Perhaps the demon didn’t know how much schools cost these days, because he’d overshot it a bit.
All right. He’d overshot by a lot.
Brannigan was paid for.
So was college. And possibly her first year of grad school.
But she would be damned—if she wasn’t already—before she informed him of his error. She stared at those numbers and thought:This is how much a human heart is worth.
Dee picked up the scrap of paper James had given her at the hospital. She knew Portland well enough to recognize the address’s general location—Pearltown, an odd place for a demon to make its lair. Somehow she had thought this paper would lead her to a sewer or a castle.
It was a Saturday. She had a signed permission slip that allowed her off campus on weekends—she had forged her mother’s signature herself. If she wanted to check out this address, she might as well get it over with.
“I need to get out of here,” said Gremma, as if hearing Dee’s thoughts. She was sprawled across her bed, a chemistry book before her. “You want to come get coffee with me?”
Dee hesitated.
“Can’t,” she said. “I’ve got errands to run.”
“And you can’t make time for a teensy coffee with your roommate in between whatever you’re doing?”
Dee didn’t bother to think about it. “Nope.”
Gremma rolled over. “You’re heartless sometimes.”
Dee snorted out a laugh. She snagged her purse and her bus pass and hurried out of the room.
The address did not lead to a sewer. Nor a dark tower, a castle, or a cave.
It was one of those warehouses—the kind that had been converted into apartments for young up-and-comers. There was a food truck parked on the opposite curb, and a man in a custom suit held the door for Dee when she walked into the building. It was clean, neat, and everything she had not expected. She took the stairs, too keyed up to stand still in the elevator.
The apartment door was slightly ajar, a sliver of light piercing the gap between wood and frame. Dee swallowed, pushed on the door, and it swung silently open.
Inside was a large space of unfinished brick and concrete. It looked as though some designer had gotten fed up and abandoned the project halfway through. One entire wall was nothing but windows, crisscrossed with metal. The whole area was wide open, with curtains cordoning off what must have been a bedroom. Closest to the door were two couches and a ratty recliner. There was a kitchen—if she could really call it that—with a fridge, a microwave, a portable camp stove, and a cluster of tables that were clearly being used as counter space by whoever lived here.
“Hello?” she called.
A groan came from the clump of furniture. Dee jumped, ready to flee, but the noise hadn’t sounded aggressive.
“Cora?” It was definitely a male voice, rusty and surprisingly familiar. “If we’re being sent on another mission, you’d better have brought bagels.” A hand appeared, grasping at the back of the couch, and a face followed the hand.
It wasn’t the demon. It was Mr. Not-Homeless.James, she thought, taking a moment to place the name. His hair was rumpled and stuck up on one side, and his expression was fuzzy with exhaustion.
“You’re not Cora,” he observed.
“And you’re definitely not homeless,” she said.
He pushed himself off the couch. He was dressed in an old flannel shirt and sweats. His feet were bare, and something about that made her feel safer. If she did run, he’d have to put on shoes before giving chase.
He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Dee, right?”
She nodded.
James let out a breath. “All right. All right.” He repeated the words quietly, as if they weren’t meant for her. “I’ll call the welcoming committee. You”—he waved at the couch—“make yourself at home.”
She hesitated, unsure about venturing farther intothe apartment, but then James was walking away, his gait unsteady. He blindly reached out and hit a button on the coffee machine before tottering into the curtained-off portion of the apartment.
The couch was Ikea-standard, a model made for comfort and sturdiness. There was a gray stain across its red fabric. And sitting at the coffee table was a knitted red heart. She picked it up. It was dirtier than hers, worn, and a few strings were knotted together as if they’d come undone and been clumsily fixed. Papers were everywhere, smudged with charcoal and pencil. Dee set the knitted heart down, picked up one of the papers instead.
