Demon High (24 page)

I pressed my lips together.

“Too bad.” He cocked his head left then right. “Well, your new guests are ready for their visit, but this circle is a bit confining. Care to enlarge it?”

I suddenly realized Kobal had messed up. His current circle was apparently too small for him to call the other demons into, and he hadn’t forced me to agree to enlarge it before we struck our deal. He hadn’t set a deadline for that part of the deal at all. I picked up the candle and knife.

“Lucinda,” he warned.

I lifted my gaze, but kept my head lowered.

“Don’t think you can figure a way out of this. Sooner or later, I’ll call in my mark.” He rounded his lips and blew. A chill wind shot across my neck, into my neck, like a spike of ice had been driven down my spine. My head jerked back and I gasped.

“And the mark is only a mark. Don’t forget what it symbolizes. Unless you fulfill your part of the deal, your soul is mine.”

“But—” I suddenly realized I was the one who had been sloppy. I’d agreed to call him every day, with no limit on time. If I died on a day when I hadn’t called him yet….

“Your soul will be mine.”

I chopped the end off of the candle.

Walking through the factory after I released Kobal was a bit of a letdown. It was nothing but a dilapidated old building—no maze, no secret passages. I started to feel as if nothing I’d experienced that day had been real, as if I’d been slipped some kind of mickey and hallucinated everything.

Until we reached the main floor and found the first boy. He was slumped over in the middle of the room, exposed. And he was very much dead.

“What should we do?” I glanced at the machine that sat a few feet away. Rope still hung from it. I walked over and tugged on a frayed end. “Holmes used illusion to mask the machine and make us think we were in a maze. Why couldn’t he have faked this too?”

Charles was passed out. Oscar had carried him down the stairs. Brittany’s cousin, Joshua, was walking, supported in part by Brittany but still walking. Thankfully, Brittany had recovered quickly after Holmes had disappeared which made me guess that at least part of Holmes torture
had
been illusion.

Joshua took a few wobbling steps toward his dead friend. Brittany tried to stop him, but he waved her away. After giving him a worried look, she left him to deal with his grief alone. She walked to a corner and stared up at a camera. “This was real. Which means there are recordings.”

“Recordings? Should we destroy them?” I asked.

She turned toward me. She’d used her sleeve to scrub off a lot of her make-up, but she was still far from the put-together Brittany I was used to. “The police are going to want an explanation for this.” She gestured to where her cousin knelt next to his dead friend.

Joshua looked up. “We were just having some fun,” he muttered.

“I know.” It was all I could think to say.

He focused on me, his face drawn. “Just some fun. It wasn’t supposed to be real. You didn’t tell us it was real.” Then he stood and staggered toward the door.

I let him go. Nellie was out there. As much as I couldn’t believe I was thinking it, some time with her would be good for him.

Brittany watched him, torment obvious on her face, but once he was gone, she pulled herself back together.

“What are we telling the police?”

I didn’t have an answer.

“Were you planning on trying to cover this up?” She ran a hand through her hair. “It would be touchy. Joshua and Charles can’t just show back up at class without Brad. People are going to want to know what happened. And I don’t think we can tell people the truth, do you?” She was swaying on her feet. She was exhausted. We all were, but she was Brittany. She was going to fix this. I would probably have just gone home and let the police think what they wanted. In other words, run.

I glanced at Charles. Nellie’s magic still had a hold on him. He hadn’t made a peep the entire trip down the stairs. “We need to get him to a hospital.” I was talking to myself more than Brittany, reminding myself how complicated the mess was.

“We can call an ambulance, but we need a story, and we need the recordings.”

Confused, I looked at her.

“We’re on those recordings. Holmes world—” She held up her hands. “—is on those recordings.”

“So we destroy them?”

She shrugged. “Or doctor them. We can fix them to tell whatever story we need them to tell.”

While Brittany went back upstairs to get whatever records the camera had stored, Oscar, Nellie and I loaded Angie and the boys into her car. Brittany was back by the time we were through. After a very short talk, we agreed Nellie and Brittany should take the three to the hospital. They both had abilities when it came to getting people to believe whatever they wanted them to believe.

Their story would be that they went into the factory as part of a Halloween prank and found Angie and the boys. They’d had no phone—Brittany gave me hers–and decided to drive everyone to the hospital by themselves. It was a short drive, but it would give Oscar and me time to get away.

He and I walked to a cafe we’d seen not too far away. When Brittany and Nellie were done, they’d meet us here. I had the recording; at least Brittany said I did. It was on some kind of external hard drive. Hopefully, the police would assume the security system had never been fully set up and used. But if something bad happened, like they arrested someone for Holmes’ crimes, we’d have it. We wouldn’t let someone else pay for what Holmes had done. We’d edit out our part and send it in anonymously, assuming there was something on the recording that would clearly show Holmes was the villain.

Sitting at the cafe gave Oscar and me a chance to talk, not that I thought either of us really wanted that chance. Based on the way the waitress looked at me when we wandered in, I knew I looked rough, and even Oscar looked more worn than usual. And it was impossible for me to look a tenth as bad as I felt.

I’d made a deal with a demon, and odds were it would cost me my soul. Made it hard to chit-chat over sodas.

Still, I swilled down half of mine within seconds of the waitress leaving. I needed caffeine.

I pulled my straw in and out of my cup and eyed Oscar. “You’re under Kobal’s control.”

He shrugged. “That’s the way it works. He’s a demon lord.”

I twisted my lips to the side. “It’s more than that, isn’t it?”

He placed his hands on the tabletop and stared at me. There were shadows under his eyes, but I didn’t think he needed sleep. Maybe just being on this side of the veil was wearing him down.

“Why do you want to know? Are you planning for your future?” he asked.

I jabbed my straw into my drink, then pulled it out and did it again.

“That wasn’t very bright, what you did back there. But you know that.” He turned his head and watched an older couple pay for their sandwiches and leave.

“I’m sorry. I was under some pressure.” I shoved an ice cube under and held it there.

He looked back at me. His gaze was dark and direct, more piercing than I had ever seen it. “He’s going to own you.”

My hand paused over my cup. “Are you mad?”

He blinked.

I dropped my straw. “Because if you were, that would mean you cared.”

His gaze darted down and his hands tightened around his cup.

I leaned forward. “Do you care, Oscar?” I pushed my hand closer to his, but didn’t touch him.

“I can’t.” He flattened his palm on the table.

I slid my fingers closer until they edged up over the top of his hand. He stared at them. I wanted him to turn his hand over, wrap his fingers around mine and tell me that yes, he did care. That somehow everything had changed. I wanted something good to come of my mistakes.

I wanted to save Oscar. He wasn’t a demon, not like Nellie and certainly not like Holmes. He didn’t deserve whatever he’d been surviving back “home” as the demons termed hell.

That’s why I didn’t ask Kobal to take him back. Because Oscar deserved more.

Even as I thought this, a piece of me whispered,
liar
. It wasn’t just about Oscar; it was about me too. I couldn’t see Oscar as a demon. I couldn’t allow myself to believe a basically good person could become such a thing with no hope of salvation.

There had to be hope.

“You aren’t like Nellie or Holmes,” I murmured.

He looked at me and the darkness was back. “Destruction comes in many forms. Just because one form is less obvious doesn’t make it any less dangerous.” He pulled his hand free.

My fingers landed on the table, cold and wet from condensation from our cups. I curled my hand closed, and tried to think of something else to say.

If he would just admit he cared, I knew things would get better. I knew he could be saved.

o0o

At midnight I was up. I sat in my room staring at the phone, wanting to call Brittany, -nine minutes I had to call Kobal. What about his other demons? Should I let them through? Or was there another loop hole I was missing, one that wouldn’t keep my soul hanging out exposed?

The one changed to a two.

I gave in to temptation and picked up the phone.

It took three rings for Brittany to answer, but she didn’t sound as if she’d been asleep.

“Are you calling him?” she asked.

Obviously, she’d been thinking about my dilemma too.

“I have to.” I picked up my favorite teddy bear and pulled him to my chest.

“What about the demons? Are you going to release them?”

I’d explained the first loophole to her on the way home, but also what it might cost.

“Should I?”

There was silence on her end and then, “Not yet. We need a little time. Come over and we’ll figure this out.”

She hung up.

I took my bike to her house. Our car ran like a bulldozer, and Nana’s room was over the garage. The bike was quiet, and I’d conveniently left it outside the last time I’d used it.

Until I called Kobal, I was living on his dime. I could only pray that I didn’t get hit by someone drunk and stupid on the way to Brittany’s.

o0o

Brittany met me on the front porch, but walked me around back to get into her house. Up in her room, she had her computer going. The recording from Holmes’ castle was on the screen.

“Holmes had cameras everywhere, but he only recorded in bits and pieces. I think he started this going when you landed in his office. At least there wasn’t anything on it before that.” She tapped something with the mouse, and I appeared on the screen. I was laying on the sheet next to Charles. “We can replay it and see exactly what you each agreed to.”

It was painful sitting there and reliving what I’d gone through, but since most of my torment was based on watching Brittany’s torment, I guessed it wasn’t any easier for her.

The camera was angled so I was the star. You could hear Holmes and even Brittany in the background, but the image of me stayed on screen.

I fought the urge to yell at myself, as if it was a bad B movie. As if I could still change what had happened.

When it reached the part where Brittany yelled at Joshua, she started fast forwarding. “You can tell me when Kobal arrives, right?” she asked.

I nodded. I didn’t want to watch any more than I had to either.

When the on-screen me reached for the candle, I touched Brittany’s arm, and she slowed down the film. We sat in silence listening to everything Kobal said. When I gave him my ultimatum, that I’d cross his name out of demon history and make sure he was never called again if she died, she glanced at me. Embarrassed, I dropped my gaze. The film kept running.

When it was done, when it was just Brittany, Oscar and me, pulling Charles from the room on his sheet, she clicked pause.

“So, two demons, no more powerful or dangerous than Oscar. But there was no deadline as to when you had to do it by. And you have to call Kobal every day before midnight to…talk.” She screwed up her face. “That was kind of vague, and why? Why does he want you to call him?”

My hands were shaking. Watching the video had brought it all home. I slid my fingers under my legs and took a breath. “I think being called by a human increases a demon’s power. That’s why I said that about erasing his name.”

She smiled. “Yeah, thanks.”

I brushed her thanks aside. “Point is, if I call him every day he’ll get stronger and stronger. I don’t know what that means to him, but I think it’s his goal.”

She nodded and twisted her lips to the side. “The part I don’t get is the ‘You talk, I listen and I decide.’ What kind of power did you give him by agreeing to that?”

“I don’t know that I did agree to that. Back it up.”

We leaned toward the computer and played the tape again. As I’d thought, after Kobal made that demand, I hadn’t agreed, I’d restated what I was willing to do instead. Then he’d countered, but he had never gone back to what would happen when I called him.