“Yes,” he answered.
Three explosive, nervous spawns loitered there on the edge of the vortex, like blobby monsters peering up out of a manhole. The goo-boys were blobs of lava: red oozy heat and crackly black skin. They had two eyes each, and all of them glowed yellow.
Only one had popped its foot-like tentacle out of the swirl of light, but where it touched the ground, it left behind little lines of smoke and blue flames that quickly winked out.
One of them “harrumphed,” another one gurgled, and then there were three tentacles barbequing the ground.
“How do we shut the vortex?” Delaney asked.
I had no time to reference the books.
“Bathin?” I asked.
“Oh, now you want my opinion?”
“Don’t be an ass,” I said.
“All right. You want the vortex closed, I want something in return.”
Of course he did. He was a demon. It was all about devil’s bargains with him. Getting more than he gave. Typical male from Hell.
“Name it,” I said.
“Within reason,” Delaney added.
“We shove the unicorn in the vortex and close it behind her.”
The unicorn yelped in indignation, and all three of us—Delaney, Ryder, and I—chanted, “No.”
Bathin’s gaze tracked the demon spawn, but his voice was light. “Well, then, I don’t think I can help you. Oh, look at that. Is that a nice mortal family coming to play at the park? I wonder how many seconds it will take the spawn to drag them to Hell. I bet five. Five seconds. Anyone want to throw in on this wager?”
“You’re bluffing,” I said.
He held up one finger just as the sound of an approaching engine reached me.
Dammit.
“Name something else you want,” I said.
“Anything?” he asked.
“No possession of souls,” I said. “No harming any person, creature, or god. Which, by the way, Xtelle now falls under the protection of Ordinary. So if you suggest that we do any harm to her, or if you try to do any harm to her, we will throw you out of Ordinary so fast, you’ll break the sound barrier.”
“I want you to date me,” he said.
“No.”
The car engine cut off. A door opened, and another. I heard children laughing, the sound of a mother getting a baby out of a seat.
Ooze One and Ooze Two seemed to have noticed the new arrivals too, which was kind of weird because the way the parking lot was situated, and how the vortex was level with the ground, made a clean sight line impossible. Maybe they smelled the humans.
Yeah, that was even worse.
Dammit.
“One date,” I countered.
Ooze One and Ooze Two hefted more tentacles up out of the hole, their lava goo stretching across the ground like pulled Slinkys. The smell of burned dirt and wood chips and, weirdly, burnt pie, filled the air.
