He crossed his arms and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Now you’re being mean.”
“Let’s circle back to the whole demon-uprising thing. Bullshit?”
“No, I was serious about that.”
I sighed. “Of course you were. Okay, let’s pretend for a minute I believe you and think that the demons will rise up and bring Hell on Earth and all that.”
“You should believe me, because I’m not making it up.”
I waved my hand at him, visually shushing his interruption. “Let’s say I believe you. When might this incredible demonic plan be put into action? You know, so I can add it to my calendar.”
“You’re very saucy for a young woman alone in a room with a demon with no way out.” He stepped closer to me. “Do you think you’re invincible? Because you smell mortal to me, girl.”
It took all my willpower not to step back towards the door. I may have once had supernatural gifts, but now I just had fancy weapons and fancier wits. He could slit me open end to end before I could scream for help, and we both knew it.
But I didn’t budge, and he gave me a nod.
“You must be awfully smart to act so stupid,” he decided out loud.
“Thank you?”
“The uprising is meant to happen after sunset tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I stammered. Geez, these guys sure didn’t waste any time, did they?
“You wanted to know the date, I gave you the date.”
“To be honest, Harold, I was expecting you to tell me the plan would be set into motion on the sixth day of the sixth month in 2066 or something. You know, so I could leave a note for future generations of demon hunters saying, ‘Good luck, suckers.’”
“2066 isn’t that far away. Are you not expecting to be alive?”
“Have you seen the cavalier way in which I treat the sanctity of my own life?” I gestured to the space between us, reminding him how little there was. “I’ll honestly be surprised if I live to see thirty.”
“Good to have realistic expectations.”
“Can we maybe circle back to this whole the-world-is-going-to-end-tomorrow thing? That feels important.”
Harold took a seat, and though he didn’t show signs of discomfort, it was really awkward watching a demon with goat legs try to sit naturally on a little military-grade cot. He sipped his water, his long, pointed fingers wrapping almost double around the bottle.
“The world ending seems extreme. I like to think of it as more a change in management.”
I snorted and gave a sidelong glance to the mirror as if to ask, Can you believe this guy? but of course no one answered or gave any indication of having heard me.
“What’s the plan, then? What makes this attempt better than any others?”
“Vampires,” he said simply.
“Vampires?”
“Heard of them?”
“Har har, smartass.”
“For centuries, vampires wanted nothing to do with demons. There’s an association, historically, that vampires might be a kind of demon, a lesser dilution, and that’s why they need blood, because they can’t feed on souls directly. But regardless of whether or not that’s true, vampires want no part of the kinship conversation. And so for a long, long time the only ones we could make deals with were human. That is until someone on your level decided to make sure everyone knew about vampires. Then they found something they liked even less than demons.”
“What’s that?”
“Humans who know what they really are.”