Devil's Soul

Chapter 22 (in good spirits)

Want to hear a joke? Two demons and two MIT students walk into a bar. The bartender asks, “What will it be?” The four friends order spirits, but only the MIT students are happy when the bartender retrieves drinks for them. When the bartender asks the demons why they haven’t touched their drinks, the demons reply that they ordered sprits, not alcohol. Then they proceed to suck pieces of souls from the other patrons. “Now that we’ve had our spirits,” they say, “we can drink.”

Funny, right? I didn’t think so either.

Abhinav came up with this joke on our way to the bar, and it had Desmond laughing until tears oozed from the corners of his scrunched up eyes. The two were lagging behind Chung and me like they were old buddies as we walked.

“Great,” Chung muttered, pushing up his classes with his index finger. “Now, thanks to your boyfriend, Abhinav thinks he’s funny.”

We both knew that Desmond was not my boyfriend, so I didn’t bother responding to that. “Abhinav can be funny,” I said.

“Only by chance. You crack enough jokes, and one of them is bound to be funny, right?”

“Oh, come on. Don’t take your dislike of Desmond out on Abhinav.”

Chung glanced over his shoulder at Desmond, who was slapping Abhinav’s shoulder in delight to some new joke. Chung shuddered and faced forward. “I just don’t like the way he looks at me, like I am some sort of meal.”

“He doesn’t look at you like that,” I argued. Right now, Desmond wasn’t paying attention to Chung at all.

“Yes, he does.” Chung assumed a look of unmovable resolve.

“You didn’t have to come, you know.”

Chung let out a heavy sigh. “Abhinav and I promised that we would help you through this demon stuff, and we weren’t about to let you go to some sketchy bar alone.”

“I wouldn’t be alone. I would be with Desmond.”

“You know what I mean.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know, Chung. Thanks. You’re a good friend.”

The bar turned out to not just be sketchy, but also rowdy, and I was glad to be surrounded with three guys when we got there. I was also glad to be wearing a baggy sweatshirt because these were not the kind of men that I wanted to attract the attention of.

Desmond came to stand beside me, as I eyed the bar he had led us to. “The perfect place for passive soul hunting, don’t you think?” he asked, grinning as usual.

A sound like crashing glass came from the bar, followed by a few manly war cries. I flinched. “Maybe we can just do this from outside?” I suggested, not feeling particularly inclined to get in the middle of a bar fight. I turned on my demon eyes, and, sure enough, a couple soul fragments were drifting toward us from the anger and violence. I looked upon them like a starving woman. The Adderall had been doing a poor job taking the edge off, lately, and I still wasn’t comfortable with the whole idea of soul hunting. The only reason I was here was because Desmond had made it clear I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

“I’ll tell you what,” Desmond said. “If you can capture those soul fragments, we can go home right now.”

“Deal,” I said. I stepped toward the soul fragments, eager to take a double win. However, instead of going into the darkness around my body, the souls slipped past me and continued on toward Desmond. I spun around to glare at him, but I couldn’t really be angry because this was what we had come here to practice.