I practically had to sneak out of the apartment. Getting past Yesterday didn’t take any effort. I told her that Seanan, Seamus, and I had plans to go to dinner and see a movie. She just nodded her head, like that made perfect sense. When I walked out of my room, she had been in hers, stretched out on her bed with a book in front of her and headphones in. She had waved to me, and that had been it.
Linda proved much more difficult, though. She’d been in the living room, working on her computer. I didn’t know what she did for the demons, other than take care of us. She got a neat little sum for that alone, so I couldn’t imagine her needing more money. Yet, I still caught her working on the computer frequently. Two or three times a week. She’d never tell us what she worked on, either.
I thought that I could sneak out and had been tiptoeing toward the elevator. Then she busted me.
“Where are you going?” Her sugary sweet voice sounded more irritating than usual right then.
I plastered an innocent look and smile onto my face and turned around. “I’m going to see Seamus and Seanan.”
Linda glanced at me from over her computer, a frown on her face. “I don’t recall you telling me you were going out with them today.”
“Last minute thing,” I said.
I waited for more questions while Linda alternated between typing and watching me. It always bothered me when she did that. Something about the laser sharp focus on me, while still having part of her mind occupied by whatever work she did, seemed wrong. It made me want to squirm all the more.
“All right, but only because it’s not a school night,” Linda said. “Don’t make this into a habit, Tom.”
I resisted the urge to verbally sock her in the face. “It won’t be,” I said, and hit the button for the elevator. If it came down to it, I could probably take Linda in a fight. She was just as human as me, and while I might’ve been short, I believed in myself a whole hell of a lot. Maybe that would get me through the scrape.
Now, I waited down by the street, worried that Linda watched me through the window. She hadn’t gotten Yesterday or me driver’s licenses or cars, so I had to rely on my friends for rides. Linda said that we could always call a cab, or ride on the bus. I hated buses. They always felt crowded, and some asshole in the back felt the need to pick on everyone. Since I didn’t want to get expelled for picking fights with bullies, I thought that letting Linda drive me to school would be the smartest choice.
Seamus turned the corner, and I almost breathed a sigh of relief. Seanan sat in the passenger’s seat, looking nervous as all hell. She kept fidgeting and running her hand through her hair.
He pulled the gray car up to the curve, and I climbed in before the spot between my shoulder blades could catch on fire.
Seanan turned around to stare at me, her eyes wide. “Please tell me that you have some kind of fancy dress rolled up in your bag?”
“No,” I said. “What was I supposed to do? Tell Linda that I was going to a party, and needed the dress?”
Seanan thumped back into her seat, her eyes staring at nothing. “I’m starting to get a doomed feeling.”
“Calm down,” Seamus said. “We can swing by the house, and she can borrow something from you. You guys are about the same size, right?”
We looked at him. Height wise, yes. Body wise, not so much. Seanan had some meat to her bones, enough to give her curves in all the right places. I…didn’t. One of her dresses would probably fit me, but it would look like I played dress up with my mother’s clothes.
“We don’t have much of a choice,” Seanan said.
We went silent for the next fifteen minutes, as Seamus drove through busy streets, back to his house. Whereas I lived in the heart of the city, Seamus and Seanan lived on a street, in a little suburb. Their house looked massive from the outside and felt worse from the inside. One could get lost in those hallways.
“What about your parents?” I asked, while Seamus pulled into the four-car garage. His father’s Maserati had been left behind, as had their four-wheeler, but their mother’s luxury SUV had been taken somewhere.
“Out of time,” Seanan said. “We got home yesterday to find a note on the table, saying they had been called away on urgent business. I figure that meant they wanted another honeymoon. I expect them back in three or four weeks. Until then, we’ve got all the money that we need to order food, since neither of us can cook. Good thing I liked pizza.”
Seamus snorted. “I can cook. You just don’t like what I can make.”
“Being able to assemble a dozen different kinds of burritos does not equate cooking,” Seanan said.
“I disagree,” Seamus countered, and climbed out of the car.
All of us trooped inside, and I got my first good look at what my friends had put on. Seamus had a suit on. A legitimate suit. A charcoal gray one, with a white shirt underneath, and a dark gray tie that brought the entire thing together. I thought he looked strange, because his massive shoulders didn’t belong in a suit. It felt like some jock trying to play up to a role. Strange, since Seamus could only be considered in a jock if chess counted.
Seanan had on a silk dress that fell to her feet in a wave of fabric. It flowed with her every step, shimmering and green. Most people couldn’t have pulled that color off, but it worked with Seanan in a way that it wouldn’t with anyone else. She had carefully done her makeup, so that she looked older than sixteen. She could almost pass for twenty, but not quite. The short thing didn’t help. Her heels brought an easy three inches taller than me, which felt strange.
“You, stay here,” Seanan said, pointing to her brother. “I’ll be back with one dolled up friend in no time.”
I didn’t get the chance to say anything before Seanan dragged me up two flights of stairs, to her bedroom suite. She had this floor to herself, where her parents had the middle floor, and her brother took the downstairs. I often wondered how many days they could go without seeing each other. I would’ve asked my friend, but I worried that she would answer me.
I sat down on her king-sized bed, and watched her push open her closet door with a frown on her face. “I haven’t even worn most of these dresses before,” she said, running her hands along them. “It seems like a waste, but my parents insisted that they buy me things.”
Probably to make up for the fact that they took a lot of vacations.
“Well, we’ve said it before. Better to be rich and alone than poor and alone,” I grumbled.
Seanan snorted and pulled a dress off her rack. A silver one, that shimmered in the light much like her green silk did. “What do you think about this one. It’ll make your hair pop like nobody’s business.”
I put my hands on my head and cursed. “This certainly won’t make me look any older.”
My friend shrugged. “That’s what the fake IDs are for.”
“What?”
“I know a guy,” Seanan said. “You do, too, actually. His name is Peter, and he’s in our first class. He’s the one that’s always drunk or high, and will probably be dead before he turns eighteen? Yeah, he makes fake IDs so that his parents won’t figure out what he spends all his money on. We got all three of them for only three hundred dollars.”
That still felt like a lot of money to me. Seanan and her brother got huge allowances from their parents, so they didn’t have to worry about things like money. Yesterday and I could get anything we wanted, as long as we didn’t mind Linda buying it. I figured that meant we were lucky and shouldn’t complain.
“What about my skin tone, then?” I asked, touching my face. “I’m not sure silver could hold up to that.”
“Well, if we’re trying to pair something up with your skin tone, then we might be in trouble. In case you haven’t noticed, the two of us don’t have the same complexion at all.” She touched her own face, and I had to smile at her white, freckled cheeks. “But maybe I have something black I here, something that I had to wear to a funeral.”
“Great.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Seanan called, as she disappeared into the depths of her closet. I had dresses that I could’ve worn to this thing. Dresses that Linda had bought me for school dances and for birthday parties. Seanan’s sweet sixteen hadn’t been that long ago, and I had to wear the fanciest dress imaginable to it. Her parents had thrown her a party that she didn’t want, and it came with a dress code. Seanan, Seamus, and I had ended up sitting on the back porch while the rest of the kids from our class partied inside. We’d had ice cream and talked about going to see the latest superhero movie that weekend.
Seanan reappeared with a black dress and showed it to me. “It’s kind of simple, but I don’t think anyone would just for that. Try it on.”
We traded places, with me in the walk-in closet. I traded my jeans and sweater for the dress, and then stared at myself in the mirror. It went down to almost the floor, barely not touching. I frowned over that but figured that most people wouldn’t notice. Like I worried it would, the dress looked kind of formless on me. My hips barely poked out, but my boobs looked nice in the thing. My pink hair…well, nothing could have been done about that tonight. Not before the party, at any rate.
I came out, barefoot and wearing the black dress. “It’ll do,” I said.
Seanan nodded. “I think I have something that will help. Hold on.” She disappeared and returned a second later, holding a buckle in her hands. She brought it around my waist and cinched it tight. I thought it would look ridiculous on m y, but instead, it made the dress look better. I had a figure all of the sudden, and my hips looked pronounced.
Next, my friend handed me a pair of black heels. I put them on and felt just like I thought a would. Like a kid playing dress up. “What do you think?” I said.
“You look nice,” Seanan said, running her hands across the skirt of her dress. It shimmered in the lights above, whereas my dress didn’t reflect anything. The two of us looked like two contrasting wholes. I hoped that it didn’t draw attention to us but didn’t think we’d get that lucky.
“Let’s head out, before we arrive late enough to draw attention to ourselves,” Seanan said.
Seamus hadn’t moved by the time we got downstairs. He looked up when we rushed down and nodded. “Good. You’re both ready.”
“Almost,” Seanan said. “I’ll be doing her makeup in the car. Try not to go over any bumps. The last thing any girls wants is to get a mascara wand through their eye. You have no idea how embarrassing an ER trip would be. I’d have to turn in my diva card.”
I did not get a mascara wand through my eye during the drive, thankfully. Seanan had been very careful with my makeup the entire drive. As Seamus pulled into the casino parking lot, I looked at myself in her little mirror. She had done the same thing to my face that she had down to her own. I looked years old. If I walked into a bar like this, they might not even card me.
Probably, though.
The valet walked up to the window, and Seamus rolled it down. “Sorry, but I don’t let anyone drive my car. If you could point me in the right direction?”
The man looked like he had tasted something sour but nodded his head. “Right that way, sir. There should be a parking space to your left, and you can take that one.”
“Thank you.” Seamus put the window back up and leaned away from the window.
“What happened to not drawing attention?” Seanan hissed.
He glared at his sister in the rearview. “I have to be more careful than that,” he said. “If we do get caught, do you want to be stuck waiting for a valet to hand over my keys, and then hunting through the entirety of this parking lot, looking for the car?”
“No,” I said. “Let’s stop fighting. This isn’t getting us anywhere. We’re here for a specific reason. We’re looking for Derrick, and until we find him, we need to act like adults. Which means no fighting.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Seanan said. “I’m just nervous. The last time we went up against demons, I nearly had a building collapse on my head, and then got grounded for two months by my parents.”
“Clearly those two things belong in the same category,” Seamus said.
I thumped him on the back of the head as he put the car in park. “Not helping, buddy.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
Our next test came in the form of the door guardian. He stood in his suit, with one of those curly cords in his ear, probably listening to his buddies talk about football or something. The man took tickets at the door, looking at the invitations carefully. He had dark hair that had been shaved close to his head, and the way the guy watched everyone that walked past him had my chest constricting.
“Be cool,” Seamus said, as we approached the building. Everyone on the outside looked silver and gold. It shined in neon lights from across the street, and I could almost see the top of the building, even through the clouds and smog. As we approached it, I tried to keep my wide-eyed gaze to myself. I didn’t want to look like a kid.
The guy at the door looked at Seamus critically when he handed over the ticket. He turned it over in his hands without looking at the piece of paper. “How old are you?” he asked, still not looking at the paper.
“I’m twenty-two,” Seamus said. His sister hadn’t put any makeup on him, but she hadn’t needed to. Seamus could pass for an adult, thanks to his size. Not someone in his thirties, but he could pull of early twenties, no problem.
“Got an ID?” the man said.
Seamus didn’t hesitate in pulling out his wallet and flashing his ID at the man. The man who moved faster than I could blink. He snatched the wallet out of Seamus’ hand before we even know what he planned to do. Then he stood there, scrutinizing it from every angle, turning it this way and that.
I prayed that for once, Peter did something for someone else without screwing it up.
“All right,” the man said, passing it back to Seamus, along with our ticket. “You can go in.”
Seamus nodded, and we scurried in after him. The second we got past the door, it took all my effort not to collapse on the casino floor and just breathe out. I figured that would alert everyone to the fact I shouldn’t have been there.
As we walked away from the door, Seamus looked over at me. “Now we just have to figure out where they hold their prisoners. They’ve probably got a special room, or something.”
“If they’re here at all,” Seanan said.
“They’re here,” I said, and meant it. “After Derrick went missing, I did a bunch of research. No one knows where the demons keep their souls for sure, but some guy said that he escaped demons once. They keep the humans alive and healthy until their soul is drained completely, but they move their supply constantly, to keep humans from finding their loved ones. At least, according to this guy. He said that demons rarely take souls in one fell swoop. They usually drain them bit by bit, until the person is nothing like they once were.”
Seanan rubbed her stomach. “That’s awful.”
I nodded. “It is, but if that’s true, we just have to ask the humans where they were kept before and keep going until we find the bottom of this barrel.”
Seamus nodded, but his sister looked unsure of herself. “I hate to be a bitch or anything, but…but are we really going to leave all those people to suffer like that?”
I didn’t have an answer for that immediately. I shifted my feet, frowning. “What are we supposed to do, Seanan? You know that a lot of them are bad people, and that they made their deals. This is the way the world works. Everyone knows that you should make deal with demons, but they do it anyway, because it’s easier than whatever else they would have to face.”
“Like Derrick?” she asked.
“Yes, like Derrick. The only difference is that I care about him and want him safe. He made this deal for his sister. He shouldn’t die for that.”
Seamus touched his sister’s shoulder. “Listen. We have to save him right now. Let’s start small. We can talk about everyone else…later.”
She closed her eyes. “Fine. But we will talk about it later.”
For the first time since walking in, I looked around the casino. It looked pretty empty, now that I thought about it. All the slot machines sat abandoned, and the car tables had covers over their felt, to keep them from getting dirty. I couldn’t see anyone, but I could hear them. More people came in behind us at a steady rate as well, making me feel like we stood out like sore thumbs by staying there.
“Let’s follow the crowd,” I whispered, and nodded at the people walking.
We fell into step behind them and tried to look sure of ourselves. I kept my head up, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t wave my hips the way that Seanan could. I noticed several people looking over at her, clearly not knowing they ogled a teenager. I wondered which ones would care and which ones wouldn’t.
The crowd led us into the event room. It looked like a massive ballroom that stretched out so far, I couldn’t even guess the size. The ballroom had been filled with people. they stood at small, round tables, talking over appetizers, and laughing with each other. I saw a lot of gold, silver, shining jewelry, and the like. Everything looked…shiny. Grossly shiny.
“I feel out of place,” Seanan muttered.
I almost laughed.
“There,” I said, pointing to an empty, round table. “No one’s taken that spot yet. C’mon.” I dragged my friends over, and we circled the table. I folded my hands over the surface and looked around at all the other patrons. I couldn’t tell who was a demon and who was human, and that bothered me. I always thought it would be easy to tell.
Everyone else had started to eat their food, so I popped one of the appetizers into my mouth. It tasted like fish, and I resisted the urge to spit it out. My friends followed suit, and they both looked equally disgusted. We continued to chew, though, and then take little sips from the water glasses that a waitress provided for us the second we sat down. Only, it turned out to be alcohol. Not vodka, but some other clear kind of alcohol that burned all the way down to my stomach.
I tried not to choke on it.
“Whoa,” Seamus said. “This is the good stuff. Demon water.”
Demons made alcohol. It was some of the most expensive stuff that I had ever seen. A single bottle could cost more than a car. It tasted foul at first, but as the burning got worse, this fruity flavor sprang up on the back of my tongue. Bright and refreshing. Not that I would be taking another sip. Not after the first one nearly laid me out. Plus, I had heard that demon water could get someone drunk with half a glass. I already felt it buzzing in my head. No need to make it worse.
To counter it, I took what looked to be a little cheese puff thing and popped that into my mouth. It turned out to be some kind of potato that tasted amazing. I wanted to stuff my face with them in an unladylike manner.
“Do you feel like everyone is waiting for something?” Seanan asked, looking around. “They’re all talking and looking to the stage expectantly. What do you think they want?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my eyes scanning the room for other reasons. I wanted to find a door that no one else walked through. I spotted the kitchen fairly easily. All the waiters and waitresses walked through that door. When they did, I could see the bright white and blue illuminating from within.
Another door, to the right of the room looked promises. If we went through there, though, it would have to be when no one else paid attention. Which meant that we had to wait for whatever everyone else seemed so excited about.
I nudged Seamus and nodded in the direction of the doorway. “What do you think?”
He squinted at the door, and then nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s give this thing another twenty minutes, and then we’ll go for it. Maybe there’s some kind of entertainment, and that’s what everyone is waiting for?”
Seanan frowned, staring at everything. “It would have to be some hella good entertainment, if no one looks bored, yet.”
I agreed with that but didn’t say anything. One of the waitresses came over, removed the appetizers that we hadn’t finished, and put another plate down. She said something about mousse before she walked away. I looked down at the food and decided not to eat it. It definitely didn’t look like chocolate, and the last I wanted was goose liver in my mouth.
The lights flashed above our heads, and I looked up at the ceiling. Everyone in the room went silent, and turned to face the front, where the stage had been located. I hoped that a band would walk in. Something that would make a lot of noise, and everyone would want to pay attention to. If they danced too, that would only make my life that much easier.
An announcer came over loudspeakers. “Please, everyone, stay seated until the introductions are complete. Afterward, you are free to mingle as you see fit. The main dinner will be served in one hour, and the band will start an hour after that.”
The voice cut off and I looked at my friends. “All right, we can get through two hours. Or, when everyone else is eating, we can go exploring,” I said.
Seanan nodded. “Or even when they’re mingling. No one will notice a few nobodies disappearing from the venue.”
I hoped not, anyway. We just had to get through some kind of introduction…
Someone walked out onto the stage, and I looked over at him. I suddenly realized why I hadn’t been able to tell the difference between the humans and the demons. Until that man arrived, everyone had been human.