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I.
Grian isn’t very good at keeping secrets.
Well, he is, in the sense that if you tell him not to tell anyone, he won’t. Not even if Pearl asks him really, really nicely. He’ll raise his eyebrows and mime zipping shut his lips and throwing away the key and won’t say a word until Pearl tickles him and he breaks his vow of silence to beg her to stop. And then he still won’t tell her the secret.
What he’s not good at is hiding that he has a secret in the first place. If it’s not outright teasing, not a sing-song I know something you don’t, then it’s smug looks and hidden smiles and cryptic hints. Pearl has always gotten the sense that Grian thinks that keeping secrets is a hilarious joke that only he and the secret-teller are in on.
She, personally, finds it deeply frustrating.
And she’s frustrated now, because sometime after their sixth birthday, Grian learned a secret, and he won’t tell her what it is.
She scowls at him across their shared bedroom. “Stop looking at me like that,” she tells him.
Grian widens his eyes, all fake innocence. Father BigB says, sometimes, that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, and she’s not exactly sure what that means, but she’s pretty sure the descriptor applies here. “Like what?” he asks.
“Like you really wanna tell me something.” She crosses her arms with a huff. They’re sitting on their beds in the slightly-too-big pyjamas they’d received as birthday gifts, the room lit by lamplight. Pearl’s feet brush against the floor where she swings them.
“I do really wanna tell you something,” Grian says. He’s sitting cross-legged, a pillow hugged between his arms, fingers playing with the fabric.
“Tell me, then.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I was told not to. It’s a secret.”
“Ugh. Who told you, anyway?”
“It was—wait, no, that’s a trick! You’re tricking me!”
Pearl raises her eyebrows back at him. She pictures butter in her mouth and refuses to let it melt. “Am I? How am I tricking you?”
“You’re trying to get information outta me.” He points at her, eyes narrowed. “Well, you’re not getting it. I can’t tell you.”
“Ugh, fine.” Pearl rolls her eyes, pulling her legs up over the edge of the bed and swinging herself around until she’s lying on her side, still staring at her brother. “I’ll stop asking as long as you stop looking at me like that. It’s not fair, you know.”
Grian sighs. “Okay, fine,” he agrees. He twists around and flops down backwards on his own bed, staring at the ceiling.
They’re both quiet for a moment.
“I do want to tell you, though. It’s not my fault I’m not allowed.”
“Grian, I swear…”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’ll be quiet!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Another pause. Then, “You won’t be mad at me when you find out, will you?”
Pearl sighs. “No, I won’t be mad.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay. Good.”
Pearl waits for him to say something else, but he never does. He also never stops shooting her those frustrating glances, but he gets better at hiding them as the years go on. She learns to live with it.
II.
“BigB!”
Pearl’s voice tears at her throat, raw and ugly and desperate. There is nothing but blue flames and screaming faces and her foster father’s blood on her hands. She clings to BigB’s body, fighting against the pull of the Gate, chest tight like she’s drowning.
“Hey,” she chokes out. “Hey, hey, no, stop that. Wake up. BigB, c’mon!”
BigB does not c’mon. BigB doesn’t do anything. BigB lies there limp and still in her arms. His cheeks are streaked with blood and his throat is a gory mess. The sight of it makes her feel sick. Tears sting her eyes.
“You can’t just leave me,” she chokes out. “This isn’t funny, BigB. I need you. Didn’t I tell you that I need you?”
No response. The Gate continues to suck them down. Pearl wails, overwhelmed by the weight of it all. I need to get out of here, she thinks, but she can’t lift BigB, and she can’t swim, because despite all of her drowning she isn’t actually in water.
“Someone!” she yells to the room. “Someone help!”
Nothing. No response. She sobs again. And then she spots it: the koma sword.
If you draw it, you will reclaim your demonic nature and can never live as a human again. BigB’s voice rings in her mind. Don’t ever draw it! She stares at the sword, mouth dry.
Here’s the thing: Pearl doesn’t want to be a demon.
Here’s the other thing: Pearl doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to be sucked down into hell away from everything she’s ever known. She’s already lost so much tonight, and she doesn’t want to lose anything else.
She’ll lose her humanity if she draws it.
She doesn’t have a choice.
She flings out an arm, fumbling with the sword until she’s got it held solidly in her grip. It takes a little finagling and a bit of a yank before she’s able to pull the blade from its sheath. It comes free with an awkward jerk, and for a moment, nothing happens. She breathes a sigh of relief.
And then she bursts into flames.
Everything is blue and shining and heat. Her body stretches, elongates, then snaps back into place, the reverberation of a rubber band echoing through her bones. Her teeth split her jaw apart in an overstimulated scream.
New strength surges through her, and she pulls herself, one leaden limb at a time, from the Gate’s grasp. With a clumsy swing, she brings the sword down, once, twice, over and over again, against the Gate, feels it shatter beneath her. Her scream turns into a growling snarling serenade, something entirely inhuman even to her own ears. The Gate screams, its hundreds of faces melting away into the cracked floor of the monastery, and Pearl falls to her knees, clutching her sword, still wreathed in flame.
BigB lies on the floor in front of her. He’s still dead. It shatters something deep inside her chest.
She hears the door swing open and closed. Fast footsteps slow and come to a hesitant stop. Pearl, face full of tears, forces herself to look up. Grian is standing there, staring, jaw dropped.
“I can…” She chokes on her own voice. It doesn’t sound right to her ears. Sobs wrack her body, wet coughs strong enough to break a rib. “I can explain.”
Grian manages to close his mouth. He steps forward, kneeling down to pick up the sheath of her sword and handing it to her. She takes it, and with shaking, bloodied hands, forces the blade back into it. The flames die. She stares blankly at Grian as he kneels just across from her, their foster father’s corpse between them.
Pearl opens and closes her mouth. Her breath catches. Finally, she whispers, “I don’t think I can explain, actually.”
Grian swallows. Nods. Says, “I think I can figure it out.”
Pearl laughs, hysterical. “Can you?” She doesn’t think she could have figured this out. Not once in a million years.
“Well, y’know. It helps that I already knew some things.”
“Already kne—oh.” Pearl stares at him. Glances down at BigB. “He… told you.” She’s not sure how to feel about that. It’s just another piece of information she has to process, and she hasn’t processed anything that’s happened here tonight. She feels like her head is going to explode.
“You’re not mad, are you?”
“...What?”
“You promised. That you wouldn’t be mad when you found out.”
It takes her a moment to recall the secret that he’s been dancing around for the past decade. She barks out another hysterical laugh. “All this time?”
“Pearl. You promised.”
“I did promise,” she whispers. “I’m… I’m not mad.”
Grian sighs in relief. Then, shoulders slumped, tears begin to stream from his eyes, his breath shaking and shoulders shuddering. Pearl’s still frozen where she fell, but she reaches out to him across the gap. He grabs onto her hand and holds it like a drowning man holds a liferaft.
She squeezes his back, because she’s drowning too, and needs him just as much as he needs her.
III.
Grian is a teacher.
Grian is a teacher.
Grian is a teacher.
Grian is a teacher!
Not only that: he is, apparently, her teacher, because, apparently, BigB had been training him to be an exorcist in secret since he was six years old.
Pearl sits, frozen, jaw agape, as Grian runs through the temptaint ritual with the few students who haven’t received one. She thinks that under any other circumstances she’d be far more fascinated by the whole process than she currently is. Under these circumstances, all but one of her braincells has fled the building, and the straggler is spinning in circles unsure of where the exit is. Her skull is full of fire—blue, burning, and utterly bamboozled.
Class comes to a close; the other students file out at dismissal. Pearl stays sitting, staring silently as her brother gathers papers together and tidies the desk.
“Uh, Pearl.” Grian glances up after a minute of silence. “You know you can go, right?”
“...Right,” she says, voice stilted and strained. Then, “This whole time?”
Grian purposefully avoids her gaze. “I thought we already established that.”
“But—when? How?”
Grian shrugs. “You had all those art classes,” he says. “And track, remember?”
Pearl bites at her lip. “BigB said it was good for me to do extracurriculars,” she whispers. “He said that if you keep your hands busy…”
“Your brain will be too busy to realise it’s too late,” Grian finishes with a wry grin. “And then he’d never explain what that means.” He tucks his papers into his bag and shrugs. “He had suggestions for how I should keep myself busy too.”
Pearl, abruptly, absurdly, feels like crying. She swallows the sickly feeling down. She traces the wood grain grooves on her desk with her eyes. “I feel like an idiot,” she mutters. Her hair falls down around her face, hiding her from the world, her too-sharp eartips poking out into the chill air of the cram school classroom. “How come everyone but me knew what I was?”
“Well, it’s not like everyone knew,” Grian says. “If everyone knew, the Order would have killed you, after all!”
“Gee, thanks. That really makes me feel better.”
“Look, Pearl, it’s fine. Seriously. This doesn’t change anything.”
Pearl will have to agree to disagree, because this has changed everything. Even her body is different now, too sharp and too hot and with at least one more limb than she’s used to. And if she can’t trust her body to be her own—how can she trust anything or anyone else to be hers in the same way they were before?
“Gri.” He’s halfway towards the door now; she still hasn’t moved from her chair. He pauses, footsteps falling silent in the too-empty space. It’s not a large classroom, but it feels like a cavern right now. “If you knew all this time… then how did you feel about me?”
“How did I feel about you?” he echoes. “Huh. Well, I guess… Since you’re a demon and all… I guess I thought you were pretty dangerous, yeah.”
Pearl’s head snaps up towards him, eyes wide. “What?”
“What?”
“You think I’m dangerous?” She surges up out of her chair, knocking it to the floor with a clatter. Something surges within her, too, something white-hot and scorching. “What? This whole time you’ve been—you’ve been scared of me?”
Grian drops his bag on the floor, a heavy sound that’s not quite as loud as her chair. He turns towards her, a scowl on his face. “The Order is scared of you,” he says. “They don’t know that you exist and they’re scared of you. The Exwires in this class? If they knew what you were, they’d be scared of you too. Anyone who knows anything about demons in their right mind would be scared of you, Pearl. You’re the daughter of Satan.”
Pearl doesn’t feel scary. She feels small and scared and shaky, spotlit by all of her insecurities. A childhood of anger issues and a strength too large for her tiny body has scarred her down to the bone, and all her hard work to become normal has been dashed against the rocks of this revelation.
“So you’re scared of me,” she says, and her voice is so, so small.
“I,” Grian declares, pausing for dramatics, “have no reason to be scared of you, Pearl. You’re my sister. Come on. I’ve seen you trip over your own feet too many times to be afraid of you.”
Pearl feels, abruptly, like a wrung-out dishrag, the emotional rollercoaster of the last hour having brought her to the brink of exhaustion. Relief makes her dizzy. “Oh,” she whispers. “That’s… yeah. No, of course you’re not scared of me. I’m such a silly goose, huh?”
“The silliest,” Grian says vehemently. “Besides, I have a headstart on you.” In a single fluid motion he pulls one of his guns from its holster, clicks off the safety, and aims it at her head. Pearl freezes, mouth going dry. “I beat you at exorcism any day.”
…And Pearl is a demon; Pearl is the thing that exorcists kill; Pearl is the thing that Grian has been training to kill since he was six years old.
Her heart beats a frantic rhythm in her chest. She feels suddenly like she might be sick.
Grian holds her at gunpoint for one moment, then two, then bursts out laughing. “Oh, your face! Pearl, I’m not going to kill you.” He flicks on the safety and re-holsters his gun. This is a far less fluid movement. Her eyes catch on the clumsiness of it. “Come on, did you seriously think I was going to?”
Pearl stares.
Well, it’s not like you had the safety on!
Finally, she finds her voice. “Excuse you, mister! What are you trying to do, scaring the living daylights out of me like that?”
“You’re my sister.”
“And I’m considering fratricide,” she shoots back. She grabs her schoolbag and stalks across the room, shoving at him as she exits the room ahead of him. “God, I am so glad I don’t have to share a room with you anymore. You’re the worst.”
“...Well, actually, about that…”
IV.
“Liars! You’re lying!”
The voice rings in Pearl’s ears, the force of its emotion knocking her back half a step. Grian spares her a curious glance, eyebrow raised, and Pearl forces a shaky smile back. Her gaze slides past him and to the source of the voice: a large, bus-sized frog blocking the bridge into True Cross.
Well. You don’t see that everyday.
…Grian might, actually, since he doesn’t even seem fazed by its presence, mouth set in a grim line and shoulders slumped with something like disappointment. “Pearl, you should go home,” he says.
“What? But I wanted to go on a mission! I need experience!” she protests, heart leaping into her throat. “It’s just a frog. I can deal with a frog.”
If she can’t deal with a frog, how is she ever going to deal with Satan?
“That’s not just any frog,” Grian says. “That’s Judge, Judy, and Executioner.”
“Uhh…”
“He was Father BigB’s familiar.”
“...Oh.” There’s something tight around Pearl’s chest. The memory of the voice echoes in her skull. Liars! You’re lying! She swallows hard. “Well, that’s fine, isn’t it? That means he’s basically part of the family.”
“Ahh, about that…” One of the nearby guards speaks up. “He suddenly grew huge and attacked when he overheard us say that Father BigB died.”
“He’s gone completely wild,” another adds. “He won’t see reason.”
“Well, I’m sure if we try—” Pearl starts.
“We’ll get rid of him,” Grian interrupts. He pulls something from his exorcist’s coat; if Pearl’s allowing herself to be a little silly, she’d think it looks a little like a grenade.
“Haha,” she says. “What’s that?”
“A modified hand grenade containing a deadly poison. Probably.”
“A—excuse me?! What do you mean, probably?”
“Well, Father BigB never actually told me what it was.” Grian shrugs, swinging the case a little too jovially for something that is probably a grenade. “He just said that I should use it in case this ever happened. That it would ease Judge Judy’s suffering.”
Pearl stares at him. “So, what? We just kill him?”
“I mean… What else would we do?”
“I don’t know! Talk to him?”
The look he gives her is so sceptical it’s almost scathing. “Pearl. He’s a demon. They don’t think the way we do.”
She’s not expecting it to hurt as much as it does, a knife between her ribs. She glares at him with as much offense as she can muster and hopes he can’t see the tears that she feels burning the back of her eyes. “Maybe not the way you do,” she snaps, and then, before he can stop her, she’s running past the barricade and towards the giant frog.
She only realises when she’s staring up at the giant screaming, thrashing frog that this may have been a rash course of action. She hesitates, unsure of what to do, and that’s when she hears it again.
“Liars!” Judge Judy screams. “BigB can’t die! He’s too strong! He’ll come back! He can’t die!”
Pearl’s heart aches for the beast. She has to do something. She swallows, wets her lips, and clears her throat.
“Um, hi?” No response. Duh. Think, Pearl, think! “You’re… Judge Judy, right? I’m Pearl. Father BigB raised me. He was kind of like my dad, uh, I guess, when you think about it…”
Her voice shrinks smaller and smaller before trailing off. Judge Judy has ceased his thrashing and has lowered his head down to the ground, large amphibian eyes staring at her in a way that makes her feel completely and utterly exposed.
“Then you know,” Judge Judy says. “You know that they’re liars! That he’s too strong!”
Pearl swallows again. “I know that Father BigB is dead,” she whispers, “because I watched him die.”
Silence.
The two of them stare at each other, human-to-frog, demon-to-demon.
“You’re a liar!” Judge Judy wails, raising his head and rearing back on his hind legs to crash back down onto the ground. Pearl feels the pavement crack under her feet and throws out her arms in an attempt to keep her balance. “Stop lying to me!”
“I’m not lying!” she yells. “It happened! I was there! I saw it!”
“No!”
“Look!” Her throat hurts from the strain. “I know you loved him. I know you’re hurting. I know you’re lashing out because you’re hurting and you’re angry and you don’t understand. I get it! I loved him too! It hurts me, too!” Tears sting her eyes again. She gasps and reaches up to rub at them. “I’m also hurting and angry and I don’t understand why he’s gone, either. I get it. But this won’t bring him back. It’ll only hurt more. So, please… stop? For me? For you?” Her voice drops into a whisper once more. “For Father BigB?”
“Father BigB…” Judge Judy makes a low, keening noise. “Father BigB is dead… He’s gone…!”
And then, with a poof, he’s shrunk down to normal frog-size, wailing echoing through the air. Pearl’s heart shatters and, unable to resist the urge, she stoops down and pulls him into her arms. He’s cold and moist and a little sticky—not the nicest sensation, really—but she doesn’t care as she hugs the sad frog-demon to her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers to him. “Let’s be friends, the two of us, okay?”
She doesn’t get a verbal response from Judge Judy, but she thinks the way he nestles into her chest is a yes.
Later, when they’re back in their dorm and Judge Judy has discovered that the deadly poison inside the grenade is actually pondweed wine and is happily partaking, Grian fixes Pearl with a curious look.
“Sooo,” he says, dragging out the vowel. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone talk down a rampaging demon.”
Pearl shrugs. “Have you ever seen anyone try?” she shoots back, tone maybe more than a little harsh.
“Good point,” he replies after a moment. Then, hesitantly, “Are you mad at me?”
“I don’t know, Grian, am I mad at you?”
“...That’s a yes, then.” A pause. “Um. Why are you mad at me?”
She sighs. Watches Judge Judy as he wiggles happily over his bowl of wine and distracts herself by wondering about frog alcohol tolerances. Is it healthy for him to be drinking this much? Can frogs be alcoholics? Does she need to find a support group for her new frog?
…Gosh, she hadn’t thought frog friendship (frog parenting?) would be so difficult.
Grian’s still staring at her. Still waiting for an answer. She doesn’t think she wants to give him one. If he can’t figure it out himself—well, then there’s really no point, is there?
“It doesn’t matter,” she says at last. “I’ll get over it. I always do.” She tries not to let her bitterness seep into her tone. She’s not sure she’s successful.
“Oh,” Grian says, thrown off. “That’s good.” Then, “We’re good, aren’t we?”
Pearl drags her gaze away from Judge Judy, finally, and looks over at him. She forces her lips into a smile that doesn’t meet her eyes. “Always.”
V.
“What’s your problem?! What don’t you like about me?!”
“Everything!”
“Stop it! Stop fighting!”
It comes as a surprise to both of them when Scar is the one to end their argument. They both jerk to a halt, breaths coming heavy, and Pearl feels like she’s swallowed a bunch of glass marbles that have all shattered in her chest. Scar is panting, too, face flushed and fists clenched, and Pearl doesn’t think she’s ever seen him angry. It’s jarring.
…Pearl feels, a little, like a kid with her hand caught in the candy jar.
“I’m gonna go,” she says after a moment, disjointed and off-centre. “Clear my head.” She shakes it as she stands as if to demonstrate her intent and then wanders away across the rocky beach. She hears, distantly, Grian and Scar talking behind her, but she tunes out the words.
She grabs a random stone from beneath her feet and skips it out across the water. It makes her feel a little better. Maybe. Kind of. Not really. She sighs. The sea and sky stretch out ahead of her, blue reflecting blue, and in the distance is the golden stretch of beach where the rest of their friends wait. She wonders if Cleo is still upset with them. She sighs again. She replays the argument in her head, prodding at it like a tongue prods at a missing tooth.
“I’m not like you.”
“So you are mad at me.”
“No, I’m just amazed. Aren’t you ashamed? Acting like you do? Pretending not to be a threat?”
“I’m not pretending anything!”
“I saw you acting all buddy-buddy with everyone! Showing off your flames like they’re a fun party trick and not the literal devil’s power!”
“I know what they are! I just want my power to be useful!”
“Then use it properly! I swear, I just don’t understand you anymore!”
“Understand me? I haven’t changed!”
“Oh, so you think I have?”
“Yeah, actually, I do! Do you even notice the way you look at me these days? The way you talk to me? What’s your problem?! What don’t you like about me?!”
“Everything!”
The memory hurts her brain like a sore gum.
She glances up as footsteps approach, Scar dragging Grian reluctantly towards her, wheels crunching over the gravel beneath. “You two need to talk,” he tells them firmly. “Actually talk. No fighting. No yelling! I swear, I will hit you both if you start yelling.”
They glance at each other, equally caught off-guard by the declaration.
“Okay, good.” Scar lets go of Grian and begins to wheel backwards. “I’ll be over there. Talk!”
And with that last command, he’s gone, backing out of earshot.
“Um.”
“Uhh…”
Silence. They stare at each other.
“So,” Pearl says at last. “Everything, huh?”
Grian flushes. “Sorry,” he mutters. “That was, uh, pretty rude, huh?”
She snorts. “Yeah, it sure was.” She kicks at him lightly. “Come on, then. Out with it. What do you actually have a problem with?”
Grian sighs. Stares out to sea. “It’s stupid,” he says.
“It usually is. C’mon. You know I won’t judge.”
“...I think I’m jealous.”
She gapes at him. “You’re what?”
“I knew about you—well, not the whole time. For a lot of the time. I knew what you were theoretically capable of, and I told myself, well, even if everyone else is scared of Pearl, I won’t be. I think it’s great that Pearl is super dangerous and scary!”
Pearl blinks, caught off-guard. “Uh-huh…?”
“And now… everyone else seems to be getting over it. Pretending like they’re not scared and being your friend again. And you’re just… letting them.”
“Uh, yeah? I don’t like it when people are scared of me. I don’t like it when my friends are scared of me. I love that I don’t have to hide now and it’s fine. Mostly.”
Grian snorts. His eyes are still fixed to the horizon, and now Pearl realises that he’s not looking out to sea, but rather staring at the shore beyond it, where their friends wait for them. “They’re fake, Pearl. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love them, I do—but they’re just convincing themselves you’re harmless. If you ever showed them the truth, they’d turn on you again, just like before.”
“Grian…”
“I won’t,” Grian promises, and spins on her with such ferocity that it leaves her dizzy. He grabs her wrists and holds them, staring up into her eyes. “I like you because you’re scary, Pearl. I like you because you’re dangerous. You don’t have to pretend around me.” His eyes gleam with something she can’t name. A shudder runs down her spine. “I can’t stand watching you pretend. I’m not like the rest of them. I want you to be a monster.”
He says it like it’s a compliment; like it’s a good thing. Pearl feels like she’s been plunged into freezing cold water, an anchor tied to her ankle, no amount of swimming able to return her to the surface. She wants to pull away from him, from the way his touch makes her skin crawl, but she’s frozen.
But I’m not pretending, she thinks, followed by, I’m not a monster. Dizzy, sick, she thinks that maybe neither of them has changed that much at all—she thinks that maybe she just didn’t know her brother as well as she thought she did. She thinks that might be scarier than the alternative.
She swallows, then says, “This is the first time I’ve ever had friends, G. It’s okay to be jealous, but… Don’t screw this up for me?”
His face twists into a frown. “But why?”
She hopes the smile she plasters onto her face looks convincing, because it certainly doesn’t feel it. “Sometimes it’s fun to pretend, you know? It’s okay. I’ll…” Bile rises in her throat. She swallows it back down with all the violence he believes she possesses. “I’ll still be your monster, yeah?”
He frowns and stares at her for a moment before his face splits into a relieved smile. “Alright. Sure.” Then, he asks, “Are you still mad at me?”
And Pearl answers, honestly, “No,” because the emotion she’s feeling right now is much more akin to terror than anger.
“Good. And, uh, I’m not mad at you, either.” He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry. I really blew all this out of proportion, huh?”
“That’s nothing new.” She rolls her eyes, and this kind of teasing is much more familiar, a liferaft in the storm she’s been thrown into. “Come on. Let’s get back to Scar, and figure out a plan for this kraken.”
Grian freezes. “I forgot about the kraken!”
“What do you mean, you forgot about the kraken?! Grian!”