Four more invitations.
Four more rubies.
And somewhere in the future, a demon’s freedom—or my heart’s destruction.
What could possibly go wrong?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The sound that greets me when I enter my studio at 5:47 AM is not the sound any studio owner wants to hear. It’s a gurgle. Deep, ominous, and coming from somewhere inside my building.
Please be a fluke. Please be nothing. Please?—
The smell fills the entire building. Not sewage, thank God, but something mineral and wrong. Like rust and standing water and every pipe-related nightmare I’ve ever had rolled into one.
I flip the light switch. Nothing happens.
“Oh no.” I fumble for my phone, activating the flashlight. “No, no, no...”
The beam illuminates exactly what I was afraid of. Water. Everywhere.
It’s seeping out from under the studio bathroom door, and spreading down the hallway in an ever-widening pool. The baseboards are already dark with moisture. The practice mats I left stacked in the corner are soaked.
And somewhere behind the bathroom door, something is making a sound that can only be described as death rattles of ancient plumbing.
I splash down the hallway, yank open the door, and am immediately hit with a spray of water from a pipe that has clearly given up any pretense of functionality. The wall behind the toilet looks like it’s weeping—brownish water streaming from a crack that definitely wasn’t there yesterday.
“No, no, no, no?—”
I drop to my knees in the freezing water, reaching for the shutoff valve under the sink. My fingers find it and turn it, praying desperately. Nothing. The water keeps coming.
“The main valve,” I mutter, scrambling to my feet. “The main valve is in the basement.”
The basement that I haven’t entered in three years because it’s dark and damp and full of spiders and why would I ever need to go down there when everything was working fine?—
I’m halfway down the narrow basement stairs when my foot slips on something wet and I catch myself on the railing hard enough to wrench my shoulder.
“Damn it?—”
The main shutoff valve is exactly where I remember it—in the far corner, behind a stack of boxes I definitely should have moved years ago, covered in cobwebs and corrosion. I shove the boxes aside, ignoring the cascade of old costumes and forgotten props. My hands close around the valve. I twist. It doesn’t move.
I twist harder. Still nothing.
“Come on?—”
I’m crying now, which is stupid and pointless and won’t fix anything, but I can’t seem to stop. My studio. My livelihood. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve built, drowning in rusty water while I sit in a spider-infested basement unable to turn a single goddamn valve.
I pull out my phone with shaking hands.
The screen is wet. The numbers blur as I scroll through my contacts. My mother—not an option, never an option. The plumber I’ve used twice before... I try the number. Voicemail. Of course it’s voicemail, it’s not even six in the morning.
Who else? Who else can I call?
My thumb hovers over Bianca’s name. But she’s a student, not a contractor, and what could she possibly do?
Then I see it Mal’s number. He’d added it after our first private lesson. ”For emergencies,” he’d said. ”Or if you miss me. Either works.”
I stare at it for a long moment.
