Servants of the Storm (25 page)

He yawns and rubs his temples, just like he used to do when he was little, and a rush of affection rolls over me.

“Baker, come on,” I say. “I need to do this. For Carly.”

Our eyes meet, and I see only agony. Whether it’s pain from thinking about Carly or pain from knowing I’m about to leave with another guy, or pain from having demons screaming in his head, I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t know either.

“We saw her, didn’t we?” he says gently.

“Yeah,” I say, voice breaking. He pulls me into a hug, wrapping
his arms around me. Our bodies line up in a way that’s unfamiliar but somehow comfortable, and I let him hold me for a few minutes as headlights flash over us. A faint stench of swamp overlays his usual, warm boy smell. Over Baker’s shoulder I see Isaac lean back against the car, arms crossed, and look at his phone.

“Then I guess you have to do this,” Baker says into my ear.

“Yeah.”

“Fine. Take me home, jagoff,” Baker says. “But you have to tell me everything tomorrow, Dovey. What time is it, anyway?”

I go for my phone, but it’s not in my pocket. And I suddenly remember a moment on that first loop of the Frog Strangler, watching something flash in the moonlight as it fell.

“Crap,” I say. “I think I lost my phone on the coaster.”

“You’d better hope you didn’t,” Isaac says. “If your name’s in it and the demons find it, you’re screwed.”

“I thought demons couldn’t do technology. Or hack a locked phone.”

“Demons can’t. But cambions can.”

“Great.” I sigh. “One more thing to worry about. Can we go before something worse happens?”

“Look on the bright side,” Baker says. “Maybe it broke.”

“So not helping. My mom’s still going to kill me. I’m dead either way.”

Baker looks disappointed when I slide into the front passenger seat and unlock the back for him, like he thought maybe we were going to sit back there together. I dangle the keys over the
steering wheel. I can’t believe I’m letting someone else drive, but I’m so amped up from Riverfest that I can’t stop shaking. Isaac gets in and slams his door with a squeal, saying, “I can’t believe this dinosaur actually runs.”

“And I can’t believe you’re leaving your bike here for the demons,” I shoot back.

“Oh, that?” He grins. “That’s not mine.”

All the other cars are gone. Baker murmurs directions to Isaac, who looks straight ahead and barely acknowledges him. As we pull through the chain-link gate, I see a shadowy figure walking across the lot behind us with the unmistakable, sliding limp of a distal servant. Is she locking up? Or searching for stragglers? Or coming just for me? Exactly how fast can she run, if given an order by her demon master? As fast as the girl at Paper Moon? And can distal servants be commanded to kill?

I crank up the heater and hunch over to lock my door, muttering, “You’re not going to hurt that gas pedal, you know. Stomp it.”

The car peels out, and I hear a gulp. I spin so fast in my seat that my neck hurts. Baker’s drinking out of a bottle—the red one, thankfully. Still, I grab it from him so he doesn’t need to think too deeply about what happened tonight.

“What the hell, Dovey? I know what I’m doing. I remember . . . some stuff.”

“Just . . . stop drinking things,” I snap. “You’re going to fry your brain.”

“I’m no good to you stupid,” he says. “And I don’t trust that guy. I don’t trust him alone with you.”

“Too bad.”

When Baker shrugs and starts looking at me with puppy dog eyes, I turn back around and push the old-fashioned cork deeper into the depleted bottle.

As we hit the highway, I keep looking back at Riverfest. Now that the numb fuzz is gone, it’s painful to feel the new, horrible memories suffocating the old, happy ones from before Josephine. My heart aches like the ruined city itself. What’s left behind is just a crusty husk. It reminds me of the time I made a papier-mâché piñata in art class, and the balloon inside popped and shriveled up to nothing. This new demonic version of Riverfest is like the papier-mâché—a thick, slimy coating that grows hard and crushes the fragile, beautiful things that used to be underneath.

Of course, the only way to deal with a piñata is to beat the crap out of it until it collapses.

I think of Kitty’s smug face and smile to myself. I want to be the bat to her piñata. Fighting her is a hell of a lot better than sinking into hopelessness, which seems to be the only alternative. Maybe talking to this other cambion is the next step. As Isaac speeds my old car toward Baker’s house, I rub the pendant in my pocket and wonder if the new cambion will be as handsome, mysterious, and infuriating as Isaac.

BY THE TIME WE GET
to his house, Baker is a ball of nerves. I can feel the tension in him, hear his fingers tapping on the door behind me. He’ll take a breath like he’s going to say something explosive, then sigh in frustration and keep quiet.

When Isaac stops the car, Baker finally bursts out with, “Dovey, I need to talk to you. Alone.”

I go on alert but nod my head.

He gets out of the car and opens my door for me. I glance at Isaac, who’s leery but amused, and slide out. Baker is silent at my side, up the crumbling stone walkway and three steps to his small front porch, which is partially hidden from the street by an overgrown eucalyptus tree. The scent is sharper in the summer, but even now it washes over everything with a clear, energizing sort of zing. I didn’t feel asleep before, but I’m suddenly more awake.
As soon as we’re on the porch, he faces me, eyes frantic under the porch light.

“Do you trust him?” Baker asks.

I snort. “Of course not. But I need him.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s the only person around here with any answers. He’s the only person who sees the same things I see.”

Baker shifts impatiently, takes a step closer. I step back, and the corner of the porch railings presses against the back of my coat. His eyes search mine. “So that’s what you want—a crazy guy? Who’ll agree with whatever you say?”

“It’s not like that,” I mutter, looking down from what I think I see in his eyes. “Half the time you’re drugged and think I’m a mental case, and the other half you’re drugged on something else and seeing demons. I need to save Carly. And myself. And if he can see clearly, then I’ll use him.”

Baker’s hands grasp the rails on either side of me, boxing me into the corner, and I can feel the warmth of his chest. He leans down, his face close to mine.

“I can see clearly right now. I care about you, Billie Dove. I have for a long time. And it kills me to watch you drive away with some pretty stranger who’s telling you exactly what you want to hear. I want to be what you need, see what you see. You just have to show me. You have to let me.”

“Baker, I—”

His lips press against mine, warm and soft, and I gasp. It’s one
thing to think your childhood friend is in love with you, but it’s another thing entirely to find your heart pounding inches away from his, in time with his, to feel your hands rising of their own volition to pull him closer. He makes a strangled sort of sound, and his lips begin to part as he leans into me even more, and I tilt my head just a little, and that’s when I hear my car’s engine revving. I pull away.

“Dovey, I need—”

“You need to go inside and get some sleep, if you’re going to steal the show tomorrow night,” I say gently.

“And fight demons?”

I smile. I guess I’m glad he drank the red stuff. It’s so much easier when he sees what I see.

“Yeah. And fight demons.”

He nods sleepily and yawns. “This isn’t over.”

“I know it’s not. But it is tonight. Go to bed, Joshua Baker.”

He cups my face gently, and I blush and playfully shove him away. My feet are light on the steps as he unlocks his front door. When I stop on the walkway and look up, he’s gazing down at me from the doorway with the strangest look on his face.

“Sleep, you,” I mouth, and he nods and mouths something else before closing the door. It might have been “Dovey,” or it might have been “Love you,” and my lips don’t know whether to smile or frown. My tummy is fluttering sweetly, and I feel like I’m right on the edge of something that’s been there all along, something I’ve managed to miss completely. But I blush and shake my
head as I walk back down the sidewalk, even if I can’t make my face blank. It’s a bad time to wrestle with my feelings for Baker.

I slide into the front seat of my car and stare straight ahead. I can feel Isaac smirking at me, and I mutter, “Drive.”

“What did he need to . . .
say
?”

I give him a drop dead stare and ask, “Is he going to remember this tomorrow?” As much as I hate to say it, for now it might be easier if he didn’t.

“What’s he had today?”

“Red stuff, clear stuff, chocolate cake, and more red stuff. Oh, and pills and a slushie at Riverfest.”

Isaac whistles.

“That’s a lot. But he seemed to come out of it fine after Riverfest. And there’s red stuff left, if you need it later. From what I know, it’ll depend on how much he wants to remember.”

“Crap.”

“You want to take that kiss back, huh?”

My cheeks burn fiercely. “You want to drive the eff away from here?”

He chuckles and gives me a dark, taunting look. “Scrappy-Doo’s not going to unmask mean ol’ Mr. Milligan as the Riverfest Phantom. He’s a sweet kid, but sweet won’t help you here. You can’t depend on him.”

He pulls away from the curb, and my familiar neighborhood disappears in the darkness like something I’m leaving behind forever. My face heats up, but it’s not from my car’s faulty heat vents.

“Baker’s been a lot more help than you have! He’ll do anything I ask.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s helpful. It means he’s stupid. And you don’t know everything I’ve done for you,” he snaps.

It’s true. I keep forgetting that he was doing something very helpful for me right when I busted in and got my pinkie bitten off. So I change the subject.

“So who’s the guy we’re going to see?”

We’re back on Truman Parkway now. It’s always desolate here, and the streetlights give the road this postapocalyptic glow, like it’s lit by the fires of smoldering ruins after a nuclear war. Tree-tops rustle like low, round hills right beyond the concrete barrier, and it’s easy to forget that entire half-abandoned neighborhoods are far below us. As we ride to an uncertain future, people sleep in their beds or watch their reality TV as dark things like Grendel sniff around their windows. Some of the neighborhoods below were hit hard by Josephine, and there are holes in the tree canopy to mark her path. But Isaac’s presence makes it easier to be here somehow. Like he’s in control, while the rest of us are just spinning around. He makes me angry. But he also makes a lot of sense.

He sighs deeply and shakes his head. “So the guy we’re going to see. The cambion.”

“He’s that bad?”

“His name’s Gavin Crane. Or he says it is. About seventy-five percent of what comes out of his mouth is lies. He’s completely
worthless and lazy as hell, and he took the first deal the demons offered him. And he hates me.”

“So why will he talk to us? And why should we believe anything he says?”

He shoots me that grin, the one with a dimple, and says, “Because if he thinks you’re my girlfriend, he’ll want nothing better than to steal you away from me. And Kitty’s more powerful than his demon, so he’ll want to impress you. Which means he might actually tell you some true things, to reel you in.”

“So I’m being used as a piece of meat?” I say.

He gives a one-shoulder shrug. “To the demons you
are
a piece of meat.”

I’m at a loss. It’s too weird. Like one of the soap operas my grandmother used to watch, a world of evil twins and dead people coming back to life and women too beautiful to be real. We’re going to see another demon baby, one that apparently revels in his dark side. And before I even know how to be in love for real, just when I think I’m ready to try, I have to fake it. With Isaac.

“So what—I’m supposed to flirt with him and hope he’ll tell me all his secrets?”

“He’s a straight-up bad guy. He does bad things. But he thinks he’s badder than he is. He might know more about dybbuk boxes and distal servants, about other ways to free them. His demon is more yappy than Kitty, apparently, and she thinks Crane is trustworthy enough to tell him secrets. But the bastard loves to brag.”

I sigh and snuggle deeper into my dad’s old coat, breathing
in the scent of his pipe and gunpowder and the slightest tang of eucalyptus. There are a couple of bullets rattling in the pocket; this is the coat he takes to the shooting range. I feel like if I could just talk to him, no pills and nothing but the truth, he would listen and believe me and help me. But I haven’t seen him in days. It’s just another reason I’m scared right now.

Following Isaac to the club and going to Riverfest I can handle, I guess. But pretending to be the hot guy’s girlfriend while we talk to a bad guy is making me seriously uncomfortable. I’m not wearing makeup or cute-girl clothes. And I’ve never actually had a boyfriend. What just happened between Baker and me was my second kiss, which barely lasted longer than my first kiss, which occurred during a game of spin the bottle. I take off my knit hat and start unbraiding my pigtails and finger-combing my hair into place by the light of the passenger-side mirror.

“What makes you think he’ll actually tell me anything? Won’t he just think I’m some normal, stupid girl you’re using?”

I almost mention Gigi’s hex, but I’m keeping that tidbit in my pocket until I know where Isaac’s loyalties truly lie.

When he glances back at me, his eyes are black. And determined.

“How old are you?”

“How does that matter?”

“Answer the question.”

“Seventeen,” I say, feeling like I’m actually nine. “Why?”

“You look older. You act older.”

“I get that all the time. So?”

“So I’ve been doing some research, and I think there’s a good reason that you’re caught up in the middle of this.”

“I’m in this because of Carly,” I say firmly.

“No,” he shoots back. “I think
she’s
in it because of
you
.”