“Okay,” said Shai. “Well, since there’s no apocalypse going on right now, let’s figure out somewhere for margaritas, okay?”
“I’m happy with wherever. It’ll just be fun to see you and get out of the basement. And I definitely need a drink. I gave an absolutely disastrous presentation today in my Abnormal Psych class.”
“Shit. Okay. Just give me a chance to call around and see if I can get us reservations, huh? I’ll text you in a few.”
She hung up, and I leaned back against my pillows. A flicker of movement caught my eye, and I glanced at a spider skittering over the floor. The scent of mildew and mold hung heavily in the air.
I pulled my drawing pad and pencil into my lap, then finishing the filagree on another image of the gates to the City of Thorns.
There were only two kinds of mortals allowed in the city: the servants born into their roles, and the students like Shai who could afford it. Every year, Belial University in the City of Thorns accepted around three hundred mortal applicants. At Belial, the demon university, they learned to suffuse their careers with the magical arts. Graduates like Shai always landed plum positions in whatever field they wanted.
But in my case, education wasn’t the real reason I wanted to get into the demon university.
I wanted revenge. I wanted to find the demon who killed my mom.
When the picture of the gate was finished, I flipped over the page and started jotting down some financial numbers. Right now, I owed seventy-five thousand in student loans, with seven percent interest. If I was going to pay that back, and also save up the hundred grand to get into Belial University on what would likely be poverty wages after graduating…
My stomach churned.
Whenever I started making these calculations, the weight of impossibility started pressing down on me. I’d done it a million times, but the numbers never added up. With my loan interest, I’d save up the hundred grand roughly…
Never.
I would never have a hundred thousand dollars to get in.
Increasingly, I was starting to think about plan B: break into the city, then find a way to blend in. There had to be a way. Even an ancient demon city would have a weakness.
As I started to mull over my more dangerous and unhinged plan, my phone buzzed with a message from Shai: Cirque de la Mer. Two for one cocktails tonight. Meet me there at 8:30 xo
Really, it was probably a good time for her to interrupt my breaking and entering schemes before I came up with something that could get me killed.
Sitting at the white marble countertop at Cirque de la Mer, my red hair drenched by the September rain, I sipped a Guinness and licked the foam off my lip. I still wore my black dress and boots, but I’d accessorized a bit with black nail polish, eyeliner, and silver rings. This was my look: ginger Goth Puritan.
Behind the bar, enormous windows overlooked the Atlantic Ocean, and the sea twinkled under the starlight. Dubstep boomed around me. I liked it here, with the loud music to drown out my own thoughts and a gorgeous view of the sea. Of course, this was probably the most expensive bar on the north shore of Massachusetts, but for tonight, I wasn’t going to worry about money. The loans were too ridiculous to worry about at this point, and I might as well owe a billion dollars.
When Shai sidled up next to me at the bar, she flashed me an enormous smile. Her dark hair fell in two long braids over a cream-colored dress. She wore vibrant red lipstick that perfectly complemented her tawny brown skin.
I’d really needed to see a friendly face.
She hugged me. “Hello, birthday girl. What are we drinking? Tequila shots?”
“I swore off them after the Harvard Square incident.”
She grimaced. “Oh, right. Okay, well, let’s eat and get cocktails so you don’t get messy.” She raised her hand, and the bartender immediately came over with a smile. Shai ordered us two mojitos and a butternut squash pizza.
With that accomplished, she turned back to me, eyebrows raised. “Okay, what was this about your nightmare of a day?”
I sighed. “Jack Corwin turned up in the middle of my class presentation and made orgasm faces when I was trying to focus, and then he claimed that I punched him in the eye. “
Her hand flew to her mouth for a moment. “First of all, fuck that guy. Second, has he lost his mind? Why would he think that people would believe that you punched him?”
I cleared my throat, cringing. “Well, about that part. I did actually punch him.”
“What?”
“After he tried to ram his tongue down my throat,” I said defensively.