The Devil's Only Friend by Dan Wells Read Free Book Online

part,” said Kelly. “He’s been visiting here ever since Merrill Evans checked in. That was almost twenty years ago.” She sighed. “Either that’s a really deep cover story, or we don’t have any idea what’s really going on here.”

 
    3
    “I don’t want you in my house,” I said.
    “That’s not your call,” said Potash.
    We were going back to my apartment; Potash was driving. That was a frustration of its own: I was seventeen and I could drive just fine, but they never let me. I had my own car, but whenever I was with the rest of the team—which was always—I had to let one of them drive. I was a child to them. Worse, though, Potash had a duffel bag in the back seat, full of what he claimed to be the sum of his material possessions. I felt my throat starting to constrict, imagining the invasion of my living space. I couldn’t do it.
    “It’s my house,” I said, “of course it’s my call. Why do you think I live by myself—because I love people so much? It’s part of my deal with Ostler: Kelly and Diana share a place; you and Nathan and Trujillo share a place; I live alone. This isn’t up for discussion.”
    “You’re right,” said Potash, still looking at the road. “It isn’t.” Now that Meshara and who knew how many others were hunting for us, no one on the team was allowed to be alone, even at home.
    “Have you considered that I’m a dangerous psychopath?” I asked. “Sleeping in the same apartment as me could be severely hazardous to your health and well-being.”
    Potash glanced at me, a silent, emotionless look that expressed precisely how little danger a scrawny teenager posed to a special forces soldier. “Have you considered that that’s exactly why they chose me to be the one to join you?”
    “Even if I’m not a danger to you,” I said, “what about other people? How many guns do you have in that duffel bag? Is it a 50 percent ratio of clothes to weapons, or somehow more than that? I have a very strict no-weapons policy in my house—”
    “All the more reason you shouldn’t be alone.”
    “—and I do that to avoid temptations. I’m trying very hard not to become a serial murderer and the last thing I need is a bunch of guns and knives all over my house.”
    “There are no weapons in my duffel bag,” said Potash. “I have a concealed gun on my person, which you will never see or touch. Everything else is stored off site.”
    “It’s a one-bedroom apartment,” I said. “I have nowhere for you to sleep.”
    “I sleep on the floor.”
    “I don’t even—” I stopped suddenly, surprised by what he’d said. “I was expecting you to ask for the couch.”
    “I prefer floors. I don’t actually own a bed, even at home.”
    I sighed, running out of feasible plans to dissuade him. “You’re insane.”
    “Then we should get along fine.”
    “Sensitivity training,” I snarled. I closed my eyes, trying to think of the problems this would cause and searching for preemptive solutions. “I’m a vegetarian,” I said, “and rather militant about it. No meat of any kind in the house. You so much as order a pepperoni pizza, you eat it outside.”
    “Does fish count?”
    “Of course fish counts.”
    “Some vegetarians don’t count fish.”
    “I do,” I said. “I’m not protesting the American meat industry, I’m trying to not kill anything. Have you ever thought about your meat as an animal? Your teeth biting through the flesh of a living thing that somebody killed and put on a fire? No animals of any kind.”
    Potash nodded. “Eggs?”
    “Eggs are fine,” I said. I stared out the window, clenching my fist inside my coat pocket. “You can eat all the f—” I stopped and closed my eyes. My apartment was my haven; it was the one place I could go to be away from everyone. In Clayton we’d lived over my mother’s mortuary, so I’d had my own room and the embalming room as my private, silent sanctuaries. Now I had neither. We moved around the