Samuel poured them each a bowl of soup and sat down opposite the sheriff. He gave a soft blow on his first spoonful before taking a bite, wondering why the sheriff was being so civil. He wasn’t sure if it was the sheriff’s way of apologizing for threatening to get him killed.
The sheriff shoved the bottle over to Samuel.
“I can’t be drinking next to you,” the sheriff grumbled. “Not if you’re going to sulk like that. It’s killing my buzz.”
Samuel hesitated, but his hand eventually took hold of the bottle. He took a sip and nearly choked. It tasted disgusting, like tree bark and acid, burning his throat like liquid fire as it went down his pipe.
“No thanks,” he said as he scrunched his face. His lips were puckered, and he pushed the bottle back to the sheriff, who was laughing once again.
“It gets easier,” the sheriff managed to get out as he swirled the bottle back and forth. He let out a few more cackles before taking a sip of his own. “Before you know it, you’d near sell your soul for a drop. Anything to shut the mind off. Stop all the noise.”
They ate in silence for several minutes before the sheriff spoke up. He lowered his spoon into the bowl and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“I’ll give you some advice, kid. If you want to make it in this life, you’ve got to be hard. You can’t be soft. If you’re soft, no one will respect you. If you’re soft, you’ll die. And no one is going to take care of you. You have to take care of yourself. It’s that simple. Learn that now, and you might actually have a future. Understand?”
Samuel sat beside Zei in the cell, their shoulders nearly touching. He relaxed against the stone wall, watching her write all the letters of the alphabet over and over and over again. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He’d been acting as her teacher for five days, and he couldn’t have asked for a more engaged student. If he wrote a letter and asked her to copy it, she would write the letter repeatedly until he’d tell her to stop. He had to buy her a new sketchbook within two days of their lessons because she’d used up all the free pages.
Samuel had no clue how to teach her to read and write. He was not a teacher. All he could think to do was mimic the ways his father had taught him. When Samuel turned five, his father had decided it was time for him to learn to read the scriptures. For weeks on end, Samuel did nothing but write the letters in the snow with a stick. Paper was expensive, so his father made him use what limited resources they had available to them. First, Samuel had to memorize the letter. Then, he’d have to write out the letter and say aloud its corresponding sound. Zei couldn’t speak, so he had to modify his approach a bit by saying the letter’s sound for her when she drafted each letter. By the end of the day, his throat itched something terrible, and his voice would nearly be gone. He’d never spoken aloud so much before.
“You can take a break if you want.”
Zei’s pencil moved furiously, her eyes sucking in the pages of her script like they were fresh meat. Samuel had tied her thick hair back so it wouldn’t keep falling over the pages. He rubbed his fingers together, thinking of ways to break up the monotony.
“I’ve got an idea. We could play a game with the letters. Would you like that?”
Zei paused her writing and lifted her pencil from the page.
“Here. Do you mind, Zei?”
Samuel brushed the shackles around her ankles to the side. He sat up on his knees, leaning over as he turned to a blank page. He liked calling her by her new name. Giving her his mother’s name was a dumb idea. Thinking about his own name, he felt that “Samuel” capsulated his identity. His mother had chosen it. He didn’t know why. But that was the name she’d chosen for him.
Zei tapped her pencil on the blank page.
“Right. Okay. I will make a letter sound, like ‘guh,’ and then you’ll have to write the letter that goes with it. And that way I’ll help you spell out some easy words.”
In near calligraphic design, Zei wrote the letter G.
“Yeah. That’s right.”
Zei realigned the point of her pencil with the paper. Samuel thought for a moment, closing his eyes.
“Buh … ih … rr … duh.”
When Samuel opened his eyes, he saw the word bird on her paper.
“That’s good.” He tapped each letter with his index finger. “Buh, ih, ir, duh. But if you say the sounds fast, it makes the word bird. You get it?”
Zei inched her nose closer to the word, almost as if she were about to sniff it. She pulled back and then sketched a snow owl perched on a pine limb. Samuel couldn’t help but smile wide.
“I knew you could do it. You’re so smart, Zei!”
“Who?” a voice called out.
Samuel’s skin crawled, and his muscles spasmed. He whipped around to see if he could spot the intruder. Charles stood by the doorway, his arms tucked inside his gray peacoat. He was dressed in tan slacks, a fancy collared shirt and bowtie, and a suit jacket.
Samuel stood up quickly. He took the sketchbook from Zei, closed it, and put it on the ground next to her.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be in here.”
Charles pointed his chin up.
“Did you give that demon a name or something?”
Samuel almost said no. It was her name, and she’d written it for him. It was best to keep that between them. At least for now. “Kind of.” The chains behind him jingled slightly. “Why are you here?”
Charles shrugged. “Bored. I don’t know. My dad comes back tomorrow. I wanted to check up on you. See how our friend in there is doing. Summer festival is in a couple of days. You’re coming to the festival, right?”
Samuel nearly blushed at the memory of Claudette.
“I want to,” he said. “But I’ll have to check with the sheriff.” There was so much about being a normal citizen he still didn’t know. “Am I supposed to dress up nice for it? I … don’t really have nice clothes.”
“Forget the sheriff. You don’t need that old drunk’s permission. And don’t worry about clothes. I can come pick you up, and we’ll get ready at my estate. You can borrow one of my suits. What the hell are you spending your salary on anyway?”
“Stuff for her,” Samuel said as he scratched his arm. “And I’m trying to save as much as I can. In case. Maybe this job doesn’t last.”
“How very responsible of you,” Charles said with exaggerated inflections. He pointed to the cell. “Wow. Amazing. You really are a demon whisperer. It hasn’t tried to hurt you or anything? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the demon looked like just a normal kid.”
As if prompted by Charles’s questioning, Zei popped to her feet, moving in front of Samuel. The slack in her shackles was nearly gone. Her face was cold and ferocious, the fingers of her one hand stretched out and curved like claws ready to tear apart its prey. Samuel could see the fear on Charles as he nearly stumbled back into the hallway.