After my shitty day, I’d gone for a long run. I’d pushed the pace hard, and my muscles still burned as I stretched them on the comforter. Running was the best way I had of dealing with stress, losing myself in physicality. It was also the one time I felt really good at something. The only problem was that sometimes, when my feet pounded the leaves in the woods, I’d have glimmers of flashbacks to the night Mom died. I’d hear her voice, telling me to run.
I shook my head, clearing my mind of the dark memory. Instead, I focused on trying to perfect the picture of the gate. This drawing served no purpose, but I’d become completely obsessed with the gate’s contours—the wrought iron entrance to the demon city, decorated with a skull in the center, strangely beautiful and forbidding at the same time. Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest obsession to draw the same thing repeatedly like a psycho, but at least I wasn’t thinking about Jack Corwin.
I exhaled as I shaded in the skull. Living here was all part of my plan to save money for grad school in the demon city. Down here, I was saving every dime I could, living in a cellar with six other broke students. Our rooms were divided by thin wooden walls, and we shared a bathroom and a kitchenette that was mostly a hot pot and kettle.
My phone buzzed—a call from Shai—and I swiped to answer. “Hey.”
“Oh! You actually answered instead of pretending you were busy and then texting two minutes later.”
I grinned. “Who talks on the phone anymore? It makes everyone nervous except you.”
“So what are we doing for your birthday? Because there’s this amazing Thai takeout place I want to try, and I could bring it to you with, like, a couple bottles of wine.”
I smiled. “My new place is a shabby basement with spiders. And compared to your fancy Belial University dorms, it’ll seem like a full-blown shithole.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“Hang on.” I snapped a few photos to get the point across, then emailed them to her. “Okay, check your mail. See, if we were texting like normal people, this would be going much more smoothly.”
After a moment, I heard her say, “Oh, okay. Well, yeah, it’s small. Nicely decorated, but small. I don’t love the idea of spiders…I wish I could have you here, but I think you could be legally murdered by demons if I sneaked you in.”
I nodded. “I’d like to avoid that. Maybe just a drink somewhere in Osborn?”
“Hang on…I’m zooming in on your photos to see if I can find anything embarrassing.”
“I’ve drawn thirty-two pictures of the City of Thorns gates, and most are taped to the wall,” I said, “so that’s fairly embarrassing.”
“Yeah, but I already knew you were a weirdo. I was hoping to find you were some kind of secret sex freak, too. For a second, I thought I saw giant red dildos by your bed, but now I can see they’re fire extinguishers.”
“What’s the opposite of a sex freak?” I asked. “That’s me.”
“Okay, but why do you have two fire extinguishers next to your bed?”
I sat up straighter, getting anxious just thinking about it. “There’s no way out of here, Shai. There’s a tiny window over the bed, but it doesn’t open. So if the house were on fire, I’d have to fight my way out from a far corner of a basement while the walls burned around me.”
She inhaled sharply. “Oh, shit. Can you find another place? That doesn’t sound safe even with the fire extinguishers. Is that even legal?”
“Probably not, but I installed fire alarms, too. And I stocked up with the stuff stuntmen used to get through flames.”
“Wait, what?” she cried.
I mentally reviewed what was under my bed. “Fire-retardant clothing and gels to stop my skin from burning, Hollywood-style. I could walk through flames if I had to. Oh! And I bought a gas mask in case I need to get through billowing smoke. I’m pretty much set with the fire stuff.”
“Of course. So you’re still kind of a prepper, I’m guessing?”
“Yes, so in the event of a demon apocalypse, come here. I’ve got several large bags of beans and rice and some fish antibiotics.”
“Nice,” she said. “Are we going to kill the demons with burritos and penicillin?”
“In case the shops and doctors’ offices close. And I’ve got a water purifier in case the reservoir is contaminated.”
What I didn’t mention was my weirdest prepper item: the fox urine, which was something hunters used to disguise their scent. If the demons rampaged around Osborne, hungry for blood, I’d drench myself in fox pee. They’d never find me. But Shai didn’t need to know that. Even with my best friend, I had a line of weirdness I didn’t cross.