“Ready for tomorrow?” Gran asks.
“I’m tired,” I say.
“Big day tomorrow. Big day,” she says, and then she looks back at her crossword puzzle
Connie is laughing on the phone with Thomas when I get upstairs, and I wave at her from outside her doorway before turning into my bedroom.
When I close my eyes, Emmaline Spencer is everywhere. I can see her face—similar to mine, but her eyes are covered and her mouth is zipped shut. No one wants her to speak. I find her locked away in some closet. I pound on the door and scream her name. She doesn’t answer because she can’t. She tries to speak, but it comes out as this screeching sound so loud that it pulls me back to reality.
The screeching is still there—and then I realize it’s my phone. I answer the call, still groggy from my dream. Carter’s voice is all singsong like on the other end. “Ready to go on a track?”
I blink and glance at the clock—11:48 pm. “It’s late,” I say.
“This was part of our deal. I can’t control when the demons are on the move,” Carter says quickly. I can hear the excitement in his voice over the phone. “Come on, Pen. We’ve got to go before I lose the demon.”
I bite my lip. I shouldn’t go. Gran would flip out if I she found out I wasn’t here. I’m being Paired tomorrow—it’s serious business. But that’s really out of my hands. I’m curious, and honestly, I don’t want to say no. I don’t want to go back to sleep either.
“Meet you in ten?”
“No need. I’m already outside.”
Chapter Thirteen
The night is chilly and the air is motionless, like it’s waiting to see what we’ll do. We’ve been following a demon that looks like an old man with a beard that touches the ground. The tips of the beard are dark, while the part at his nose is white. One of its pants legs is shorter than the other, and it’s only wearing one sock with a red stripe. Every few steps it hunches over, looking through the trash bins and knocking on brick walls. The streetlights flicker above it two and three at time with each step it takes.
A beep sounds next to me. Carter mutters something and quickly reaches into his pocket. His phone is blinking red and yellow with a small hum radiating from it.
“What is that?” I ask.
“It’s the tracker I made.”
“A tracker?”
“That demon.” He points to the old man and looks at me grimly. “It’s supposed to find lost things. I’ve been tracking it since that night before I met you, trolling the network for a clue.”
There’s a network? A network of what—demons? I look toward the old man demon. It’s digging in a trash can.
“Why are you tracking this specific demon?”
Carter sighs, focused on the demon. “I’ve been searching for clues for years, Penelope. This demon, Vassago, is my last hope.”
The way he says it, I can tell it isn’t something he wants to admit. His voice is low and his gaze focused on the demon Vassago. If Vassago can find lost things, then this may be the best mission I’ve been on. I’m missing a lot of things—answers, a demon, my essence. Maybe it can help me too.
Then again, it seems to have lost something of its own. That or it has a secret love affair with trash.
“What’s it looking for?” I whisper to Carter.
“Depends on who’s asking, I guess,” Carter says. “Some people say a sock, others a love, a soul.”
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer me, but his face changes. His jaw tenses, his eyes get darker.
Carter has a secret.
What am I doing here? Carter wants help from a demon who finds lost things but can’t find its own lost sock? I’m an idiot for thinking this was a solution. We can’t trust demons. We kill them; we don’t ask them for help. That’s like opening the door and letting them into our world for a snack.
Vassago moves down the road and stops at this shady-looking black wall. It knocks again, nothing new there. The wall cracks open and it slides inside. That’s new. I steal a look at Carter, who’s already walking that way.
“Whoa, you aren’t planning to follow it in, are you?”
Carter raises an eyebrow. “Scared?”
“That’s stupid. I didn’t sign up to let you lead me to my impending doom.”
He grabs my hand. “I have a plan, Pen. There’s a masking spell that can hide us, and we can sneak in, talk to the demon, and sneak out.”
“That’s a little too much sneaking. And a masking spell? Those things take a freaking lot of power.”
“You’re right. It’s too bad that girl I met isn’t here. I bet together we could access ‘a freaking lot of power,’” he says. His face is bright, like a kid at Christmas, and has a smile so big that I want it to wash away all my worries.
That’s what he wants me for. This has bad idea written all over it. My head tells me that I should leave, and I’m risking a lot just by being here with him. Still, I can’t leave. I don’t want to. If I walk away I may be leaving someone who can help me get answers.
I’m nodding and Carter pulls me closer. His hands are on my waist and chills run up my spine. “Okay,” he says quickly. The magic between us is stirring in my gut again. “Let’s say the masking incantation. ‘Let the seen be hid from sight until the morning light.’”
Incantations in English sound so lame, but I repeat after him. I’ve never cast a spell over myself—and definitely not one that alters the way others see me. I create a picture in my head to call on the magic, mostly because I’ve done it enough to know it helps. Carter and I are in the middle of a crowded street, slowly dissolving into nothing. No one notices us as we walk past them. We repeat the incantation again together. Suddenly, my whole body is pins and needles and springs—like I’ve been sitting the wrong way for too long and it’s falling asleep.
“I think it worked,” he says.
“I’m a walking pincushion, so I’d say yes.”
Carter leads me by the arm across the street, until we stand side by side in front of the wall. I run my hands across, scouring the wall for some kind of entrance. I know the wood is under my fingertips, but I don’t feel it. Carter knocks against the wall, the same way we saw the demon do it. Nothing happens.
“How do we get in?”
“We open it.”
“How—”
Carter grabs my hand and mutters another incantation. I repeat it, but I try more to imagine it all in my head. The dark door opening. Us finding Vassago. Finding answers. The wall bursts open. Shards of metal and wood fly out at us; we duck. The air around us is filled with wood dust. We’re both coughing as we walk through the gaping door.
Inside, everything is dark. Through the dusty air, I see round green bar lights with broken glass hanging from the ceiling. The walls are dark and the floors are a shade of gray that’s had one too many cups of coffee spilled over it. My feet stick to the floor and I’m glad I didn’t wear my pink glittery shoes.
A few people—well, not people so much as demon-possessed people and straight-up demons—all look toward the hole. One demon-man with half-melted skin and missing teeth hisses from the bar, drink still in its hand.
“Stay close to me,” Carter whispers.
I follow Carter through the bar. Pool tables fill the back of the room in clusters, the felt covers ripping in places where sticks were jammed too hard across the surface. It smells like rotten eggs, urine, and day-old vomit.
One of the demons steps out of the shadows with a towel over its slimy blue shoulder. A few other demons follow it and examine our hole, confused. I release a breath as more of them explore. A demon dressed in human skin with ripped jeans and a Mohawk yells from the sidewalk.