The Devil in the Black Suit

Neon Moon

Chapter Eight

Neon Moon

By the time we leave the High Council, it is already nighttime.  The air is sticky and wrought with pesky little insects that prick my skin and leave faint pink bumps in their wake.  A tight, itching feeling makes my wings tingle and I know it is because they yearn for sunlight.  As if soaked through, they droop at the ends and weigh on my shoulder blades like stones.  It has been nearly two days since I’ve taken my halo off, and I already feel the effects of it.  Normally, I take my halo off before I go to bed every night, but there is no way I would relinquish my greatest form of protection while in the presence of demons, not even for a moment.  No matter how kindly James has been treating me.

And he does treat me kindly.  Almost suspiciously so.  He holds the door open for me as we exit the High Council building, brushes dust out of my feathers once we step outside.  He washes me with sweet words, telling me how well I did facing the councilors.  How brave I was.  How I have made history.  This is the first time an angel has ever been allowed to live in Circle One.

We meet up with Maleka and Ymae, who tell James that they are meeting their friend, Dmitri, at a club called Neon Moon to celebrate his new job.  Though James trusts me to stay at the house alone, Maleka doesn’t want me traveling by myself and convinces him to let me come with them.  This both thrills me and disappoints me; I have never been to a club before, but the opportunity to explore Hell and all its ways out could have been the perfect chance to escape.

“Bale isn’t happy that your angel’s allowed to stay,” Maleka says.  “He’s going to have his patrols look for any excuse to bring her back to trial.”

From the way she looks at me, with her forehead wrinkled and her bottom lip sucked in halfway, I would think she would be happy to throw me back into trial if it means I’ll be out of her life.

“I’m happy you’re coming with us,” Ymae chirps, swooping in front of me.  “We needed another girl in our group.”

Like her counterpart, Leyo, Ymae is a good six inches shorter than me.  But tonight, she’s got her hair in long braids piled high atop her head that make up for some of the difference.

“I’m glad they let you stay,” she adds.

“Me, too,” I deadpan, spinning my halo lazily around my finger.  “I’m glad they decided not to kill me.”

Ymae giggles even though I wasn’t trying to be funny.  At first, it bothers me, like she thinks my living or dying is some sort of throwaway joke.  But the sound of her laughing is as sweet as harp strings, and I can’t manage to stay sour.

It’s good that she’s laughing, I think.  To think that less than two days ago, the Demon King had attacked her.  If it were me who had been assaulted, I don’t know that I would have had it in me to laugh at anything, joke or not.  Suddenly, I am flooded with respect for the girl.  Like Leyo, she is much tougher than she looks.

Leyo never spoke about the death of his sister.  He never asked for special treatment and he never burdened anyone by crying about it.  But it did change him.  It made him scared to fly and scared to be alone.  I knew he had nightmares about the demon who killed his sister.  In the barracks, Leyo lived two doors down from me, and even then I could hear him cry out in the middle of the night.

Leyo had always been different than Nea.  Always more cautious, more reserved.  Nea was the type to sneak out of her house and experiment with flight tactics with me in the nimbus playground near our houses.  Intricate feints, spins, and dives that we had seen the fly-scouts perform on the rare occasions when they would come to our small town to patrol or give presentations in school.