Chapter 24
Ella gasps. “What did he say?” Al the pain demon wasn’t quite quiet enough.
“Ella, go inside right now,” I say.
She whimpers.
“You’re fine, it’s fine, sweetie. I just need a minute out here. Just give me a minute.”
“Hello, child,” Al says to her, wiggling his fingers. “You’re small but I like your hat.” His gruff, strange whisper-yell is alarming.
Ella blinks. “It’s a helmet,” she whispers.
“A helmet?” He seems to be trying the word out. “Ah. A helmet. A type of hat.”
“I think so,” agrees Ella nervously.
“A pink hat,” he guesses.
“Inside,” I say, louder, to Ella.
She scurries by us, leaving me with her skateboard.
“Did you say her father sent you for some reason?” Mom says to Al.
He nods rapidly, several times. “Yes. I had to confirm that it was Tempest Dunlap first.” He breathes in. “But I smell the same blood in her.”
“Oh good,” I say softly. “Mom, can you set Ella up in there with—whatever. Just make sure she’s okay?”
“Your mother, Carol Dunlap, doesn’t like him,” Al explains to me, again in a whisper. “I don’t like him, either.”
I must look startled. I certainly feel it.
He clarifies: “I don’t like the . . .” He uses a word that sounds split into two angular parts.
“Although I don’t really know him. They are almost never likable.
Well, I did like one, but he was still young.
He was extinguished while he was still young.
” He seems to be reminiscing, continuing to whisper.
“He angered one of the guardians of the empty.”
“The empty?” I don’t know why this is the particular question I ask.
“Oh. Uh. The nothing? The . . . fabric?” He screws up his mouth in a clownish way, like he’s doing an exaggerated impression of confusion. It takes me a second to realize he’s actually confused.
“Oh,” I say, wondering if he expects me to know the name of the metaphysical realm he’s referring to. “I’m not sure.”
He does the rapid nod.
Mom is lingering. I gesture for her to go inside. “Ella?” I remind her. She finally goes.
“You’re later than I expected,” I say to Al.
“True,” he admits. “I had to drive all the way here. And I had to learn how to drive.”
I glance at the tire intruding into our garden. He glances, too. He says, “It wasn’t easy. I was sometimes afraid.”
I nod slowly, maybe to emphasize my own undemonic nature.
“I’m not sure I need your, um, services,” I say with what I hope is the right amount of tact.
Al stares at me without blinking for an uncomfortable amount of time. Any amount of time would be uncomfortable.
“I mean, I have it under control,” I add. “And my sister will come home. She doesn’t exactly . . . believe in things like this.”
He waits, head cocked.
“Things like you,” I clarify.
“And things like you?” he asks.
I wince. “Okay, that’s fair.”
He reaches up and runs a finger down the length of his nose. He runs the finger back up again, taps the bridge.
“You feel no trust toward me,” he observes.
“No, no, it isn’t that.” I shift my weight to the other foot. I am coiled, I want to spring away, to launch myself up the steps and into the house and slam the door and wait for him to get back in his RV and pull out of the driveway.
“I was summoned,” he says patiently, as though maybe my puny human brain isn’t able to hold on to a relevant detail like this for long enough to make use of it.
“Right. I understand.” I mean, I don’t. “And what I’m trying to say is, I appreciate that, but I don’t want to trouble you— ”
“Hmm,” he hums. His eyes unlock from mine, flick past me, and I see he’s looking at a slouchy little group of boys across the street, either late high school or early college age, two of them on too-small scooters, hopping on and off the curb.
A girl, maybe fifteen, is walking toward them, and a few of the boys call at her.
She slows down, glancing nervously at the street, trying to decide whether she should cut across to avoid them.
“Maybe you want a demonstration,” murmurs Al. “You are doubting my ability.”
“What— ” I say, but he has lifted one hand, palm turned up, a gentle, almost casual gesture, and suddenly the most obvious boy, the loudest one at the front of the group on a scooter with red wheels, tumbles over backward as though lassoed and dragged from behind.
He screams. The other boys jerk away from him, forming an instantaneous circle around his flopping, spasming body.
He’s on his back, then his side, arching over the frame of his crash-landed scooter, his mouth gaping, his eyes a howl of wide-open pain.
The noise he’s making is high-pitched and animal—the wretched barking scream of a fox, except it goes on and on at its peak.
His fingers seem forced open, or maybe he’s holding his hands that way in a reflexive attempt to ward off his invisible attacker.
I grab Al’s shoulder. “Stop!”
He glances up at me—I’m a few inches taller—and his eyebrows quirk.
He has the thoughtful, pliable expression of someone who is interested in learning more.
His fingers fold inward, the boy falls limp, and his friends converge around him.
The girl scuttles past, clutching her bag to her side.
The whole episode has taken only seconds—maybe as few as five?
No one has even had time to pull out a phone and call for help.
I am vaguely aware of the boys arguing over whether to do it now.
Al’s victim has scrambled upright and seems to be telling his friends he’s fine.
I hear the word “aliens.” They stare around, eyes passing over a woman pushing a stroller, then us.
“That was only a little,” says Al. “Nothing was damaged. He did seem not very nice, though. As far as people go. But that isn’t a reason to extinguish someone.” I can’t tell if he’s reminding himself of this—if it’s some kind of rule—or if he’s reassuring me.
“That’s only a little,” I repeat numbly.
He furrows his brow at me, maybe concerned about my hearing. “I can do more.” He lifts his hand very slightly and I shove it down again. His skin is oddly cool.
“No! No, thanks. That was—fine.”
He touches the place where I touched him. “Human skin,” he says. “I always enjoy it. Like a cloud. A warm cloud.”
Excellent. Fantastic. This is going really well. Thanks, Dad.
“So,” he says, tugging one of his earlobes with appreciative focus, “you are convinced.” He smiles, takes a breath.
“The earth is moist here.” He looks at his RV, apprehension showing.
His expressions are all transparent, slightly too big.
“Maybe you would be able to bring me to the . . .” He utters a word I can’t understand, but I know he means Joel. “. . . in your own carriage?”
I’m going to have to handle this delicately.
I’m not a wimp about pain. I have certainly lived with a steady slow-torture level of it for a long time.
I have also been around it more than the average person, holding up laboring women as they endure extreme amounts, looking into their eyes and breathing with them and getting the bones in my fingers crunched as they clutch my hands through contractions and we make our vocalizations low and powerful together.
I am familiar with pain. But I have never seen it like that boy on the sidewalk.
I really, really don’t want to feel that, whatever it was.
And I also don’t want Joel to die that way.
Yes, he has to die. I already know that. I’ve already decided. Several times.
He has to die. But my way is much more civilized. Much more natural. Kinder, more humane.
“You’re clearly very good at, um, what you do,” I say.
“That was very impressive.” He looks at me with his lizard stare, unblinking and thoughtful.
“But I’d prefer to kill the—can we just call him an angel?
—myself. I started the . . . process.” An image of Joel, my hands spread on his bare chest, comes instantly to mind, and I wince.
“So I think I should be the one to finish it.”
Al waits, seeming to think I have more to say. It turns out I do.
“Anyway, he knows something. There’s information he has that I want. Before he dies.” I’m speaking a little too quickly.
“I can get the information for you,” offers Al neutrally. “It is usually very easy, with the right amount of pain. And humans are so delicate.”
“Right, of course,” I say, on the verge of stuttering. “I’m sure you can. But I still think I’d like to handle it. I’m sorry that you were summoned unnecessarily. Is there anything I can do to help you . . . go back?”
His chin drops. He’s dejected like a toddler at the thought.
“Oh. Well. It would be sad to leave so soon after arriving in this lovely body.” He strokes his knuckle hair proprietarily.
“But also, I am bound to protect you. So even if you have claimed the . . .” He stops himself halfway through the harsh-sounding, unpronounceable word and tries again: “Ang-gale as your own to extinguish, as is your right, I will stay until it is done.”
It’s my right! Good! “Angel,” I correct.
“An-gel.”
But the staying part. We both look at the RV.
“Inside is a very comfortable sleeping nest,” Al explains. “And a bowl for emptying the waste of the body. It gets carried away and I cannot see where it goes. Maybe it is destroyed in the belly of the carriage.”
“I think you should come inside to use our bathroom,” I say, resigned.
He brightens. “That would be nice to use,” he agrees, and it’s clear he doesn’t know what a bathroom is.
“And also, if you have anything for me to eat . . . I did stop along the way to catch some fish, but my body is already hungry again. The stomach doesn’t hold very much, unfortunately.
My last one was a little larger, although all human stomachs are too small. ”
I don’t try to imagine the proportions of a demon stomach.
* * *
It rains for a few hours that evening. I can hear Al downstairs on the couch with Mom, laughing uproariously—Al braying, Mom shrieking—as they watch something on her phone.
I’m hiding in my room. Dee has taken Ella out for dinner, thank God.
She seemed disconcerted by Al’s presence, but when I explained that he’d only be here briefly and that it was important to me to talk with him about Dick Face, she seemed unusually convinced.
She agreed almost instantly to let him stay.
You can never quite tell how people will react to things.
Or maybe I’m just losing my ability to discern how people should feel and act in general.
I haven’t exactly been within normal parameters myself for a while now.
It was a relief that Dee agreed so easily to Al, because I’m more than a little concerned that he might be motivated to use his pain skills on her if she decides to pose a problem.
I write to Dorothy, the fiftysomething woman in Chicago whose DP makes food taste like literal shit. Does she know any of the other groups? We need to get the word out to an accountant in New Hampshire and a painter in Ohio: They are in danger. I send some more messages—how can we reach them?
But no one knows who they are. Maybe Joel was lying.
He doesn’t seem like a liar. It’s his face. There’s that sweetness in it, a calm in the space between his features; you can’t quite convince yourself that this is a person who would wish anyone ill, let alone actively hurt someone.
But he has. And he will again. And I’m the only one who has any chance at all of stopping him. Except for a pain demon named Al who is discovering the explosive magic of YouTube in my living room. Al will stop Joel for good, if I just give him Joel’s address. If I just give him my okay.
I’m pacing. Actually, I’m walking in a small circle, which might be different from pacing. It certainly must look stupider and more futile.
Now music is blasting downstairs. It seems to be . . . a Beethoven sonata?
I hear Al cry, “You say it is only a single instrument? Playing like an entire symphony?” He seems to be overjoyed.
He declares, “This modern music is so full of courage! It is madness!” Just wait, Al, until you get to rock and roll.
Which Mom does shortly. I cover my ears.
I want to climb out my window. It would only take me a few minutes, sprinting, to get to Joel’s.
Maybe I can kidnap him. Maybe I can take him away with me to an island somewhere.
And. And what? First things first. I need to stop him from harming any more of my father’s children.
After that—okay, I don’t want to think past that.
I’ll just do that. Then we’ll talk, brain. Then we’ll talk.
And abruptly, I know what I need to do.