pushed northwards as more expensive buildings moved in.
She patronized local businesses when she could and never called the cops and generally tried to be a good neighbor for a white girl from outside the city.
But she was terribly aware of being part of the problem, even as she knew she couldn’t have afforded to live any farther south.
He eyed her speculatively. “But you seem more to want to not do or have things, rather than wanting to do or have things. Is that normal for humans?”
“Gee, thanks.” She sped up a little. She already got enough crap from people seeing what she didn’t do or have; she didn’t need someone observing her pathetic lack of internal ambition as well.
He hurried to catch up. “I meant—it’s kind of restful. Never mind.”