Page 2 of 10 Days to Ruin

“Shit.”

The door handle that sliced me starts to turn. I move faster than I’ve ever moved in my entire life as I sprint into the nearest stall, slam the door, and hike my feet up on the toilet so no one sees that there’s a woman in heels and painted toenails creeping her way around the men’s bathroom.

The door creaks inward.

Footsteps ring out. Male—I mean, obviously, they’re male, given the fact that we’re in the men’s bathroom, but there’s a heavythumpand a kind of power in the stride that can only come attached to a Y chromosome.

Thump.

Thump.

I stare at the gap underneath the stall door. My breath is held hostage in my lungs and I’m doing the best I can to get my heart to stop beating so damn loudly as those feet come into sight.

And then they stop right in front of me.

I used to play a game with my mom when I was little—before she left, before she told Baba,I can’t do this anymoreand kissed me on the cheek and took her one duffel bag with her—where we’d sit outside coffee shops and make up stories about the people who passed by.

Little old lady in a pillbox hat that Jackie O. would’ve been jealous of?Secretly a fairy princess,my mom would whisper in my ear.She’s been hiding out in our world while her one true love fights a war to make their kingdom safe for her again.

A young, scruffy man busking on the corner for dollar bills dropped into his guitar case?That’s an angel,she’d tell me.He accidentally fell off a train in heaven and he’s gotta earn enough money to buy his ticket back home.

The hot dog vendor was a genie. The breakdancers on the subway were forest nymphs. Every rat scurrying past on the sidewalk was a poor little boy under a witch’s spell who just had to find a way to break the curse.

Buttheseshoes?Thisman?

That can only be a devil.

It’s in the flawless gleam of the oxblood leather loafers. The way the charcoal gray pants cuff, ironed to razor-blade perfection, floats above his ankle. Those socks, black as midnight.

And when he speaks, I know it for sure, because the voice those ankles belong to is like anointing oil poured over broken granite.

“Mne plevat’,” he growls in a harsh, ice-cold rumble. “Ya khochu, chtoby ty nashel yego i ubil.”

The bathroom is graveyard quiet, but I can hear only mumbled squeaking from the other end of the phone call. The man in the oxblood shoes doesn’t let his friend finish before he interrupts.

“Should I repeat myself in English so the message is clear? ‘I don’t give a fuck. I want you to find him and kill him.’Don’t call back until it’s done.”

The beep that follows ends the call.

I realize when the edges of my vision start to burn and blacken that I haven’t breathed since the man walked in. I can feel sweat beading up on my temples and my armpits. But I just have to hold out a little longer, a little longer,a little fucking longer,because if the man will just leave, then I can…

Oh, no.

I see it as it’s happening—fast enough to understand, but too slow to do anything about it.

The blood that’s been leaking down my knuckles forms a diamond at the tip of my pointer finger. Wells up. Swells up. Stretches…

And then it falls to the checkerboard tile floors with a tiny, a soft, but an utterly undeniableplip.

Silence follows.

Then: slowly, slowly… those oxblood shoes turn to face me.

“Whoever’s in there,” the devil snarls, “open the door before I break it down.”

2

ARIEL

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