Page 2 of Devil's Iris

“If you’re later than an hour, consider your job here gone.”

“I won’t be later than an hour,” I vow, putting every ounce of determination I have into those words.

His response is the dial tone.

I slam my hand down on my scooter’s handlebar. “Fucking Ethan,” I snarl to the empty parking lot. “I’m going to kill him.”

I can’t afford to lose this job. It took me months of rejection and humiliation to even get this one. Turns out when your only academic credential is a high school diploma, the world doesn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for you.

I turn the key in the scooter’s ignition and the engine sputters pathetically. Oh, for the love of—is this heap of scrap metal seriously going to choose today to finally give up on me?

“Come on, baby,” I murmur, twisting harder, practically grinding the key. “Don’t you dare do this to me now.”

The engine coughs, wheezes, then miraculously catches. Relief floods my chest so hard and sudden I could cry.

I let out a shaky breath and peel out of the parking lot as fast as my scooter will carry me, hyper-aware of my ticking deadline.

Driving through Blake Avenue, I cut through side streets without thinking, laser-focused on making it to the hole within fifteen minutes instead of the usual twenty. My shoulders draw tight, hiking up towards my ears as the scenery starts changing, getting progressively worse the farther I venture from civilization.By the time I’m pulling onto Amber Street, I’m in a different world entirely.

The stench in the neighborhood hits me first—a nauseating cocktail of bad sewage, cigarette smoke, human misery, and rotting trash cluttering every yard. It’s the kind of smell that clings to your clothes, your hair, your very soul… I don’t know how such a toxic mixture is even possible, but this place has perfected the art of despair.

I wrinkle my nose as I skirt around a small puddle of what I hope is dirty water in the road, avoiding looking too closely at the decaying houses scattered around, sparse and broken, with weeds growing wild and spilling onto the pavement.

Ugh. I’ve only been here one other time—the first was because of Mom, naturally—and as I pull up in front of the one-story house that was once blue but is now a sad, weathered white, a familiar wave of resentment flows through me.

Why are they both doing this to me?

No time for self-pity, though. Time is literally ticking away.

I kill the engine with a whispered prayer that it will start again when I need to escape this place, hang my helmet on the handlebar, then quickly check the time on my phone.

The ride was seventeen minutes. That leaves me exactly forty-three minutes to make it back to Brownsville.

I can do this.

I square my shoulders as I walk up to the front door, feeling the knife in my pants’ hidden pocket dig into my hip with each step, a reminder that I’m not completely defenseless in this place where violence is as common as breathing.

A rusted doorbell sits crooked by the doorframe—no chance that thing still works. So I ball my hand into a fist and knock briskly, running through my speech in my head.

Hi, there. I’m looking for my little brother, Ethan. Bushy brows, shaggy brown hair, lanky build, and stupid enough to come here.

The door swings open, and relief floods me at the sight ofthe kid on the other side. “Henry.” I almost grab his arm, but I manage to control myself. “I’m here for Ethan.”

Henry eyes me like he’s very much aware of the fact that I don’t approve of his friendship with my brother, then takes a step back from the door, silently inviting me in.

I bite my lip, hesitating. I knew I might have to go in, of course. But knowing and doing are two very different things. I take comfort in the weight of my knife as I step across the threshold, the door closing behind me with the finality of a coffin lid.

“Follow me, Ethan is?—”

The rest of Henry’s words are swallowed by someone pounding on the door. We both whip our heads towards the sound, and my neck prickles with danger signals. Probably because I’m standing in a well-known trap house like an idiot.

“That better be a paying customer,” the eighteen-year-old mutters as he unlocks the door.

“Aren’t you going to check through the peephole first?” I ask, appalled at his total lack of self-preservation instincts. He throws me a bored look that screams ‘you’re being dramatic’, then swings the door wide open.

A split second later, he’s promptly shoved back as the entryway explodes with shouting men in tactical vests, guns raised.

“Police! Hands up! Drop your weapons!”