“Then what are you waiting for?” she said.
“Three-person team,” he replied. “We’ve got another friend coming… if they don’t get stuck in traffic all day.”
Something about that statement made her choke out a laugh.
Get out of here, she thought. Whatever was happening, it wasother. It wasdangerous. She needed to leave, to go back to the normal world. She turned on her heel, pushing herself forward.
And then she slammed into the demon.
All the breath rushed out of her and she found herself spun around, knocked off balance by the force of the demon’s entrance.
It looked just as startled; it gazed at Dee with its unnaturally blue eyes, a line between its brows.
“About time you got here,” said Cal. “Where’s Cora?”
The demon’s attention snapped to the two boys. “I was ensuring that no one finds us,” it said, with a bite of annoyance. “As for Cora, I had assumed she would have arrived by now.”
Cal slid a cell phone back into his pocket. “Looks like she’s stuck on the way here. That’s the thing about starting a fire—traffic shuts down.” He frowned, but he looked more annoyed than disapproving. “I told you we should’ve just called in a bomb threat.”
“Becausethatwould never cause traffic issues,” drawled James, but neither Cal nor the demon paid him any attention.
“There was no one in that building,” said the demon. “But we should act now.” Its mouth pulled tight. “I shall collect Cora.”
Cal grinned. “If you’re going to do that rip-a-hole-in-reality thing again, can I watch?”
The demon blinked once. “No.” And then it glided out of the room.
This was it. This was her chance. Dee couldn’t talk to the demon in front of these boys. She took a step forward, and then another, until her feet carried her out of the room and into the hall.
The demon eyed her. It looked exactly the same—dressed in the clean lines of a suit, an umbrella beneath one arm, and its dark hair tucked neatly into place.
“Back for more community service?” it asked.
That surprised her. She didn’t think the demon would remember her, to be honest.
“Are you—I mean, are you here to do business?” she asked.
The demon slid its hands into its pockets. “No,” it said, face impassive.
She wrapped an arm around her own stomach, trying to make the gesture look natural. “I want to make a deal.”
It raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you didn’t hear me. Maybe you didn’t see the thing that is taking root in that room. I don’t have time for this.” It started to walk away, and her heartbeat skyrocketed.
“I could help,” she said. Her voice was quiet from nerves.
The demon froze. Not like humans froze, but how Dee once saw a stray cat freeze just before disemboweling a bird.
“You need three people,” she said. “That’s what those boys said. You need a three-person team, but you only have two.”
The demon glided toward her. “You didn’t want to make a deal before.”
Her throat was twisting shut, and she barely managed to croak, “I need money.”
The demon’s brows rose higher.
She swallowed. “I need money. A lot of it. I can’t—I need it. If I help you, if I do whatever you need three people to do—do you still need a… part?”
It was a hopeless sentence, filled with false starts and stops. But the demon understood. “Yes.”
