Their building stood ahead: five stories of aging brick with a door that never latched right and a super who’d been promising to fix the hallway light since the Clinton administration. The stairwell always smelled like someone’s grandmother’s cooking, tonight it was garlic and something fried, drifting down from 4B.
Ava had lived here for three years, splitting rent with Mia while they both chased dreams that seemed increasinglyimpossible. Mia waiting tables between auditions that never called back. Ava buried in law libraries, drowning in debt, trying to justify her parents’ sacrifice with grades and honors and a career that was supposed to mean something.
Now Ava worked for demons and Mia was about to serve dinner to one.
“Third floor,” she said. “No elevator.”
“I’m aware.”
Of course he was. He probably knew her shoe size and her blood type and the name of her childhood goldfish. Ancient demons didn’t do anything by half measures.
Including, apparently, fake relationships that refused to stay fake.
The stairs creaked under their weight, each step announcing their arrival. Music pounded through apartment 3C’s door, Mia’s pre-battle playlist, all bass and attitude and Beyoncé telling the world exactly what it could do with its opinions.
Ava knocked, even though she had a key. “Mia? We’re here.”
The music cut off.
The door flew open.
Mia stood there in ripped jeans and her faded “BROADWAY OR BUST” t-shirt, a wooden spoon raised like a weapon. Her dark curls were piled on top of her head, secured with what looked like a chopstick from their favorite Thai place, and her brown eyes locked onto Victor with the intensity of a casting director during finals week.
“You’re taller than I expected,” she said.
“You’re exactly as Ava described.”
They stared at each other. The hallway felt very small.
She counted to five. “Can we come in? Or should I get popcorn for the standoff?”
Mia stepped aside, still watching Victor like he might sprout horns at any moment. “Shoes off. House rules.”
Victor paused, barely perceptible, but Ava caught it. An ancient demon, master of contracts and souls, stopped short by the request to remove his shoes. He bent and untied his Italian leather oxfords with precise movements, placing them neatly by the door beside Ava’s worn sneakers and Mia’s collection of character heels.
His socks were black. Of course they were.
The apartment was exactly what it had always been: small and cluttered and entirely theirs. Mismatched furniture rescued from street corners and estate sales. A kitchen that opened into a living room that doubled as Mia’s rehearsal space, the coffee table perpetually buried under scripts and headshots and highlighters in six different colors. The walls held framed playbills from shows Mia had seen, shows Mia had worked, shows Mia dreamed of being in someday.
Tonight, she’d set their tiny dining table with their best plates, also mismatched, a floral pattern next to solid blue next to something that might have been from a diner, and lit a candle that smelled like vanilla and optimism.
“Wine?” Mia offered, already pouring.
“Please.” Ava needed it.
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” Victor said.
Mia poured three generous glasses of the ten-dollar red they kept for emergencies and celebrations and Tuesdays that felt too long. Then she turned to Victor, glass in hand, and smiled the smile she used on directors who’d already decided not to cast her.
“So. You’re a demon.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re fake-dating my best friend.”
“That’s correct.”
“But you have real feelings for her.”
