Chapter 3

Igape at Sarah for a long moment before I exclaim, “If the Apocalypse resumes, I’ll run to the first angel I see and report Kondar and Zeral. Once he kills them, we’ll be free of our Indentures!”

Sarah gapes back at me before she bursts out laughing. “Oh, Wen, it never ceases to amaze me, the way your mind works.”

I wink at her. “I’ll have you know this is totally logical reasoning. I don’t think we’d be worse off if the Apocalypse does resume, and we only stand to gain if angels start killing off demons again.”

She breathes another chuckle. “You’d be right—if we’re not among the collateral damage of their showdown, like the untold millions killed during their first one.”

“I refuse to believe even our luck can be that bad! Anyway, the Regulars’ media insinuate the Accords might be broken every day. It’s good for their ratings.”

She nods with a sigh. “Yeah, but they always cite far-fetched or made-up, not to mention trivial reasons for it. Zinimar’s death is major. If someone murdered him—and I can’t imagine how he died if someone didn’t—there will be massive repercussions.”

“Ugh, Sar, let me savor the fantasy. The Apocalypse resumes, angels char Kondar’s and Zeral’s ugly asses, and we sail away from the warzones to some Pacific island and set up a scuba diving business.”

“Assuming we’ll find paying customers.” I roll my eyes, and she rushes to add, “But I don’t want Zeral dead. Can I only make the angels force her to release me?”

Shaking my head, I sigh. “You’re too good, Sar. Okay, she may live. At least until she’s killed for some other reason than enslaving you.”

Wincing and chuckling at once at my viciousness, she raises the lid off the casserole and my salivary glands gush so hard it hurts.

“What magic have you conjured for us tonight, milady?” I moan.

“Stew in bone stock,” she mumbles around an experimental taste.

“No way that’s what I’m smelling.”

She gives me a triumphant grin. “I got spices.”

I goggle at her. “Whoa!”

“Yeah.” She replaces the lid and dashes past me. “Nature emergency call. Make sure it doesn’t burn.”

“You’re assigning this task to the wrong person!”

“I trust you,” she calls over her shoulder.

“A grossly misplaced trust,” I holler back.

As she giggles and slams the bathroom door, my heart sinks at the sight of the exotic spice jar on the countertop. It looks light years beyond our budget.

According to a bylaw of the Accords, demons are forced to pay their Owned salaries. But being evil, exploitative scumbags, they manage to get away with paying way below human minimum wages. It’s actually worse than slavery, since slaves at least get food and shelter. We get neither, and all that so-called salary does is disqualify us for human financial aid and food stamps.

Bottom line is, we can only afford damaged or expired food. And very little of either. It’s why I started dumpster diving years ago.

When she found out, Sarah insisted on taking turns. But I wouldn’t hear of her rummaging through other people’s garbage. Her mistress is a stickler for cleanliness, and I’m the one used to dealing with worse than literal shit at Demonica anyway.

Being her fair, helpful self, she still tried it once—and it was a disaster. She emerged from the dumpster a mass of contusions, and spent the night scrubbing herself clean. Which was to no avail. Next day, after one whiff, Zeral hosed her down and shaved her all over, head and privates included. She let her wear nothing but disinfecting worms for a week, insisting it was long overdue. According to her, Sarah’s human reek was terrible for her allergies, and she shed worse than a werewalrus. And Sarah didn’t even get anything edible out of the ordeal.

But as always, she found another way to be useful. While I lamented the loss of her gorgeous hair—what she wasn’t allowed to grow back beyond her jawline—and plotted to shave off the hideous growth Zeral calls a nose in payback, Sarah concocted the only soap that has ever gotten me clean from the dumpster reek and Demonica’s supernatural filth. One of its ingredients is a cleaning spell she swiped from Zeral. Since Sarah never stole anything else, the demoness still blames Kondar, her ex, for the theft.

Anyway, without my dumpster derring-dos, we would have starved, since most of our measly wages finances this roof over our heads. Homelessness, and in the Demon Zones too, trumps empty stomachs any day. Spices, even the ten-dollar store variety, were among the luxuries we couldn’t afford.

Then I started making loads of money selling Angelescence. But we couldn’t be seen spending more than our wages, or looking better-fed. We had to continue living as the malnourished paupers the Owned always were. We never indulged in even discreet one-offs. We agreed every cent spent pushed our goal back. And this we really can’t afford.

So why did Sarah buy that humongous jar of spices?

The moment she’s out of the bathroom, I blurt out, “How much did it cost?”

She freezes mid-step. “Nothing! You think I’d spend a cent on anything so frivolous when I know what you go through to make that money?”

“If you didn’t…” I stop, moan, “Oh, no, Sar. I’m the thief in this dynamic duo!”

“I didn’t steal it, either,” she exclaims. “Zeral gave it to me!”

I gape at her. Zeral is as big a miser as her ex. “Sar…”

She cuts off my groan. “You think I’d steal from her, when I’m still struggling not to spill the beans about that cleaning spell—five years after the fact?”

I suddenly feel like the biggest jerk in the world. Of course she wouldn’t do anything this irresponsible.

“Ugh, sorry, Sar,” I mumble. “I’m extra jumpy today…”

My apology trails off as she pats my arm on her way to the stove. “You had every right to freak out, finding that massive beauty that costs hundreds—or more—gracing our countertop.”

Feeling worse at her exoneration, I shake my head. “There’s no excuse for thinking you’d steal it. That’s something I’d do. You’re the Spock of this team.”

She turns with an uncanny imitation of his expression and voice as she says, “Jim, I have been, and shall always be, your friend.”

I wheeze a laugh, and she joins me, hers unhindered by pain. We regularly watch Star Trek at Edna’s. That wonderful show from bygone times when humans thought they had to go to outer space to meet new species. As if that is ever a good idea.

Our references to that show, and the parallels we have with Kirk and Spock, are among the brightest pin pricks in our dark lives.

Pain forces me to sober up, and I groan. “You have to stop letting me off the hook, Sar.”

She throws a towel at me as she rolls her eyes. “Stop it, will ya? Don’t you want to hear the story of how Zeral, the Grand Dame of Misers, gave me a few years’ supply of rare spices?”

I lower myself carefully into one of the two chairs we own. “I can’t even imagine. It must be epic.”

“Oh, it is. It starts when she traded that jar with a Rakshasa Demon from India for a bag of fresh teenage human teeth.”

We exchange a look, and another of our unspoken rules passes between us. Don’t ask, don’t want to know.

She clears her throat as she turns off the stove. “She smothered her raw goat thigh in the spices, and wolfed it down in one mouthful. I haven’t seen her stretch her mouth that wide since the—incident with that goblin.”

I huff a chuckle. “Good thing you don’t have to put up with her monstrous states on a regular basis.”

“Yeah, she tries her best to look ladylike. It’s such a good act, that goblin thought he could get away with killing her pet iguana.”

That was Kondar’s revenge when she got the magical curiosity shop in the divorce. “It was serving it to her as her favorite ostrich dish that sealed his fate.”

“I never saw her as frenzied as when she realized she just ate her pet.” Sarah shakes her head with a shiver. “I still didn’t think she’d do something like that.”

“You and him both.” I snicker. “I bet he didn’t believe her capable of anything he couldn’t counter. He kept hitting her with spells—up to the moment she chomped off his knobby head.”

Sarah shudders. “I can still hear the crunching of tissue and bone.”

I smile in fond reminiscence. “Yeah, it was great.” Then I frown. “Though not so great that she killed him so quickly.”

“Wen! Nobody deserves such an end!”

“Oh, that serial child molester deserved far, far worse. I daydream about the much worse and far more protracted ways I would have killed him.”

“I agree he deserved severe punishment…”

“I would have cut off the junk he raped all these kids with. But I wouldn’t have let him bleed out. I would have kept him alive, convulsing and shitting himself in agony while I cooked it and fed it to him…”

“Wen! It’s not good for you to think such terrible thoughts!”

“It’s actually the best thing for me. Such ideas are like the comfort food we never get to have.”

“I’m all for anything that gives you comfort,” she mumbles as she covers the pot again, looking a little green around the edges.

Another wave of guilt drenches me. “Ugh, Sar. I’m a crude moron, bringing up cooking goblin jun…” I swallow the rest as she holds back a gag.

Before I can apologize again, she shoots me an absolving smile. “You know I love your macabre humor, even if I can’t keep up. But maybe not while I’m cooking, hmm? I did think that goblin should die, but my stomach didn’t agree with the method.”

“Yeah, you threw up.” I grin again, unable to stop my delight at the memory. “All over his twitching carcass!”

“While you whooped and hugged Zeral. While she was still swallowing his head!”

I laugh, no longer caring that it hurts, and she does me the courtesy of chuckling with me. “What can I say? I’m a vicious product of this shitty world.” Then I hear what I said and curse under my breath. “You didn’t draw a good card with me, Sar. You deserve better.”

She rounds on me with a scandalized glare, ladle in mid-air. “Oh, shush, you idiot. I can’t even imagine a better card. You’re my wildcard, and you’re everything I need.”

I mumble something as I clatter the cutlery around my plate. I’m very bad at receiving her pep talks and compliments. Mainly because I’m positive I don’t deserve them.

Needing to change the subject, I resume our previous one. “So how did you end up with Zeral’s prized spices?”

“They gave her a fiery indigestion—literally.” She gives me a conspiratorial grin and I swear it triggers the salve’s effects at last.

The searing in my back eases as I grin back like a doped-out fool. Those moments after pain lifts and relief floods in to douse my tortured nerves are the only times I get loopy

“She singed off her eyebrows, then set fire to her boudoir’s curtains. But it was when a burp burned the ancient Egyptian papyrus she already sold for a hundred grand to ashes that she threw a demon-phlegm-spewing tantrum.” I snort along with her as she brings our sole pot to the table. “I was still cleaning up the mess when she tossed me the jar on her way out.”

I inhale the symphony of aromas, gulping down my flowing saliva. “Remind me to thank your demoness, even if she used you in lieu of the trashcan.”

Sarah giggles as she serves her latest concoction, and I grin ears-wide at her excitement.

After the first spoonful, I almost faint at the taste. I shove another one so fast I almost shatter my front teeth. Sarah’s smile widens as she gets down to demolishing her own plate.

Then there’s only the sounds of two famished girls slurping too-hot food in companionable silence.

We got good at that on days when we didn’t have the energy to make accounts of our dreary days funny. It was Sarah, again, who taught me I don’t have to try so hard at such times. That silence between us can be the healing balm we need to go on.

Her sudden movement, reaching back for a towel, interrupts my musings. She was eating so fast, she fed her hair. As she dabs it clean, then shoves it in what she calls a bunny-tail, before attacking her plate again, my heart clenches. She looks…so young right now.

Though at twenty-one and five months she’s maybe older than I am—since I don’t know my exact age—I always felt like she’s the younger sister I never dreamed of having

I’ve had that unstoppable urge to protect her from the first day we met. That was when her family sold her to Zeral. The demoness was still married to Kondar then, before they split us in the divorce. Sarah hasn’t heard from her family ever since.

While I hope this means her parents died an excruciating death, she doesn’t hate them for what they did to her. Hell, she has excuses for them every time the subject belches up. It shouldn’t surprise me, since she’s my complete opposite in everything, not just in looks.

Like her inner goodness, she’s exquisite on the outside. Fair-skinned, silky-haired, with everything about her refined and graceful. Even our chronic malnutrition hasn’t erased the softness of her curves or the perfect proportions of her five-foot-five frame. While my six-inches-taller one is sallow and spindly, with the big bones of my shoulders, hips and knees jutting out awkwardly through my sparse flesh.

From my masses of indeterminate-color dark hair that always conspires to escape my braid, to my large, hooded eyes and big mouth, the latter in every way, I can pass for part desert demon. While I always thought she looks like an angel.

But unlike real angels, she’s as good as those humans once believed in. She deserves far better than the lot she got.

I’m only glad Kondar got me in the divorce. If she were the one being abused regularly—I can’t even bear imagining that.

Zeral, thankfully, isn’t a sadist like him. Not to say that Sarah is safe with her. Zeral drinks, a lot, and what she does while drunk could have killed Sarah, many times over. It still can.

She once forgot Sarah inside the shop, sealed it with an unbreakable spell and travelled for a month. Sarah almost died of starvation, and me of desperation. Another time she mistook Sarah’s bag for hers and filled it with the magical scorpions she was delivering to a client after hours. Then there was the time she accidentally infected her with a strain of demonic bacteria, and Sarah almost burned from the inside out.

I shudder at the memories, and her eyes rise to mine in concern. I pretend to be fidgeting in my chair and shove another spoonful into my mouth. Our time together is the only good thing we have, and I’ll be more damned if I let the ugliness of the outside world taint it.

But no matter how ugly it gets, Sarah remains so warmhearted and generous, it hurts. It makes me fear for her even more.

You can’t be this forgiving in such an unforgiving world.

But that’s where I come in. I take all the hits so she can remain herself. And I’ll get us out of here, and give her the life she deserves.

Midway through scarfing down the unusually large serving like a locust, my mind wanders to what this life would look like. I never let myself dwell on that, focusing only on surviving the next day, the next sale. But I suddenly can’t resist speculating.

What kind of life can we build outside our prison?

All I know about the world beyond the Mark’s range comes from my stolen times on Demonica’s internet after I finish Kondar’s work. That is, until a year ago, when I started dedicating every second to running my operation. I could never afford a smartphone before, and now only get burner phones for my transactions. Mobile internet is useless here anyway, because of infernal magic interference.

My other sources are the summaries Sarah gives me of the books and magazines I steal for her, and the snippets I hear from Demonica’s droning news or sports channels. We reserve Edna’s screen-time for watching our beloved pre-Apocalypse movies and shows. The rest of my knowledge is anecdotal.

But as far as I can tell, this Afterworld looks nothing like any post-Apocalypse these shows and movies projected. Neither was the Apocalypse itself, for that matter.

Not that anyone knows what really happened. How and when and where it started before it came to earth, what exactly happened when it did, and why it ended, so abruptly. Everything remains rumors peddled in private gatherings, or conspiracy theories on the internet’s back alleys. No one dares to openly discuss or investigate the war. Not when getting your social media accounts banned and losing your job are the first price you pay. Then things get serious.

I myself don’t believe either side. Considering the angels are the ultimate in authoritarian bureaucracy and humans the epitome of herd mentality, who can blame me?

The fact remains that there are no dependable records of anything. The devastation made it impossible to document the war at first, then rebuilding and restoring normal life became humanity’s priority.

As for the other players, demons—who are said to be the world’s second largest population, with their dozens of subspecies—spread only misinformation. The Shifters, Vampires, Witches and all the other Supernatural races are far less in numbers, and they mostly live in secret societies, so we don’t hear from them much. The Fae rarely bother to address the issue, or humanity itself for that matter.

So we’re stuck with the angels as our only source of info. They provide the “facts.” The media parrots them. Period.

By the time we’re finished eating, I still can’t imagine what our lives will look like on the outside. But I don’t care. Anything will be better than the ones we have here.

We’re almost done cleaning up when Sarah suddenly says, “Okay, out with it.” My eyes widen in surprise, and she persists, “You have something serious on your mind. Tell me.”

“Why don’t you tell me, Sar? You can clearly read it.”

She gives me a glance that can shame a demon into telling the truth.

I was going to wait until she sleeps, so I’d avoid having this confrontation. I should have known she’d read my intentions.

I sigh. “I’m going out again.”

She jerks in alarm. “But you already had a—transaction today!”

It still disturbs her to even think of my drug dealing. If I could have kept her in the dark about it, I would have.

But she was my very first test-subject. Accidentally, granted, but she was there every step of the way while I figured this whole thing out, and decided to cash in on it. Being the smartest being I know, she would have figured out what I was doing anyway.

I shrug. “My client was a kid, so I walked away. But I have exactly a hundred transactions left to goal, and I not only need to keep on schedule, I must double my pace. Things are coming to a head, Sar. Good news is, I had another vetted customer lined up, so I set up the deal while I was still at Demonica.”

Her hand shoots out to grab my arm. “Don’t go out tonight, Wen.” Her face and voice suddenly crumple. “Nothing is worth putting yourself in such danger!”

My frown deepens at her outburst. This is more than her usual anxiety. I still have one way to deal with it. Make a joke. That always works.

But when I open my mouth, I find myself saying, “Getting out of our servitude—getting you out of here—is worth anything, Sar.”

I don’t add, my life included.

Sarah gets my unspoken words, and panic creeps into her reddening eyes. “I…I feel something big is going to happen.”

I wave her off. “It’s all the doom and gloom news getting to you…”

“It has nothing to do with Zinimar’s death,” she speaks over me. “That’s too big to touch us in our tiny lives, not for a long time. I’ve been feeling this way for a while now, that something close to home is going to happen—and soon.”

This extra panic must be nerves. And who can blame her? We’re living under constant threat by default, and I went and added a drug operation to our perils. The longer I do it, the more it weighs on her. She may be approaching breaking point. I can’t have that.

But I can’t give her reprieve either, can’t slow down.

And now I can’t shake the dread her fear has infected me with.

Sarah’s instincts are never wrong.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” I say, to myself as well as to her. She shakes her head, and I add more forcefully, “I must keep doing this, Sar.”

Her grip tightens on my arm. “No, youdon’t. You have enough money to buy out your Indenture.”

I go still.

I already got us a million bucks. Five-hundred grand each. It never occurred to me to calculate it any other way.

But she came up with her own solution to the equation. That I have enough for one ticket out of this hell.

How can she even suggest this to me? How can she consider I’d leave her behind, under any circumstances?

Throat tightening with the tears I held back before, I lean down to peer into her pleading eyes, renewing the pledge she’s trying to nullify. “We get free together, Sar, or not at all.”

She shakes her head vigorously. “I waited until you made enough money, because I knew you wouldn’t hear this before. But you must see reason, Wen. You’re the one in constant danger. And things are coming to a head, one way or another. I can deal…”

“Together or not at all. Period, Sar.” I tug my arm out of her spastic grasp, stride to the door before those damned tears fall, giving her more reason to cling to me, to drag this out.

I think I’ll manage a clean exit when she cries, “Wen, please, don’t go!”

Her tremulous entreaty lodges between my shoulder blades, inflicting more pain than Kondar’s lash, making me grit out, “I’ll be fine, Sar. I always end up fine.”

Giving her no chance to say anything else, I slam the door behind me.

But as I rush down the rickety stairs, I wince as my declaration echoes in my head.

Is that what they mean by famous last words?