The Demon's Deadline (Demon's Assistant Book 1) by Tori Centanni Page B

terms with the reality of it. He’s going to be elated. He’ll want to shout about it from the roof of my building. Maybe that’s how I should feel, too, but I don’t. I feel like the rug was ripped out from under me and I’m struggling to regain my balance.
    Now that the job is over, I can see that it was something I was really good at. And Azmos was finally starting to answer some of my questions, to let me into his world. Now that I know demons are real, it’s not like I can be satisfied with a career in pizza delivery or some desk job. I’ll never stop staring into shadows, wondering what they hide. How am I supposed to be happy living a mundane life when I’ll always be looking for demons and monsters over my shoulder?
    I groan softly to myself. Life’s not fair, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.
    “Is the food okay?” Cam asks. He has a tiny crinkle in his brow and his green eyes study me like I’m an algebra equation he can’t work out.
    “Great. I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.”
    “Yeah,” he says. He doesn’t look sure that exhaustion is my problem, but he picks up his fork again and goes back to eating.
    I should tell him. Just blurt it out and let his excitement and relief wash over me. Except I’m not excited or relieved. I’m disappointed and bummed out. I need to wallow and Cam won’t understand that. So I pick at my food in silence, holding the secret in and letting it gnaw away at me instead.

 
     
     
     
CHAPTER SEVEN
     

     
    The next few days are normal—if you ignore the fact that my dad is in California with my aunt and cousins and my grandmother, who is slowly dying. He calls every day, and every day his voice sounds more haggard and rough. When he reports on Nonna’s declining status, his words catch in his throat.
    “She’s mostly sleeping now,” he tells me on Wednesday, while I stand in the kitchen eight hundred miles away and boil water for boxed macaroni and cheese.
    “Maybe I should come down,” I suggest. I do not want to. I do not want to sit in a hospital waiting room that reeks of bleach and flip through old magazines. I don’t want to watch her slowly fade away.
    “I can arrange it if you want,” he says, “but there’s nothing much to do. She’s never awake and I doubt… ” He trails off. “If you want, sweetheart.”
    I pretend to consider. I wonder what Cam would do. He’d probably have gone the first time, after getting a month’s worth of homework in advance and signing up for independent study in classes where that wasn’t even possible. He’d probably sit at her side day and night and hold her hand and read her stories. Compared to me, Cam is an angel. But then, given my recent employment under a demon, most people are. “I guess I should stay for school,” I say.
    “That’s probably best. I love you, Nicki.”
    “I love you, too, Dad,” I say, my voice hitching at the end. I try to think of something else to say, but nothing comes to mind. Since my mom died, Dad and I have stayed close, but it’s been a surface closeness. We change the subject when things get too serious. He never says her name. I never say, “Mom.” It’s like we both enable the other’s need to shut and deny our pain. Now that we’re forced to face grief again, I don’t think either of us know what to say.
    I hang up and then dump the elbow noodles into the boiling water. I don’t know what it’s like to slowly lose someone. Losing my mom was devastating, like part of me was ripped out and left a gaping chasm that nothing could fill. It still aches, like a phantom wound that has closed, but will never heal. But it happened in one quick moment, a matter of seconds. She was there and then she wasn’t.
    It took time to adjust to the idea, of course. When someone dies suddenly, it’s hard to really grasp the entirety of the loss. I kept expecting her to show up with Dad in my hospital room or to be home when I was finally able to