Joey looked back at Dorian, still leaning against the wall. “So, does this mean you won’t teach me after all? Like, does any of this matter anymore? Guitar lessons, all of that.”

“I will still teach you,” Dorian said. “If anything, it will keep your aunt at bay. Plus, knowledge is power, I always say.”

“And you better stick with guitar lessons,” Jack said. “I got you a present. I’ll show you after you finish your school stuff.”

Joey’s heart lifted. After learning his hero had once been a murderer, the kindness from him helped soothe the disappointment.

Once Cameron and Miles left the room, Dorian took his seat back and handed Joey a notebook and pencil that he’d set aside for him. Though Jack was still at the table watching his bandmate, Dorian was clearly avoiding all eye contact with him.

“So, I’ve done some research on what a student your age should be learning and what is required for this GED thing your aunt talked about. I don’t know what you already know, so I’m going to just teach you and you tell me if you know it already. You can take notes on there.”

Dorian, now smiling, scooted closer and used his own notebook to begin explaining algebra concepts. Though Joey already knew a lot of it from reading his former tutor’s mind, he didn’t want to interrupt his new teacher. Instead, he made eye contact as if listening but was instead reading everything passing through the demon’s brain.

It was like walking through a giant library. He hadn’t been to a library since elementary school, but the collections of knowledge in Dorian’s mind was like the school library a thousand times over. It seemed like there were organized sections by subject, though he couldn’t tell what they all were, but one section that he assumed was math was pouring out with thoughts floating by. It was so much smoother than that of his old tutor, whose mind was filled with more Biblical topics than anything else. Joey grabbed everything that passed by including what was planned to come out of his mouth in the future.

“Are you listening, kid?” Dorian’s words broke him away from the sea of knowledge.

“Yeah.”

Joey could tell that Dorian did not believe him. This kid has no appreciation for my knowledge.

“Yes I do,” Joey said. “I’ve read a lot of teachers’ minds, but your brain is amazing. How do you know so much stuff?”

Dorian’s thoughts were almost amusing, going back and forth between being flattered and irritated. “All right, kid, if you’ve been listening and reading my mind, figure out this math problem.” Dorian wrote out an algebraic equation and pushed the paper to Joey, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair.

The equation was not one he’d read in his mind, or had previously learned how to do, but he had seen the technique go by in Dorian’s wave of knowledge and solved the problem in seconds. He pushed the paper back and smiled.

Dorian raised an eyebrow and Joey read his thoughts of shock. “Did you learn this already?”

“No. I read it in your mind. Something you were thinking of teaching me later.”

“Holy shit,” Dorian muttered, and Jack snorted.

“How do you know so much?” Joey asked, still thinking about the giant library in the regular sized head in front of him and compared it to what he’d remembered seeing when Jack taught him guitar—minimal book knowledge aside from music. “It’s like you know everything.”

Dorian smiled suddenly. “I suppose I don’t know everything, but I know almost everything. I guess since you know about us now, I can teach you a little demonology, if you’re really interested in my intelligence.”

Joey nodded vigorously.

“Okay. Now, you said you’ve read the Bible, right?”

“Yeah. My grandpa’s a preacher, owns a giant church, preaches on TV and stuff.”

“A televangelist?”

“Yeah.”

Dorian snorted and shook his head. “That explains a lot. Anyway, I’m sure you’ve always thought of Hell as being all fire and brimstone, everyone burns forever, etc.”

“That’s why I’m afraid to go there. I don’t want to burn forever.”

“You won’t. Only the worst of the worst get eternal torment. But Hell is actually a very organized hierarchy of rulers serving under Lucifer, the Dark Lord, and each ruler has legions of servants below them. That’s what we are, members of legions. Some of us are higher up in the hierarchy than others.” Dorian shot a look at Jack, who glared back. “Anyway, servants are given powers by their rulers in order to do their assigned jobs. I work under a Great King named Asmoday whose specialty is the knowledge of everything. Every subject, anything you can think of. As a top member of one of his legions, I have been granted most of that same knowledge. At least the most important stuff. Everything needed for me to complete my job as an external servant here on Earth.”

“What’s your job? Do you kill people with knowledge or something?”

Dorian and Jack laughed. “I’ve always wondered the same thing,” Jack said. “Enlighten us both, please.”

“Fine.” Dorian took a deep breath before continuing. “I do not kill people. What I do is find people who are questioning their beliefs in God. In the beginning I’d find these people in places like libraries or community centers or among the homeless and I’d talk to them or sneak them books that validated their questions, made them give up their religion. Atheism isn’t a straight ticket to Hell, but if they were unlucky enough to talk to me, I would convince them that committing certain sins was okay. In these modern times, however, I’ve begun doing my work on the computer, the internet, finding vulnerable and questioning people to teach them and groom them into Hell-bound humans. I’ve been so successful at this that Asmoday has considered me his best servant. Probably why I was chosen for this mission.” He looked at Jack again. “Unfortunately not everyone appreciates my gifts.”

“Impressive work, Dorian,” Jack said. “You really do love kissing Asmoday’s ass, don’t you.”

“Shut up. I hear you kiss Andromalius’s ass, so who are you to talk.”

Joey looked back and forth between the two as they glared at each other. “You guys don’t like each other, do you.”

“Not a fan of assholes, no,” Jack said.

“And I’m not a fan of having an earl servant from the west as a leader.”

“But I seem to remember something you said…what was it…oh yeah, something about me having a brilliant idea and that I was a decent leader.”

“Today proves I was wrong.”

Joey tried to read their thoughts again, getting only If only he knew what else I told the boy from Jack before his new teacher demanded to continue lessons. As much as Joey still reveled in the vast knowledge he had access too, he couldn’t help but feel disdain toward Dorian. Jack might be considered a murderer, but Joey felt more attached to him—and somehow safer.

* * *

“Are you ready?”

Jack had taken Joey down to the basement to present his gift and to fill the remaining time in their day with guitar practice. The boy seemed to have forgotten his fear and disappointment from earlier, his aura yellow once again. The boy gasped when a shiny black guitar was taken from a hidden corner and presented to him. “For me?”

“Yep. It’s all yours. Now that you know about us, I can tell you that Cameron made it. He made a nice case for it too.” Jack showed him a black rectangular bag with a handle.

“He made all this stuff? From other stuff?”

“Yep. The wood is from a nightstand in one of the bedrooms, the electronics from the microwave we don’t use, and the bag from some blankets and curtains. The strings are the real deal though, some extras I had.”

“This is amazing, thank you! And it’s just like yours.”

“No problem. And if Annabelle asks, it’s a cheap one I bought, okay?”

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Joey nodded.

Jack took one of his guitars from the wall and sat on his stool across from Joey, who was looking at Dorian’s basses.

“It’s sad that you guys don’t like each other,” he said. “Is it hard to write music together? And tour together?”

“Sometimes. I can’t deny that he’s a great asset to the mission and that our music has a certain great flavor because of his ideas, but it is frustrating when he doesn’t respect us in return. But it’s not really all that surprising. The hierarchy he mentioned is very competitive among the servants. The higher you are, the ‘better’ you are. The Great Kings are only two steps down from Lucifer. Earls, like the one I work for, are way near the bottom, so in Dorian’s eyes, I’m trash. The rulers themselves don’t seem to feel that way among each other, but for those of us damned to a life of servitude, there’s a lot of competition and hatred. I thought Dorian was coming around, but I was wrong.”

“What about the other guys? They seem to like you. Do they work for earls too?”

“No. Miles is under a duke and Cameron is under a president, both higher than me. Miles and I have been friends for a long time, and Cameron’s a decent enough guy to not even care about that sort of thing, or if he does, he keeps it to himself.”

“It’s kind of cool that demons have different personalities like that. Hearing my grandpa talk about them all the time always made it seem like they were just evil beasts. But I guess if I’m a demon, that proves it’s not true. I don’t feel evil anyway.” Joey paused and looked curiously at Jack. “Were you guys born into human bodies like me? Or is this just a human form and you’re really like in the pictures where you have the red skin and horns and spikey tails?”

Jack laughed. “There isn’t a single demon in Hell that looks like that. Some of the rulers have unique forms, but us servants, we look like this all the time.”

“Lucifer made you all look human?”

“No. We were born human. From human parents. Regular people. But when we died, well, we went to Hell.”

Joey gaped. “So, you were a real person that did something bad and went to Hell. What did you do?”

Jack shrugged to hide the shudder as he remembered his first memory, the agony of everything being removed. “I don’t know. When we’re demonized they remove all our memories from when we were alive so that it won’t affect our work on Earth. We’re given a new name and they change what we look like, at least slightly so we’re not recognized. So I don’t know anything about who I used to be.”

“That’s so sad.”

“It’s part of our punishment for whatever it was we did. The removal is extremely painful, and we have to live eternally knowing that whatever life we lived is gone forever. I try not to think about it. I’ve lived like this for so long now, but I still wonder sometimes.”

“How long have you been a demon?”

“Don’t know exactly. Decades for sure. And I’ll be like this forever.”

“Wow. So Hell’s not a place where everybody burns, but it still sounds like a horrible place.”

Jack nodded.

“It’s where I’m gonna go someday, isn’t it. No matter what I do.”

“I honestly don’t know. You’re the first ever of your kind. But interestingly you’re protected by an angel, so maybe you’re in luck.” After a pause, Jack said, “She knows you’re a demon but still protects you even though she’s an angel.”

“She doesn’t believe she is though. But she’s got powers, healing powers. She hides it though. Only I know about it. And my mom knew. I think Annie’s got some sort of psychic powers or something too, like she always knew when I was in danger. She’d come to save me, always knew where I was. And she’s said weird stuff sometimes, like I mentioned I wanted to kill myself and she said something about how she would die if I did that, like she needed me to live. But you know for sure she’s an angel, right? How can you tell?”

Jack thought about Annabelle’s unique aura and knew Joey could see it in his mind. “People have auras that I can see. I can tell from hers that she’s an angel even though I’ve never seen one before. I just know it.”

“Do I have one too?”

“Yeah, though it’s faint. Demons don’t normally have auras, so I wonder if maybe you have some human in you.”

Joey smiled. “So maybe Annie’s right. She sees my mom in me, or so she says. So maybe it’s true.”

“Could be. You said Annabelle always knows when you’re in danger. She doesn’t feel that way about us?”

Joey raised an eyebrow. “Should she?”

“No. As long as you’re with me, you’re fine.”

“That’s probably why she’s okay then. She has a crush on you.”

Jack chuckled. “Really?”

“Totally. I’ve read it in her mind a bunch of times. It’s super hilarious now that I know you’re a demon.”

“Do not tell her. Don’t let it slip because of that.”

“I won’t. I swear.”

Jack spent the rest of the time teaching scales and more complicated chords. Watching the boy excel, he couldn’t help but think about Buriel. Despite having some sort of human quality, there was a lot of the terrible demon in him. His powers, his natural proficiency in music. He kept these thoughts for when Joey wasn’t looking at him. The boy had some hope about himself now; no need to ruin it.

Around 6 p.m. the doorbell rang and Jack led Joey back up the stairs with his new guitar. Annabelle stood just inside the door, looking at Dorian in particular with discomfort in her aura, though the demon was paying no attention to her while he sat on the couch with a book. She hadn’t looked at him like that before. Perhaps she sensed some sort of danger as Joey had mentioned.

She looked relieved to see Joey approach her and show her the notebook proving he’d learned things that day. But her eyes strayed to Jack standing behind him. The pink aura was sudden. Jack finally knew what the color meant and had to hide a chuckle.

“Look, Annie,” Joey said, holding up the case in his hand. “Jack got me a guitar! Now I can play at home too.”

Looking at Jack in surprise, she said, “You didn’t. Please tell me you didn’t spend a lot.”

“I didn’t. It’s just something to get him started.”

Annabelle blushed. “Thank you.” She looked tentatively at Dorian. “And thank you, Dorian, for tutoring him. I hope he wasn’t a bother to you.”

Looking up from his book he said, “Not at all. Smart kid. Makes my job easy.”

As Jack bid them goodbye, he shared a last look with Annabelle, trying not to show his amusement. A demon and an angel. How crazy would that be?

* * *

Joey wanted to wait for the right time to question Annabelle. She had been tired after a long day of work that Friday night, and much of Saturday had consisted of getting Joey’s furniture moved in and Annabelle’s office dismantled to create a room for him. He felt guilty for intruding to the point of taking over an entire room of the apartment, and read many thoughts of frustration and exhaustion from her mind.

But Sunday was not much better. He could easily sense the dread she had when preparing for church, and remembered her irritation when she’d returned home the previous week. But he needed answers, if not just for him, but for his demon friends.

Annabelle finally seemed mostly relaxed that evening, collapsing on the couch with the greatest sigh as if it were the first time she’d been able to relax in ages. For a moment Joey thought he again shouldn’t ask her anything about that night, that it would ruin her comfort. It had to be done.

“Annie,” he said softly, entering the living room. “Can we talk please?”

She sat up, looking concerned. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, now that I have the freedom to do that. Thinking about my past, where I came from, now that I have a future of some sort.” He paused, preparing himself for her reaction. “I know that what you’ve told me about that night isn’t all that happened. I think I deserve to know. I’m old enough to understand.”

As Annabelle sighed, Joey read the words God help me please, then she patted the empty spot on the couch next to her.

“I understand that you want to know,” she began after he sat down. “I’ve always wondered about where I came from too. But sometimes it’s better to not know, especially when it’s something painful and scary.”

“I can handle it. Please tell me. I have a right to know.”

Annabelle nodded. “Okay. You have to understand how hard it is for me. I was there. I saw it.”

Joey raised his eyebrows. “You saw it? Everything?”

“Not everything. Not the summoning and not what happened to Derek, her boyfriend. But I saw your mom get attacked.” Her eyes were tearing, her fingers fumbling in her lap.

“What did he look like? The demon.”

“Like a regular person. Looked to be in his twenties maybe, long hair. Same with the two guys that were with him. It didn’t even occur to me at the time that they might be demons of some sort or possessed or something. But it’s when they were about to kill her that I realized they might be.”

“What did they do?”

“One of them suddenly had a giant axe and was going to…”

Joey tried to coax her to continue.

“Joey, I have to tell you something. The things that I’ve done for you, finding you, saving you, those were all things I did for your mom too. She was my purpose. I knew she was in danger and where she was, where I could find her. Just like I do with you. And I felt myself dying when she died. I actually collapsed like I had died at the same moment. I had saved her that night, and took care of her while she was pregnant, but I couldn’t save her in the end. But then it was like it transferred to you. You became my new purpose. And even though you came from evil in some way, I’ve never given up because I know my purpose must be to keep you good.” She put her hand on his and squeezed.

It seemed to make sense now, why an angel would protect a demon. Joey remembered what Jack had said about his aura, that it meant he could be part human. “I’m trying my best to be good,” he said. “Maybe I am a bit like my mom after all.”

Annabelle smiled. “You are. And always remember that.”

Going back to the visual of his mother under an axe, Joey asked, “How did you save her that night?”

“Something…something happened to me while I was hiding in the trees. I had some sort of invisible power that I threw and knocked down that guy. Then I had some kind of shield power, protecting me when the one who attacked your mom was looking for me. Then he was going to kill her again so I threw something at him. This invisible something that just came out of my hand. The third guy set the trees on fire. It came out of his hand, I’m almost certain of it. I had the shield again and it protected me from getting burned. It’s never happened again, those weird powers. I even tried to consciously do it, but couldn’t. It felt like all for nothing afterward, watching your mom suffer so much, and then I failed in the end.” She looked at him, a tear leaking from her eye though she smiled. “But now there’s you. It wasn’t all for nothing.”

Joey hugged her. Of all the kind things she’d done for him, those words were the most meaningful of all. “You know, this proves you’re an angel. These guardian powers.”

“Where’s my halo and wings then?” Her smile and thoughts were of amusement.

“Modern angels don’t need that stuff maybe.”

Annabelle laughed. “You can keep believing that, I’ll keep living my life like a normal person, even if it’s only to care for you.” She paused a moment, concern on her face. “Did you feel safe on Friday?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I was worried about you all day. There were a couple times when I got a feeling like you were in danger. Was there any time when Jack wasn’t with you?”

Joey thought it an odd question. “Well, he didn’t follow me in the bathroom to pee.”

“Besides that.”

“No. He actually was with me the whole time. That’s kind of weird, come to think about it.”

“It’s not. Keep it that way please.”

The sudden seriousness in her tone was jarring and he could tell it was not due to her secret crush.

“Okay. Why exactly?”

“Dorian. I have a weird feeling about him. As much as I appreciate a free tutor…Just stay with Jack, okay? I just feel better that way for some reason.”

Knowing Annabelle’s instincts against danger were never wrong, Joey promised to heed her warning. He vowed to himself to try harder to read the demon’s secrets.