Page 27 of Cry for Help

“Where is Malphas?” Stolas asked, hanging his jacket on the hook on the back of the door.

“There was a lead.” Caim shrugged. “A doctor from one of the prisons has a bee in their bonnet about an inmate. Apparently, there was a clerical error, and two prisoners have vanished.”

“The missing two?” Stolas guessed.

I thought back to intake. To the gauntlet. Higgins and Peck. How my name had been called.

Had those two women gone missing?

Had someone smuggled them out of the Red City?

Had it been Dr Holdsworth?

Stolas’s eyes flicked to mine, but he turned away. I sensed his thoughts as if they were written on his face. He wanted to ask me about the two inmates. I knew exactly who they were talking about.

I saw the moment Stolas dismissed me, and ithurt.

People often equated silence with a lack of intelligence. Stolas had done just that, even if he hadn’t been aware of his actions.

I grabbed a bag of chips and salsa from Malphas’s stash, refusing to look either demon in the eye as I retreated to the guest room.

The Tailor’s words echoed through my mind—Bean Sídhe.

Stolas was either ignorant of what that meant or good at playing possum. I couldn’t decide which. That demon played hisemotions too close to his chest.

Maybe that was what his meeting had been about? Running across the city to report me to the Big Bad.

‘Hey! Look Asmodeus! I found a Bean Sídhe. You should put a chain on her neck and force her to use her magic!’

I felt out of place and out of my league, almost like going to prison for the first time again.

If I went back in time and told the me of a year ago, she would be sleeping on a down comforter, surrounded by demons, and she would have laughed in my face.

I was usually pretty good at rolling with the punches. I kept my nose clean in prison and didn’t mouth off (ha!), but I was in the Red City now.

The rules had changed.

I didn’t know where I stood, and that bothered me.

If they find out what a Bean Sídhe is, I’m fucked.

I had to get away. Disappear.

I’d gleaned enough from Seir that Stolas didn’t have a lot of clout in the Red City. If he let those words slip to the wrong person...

I’d always had an impulsive streak as a teenager. I’d often compared it to another set of hands grabbing the steering wheel and wrenching control away.

My body had already taken over as my mind kept turning over the pros and cons of running away. I eased open the guest room window and climbed out, dropping to the path at the side of the house without a sound.

I was in the human district, the safest part of the Red City, I hoped. I’d find somewhere to sleep. I’d done it before. Slept rough. It wasn’t the best option, but it was my only one.

I’d been called an idiot, a retard, or just plain slow more times than I could count in prison. Like rain, I’d always let it wash over me because deep down, I knew I wasn’t anything they said I was. So what if I was silent. It was for the safety of other people—not me.

It wasn’t until I was three streets away from the single-story house, surrounded by squat, ugly buildings, all colored the same drab gray—save for the graffiti—that I realized maybe I should have thought things through before I’d climbed out of the window and set out on my own like an angry child.

I hadn’t even thought to pack food, and I was always thinking about food. A side effect of having your meals provided by the state and rolling the dice on being given an edible meal versus dog food.

I kept walking as the sunset. The street lamps were few and far between. More broken than working.

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