Irene stayed behind Saija and tried hard to be as uninteresting as possible. She had enough demons—and people—interested in her as it was.
But she did watch their interactions.
Saija knocked on the first door. It took a moment, but a demon answered with relative promptness. Some demon stood in the doorway with glassy eyes. One Irene hadn’t spoken to before.
Irene hadn’t spoken to most of the demons, now that she considered the thought.
“Something you need?”
“Just thought you ought to know that a doll is running around the mortal realm for some reason. That’s all. Ta~ta!”
With a half-skip and a wave, Saija left the room and moved on to the next one.
The glassy-eyed demon froze much as Saija had when Irene first mentioned the doll, but didn’t ask for any clarification. He eyed Irene for one moment before slamming the door shut.
And then Saija repeated herself at the next room. She never stayed for long to speak with the other demons. Only long enough to tell them that a doll was in the area. She spoke lightly yet dispassionately, using the exact same tones and inflections as she had for the first demon. And, as with the first, none of the demons asked questions.
Almost as if she didn’t actually care whether or not the demons knew. It was like she was telling them out of mere obligation.
Knowing a thing or two about demons from the diablery class, Irene found it odd enough that she wondered just what was the wording of these demons’ contracts. Perhaps something like they couldn’t sabotage one another. Not telling them might count as some sort of betrayal.
As for the other demons, they all reacted in varying ways. Some didn’t seem to care. One or two started shaking with genuine fear on their faces.
But the last one…
Saija knocked as she had with the others. No one answered immediately. That wasn’t so strange. Not everyone answered as quickly as the first. A few of the other rooms had even been missing their occupants. Irene and Saija had just assumed that they were out mingling with the humans and had slipped a note into the little message box at the side of the doors.
However, someone was obviously home here. The noises coming from the other side of the door were evidence to that. Just a few moments of hearing them had Irene pulling away from the room.
The squelching and thumping. It was like someone was using eight meat tenderizers at once while singing with all the ability of a deaf walrus.
She had never actually heard a walrus sing, but that was beside the point.
Saija didn’t seem disturbed in the slightest. Angry, perhaps. Her arms were crossed over her chest. One of her fingers thumped against her arm in tempo with the thuds coming from within the room. After a moment, she hammered her fist against the door and didn’t stop until the door swung open.
The thumping within the room ceased at the exact moment that the door cracked open.
Irene looked away, almost afraid of what she might find in there.
Curiosity got the better of her.
She peeked an eye open.
Then both eyes.
A young man stood in the doorway wearing a polo shirt and slacks. His hair was neatly combed and his nails were clean, shiny, and cut short. Irene only noticed his fingers because his hand was up by his mouth as he let out a long yawn.
“You caught me while I was napping,” he said in a completely casual tone of voice.
Were it not for the noise that had been coming from his room, she might have thought that they had accidentally knocked on the door of a regular student. In fact, maybe that had been music of some sort. She had thought that something in that noise sounded like singing.
Saija kept her eyes narrowed as she pushed past the student into the room. “What were you up to?”
“Napping. I just said as much.”
“Liar. I’ve not slept once since coming to the mortal realm.”
“Don’t assume that everyone is the same as you.”
“Hmm.” Saija continued looking around the room.
From her position at the doorway, Irene couldn’t see anything odd about the room. Just a normal dormitory room. Three beds with desks at their feet, a mini-kitchen, and a door leading to a bathroom on one side of the room.
Actually, once she started really looking at it, the room was almost too clean. All three beds had their covers smoothed out without a single wrinkle. No bits of old clothing lying anywhere on the floor. The kitchen looked unused.
But there was a strong scent of lemon cleaner around the place.
“Whatever,” Saija said. “Only came by because it is demanded of me to tell you that one of the Keeper’s dolls might be somewhere around the mortal realm.”
This demon was the first to do anything more than slam the door in their faces. Something he might find difficult with Saija already inside the room. Even still, his reaction was different.
A lock of his perfectly combed hair slid out of place.
“Excuse me? I’m not sure I heard you properly.”
