“That was so much fun,” Linda squealed from the front seat, her hands splayed out on the wheel. Yesterday and I sat in the back, because by the time three in the afternoon rolled around, neither of us wanted to be around her anymore. The back of the SUV had been stuffed with shopping bags, most of which didn’t contain anything my sister or I purchased. I had gotten a new pair of jeans and a sweater so big and comfy that I felt like I drowned in it. Yesterday had gotten a new pair of shoes and a shirt that she liked. Linda had bought out almost the entire store while we stood by, trying not to be bored.
After that, she had brought us over to the bookstore, which had been more fun for both of us. Not so much for Linda, who looked ready to fall asleep the entire time. Naturally, Yesterday and I spent as much time as we could in that store. Yesterday had gotten ten new books, which she had clung to happily, and I had bought a bunch of small toys that I thought Seamus and Seanan would like, plus two for myself. We also spent about an hour reading the backs of book covers to each other in silly voices, because we knew the second we left, it would be back to boring shopping.
Which it had been. I liked candles just fine, but the fourteen in the back created a mix of smells that had my head spinning. I could barely stand it.
And of course, there had been lunch. Linda took us to this fancy place, where all the waiters had to wear little suits. She bought herself a side salad, while Yesterday and I had to search the menu for something that didn’t have fish in it. We were both allergic, and neither of us wanted to go to the hospital. In the end, we ended up having bread and cake, because the waiter couldn’t guarantee that anything else hadn’t come into contact with the fish.
But Linda had fun, and I supposed that nothing else mattered but that.
“We should make this a monthly tradition,” Linda said. “We’ll go out, we’ll have fun, we’ll destroy the credit card I got for being your caretaker. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
Yesterday and I looked at each other, and then she turned to her books. “I could read those within the month, I suppose.”
Linda squealed so loud that I thought my ears would bleed.
“Just don’t take us to that restaurant again, and I’ll agree to anything,” I said.
“I’m really sorry about that. I thought that they would have something you two could eat.” Linda frowned from the front seat, shaking her head. “It’s so hard, finding you guys a safe place.”
“Not really,” I said at the same time that Yesterday said, “Ever hear of a burger joint?”
Linda laughed and waved her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out before we have to go out again.”
The two of us looked at each other. Since we’d had to stuff our faces with so much bread earlier, I thought both of us had the same sense of dread when she said. I loved a good breadstick as much as the next girl, but I preferred when they didn’t taste a day old and require so much effort to chew.
“I think this did the trick,” Linda continued, unaware of us in the backseat. “You two seemed to be so down lately, and I just wanted to make it better. You guys were smiling all day.”
Yesterday cleared her throat. “Yes, bookstores are a lot of fun.”
Linda giggled, and I tried not to roll my eyes. I didn’t know how I felt about Linda. After so much time, I felt like I should have loved her. She had been my surrogate mother for eight years, after all. In all the time, I hadn’t learned a single thing about her as a person. Not that I hadn’t tried. When we’d been younger, just coming into our teen years, Yesterday and I had asked her all sorts of questions. Like where she came from, what her parents had been like, if she had any siblings, how she got involved with demons. Each question had been met with the same answer. “Oh, that’s all in the past now, dear. There’s no point in dwelling in the past.”
That wall would never come down, and it felt like I couldn’t love her when I didn’t know a thing about her. Linda could’ve been a psychotic serial killer for all I knew.
The she smiled would play right into that.
She turned down our street, and the apartment building came into view. We ran into some traffic that brought us to a halt, though. It appeared that some moron had tried to cut off a storage truck. The truck had won.
While we sat there, Linda hummed under her breath, watching everything around us. She stopped, and said, “Oh! I almost forgot to ask how Seanan’s date went. It certainly didn’t take you long to help her pick out a dress. Of course, a girl like her would look nice in anything.”
It took me a second to remember the lie I had told her. I kicked my brain into gear and offered a fake smile. “Oh, it went all right. She didn’t really like him, though, and I think he got the hint.”
“That’s a shame,” Linda said, shaking her head. “I really do hope that you girls have better first dates than she did.”
I started to worry about her constantly mentioning our dating life. I didn’t want Linda setting me up with someone. I got the image of a blond guy with perfectly straight teeth, blue eyes, and a letterman jacket. My stomach rolled over.
It took us twenty minutes longer than it should have to pull into the parking garage. The attendant smiled at us like he always did, while we brought in bags and bags of things. Yesterday and I huddled in the corner of the elevator, because we didn’t have room for anything else.
The door slid open, and Linda bustled out before we did. “If you girls would help me, bring in all my things that would be wonderful—Oh. Hello.” Her voice changed with the last couple of words. It still sounded sugary sweet, like she wanted to give me a toothache, but the cadence changed. It went from motherly to respectful in a second.
I stepped out with Yesterday, who hit the button that would keep the elevator doors open.
A few steps into the apartment, and I saw him.
Lochlynn sat on the couch, with his legs stretched out. When he saw me and Yesterday, he started to sit forward. I noticed that he had already healed. He looked odd, though, because I kept picturing him in the suit. In my head, he always wore a suit, no matter the occasion. Not so much in real life. He had on a t-shirt that had been through the wash quite a few times, and dark jeans that had started to fade. The clothing hugged his body, showing off those muscles that he had. Not as big as Seamus, but then again, few people our age were. Lochlynn still had my friend in height, though.
My heart started to beat erratically in my chest.
Lochlynn rose up. “Sorry for the intrusion,” he said to Linda. “When he saw me, the doorman sent me right up.”
Linda set her bags down in a hurry and rushed over to Lochlynn. “No intrusion at all. Please, feel free to get comfortable. Is there anything that I can do for you? Anything that you need?”
Lochlynn raised an eyebrow but shook his head. “No, I just came to talk with Tomorrow.”
Oh god.
Linda turned to stare at me, her eyes wide. “Um, if you don’t mind my asking,” she said. “How do you know my ward?”
Oh god, oh god.
“I met her about a week ago, actually,” Lochlynn said. “At her school. We talked a few times since then.”
Linda offered a small smile. “Ah, well she hasn’t told me anything about that.” She shot me a hostile stare that I didn’t know what to do with. I hadn’t told her anything, because Lochlynn blatantly lied.
Yesterday nudged me and glared when I looked over. I realized that I hadn’t said anything but stared with shock at Lochlynn the whole time. Shaking myself, I smiled and said, “Well, there wasn’t much to tell. We had only talked a few times, and it didn’t feel like anything consequential.”
Linda breathed out, turning back to the demon. “Well, you talk to her for however long you need. I’ll just put my bags away, and I’ll be right back out.” She gathered up her first load of purchases and dashed off to her bedroom. The second she had disappeared, I felt like all the strength ran out of my legs.
Yesterday looked over at Lochlynn. “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I came to talk.”
“You aren’t going to kill her, are you?” Yesterday asked.
“If I wanted to do that, then you’d already be dead,” Lochlynn responded, which did nothing to help my anxiety. I wanted to curl into a tight ball and stop moving.
A nervous laugh came from my throat.
Linda came bustling back out, gathering up her second load of bags. Since Yesterday and I had brought our things in already, that ensured that she wouldn’t be coming out a third time. As Linda walked past though, she nudged Yesterday with her shoulder. “Go to your room,” Linda said.
“What?” my sister asked.
“He asked to talk with your sister, not you. Now, go to your room. Right this second.”
My sister opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out. She must’ve realized that she couldn’t say anything without making it abundantly clear that she knew Lochlynn too. Which would make Linda ask more questions, and the more lies we had to keep track of, the harder it would be to talk with Linda. She’d eventually catch us, and I honestly didn’t know what would happen then. I kind of thought she would turn us in to the demons if she found out that we had kept Lochlynn prisoner.
Yesterday glanced at me, and I nodded. Lochlynn had been telling the truth when he said that he could’ve killed us by then. My sister nodded and walked away. I knew that she would be listening for my screams, and that she would rush to my rescue if she heard them. I didn’t think it would come to that, though. Within two minutes, Lochlynn and I stood alone in the living room.
It felt awkward.
“Um…can I start out by apologizing?” I asked, setting my bag of toys down on the coffee table. They made a clunking sound that seemed loud in the otherwise quiet room. “I’m not sure how to apologize for something like that, though. My teacher in fourth grade had this sentence that we had to use, whenever we had to formally apologize to someone else in the class. Somehow, I don’t think it’ll work with kidnapping.”
Lochlynn tucked his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “No, probably not. It might be amusing, though. I’m not here for an apology.”
“Really?” I asked. “Then you did come to rip my head off. I would understand since, ya know, we kind of tasered you twice.”
“Yes, you did,” he said, dryly. “But that’s not why I’m here, either.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked, because I honestly couldn’t fathom his reasoning.
He looked around the living room, and asked, “Are we secure in here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, does your guardian have anything that would allow her to listen to what’s happening in this room?”
I blinked, surprised. “I’ve honestly never thought about it.”
He sighed, his shoulders dropping. “All right, well, don’t freak out, okay?”
“About what?”
He put his hands together, and a second later, I felt it. The push of power was more intense than I ever thought it would be. It felt like a strong wind trying to knock me back several steps. I resisted that wind, struggling against it, but couldn’t move. It in case me, with little sparkles of energy bouncing off my skin. It felt like static electricity had come to life and danced on me.
“Whoa,” I said, wrapping me arms around myself. “What the hell did you just do?”
“A little magic,” Lochlynn said, and then offered his bitter smile. “Don’t worry, though. Your soul isn’t in danger.”
“I didn’t think it was,” I told him.
That seemed to knock him for a loop. That bitter smile wavered for a second before he regained his composure. “Anyway,” he said. “You don’t seem to like your guardian very much, so this will probably be easy to hear. She reports your every move back to the demons, and I don’t want them to know what I’m about to say.”
“I figured she did that,” I told him, honestly. “She tells us whenever she’s about to make a report. I mean, she makes it sound like they’re interested in our wellbeing, but I don’t think they are. Not beyond the deal they made with our father. They have to stick with it, or something bad might happen?”
Lochlynn nodded. “Yeah, something bad will happen.”
I wanted to ask what but didn’t think he would answer honestly. Also, we already knew one of their weaknesses, what with the taser incident. I didn’t think he would let us know about another.
“After your sister let me go, I went home. My parents didn’t notice that I had been gone, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
“Really?” I asked. “No one realized you hadn’t come home?”
“My sister did, but she just thought that I went off,” Lochlynn said, waving his hand as if that didn’t matter. I realized that to him, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t imagine that. If I disappeared for days, my sister would mount her own personal manhunt. I believed that Yesterday could round up a crowd of hundreds of people to search for me. I couldn’t imagine no one caring.
“Anyway, when I got home, I snuck into my brother’s office. He has files on his computer, and I just happen to know the passwords. I looked up Derrick’s name in our database.”
My chest suddenly tightened, and I wrapped my arms around my middle. “Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Lochlynn answered, his jaw tightened. “But I did do it, because you were on my mind, I guess.”
I ignored the way my stomach fluttered at that. “What did you find?”
Lochlynn looked down at the ground, his jaw still tight. “I don’t know where he is. We don’t keep track of that past when the cargo makes it to their destination. And I know you hate when I put it like that, but it’s how we talk. However, we do keep track of when someone has been fully processed. Meaning, when a human has had their soul altered or drained.”
“And Derrick?” I prepared myself to hear that my friend had died, and I could officially let it all go. Finish mourning, and move on with my life, even if I didn’t want to. Even if I wanted to keep him in my life for the rest of time.
So, when Lochlynn said, “He hasn’t been processed,” it took me a minute to figure out what that meant. I stared at him, my mouth opened, air trying to force its way in.
“What?”
“He hasn’t been fully processed, at least,” Lochlynn continued. “He’s probably been drained some, but not enough that you can’t do something about it.”
My legs went weak. I walked over to the couch, and the magic sparked around me with every move. It felt like electricity pinging off my skin all the way back to the couch. I sat down, feeling more of that magic rise up around me. I covered my face with my hands, because I didn’t want Lochlynn to see the look on my face. If he saw the hope, it would be so easy for him to do something about it.
My entire body shook.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, finally lowering my hands. “Are you trying to hurt me, as punishment for what I did? Because, let me assure you, I regret what I did enough already.”
“No,” Lochlynn said, shaking his head. “I’m telling you, because you’ve tried so hard to save him already. You ran with him, when he was supposed to go with the demons, and then what you did with me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still furious about that, and think you’re an idiot for trying it, but…You tried so hard, that I want you to know that you haven’t failed yet.”
With the way that my emotions had been jerked around the last week, I didn’t know how to feel. Part of me just wanted to finish mourning, and let Derrick go. Another part felt elated that my friend hadn’t died yet. A third part had a joyous feeling all throughout my body, because maybe I could still save him. Yet another part felt dread, because in order to do that, I would have to go into the lion’s den once more, and hope that I made it out alive again.
All the emotions collided in me and struggled for control. My chest twisted around, and I couldn’t take it. Tears burst from my eyes, and I covered my face again, feeling them rushing down my cheeks.
The couch dipped next to me while I sobbed, and Lochlynn’s hand touched my shoulder. I leaned toward him on instinct, and that arm came around me. He felt solid. Like nothing could move him, not even a freight train. My cheek rested against his chest, while the tears wrenched from my body.
When they started to slow, I realized that I had curled into a demon, who had his arms around me. That should have been more of a concern, but Lochlynn didn’t feel dangerous to me. Maybe because he hadn’t done a damn thing to us, whereas we had given him every reason to run the other way.
I sucked in a breath that hitched and pulled away from him. I wiped the tears from my cheeks, and offered a shaky, watery smile. “Sorry,” I said. “I just…” I trailed off upon seeing the hard look in his eyes. Right. He had comforted me probably because it had felt awkward to just stand there. Lochlynn didn’t care about me one way or the other. Which begged another question.
“All right, you think I deserved to know, but why?”
Lochlynn snorted and turned away from me. He rubbed his hands together, the dry rasp sounding harsh in the otherwise quiet room. “Because you made me feel something.”
What? Before I could ask what the hell that meant, Lochlynn went on. “Are you still interested in saving your friend?”
“Of course, I am,” I said. “I never wanted to give up on him.”
Lochlynn nodded. “Then I’ll help, as much as I can. You’re more likely to survive if I’m there, at any rate.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Like I said,” Lochlynn answered, “You made me feel something.”
I still didn’t know what that meant, and it had my heart twisting around in confusion. It also felt like I couldn’t ask. Like, if I tried to talk to him about it, then he would shut down, change his mind, and Derrick…well, we all knew what would happen to Derrick.
“What do we do?” I asked. “Should I call my friends.”
“No,” Lochlynn said immediately. “No offense to them, but I’d rather not see their faces for a while.” He stood up from the couch and stretched his neck one way and then the other. “Are you sure about this? Last chance to back away.” He stared at me with those cold, cold eyes, and it felt like they slammed through my soul.
“I’m sure,” I said.
Lochlynn nodded and waved his hand. The magic popped, and it felt like someone slapped me all over my skin. I rubbed the sting away, trying to forget about it. Then I looked back at Lochlynn. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer, but asked, “What’s your guardian’s name?”
“Linda.”
He called her, and Linda came rushing out of her bedroom like someone had set her on fire. “Yes?” she asked, panting. “Did you need something?”
“Tomorrow is going to be spending a few days at my house,” Lochlynn told her. “Yesterday will be staying here, though.”
I didn’t think that would fly at all. Linda had often counseled me and Yesterday about boys, saying that if ever caught us with one before we talked to her about, she would be furious. She wanted to make sure neither of us became teen moms. In her mind, I figured that meant putting us birth control.
So, it shocked me when Linda said, “Yes, of course. That’s fine. Tomorrow, I’ll help you pack. Come on.”
“What?” I asked but didn’t get another word out of my mouth. Linda grabbed my arm and hauled me off the couch. I looked over my shoulder, watching Lochlynn as he lowered himself back down to the couch, as if this entire thing hadn’t happened. Then Linda shoved me into my bedroom and closed the door.
She grabbed my suitcase from the closet and tossed it onto the bed. “We’ll pack for a week,” she decided. “If you need to come back for more, then I’ll do your laundry for you, to make sure that you have everything you need.”
I stared at the woman. “You’re a lot calmer about this than I thought you would be.”
Linda paused upon opening my drawer. She turned around to stare at me with an expression so serious, I almost didn’t recognize her. “Of course, I am okay with this. Do you realize what this means for you, Tomorrow? I know who that demon out there is. Lochlynn, son of Landers and Danette. He is so powerful…” She breathed these words out, with a small smile on her face. “You don’t even know, do you? If you don’t screw this up, if you do everything right, then you could be set for life. Your sister will be set for life. I will be set for life. Lochlynn is your ticket to everything you want. So yes, you are going, and I want you to make sure that he’s enamored by the end of this visit.”
My stomach twisted around as a realization dawned on. “I’m not going to do anything with him,” I said.
“That’s what you think now,” Linda told me, turning back to my suitcase. “You’d be surprised what being alone with a demon of his stature would do to you.” Her eyes looked lost, staring at nothing. “If you do everything right, then he won’t get bored with you, and you’ll have more than you can ever dream of.”
I thought about Linda telling my sister and me that she didn’t live in the past, and how it always felt like I didn’t know her. She smiled and she laughed, and she did everything right. No matter what, she did everything the way she thought it had to be done. Linda had always seemed so fake. Like copy of a person.
Until right then, as she stared off into space, her eyes lost. Right that second, she didn’t look like the fake Barbie doll that had taken care of me for so much of my life. She looked like a real person. A person had suffered.