Cian

"Who exactly are you planning to shoot?" asked Vinny as I swerved the Escalade sharply right, stomping the gas to power it up the driveway. I glanced fleetingly at the digital clock, glowing green in the darkness. Oil settled somewhere in the engine, a rhythmic tink ringing in my ears. It was near midnight. If my parents found me, they were going to kill me. I did not have time to be dead right now.

"I'm not sure yet," I answered, swinging myself out of the car and onto the pavement. "Maybe Eden. Maybe a demon. Maybe myself. All I know right now is that I need a weapon."

"Cian," called Vinny, and when I didn't reply, as I was more focused on finding a discreet way to enter the house, he said again, "Cian. Cian, stop acting like you don't hear me!"

"I hear you. I'm ignoring you."

"That's cruel."

I glimpsed him over my shoulder. I was approaching the side door, which was usually the quietest of them all, checking windows for lights as I went. Crickets chirped in the grass at my feet, the moon an orb in the sky, watching me. I wondered distantly if Lucie was seeing the same thing I was, the moon and the stars above, and drew comfort from it, if only for a moment. Hold on, muffin. I'm coming. Please hold on. The hardest part was that I didn't know where she was—but, regardless, I knew I had to start somewhere. "Look, Vinny," I said. "I know you're the prince of reason and you're going to try and get me to be rational. Here's rational: Lucie is missing. Lucie is in danger. Lucie needs our help. So I don't know what I'm doing, sure, but right now I need a gun."

"How is a gun going to locate her!" demanded Vinny, voice tinny and high as if through a telephone. He was not speaking through a telephone, however, but was rather just extremely frustrated, and his voice did strange things as a result. "Have you ever even used one before?"

I hesitated. "No. Not exactly."

"Not exactly—my God, you have lost your marbles."

"I know exactly where my marbles are," I snapped, peering in through the side door's window. The kitchen was vacant, as dark as the outside. I shivered in the wind, then searched around in my pocket for a key. Inserting it in the lock, I grinned at the satisfying click. "And don't use His name in vain."

"You're just jealous because I actually can."

"Vincent," I murmured, dropping my voice to a whisper as I turned the knob and slid myself inside. "We don't have time for this."

His mouth twisted as if he was going to protest, but he seemed to think better of it, and entered after me silently. I shut the door with ultimate caution, trying to make sure it didn't lock in the doorjamb with too much noise. I waited for a moment, half-expecting the lights to flip on and my parents to shower me with admonishments, but no such thing occurred. Heaving a sigh, I headed for my father's office, which was thankfully on the main level, beside the powder room.

"You're coming with me, right?" I whispered, glancing back at Vinny as we crept into the foyer, which was an eerie quiet in the nighttime, as everything seemed to be. It was something I was beginning to notice; at night, not just humans were asleep, but everything was, locked in a cold slumber that could only be reversed at the sunlight's touch. Even Vinny, it seemed, was stranger in the absence of light. He looked less like a boy and more like a figment of one's imagination, something barely grasped.

Vinny was looking at me like he knew just what I was thinking. "Where are we going?"

I said, "Once I'm armed, I'm going back to Eden's place. She's a chess player, like me. I get the feeling this is just another game, like she left us a clue, possibly."

"Unless she doesn't want to be followed."

"Don't be a Debby Downer."

Vinny made a disagreeable noise at this, and I allowed myself a chuckle. Even in such a dire time, it was somewhat relieving to have something to laugh at.

We'd reached the office, which was two bookshelves and a business official desk hidden behind two French doors. It was practically Dad's sanctuary, and it was also empty, which meant I had easy access.

"Wait," Vinny murmured, but I shushed him as I yanked opened the doors and we both slipped inside. Vinny ignored my shushing. "Oh, please. It's not like they'd be able to hear me anyway."

He had a point.

I came around Dad's desk, which was a mahogany monolith with a glass covering on top of it. The moonlight illuminated a circle of some sort of liquid residue, evidence that someone had not used a coaster. I sat in his desk chair and went to work. "What is it?" I asked Vinny.

"Dad keeps a gun in his office?"

My hands gripped the handle of the file cabinet on the lower right, the one I'd seen him unlock only once before. When I'd been little, I'd used to hang around Dad's office a lot, watching him work. That was when I saw him unlock it, and stowed underneath a plethora of papers—

Wait. A key. He had a key somewhere.

I realized I'd left Vinny waiting for a reply, but there was too much happening in my brain. The key, the key. Where was it? I joggled the handle, but it merely shook in place, unyielding. I should've known it was locked.

"Cian," Vinny said.

"A key," I mumbled. "He keeps a key to it somewhere, if I could only remember where—"

I was cut off by a wrenching sound, like nails being drawn across a chalkboard; I winced, but my eyes broadened as they met the cabinet I'd just been struggling to open. The screws were popping out of place, falling in a jumble against the imperial rug underneath me. The file cabinet shot open, papers fluttering, the screws that had once held it shut rolling across the floor.

I looked up at Vinny with a grin, which he mirrored. "You're getting good at that."

He shrugged.

I shoved the papers aside until my fingers met something cold, and slowing my pace, I lifted the pistol up. It was a black and powerful thing, and in my grasp, it made me feel more dangerous than I was comfortable with. Nevertheless, I had the pulsing knowledge that I would need it somehow.

With further searching, I located bullets. I looked up at Vinny then, whose eyes were childishly wide. "Alright. To Eden's—wait—what the—"

The gun clattered from my grasp.

Vinny shouted, "You don't just drop guns!"

I shook my head as I went to my knees, an acute and aggravating pain shooting through my chest. I knew this pain—someone was dying, somewhere. Without my wings, I hadn't been sure I would ever feel this again. In some sick sort of way, I'd missed it.

Clawing up the fibers of my shirt as I tried to catch my breath, I tuned into the visions I was getting: a neon sign that read Black Winged, a ferret-faced bartender, Caprice gasping on the floor.

No.

How?

She was—

"Cian?" Vinny asked me.

"Caprice," I exhaled, getting up and taking the gun with me. "Something's happening to Caprice."

"But," Vinny began, and I already knew what he was going to say, "she's immortal."

"There are loopholes for everything," I said, and though a part of me wanted to go to Eden's as planned, I was reminded of her courtesy towards me. Even though I hadn't wanted her service at the time, if she hadn't stepped in, that demon venom would have slowly killed me. I owed this to her.

I glimpsed Vinny on my way out of the office, pistol still a dangerous beast in my fingers. "Hurry up."

The club was empty when Vinny and I reached it, me out of breath from jogging a few blocks. When I said empty, I meant empty—there was no bouncer at the front, merely an open door, as if someone, something, was silently waiting for us. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

The dance floor was a vacant expanse of wood, showered in glitter and confetti. The glowing angel wings that had been spinning the last time I'd paid Black Winged a visit were still, like taxidermied birds hanging stagnant from the ceiling. Things kept growing stranger and stranger. At a time this late, Caprice's club would normally be filled to the brim with people who refused to go home.

Instead, it was silent.

"This way," I told Vinny as I snaked around the quiet bar, and to the corridor I'd met Caprice in a few weeks ago. Somehow, I knew where to go, and that I had to get there quickly. My brain cells felt as if they were exploding, alternating from Caprice to Lucie and from Lucie to Caprice. Sometimes I wished I didn't care so much.

Vinny and I were met with a hall of doors, like something out of Alice in Wonderland. I realized in terror that I had no idea which one housed her.

Then: a bloodcurdling scream.

I broke into a sprint.

"Caprice!" I shouted, my voice cracking as I reached the door her cry had come from, and flung it open.

I'm not sure what I saw first—Caprice gasping for breath on the floor, curled up on her side, or the four-eyed bartender I'd seen once before—but it definitely was not the ink-colored monster lunging right for me.

This was not the same type of demon that had tried to kill Vinny and me earlier; in fact, I saw no sharp teeth or talons whatsoever, merely an oozing, viscous black liquid that seemed to be able to move of its own volition. The stuff flew at me, and before I could move out of the way, it had clasped my hands and feet together, rendering me immobile. I fell in a heap to the floor, grimacing as my body slammed against the wood.

The bartender smiled down at me. It was the sort of smile a hunter gave to a caged animal he had caught. "He came," he said.

Caprice moaned, "Cian..."

I struggled against my demonic confines, but it was no use. I felt daggers seep into my skin, drawing blood. I screamed.

The bartender merely laughed at me. "Don't fight it. The more you struggle with the demon, the more it digs into you. I suggest you stay still."

I gritted my teeth. "What is this? Who are you?"

"Let them go!" shouted Vinny, and I rolled my eyes, as he didn't know when to shut up. My eyes strained towards him; he stood before the open door, his hands fists, eyes blazing with fury.

The bartender raised his eyebrows at my brother. "You've brought a ghost along with you?" he clicked his teeth. "Not the companion I'd choose."

"Don't you dare touch him," I hissed.

The bartender said, "Fine."

With a flick of his hand, more of the liquidized demon seemed to shoot up from the floor like a malevolent fountain. It emitted a high-pitched wailing noise as it forced Vinny out of the door sharply, pulling it shut behind him. I watched with round eyes as it wound itself around the handle, locking the door with its strength.

Vinny was yelling on the other side of the door, but honestly, the bartender had done him a courtesy.

"Happy?" the bartender asked me. "Anyway. I really am glad you came. I thought I could lure you here. I was an angel once. I know the kind of loyalty your ilk share."

I stared at him, trying to ignore the blood trickling down my wrists and ankles. "You're one of the fallen angels, aren't you?"

The bartender nodded. He reached to adjust his glasses, and I realized exactly why he was so familiar. When I'd come here looking for Caprice on account of one of Dempsey's murders, he'd been the one to lead me there, the one Caprice had briefly called Nick before he'd scurried out. It was amazing to me how even the most ordinary could be the most untrustworthy. "Pleased to meet you, Cian Horne. Eden has said lots about you."

"Look," I muttered, "if this is about me, which I'm sure it is, just let Caprice go."

"See," Nick said, with a perfunctory glance in her direction, "I would, but she's leverage. I've sent one of my demons down her throat. In the next few minutes, it will pierce her heart, and even immortality won't keep the dark magic from killing her. I can remove it, of course, but only if you cooperate."

My stomach did a somersault. I'd walked myself right into another trap. Caprice groaned, pushing her face into the floor. Black veins had begun to climb up her neck, an all too familiar sight that I'd once seen on my own skin. "What do you want?"

"Right," Nick commented, seating himself on the edge of a chair, as if he wanted front row seats to watch me squirm. "Let's talk. It might interest you to know, first of all, that I know Dempsey incredibly well."

My eyebrows shot up. Nick seemed pleased at this reaction.

"In fact, I am the one who created him."

I blinked. "Dempsey's your subordinate?"

Nick grinned, nodding. "Yes. My very own. I've been aiding him in his revenge plots, because it's training for him, wielding these demons. But when you came in, you see, trailing every single murder, that put us both in a wrap. See...now that you seem to have figured everything out, and now that we have his little sister—oh, whatshername, whatshername..."

"Lucie," I spat at him.

"Right, right. Lulu," Nick said, and I fought the urge not to lunge at him for calling her that, as if he had the right. "In any case, Dempsey's just been waiting to meet you. We both agree we're on fair enough ground to carry that out, don't you?"

I closed my eyes. When he said meet, I knew he did not mean a friendly tea party with several niceties exchanged and sweet smiles and small talk. No. To fallen angels, kings and queens of demons, even meet was a violent word. "You hurt Caprice, dragged me all the way over here, just to ask me to meet Dempsey?"

Nick pouted. "Except I'm not asking, and Caprice over here will die if you don't. She's got, oh, I don't know, three minutes left. Clock's ticking."

And it was ticking, like a persistent watch never ceasing, ticking and tocking in the back of my distressed brain. I squirmed again. The demon bit deeper. Vinny was still yelping from the other side of the door, and Caprice was making agonizing noises from the depths of her throat.

Through the pain of it all, I said, shutting my eyes, "Fine. Tell your idiot subordinate I'm coming to meet him. And that he'd better be ready. Now get that thing out of Caprice already."

"Oh, he'll be very pleased," replied Nick with another one of his sick grins, and then he twisted his fingers in Caprice's direction, muttering in Latin. I craned my head enough to ensure he was doing what he promised; Caprice, pale and shaken, was on her knees on the floor, gagging. I cringed as the demon spilled from her mouth, almost as if she was vomiting ink. With a sigh, she rolled back to her side and fought to catch her breath.

Every inch of me unwound in relief. I asked Nick, "Where does he want me to meet him?"

"At Sailor's Point. It's a strip of beach near—"

I rolled my eyes. "I've lived here my whole life. I know where it is."

Nick folded his arms with a humph, then hopped off his perch on the couch, removing his glasses and placing them in his pocket. He said, "Be there tomorrow at noon, and don't try backing out. We don't take promises lightly. Have a good night, then, boys and girls."

The demon released me, finally, and I exhaled, pulling myself up to my knees. Another one of the demons released its hold on the door handle, and the other skittered away from Caprice, all in Nick's direction. The last thing I saw was his unshakeable grin before the darkness swallowed him and he was gone.

The door flew open. Vinny burst in. When he saw both Caprice and me alive and breathing, he hung his head, hands on his knees. "Oh thank God! What happened?"

"We'll talk later," I said, and dragged myself to Caprice's side. We were in one of her back lounges, which was an array of posh furniture and different rugs that didn't exactly match the wall paint. Caprice knelt against the side of the one of the couches, chest still heaving, shoulders bent forward. "Are you okay?" I asked her. "Sorry about that."

At first, she only stared at me, but then her lips split into a sharp smile that was so much like her it convinced me of her health better than any words could. "Youth—always getting into trouble. Listen to me, Cian. Kill those bastards when you get the chance, alright?"

Her tongue sizzled, and I just smiled, nodding. "Alright."