Okay, it was not my most adult moment. I admit that.
Hatred flared in those dark eyes. Not just anger, but deep-seated, depths-of-the-soul hatred. No one that young should be capable of that much rage. “You don’t know me. Don’t think you get to judge me.” His accent grew thicker with every word. In another moment, he’d start spitting Spanish at me, and I’d be lost. Languages are Mira’s strong suit, not mine.
“Look, you’re right; I don’t know you. So I don’t know what your problem is. But if you can’t get a grip, one of us is gonna get canned, and I can guarantee you it won’t be me. You want this job, you cool it.” Whee, lookit me be adult again!
Maybe Sarah saw a problem brewing. The doorbell sounded its cheery “bing-bong,” announcing a customer, and she said, “Hey, old dude, you take this one, I need Paulo’s help on the ladder.”
Paulo gave me a look that could have melted titanium, but he went back to work under Sarah’s direction. What is it with kids these days? In my day, the worst we had to worry about was somebody keying a car. (Yes, saying “in my day” officially makes me old.) These days, I thought kids were scarier than any demon I’d ever stared down. I hoped Annabelle wouldn’t grow up to be one of those angsty teens.
The customer turned out to be an angsty teen himself, sporting a blond Mohawk and enough metal in his ears to make drowning a risk if he fell in a pool. I noted his clothing as I approached, trying to guess what I might be able to sell him. With his white T-shirt, low-slung jeans, and pair of scuffed boots, he looked more like he belonged in a fifties greaser movie than our usual goth customer base .
“Hey, welcome to It. Is there something I can help you find?”
Mohawk looked up at me with a sly grin, and I felt ice run down my spine. His eyes flashed red, and I heard my own voice drip from his lips. “Is there something I can help you find?”
“What the hell are you doing here?” I grabbed Axel’s arm and dragged him to a convenient corner.
“Hands off the threads-these were expensive.” He frowned and pretended to dust my touch off his bare arms.
Looking over his current form of choice, I felt sick. “Tell me you didn’t possess some idiot kid.”
“Nah, humans are too much work. This is all me, baby.”
It wasn’t an illusion. His arm felt all too real under my hand. In the future, I would have to rethink my opinion on just how dangerous Axel was. “You’re not welcome here.”
He grinned lazily, perusing the shelves with half interest. “Public place, Jesse-you can’t keep me out.” His eyes roamed over the store. “Cute place. You sell men’s clothes here?”
“What do you want?”
Axel shrugged his shoulders. “Just shopping. Trying to expand my social horizons, that sort of thing.”
“Get out.” A glance around revealed that Sarah and Paulo weren’t paying attention to us-yet. I needed to keep it that way.
“Nah.” True to his word, he started browsing, picking things up, and letting them fall to the floor. “You don’t really want me to go, anyway-not until you find out why I’ve bothered to get all gussied up and come a-callin’.”
“Hey! I have to pick all that up!” I followed along behind him, scooping up the mess he was making.
Axel snorted. “Demon… Hello…”
I dumped the armload of baby tees on a rack and moved to get in front of him again. “I don’t want you here. Nothing you have could be that vital.”
There was a chorus of noise from the back as Chris arrived for his shift. He was easily visible over the racks, towering above most other folk in his bright SUPERHERO T-shirt. His shaggy brown hair hung in his eyes, a futile effort to avoid notice.
“Oh, I know your soul’s in hock at the moment, Jesse… but I’d be willing to take one of theirs.” For the first time, Axel’s voice took on that quality that screams “demon.” It was an oil slick in my head, a taint at the back of my tongue. To hear my own voice echoing in the recesses of my skull was disconcerting at best; nauseating at worst. “Take that one, for instance.” He nodded toward Chris, a dark smile on his otherwise handsome face, and pointed a finger at the kids.
Atop the ladder, Sarah toppled with a startled squeal when her foot slipped on a rung. Chris, moving faster than I ever thought him capable of, caught her at the bottom.
“How horrible life must be for him,” Axel almost purred. “Freakishly tall. Too awkward for sports. Hopelessly in love with that girl but terrified to speak to her… What do you think he’d give me, for just one night? Just one kind word from her?” The two teens stared at each other for a moment before Chris set Sarah on her feet and retreated, blushing to the roots of his limp hair.
“Or the girl.” He tsked softly, shaking his head. “So terrified that no one loves her. That she’s not good enough, that someone will find out she throws up every single day. What would it be worth to her if I could promise her eternal beauty, unconditional love?” As if his words had conjured it, I could feel the despair settling into my bones; the loneliness, the choking uncertainty, the weight of a terrible secret. Despite knowing it was an illusion, I found it hard to shake it off.
“Or maybe they’re too close to home. Maybe… someone you don’t know.” He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me toward the windows, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “That one there, the girl in the pink shirt? She’s trying to get into Yale, but she plagiarized her last paper.” He smirked as he murmured into my ear. “You’d be amazed what she’d give to have that go unnoticed. Oh! And the tall man just past her, he’s pretty sure he has an STD, and he’s in deep shit if his wife finds out.” Axel snickered, and I felt my stomach do sick somersaults with someone else’s dread. “They’re not even good people, so what would it hurt?”
“Don’t.” Through sheer willpower, I relaxed my muscles and blocked out his voice. I concentrated instead on my own heartbeat, a bit elevated but still steady. It grounded me, and the heaviness of other people’s feelings faded-for the most part.
“What do you care? You don’t even know them. And I’m not hurting them. I’m offering them their dreams, Jesse, in exchange for something they wouldn’t even miss… Generous creature that I am, I am willing to throw in a bonus for you, too, something you so desperately need to know.” He shrugged and released my shoulders, his predatory gaze returning to my teenage coworkers. “I don’t think you’ll find a better deal, but I am nothing if not negotiable.”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re strangers, or if they’re not lily white in the deeds area. They’re not for sale.”
Behind the counter, a shaken Sarah refused to go back up the ladder, so Paulo took her place. He almost attacked the T-shirt wall, yanking things into position with a screech of tortured plastic.
The demon smiled. There was something ravenous in his eyes, a starving man eyeing a feast. “Ah, now that one. You wouldn’t believe the secrets I could tell you about him. So angry. So betrayed… An emo- rock song, just waiting to happen. What would he be willing to give up to have one chance to just get even?” Axel’s eyes glowed, more than the mere flash he usually let slip.
I grabbed his hoop earring and yanked his head around to look me in the eyes, all but growling in his face. “These people are off- limits. Get out now.” I could have escorted any human Axel’s size out the door with no problems. But Axel wasn’t human, and I had no idea how to get him out of the store if he wouldn’t leave voluntarily. My keys with the small canister of demon Mace were in my locker. No way was I leaving him alone with the kids long enough to get it.
He chuckled, calmly extracting his earring from my grip. “Ah, Jesse, ever the honorable warrior. It’s going to get you killed.” He patted my cheek, just short of a slap, then wandered toward the entrance. At the door, he paused to give me a sorrowful glance over his shoulder. “And there’re so few of you left as it is.”
Mentally, I said every four-letter word I knew, and a few I made up for the occasion. “What do you know, Axel?”
He shot me that thousand-watt grin. “I know someone’s not playing by the rules. Shame shame, I know his name. But I’m not telling you without something in return.”
The bell chimed as he let himself out. A pack of kids passed by outside the plate glass window, and when they were gone, so was the demon. Only then did I think to unclench my fists, useless gesture though it was.
I felt a presence behind me, and nearly turned to swing before Paulo spoke. “Friend of yours?” Apparently, he’d taken more notice of our “customer” than I’d thought.
“No. No, that was definitely not my friend.”
“He comes back, you want me to throw him out?”
I only shook my head to the negative, and I found reasons to stay near the door for the rest of the night. If
