A new voice spoke. “One hard vowel.”
Cal strolled into the apartment, his hands shoved in his pockets, smiling at Dee.
“Dee, you remember Cal,” said James, waving his hand in a lazy introduction.
Cal sat beside Dee. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think I ever got your full name. It isn’t really Dee, right?”
“Deirdre Moreno,” said Dee, after a moment’s hesitation. She always felt a little self-conscious; she had been the last person in her first-grade class to be able to properlyspelltheir own name. “I was named after my grandmother.”
“You have no idea how lucky you are,” replied Cal. “Carroll was the name of some dead uncle. And apparently, I was a difficult birth, so my mother decided to curse me with it.”
“Seems little has changed since then,” said James brightly.
Cal gave him a narrow-eyed look. “And when was the last time you showered?”
James took another bite of bagel.
“Well,” said Cora, ignoring the boys, “we’re glad to have you, Dee. I suppose you’ll need our numbers.” Without asking, she reached out and took Dee’s purse. It was half open, and before Dee could utter a word, Cora fished a cheap cell phone from it. “I’ll give you our contact info and loop you in on the troop texts.”
“Troop?” repeated Dee, sure she had heard Cora wrong.
Cora took a delicate bite of bagel, chewed, and swallowed before speaking. “We’re the Daemon’s Portland troop of heartless. There are other troops, in different places around the country—a few international ones, too.”
“Like the one I transferred from,” said James.
Cora ignored him. “Dee, if you want the basics, here they are: Three people are needed to destroy the voids. When a void appears—and it doesn’t happen that often, maybe once every few weeks—the Daemon will fetch us. Two people will carry the explosives into the void, get them to the center of it, and then set off the trigger. The third person stands in the mouth to ensure that when the void starts to explode—”
“Implode,” said Cal. “It does notexplode, itimplodes.”
“—Implode,” said Cora. “The third person keeps the mouth of the void steady so the other two can escape.”
A memory came back to Dee—that inhuman leg, there one moment and gone the next. No one had mentioned thingslivingin the voids.
“What are they?” she said. “The voids, I mean.”
Cora, Cal, and James all went silent. A look was exchanged, one heavy with meaning. “Thing is,” said James, “we don’t really know that. I mean, we have our theories, but…”
Dee drew in a breath. “And what are your theories?”
Cora spoke first. “I think they’re doors,” she said. “A temporary portal into another… world, I guess you could say. And the Daemon uses us to close those doors. So obviously what’s on the other side is a threat to him.” She lowered her lashes, and spoke more quietly. “What is the natural enemy of a demon?”
Oh.
Well.
That wasn’t gut-clenchingly terrifyingat all.
“Angels,” Dee said flatly. “You think we’re slamming doors on angels?”
But that didn’t make sense. What she’d seen in the void wasn’t at all angelic, not unless stories about angels had been wildly inaccurate.
“That’s one theory,” said Cal with a little nod. “Istill think the so-called demons are actually very advanced aliens. The voids could be a warping of reality used to travel long distances in a matter of moments.”
“But then how do you explain the magic?” said Cora.
Cal chewed absentmindedly on the edge of his paper cup. “Well, if you sent us back in time a few hundred years, I’m pretty sure our phones would be considered magic, as well.”
Dee looked at James. He had remained silent through all this, watching Cal and Cora with the air of a detached outsider. “And what do you think?” she asked.
