Page 61 of Devil Inside

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Someone’s out there. Outside my room. I can just make out the blackened silhouette hunched over on the fire escape. Black within black, shadows within shadows.

A woman is crouched on my fucking fire escape.

I’m staring, waiting for the image to dissipate. For me to see it for what it really is. Because there’s no way, no possible way that it could possibly be—

her

—real. I refuse to believe it,sorry, it just can’t be—

her

—real. If I wait long enough, the hallucination will fade. It’ll be a dead potted plant, the brittle husk bristling in thewind, those shriveled leaves looking like hair but not really hair.

Let me hold onto my sanity for just a little bit longer, I’m begging my brain.

Pretty please. Sugar on top.

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She’s not moving. Her silhouette doesn’t shift. I can’t tell if she’s even breathing. Only her fingernail pecks against the glass, a raven’s beak rapping at my chamber door.

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How did she get up here? Did she climb all the way up from the street? That’s five floors. Not impossible, but I would’ve heard her. The strain on the metal. The weight of her body on the rungs. The scuff of her shoes against the railing. Something.Anything.

It can’t be her. It’s not real.This isn’t happening.Nothing within my body wants to work, even though there’s a very distinct voice in the back of my head begging me to run.

Go, Jordan, leave now, before it’s too—

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It’s Lilith. The woman from the Inquisition show. She’s kneeling on my fire escape, hunched in such a cryptid position, I can’t help but picture a granite gargoyle, perched on my apartment’s ledge, overseeing the city, knees pressed against her chest.

Not human. Not human at all. Something terrifying.

Something glorious.

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Lilith presses her palm to the pane, flattening her hand against the glass. I see her skin. The tattoo of that black rose wrappingaround her wrist. I swear I see it writhe, that inked flower growing over her palm, its roots tightening around her fingers, the thorns digging into her flesh, floral barbed wire endlessly snaking and spiraling around her hand.

Lilith.How did she find me? How did she know where I live?Because you brought her back to your apartment, dumbass.Of courseshe remembers where you live...

So. The million-dollar question, big guy, is...Are you going to invite her in?