Free Thorn by Joshua Ingle Page A

genuine—those others had never thought through their views as deeply as you had, and what’s more, they had sinister motives for believing as they did. Demons would urge the human to see only the others’ surface, and to conclude that those people must be dumb or crazy or intentionally evil. It all boiled down to, “Anyone who doesn’t think like you is your enemy.” The same trick worked on everyone.
    After Madeline had closed the door on John and Amir and their demon, Thorn whispered to her about how alone she was. The world was full of bad people, and they were having picnics, no less! She was the only one who knew the truth anymore. Even her friends from God’s Grannies thought too differently for her to bear sometimes.
    And then, so she wouldn’t use her loneliness as fuel to motivate herself, he turned her thoughts to her past. “Everything most people have to look forward to has already passed you by. Romance, sex, family, a rewarding career… all in the past. And even when you had those things, you made so many mistakes.” She’d never had the chance to reconcile with her husband before he died. Her community activism had kept her from knowing her children well as adults. Never mind all the happy years she’d spent with her husband or the thousands of people she’d helped with her activism. “For the wages of sin is death,” Thorn whispered to her. “And you’ve sinned quite a bit, Madeline.”
    The closer to the end anyone thought they were, the less action they would take in the world and the more complacent they would grow. It was often good to suggest a vague anxiousness about the end to anyone who would listen, as long as it would spur them to inactivity rather than to action and a life well lived.
    In this case, though, it wasn’t just a vague anxiousness; Thorn actually was working to accelerate her death—via a stroke or a heart attack, hopefully only a few days away. Briefly, he imagined himself standing over a dying Madeline just as Marcus had stood over him a few nights ago in the rain, and he felt strangely guilty. But no, he had to do it. “The wages of sin is death,” he repeated. “Is death, is death, is death…”
    One of Thorn’s favorite privileges of demonhood was that he got to play both bad cop and good cop. “Don’t worry, though,” he told her. “God has forgiven you, and your suffering will end in heaven.” In other words, stay inside until you die .
    •
    It was the last Friday night before Christmas, and the Midtown streets came alive with hundreds of clubbers. All down Crescent Avenue and Thirteenth and Twelfth, girls in skintight dresses and men with loaded wallets laughed and stumbled between the flashy cars that inched along the crowded streets. Alongside nearly all of them floated their invisible demonic companions, shuffling their legs in that strange movement that mimicked walking but looked more like rollerblading.
    According to one of Thorn’s followers’ reports, Amy should have arrived half an hour ago, but waiting thirty minutes for a human was nothing for a demon who had once waited billions of years. To pass the time, Thorn tested the ground with his foot. It went straight through like always. Seeing humans experience the joys of the physical world when Thorn never could had always been irksome. What does pizza taste like? he often wondered—more these days than he used to, it seemed. What does the ocean smell like? Is learning an instrument as difficult as it appears? Does a cat’s fur feel any different than a dog’s? Is sex really that good? What is it like to love? Most demons believed that they were no longer capable of feeling positive emotions. This was a source of pride to them, for it meant they had excised every good thought their Creator had ever given them. (“Good” as defined by the Enemy.) Others said He had stolen their ability to feel happiness. But Thorn knew that wasn’t true. He knew it from the laughter he sometimes