Silence.
And then rainbow light came streaming from his skin. The light was force and power and it beat me back, into the side of the pentagram, which didn’t budge. The firecracker/mold smell was strong and pungent here in the confines of the pentagram, and I sneezed but didn’t flinch. It was Tuesday afternoon all over again, except this time things were different.
This time I was letting the demon in.
Demons rush to bodies. I opened wide and let the elemental stream into me. He wailed when he realized where he was, and tried to leave.
“Oh no, you don’t,” I said. “You’re staying right here.” I kept him locked inside me, which—although an unbelievably creepy sensation, like keeping a live goldfish imprisoned in your mouth—wasn’t impossible. After all, demons longed for human bodies. Estahoth wanted to leave me and try Devon again, but at the same time I was his raincoat, his shelter from the storm. The force of my command to him worked on him somewhat, as the witch’s had on Tuesday. He cowered in me, ambivalent, huddling. “You’re still not done with your contract,” I told him. “But first we’re releasing these hopes and dreams to their rightful owners.”
The demon calmed down, coiled. The goldfish sensation lessened. I felt him lurking, felt a mental shrug. “Fine,” said Estahoth. But if he was willing to play my game for the moment, then he must be thinking of some new plan. I didn’t trust him an inch. “My part of the bargain was fulfilled by collecting them.”
And then all five dreams that he’d collected bubbled up in me. I sorted through them. Reese’s secret hope to be a kindergarten teacher and have a big family. Avery’s fierce desire to be a tennis star. The girl who liked computers wanted to design games, Tashelle wanted to build bridges, and the last girl wanted to be a librarian. I sent all the dreams back to them, and the pentagram shimmered and cracked apart as one by one they dropped hands.
Well, except Reese, who still clung to the hands next to her, even when the girls tried to push her off. “I won, I won,” she said, near tears. The glassy zombie stare was gone, but her face was crumpled and confused.
Devon wavered and fell to his knees in the mud. “I’m sorry, Reese,” he said, and there was a crack in his voice. “All of you.” Most of the girls wandered off looking dazed, but Avery slapped him upside the head as she pulled heartbroken Reese away.
“My hopes and dreams!” shrieked the witch. “How can I harness the phoenix now?”
“You harness the phoenix?” shouted Sparkle/Kari. Her face was distraught, but her memory must have been sorting itself into place. It seemed to be pulling her in two directions, almost like I’d seen with Devon/Estahoth. That was surely all her former Kari-self yelling, “That was my phoenix. I discovered it and brought it here. He’s all mine!”
“Not if I get to him first,” said Sarmine.
“You’ve got a dragon,” shot back Kari. “What do you need a phoenix for, too? Greedy, evil—”
“Guys, guys,” I said. “Nobody owns a phoenix. You can’t own a phoenix any more than you can a human.”
And I reached down deep to the coiled elemental who still had one more part of his contract to fulfill. “Ready?” I said.
“Ready,” said Estahoth.
His force running through mine, we reached down and clasped the tiny metal mouse. There was a moment where we were working in harmony, and it felt right, like we understood each other and knew each other inside and out.
And I suddenly thought, Is this something that was part of Devon that I liked, that now will be gone forever?
But under our hands the mouse was warming. It came free from its base and we picked it up, warming, growing, changing in our hands. It was red, it was orange, it smelled of cinnamon and heartbeats, it fluttered, it breathed, it grew.
It lifted from my hands, still growing. Bigger, and bigger, until it was the size of Moonfire. Then bigger still, and I saw now that its feathers were dulled and torn with age, that its eyes were pouched, that its tail was heavy. The phoenix was very old. It was ready for rebirth. It was ready to start over.
“Thirty seconds,” said the witch.
Behind the phoenix I saw a form beating toward us, approaching in invisible sweeps that blocked the stars. “Cam!” whooped a far-off voice. “Cam!”
“Come,” said the demon. “See what we can do.” And with Estahoth’s help I seemed to grow out of my body, expanding along with the phoenix, which rose and winged higher and higher. “What is it you want to do with the flame? We can do anything. You could follow Sarmine’s lead. Use it to control the city. Or use it to control Sarmine.”
Unlimited power.
Anything I wanted.