Page 24 of Devilish Ink

It wasn’t a demon. There were no horns upon his forehead, no fangs in his snarl. It was just a man, a man whose features had been so corrupted by evil that he looked demonic.

Dread settled into my stomach. The details of this creature were so lifelike, it was as if he were cursing me from within the page…

He was real.

Obviously this drawing was pencil and paper. But whoever had inspired this dark piece of art was real.

My lips pressed thin.

In the way she’d shaded under his eyes to make them more sunken, the way his lip curled up with disdain, it was obvious that Ry was scared of him.

Whoever this demon was.

I vowed that if I ever met him…I’d end him.

I closed the sketchbook, banishing him back into the confines of the paper.

I kept searching across the desk, riffling through papers, drawers, trying to keep everything in the same order after I’d searched it, one ear open for the sound of keys in the lock.

I snatched up a letter. An admission letter dated just over two weeks ago addressed to Rian.

Mr Merrick,

We’re pleased to offer you a place here at Cherrywood Estate…

What the hell was Cherrywood Estate?

I pulled out my phone and took a photo of the address in the top right corner before folding it back up and placing it among the papers on his desk.

There was one last thing I came here to do.

I dragged a chair from the little table where Ry had sat alone to her dinner and climbed up to pull off the light cover. I unscrewed the broken bulb and replaced it with the new one I’d bought earlier. I slipped the old one into my jacket pocket.

I returned the chair to its rightful place and nodded with satisfaction at the light.

There. My baby didn’t have to eat in the dark anymore.

Before I left, I checked the key hooks by the front door. I was both angry and giddy to find what I had been looking for: a spare key.

Ry should have known better than to leave it out in the open like that, even if it was where Rian had kept it when he was living here.

Dublin was dangerous.

I took the spare, knowing that it would help me to make it a little less dangerous for her.

Walking out the front door felt soright. Like I already belonged here with her. Like this wasourplace.

I forced those thoughts into the recesses of my mind as I locked up behind me.

Ry was not mine. She never would be. She was Rian’s.

If all I got were the glimpses of her I stole from the shadows, that’d have to do.

I stood in front of the very last mechanic in town: O’Sullivan’s Garage.

Fine, I was probably exaggerating but it was pretty damned close to it.

Shop after shop in Dublin I watched managers scan over my scant work history, flip it over, and say, “That’s it?”

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