Page 1 of The Devils of Saint City

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So this is it, then.

The end.

Not of the world or my life, but of me having a home to come back to.

I thought I finally found the answer when I moved in here. Extra deadbolts, alarms on all the doors and windows, even a shock collar I’ve fashioned as a bracelet. All designed to do one thing: wake me up if I try to leave my apartment. Every other complex in this shitty town has already kicked me out for being too loud, for soliciting sex in the middle of the night, for waking everyone up when the alarms blare as I sneak out the window.

This was my last chance.

I’m not a freak. I just have sexsomnia.

So I guess that makes me a freak.

And now, for the first time, the disorder isn’t what’s doing me in. The letter in my shaking hand reads “CONDEMNED,” not “EVICTED.”

Toxic black mold.

They’re demo-ing the whole building in a week.

And according to the post it note slapped on top of it, they’ll bulldoze it whether we’re still inside or not.

The thought is tempting.

My dad is dead and my mom’s riding out the end of her days in a padded cell, so I have no one to turn to for help. No one except for Asher, anyway. And something tells me my stepbrother would rather eat a bucket full of rusty nails than lift a finger to help me.

My mom did kill his dad, after all.

She killed mine, too.

You’d think we’d have bonded a little over that.

Instead, he slashed my tires and set my bed on fire, leaving a scar on the back of my hand that I’ll have for the rest of my life.

But the past is the past. I have to believe he’s grown up enough to realize I’m not my mother — that I could never be her. I can’t even kill spiders when they crawl in the shower with me.

So, I drive. I practice my speech over and over again on the way there, but it still doesn’t do anything to prepare me for the dread I feel as I climb his front steps and knock.

I try my best to avoid the peephole, ducking just out of sight of it until the door swings open.

But the second he sees it’s me, the knot in his squared-off, strong jaw tightens, his intense green eyes darken, and the force of the wind as the door slams blows my hair over my shoulder.

“Asher, please!” I yell. “Just open the door. Please!”

“Why should I?” His growly words are muffled as if his face is right on the other side of the wood. “Why are you here?”

Here it is. My heart hammers in slow motion as I throw my little speech out the window, mustering up the courage to bottom line it for him. “Because I need you.”

For a long moment, he doesn’t give me anything aside from the heavy breathing I hear ghosting against the wood, and after a whispered, “Fuck,” he opens the door.

Unfortunately for me, he doesn’t immediately open it enough for me to enter, but the fact that I can see him at all right now is enough of a miracle. “What do you need, Rhea?”

To be anywhere but here. For the doctors in this town to take me seriously so I can get help.

To be anyone but me.

“I’m getting kicked out again but it’s not my fault this time. They condemned the building. I just need a place to stay until I can find something more permanent.”

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