“Yes.”
He looked at her—studied her as if she were an anomaly. “Girls like you don’t ask for death,” he said. “You ask for a larger bust or perfect skin or a talent of some kind.”
She gave him a grim little smile. “My boobs are fine, my skin is great, and I’m all right with the talents I have. I want someone dead.”
“Then why don’t you do it?” he asked. His eyes flicked down to her bag. “Demons have no monopoly on violence. Or are you going to lie and say there isn’t a gun currently in your purse?”
There was, of course. Cora was eighteen—and on her eighteenth birthday, she had gotten her concealed carry license.
It made her feel safer to carry the weight of the metal against her hip. And besides—her clearest memories of her father were of a hunting range, of a kind man with a worn voice, teaching her how to shoot clay pigeons.
“I don’t feel like spending the next few lifetimes in prison,” she answered. “I have sisters and a mom I need to take care of.”
The demon tilted his head. His eyes were so intent that it made a prickle of discomfort run over her skin. “He hurt one of them,” he said. “This man you want dead.”
Her stomach turned over.
“I never said it was a man,” she answered, her voice still hard.
“Statistically, it’s always a man,” said the demon, with a little scoff. “What did he do?”
Her back teeth ached as she ground her jaw. “Something he’ll never be punished for—at least not in any court of law. Which is why I need to take care of it.”
“By asking me to do it,” replied the demon.
“I’m not asking, I’m bargaining,” said Cora. “There’s a difference.”
“That there is.” The demon let out a small breath. “No demon will kill for an arm or a leg,” he said. “You should know that by now. Demons won’t kill. It’s bad press.”
She met the demon’s bright blue eyes. “You said demons ‘won’t’ kill. Not that they can’t. Is that true?”
His perfect mouth turned up at the corners. “You’re asking the wrong questions.”
This was the longest conversation she’d had with one of the damned creatures, and it gave her hope. “If a demon wouldn’t kill for an arm or a leg,” she said slowly, “what would they do it for?”
It turned out, that was the question he wanted to hear.
TWENTY-FOUR
Dee wasn’t sure how she got through the next few days, if she were being honest with herself.
Gremma wasn’t speaking to her. It seemed that after the Daemon had teleported Dee from the bathroom, the room had remained locked and empty so long that Gremma was sure Dee had died and ended up using a fire ax to break in—only to find the restroom empty. She’d assumed what any normal person would have: that Dee had snuck out through the narrow, high window. Choosing to risk injury rather than speak to her roommate again that night.
Dee tried apologizing, but Gremma waved her off, said that if Dee needed time to go run drugs or smuggle goods through some art gallery, that was her business.
Dee probably should have felt bad about Gremma’s anger. But she didn’t.
All she truly felt was panic.
Utter, mind-numbing panic.
Cora was right. She shouldn’t be alive; she wasn’t alive, not really.
She was a girl held together by knitted yarn and magic.
Terrified, Dee had taken one of the jam jars from the dining hall. That evening, she washed out the jar in the dorm bathroom, swirling it with hand soap and rubbing out the specks of seeds with paper towels. When she was sure it was clean and dry, she dropped her knitted heart inside.
It was stupid. Probably ineffectual. But she felt better with the heart protected.
