A Wolf at the Door

I murmured quietly to Mira, “Take Anna in the back. See if you can get Chunk to quiet down.” I knew now why the dog was going apeshit. There was no dog in the world that would tolerate Axel’s presence. Hazard of being a demon, I guess. Gee, everybody’s got their burden to bear.

“Jesse…” Mira hesitated, her fingers knotting in the back of my shirt.

“Do it.” I glanced at her over my shoulder and gave her a small smile. “Please. It’ll be okay.”

In the hallway, Estéban appeared, his worn machete in one hand. I shook my head at him, holding up a hand to stop him before he stepped into Axel’s view. “Kid, take the girls. Stay with them.”

He wasn’t happy with that, but he gave me a short, tense nod. Mira wasn’t happy with it either. I could tell by the way her green eyes went dark and the muscles in her jaw got all tight. But she nodded. “Yell if you need me.” She scooped Anna up as she vanished into the hallway. “Come on, button, let’s go get ready to play in the snow!” Obediently, Estéban followed them back down the hall, even if he did keep casting uncertain glances over his shoulder at me.

I waited until they were out of sight before I looked back to the man-demon still tapping on my door. “You know I can see you, right? You can stop knocking.”

He grinned at me through the glass. “Gotta get my annoyance quota in early.” Even through the door, he sounded like me. I mean, exactly like me. I was getting a little tired of the demon borrowing my voice whenever he felt like it. That was like…borrowing my underwear. You just don’t do that.

I wasn’t even sure if Axel and I were friends or not. I mean, we weren’t, ’cause he was a demon and that would be bad, but…I guess what I meant to say was, I wasn’t sure if we were enemies. The events of the last year had started to muddle my very clear view of what exactly “good” meant.

I grabbed my bomber jacket and slipped on my sneakers before I stepped out the door. Axel may be impervious to winter, but I wasn’t. Even bundled up, the snow-cooled air snuck past the leather, and I shivered as I shut the sliding door behind me.

The man-demon stepped back, probably glad to be away from my wife’s anti-demon magic, and I couldn’t help but notice that his footprints began and ended in a two-foot space, like he’d teleported there. Which he probably had. “That’s subtle. It’s broad daylight, Axel, what if someone saw you just blink in like that?”

He looked around, squinting in the morning sun. “They didn’t.”

“But they could have.”

“But they didn’t.”

I deliberately took a deep breath, in through my nose, out through my mouth, concentrating on why I was not going to reach out and punch him in the face. Because I knew I could now. Despite the fact that we shouldn’t have been able to cause harm to each other without a formal contract in place, one little experiment last fall had proven that those restrictions were no longer as firm as they’d once been. That made dealing with Axel a lot more unpredictable. It also meant the temptation to reach out and tag him was harder to resist.

“Here, put a coat on. You look conspicuous.” I reached back in the door long enough to grab my snow-shoveling coat, some ratty denim thing, and tossed it to him. And yes, the puppy was still having a cow in the back of the house.

He eyed it for a moment, then shrugged it on. “If you say so.”

We stood and stared at each other for a minute, while I shifted my weight as the snow trickled into the tops of my sneakers. “Listen, if you have something to say, can you do it sooner rather than later? I like my toes, they’re one of the few parts of me I haven’t broken. I’d hate to see them freeze off.”

He stuffed his hands in his—my—coat pockets, rocking on his heels a bit. “I came to ask a favor.”

“A favor, or the favor?” Because I owed him a favor, you see. A few months ago, I’d been desperate, alone, and to save the lives of my best friends, I’d offered him an unnamed favor. And in the grand tradition of negotiating with demons, if I didn’t pin down just what kind of favor this was, I’d owe him forever.

“The favor. It’s a big one.” He scuffed his boots in the snow, drawing a little design with his toe. “I need you to do something for me.”

I eyed him suspiciously. “You’re going to ask me to do something awful, aren’t you?”

Axel snorted. “No. At least, I don’t think it’s awful.”

“Then you do it.” Ha, had him there.

He shook his head, the sunlight sparkling off all the metal in his face. “No can do. My ice is thin enough as it is, I can’t get involved in this one.”

“Y’know, I’m getting damn sick of fighting your battles for you. At no point did I agree to be your pet champion.”

Axel’s eyes flared red for a heartbeat. “No, but you did ask for my help. So now I’m asking for yours. Tit for tat, Jesse. You know how this works.”