“Are you indeed?” asked Franklin, and once more that was something off-script. “How much would you truly pay to understand belief?”
None of that was in the script.
Goddamn you, Kidd, thought Trey darkly, and he wondered what other surprises were laid like land mines into the program. Anthem, Bird and Jonesy moved toward him, the four of them reconnecting, however briefly, in what they all now thought was going to be a frigging disaster. If Davidoff was made a fool of, then they were cooked. They were done.
Davidoff soldiered on, fighting to stay ahead of these new twists. “Um, yes, O demon. What is the cost of the knowledge we seek?”
“Oh, I believe you have already paid me my fee,” said the demon Ben Franklin, and he smiled. “My fee was offered up by vow if not by deed.”
He rummaged inside his coat for something.
“What’s he doing?” whispered Jonesy.
Bird leaned close. “Please, God, do not let him bring out a doobie or a copy of Hustler.”
But that’s not what Franklin pulled out from under his coat flaps. He extended his arm and turned his hand palm upward to show Davidoff and everyone what he held.
Davidoff’s face went slack, his eyes flaring wide.
A few people, the ones who were closest, gasped.
Then someone screamed.
The thing Franklin held was a human heart.
Davidoff said, “W-what—?”
Bird gagged.
Jonesy screamed.
Anthem said, “No . . .”
Trey felt as if he were falling.
The demon laughed.
It was not the polite, cultured laughter of an eighteenth-century scientist and statesman. It was not anything they had recorded for the event.
The laughter was so loud that the dancers staggered backward, blood erupting from nostrils and ears. It buffeted the audience and the sheer force of it knocked Davidoff to his knees, cupping his hands to his ears.
The audience screamed.
Then the lights went out, plunging the whole place into shrieking darkness.
And came back on a moment later with a brilliance so shocking that everyone froze in place.
The demon turned his palm and let the heart fall to the floor with a wet plop.
No one moved.
The demon adjusted his glasses and smiled.
Trey whirled and ran to the tech boards. “Shut it down,” he yelled. “Shut it all down. Kill the projectors. Come on—do it!”
The techs hit rows of switches and turned dials.
Absolutely nothing changed onstage.
“Stop that, Trey,” said Ben Franklin. His voice echoed everywhere.
Trey whirled.
“W-what?” he stammered.
“I said, stop it.” The demon smiled. “In fact, come out here. All of you. I want everyone to see you. The four bright lights. My helpers. My facilitators.”
Trey tried to laugh. Tried to curse. Tried to say something witty.
But his legs were moving without his control, carrying him out onto the stage. Jonesy and Anthem came with him, all in a terrified row. They came to the very edge of the circle in which the demon stood.
Bird alone remained where he was.
The audience cried out in fear.
“Hush,” said the demon, and every voice was stilled. Their mouths moved but there was no sound. People tried to get out of their seats, to flee, to storm the doors; but no one could rise.
Ben Franklin chuckled mildly. He cocked an eye at Trey. “This performance is for you. All for you.”
Trey stared at him, his mind teetering on the edge of a precipice. Davidoff, as silent as the crowd, stood nearby.
“At the risk of being glib,” said the demon, “I think it’s fair to say that class is in session. You called me to provide knowledge, and I am ever delighted, as all of my kind are delighted, to bow and scrape before man and give away under duress those secrets we have spent ten million years discovering. It’s what we live for. It makes us so . . . happy.”
When he said the word happy lights exploded overhead and showered the audience with smoking fragments that they were entirely unable to avoid. Trey and the others stood helpless at the edge of the circle.
Trey tried to speak, tried to force a single word out. With a flick of a finger the demon freed his lips and the word, “How?” burst out.
Ben Franklin nodded. “You get a gold star for asking the right question, young Trey. Perhaps I will burn it into your skull.” He winked. “Later.”
Trey’s heart hammered with trapped frenzy.
“You wrote the script for tonight, did you not?” asked the demon. “Then you should understand. This is your show-and-tell. I am here for you. So . . . you tell me.”
Suddenly Trey’s mouth was moving, forming words, his tongue rebelled and shaped them, his throat gave them sound.
“A careless magician summons his own death,” Trey said, but it was Davidoff’s voice that issued from his throat. “All of the materials need to be pure. Vital essences—blood, sweat or tears—must never be allowed within the demon’s circle for these form a bridge between the worlds of spirit and flesh.”
The big screens suddenly flashed with new images. Anthem. Typing, her fingers blurring. The image tightened until the focus was entirely on her fingernails. Nibbled and bitten to the quick, caked with . . .
“Blood,” said Anthem, her voice a monotone.
Then Jonesy spoke but it was Davidoff’s bass voice that rumbled from her throat. “A learned magician is a quiet and solitary person. All of his learning, all of his preparation for this ritual must be played out in his head. He cannot practice his invocations because magical words each have their special power. To casually speak a spell is to open a doorway that might never be shut.”
And now the screens showed Jonesy reading the spells aloud as Anthem typed.
Trey closed his eyes. He didn’t need to see any more.
“Arrogance is such a strange thing,” said the demon. “You expect it from the powerful because they believe that they are gods. But you . . . Trey, Anthem, Jonesy . . . you should have known better. You did know better. You just didn’t care enough to believe that any of it mattered. Pity.”
The demon stepped toward them, crossing the line of the protective circle as if it held no power. And Trey suddenly realized that it did not. Somewhere, the ritual was flawed beyond fixing. Was it Kidd’s sabotage or something deeper? From the corner of his eye Trey could see the glistening lines of tears slipping down Anthem’s cheeks.
The demon paused and looked at her. “Your sin is worse. You do believe but you fight so hard not to. You fight to be numb to the larger world so that you will be accepted as a true academic like these others. You are almost beyond saving. Teetering on the brink. If you had the chance, I wonder in which direction you would place your next step.”
A sob, silent and terrible, broke in Anthem’s chest. Trey tried to say something to her, but then the demon moved to stand directly in front of him.
“You owe me thanks, my young student,” said the demon. “When the late and unlamented Mr. Kidd tried to spoil the results of your project by altering the protection spells, he caused all of this to happen. He made it happen, but not out of reverence for the forces of the universe and certainly not out of any belief in the larger world. He did it simply out of spite. He wanted no profit from your failure except the knowledge that you would be ruined. That was as unwise as it was heartless . . . and I paid him in kind.”