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

country, killing as we went, and all I had to keep myself stable was the knowledge that wherever we went I would always have a place to myself. I needed one.
    Now I’d lost even that.
    When we reached my apartment I showed Potash the living room: a single chair pointed at a TV.
    “I thought you said you had a couch,” said Potash.
    “I said I was expecting you to ask for a couch,” I answered. “I was kind of looking forward to telling you I didn’t have one. It’s not as weird as not owning a bed, though, so don’t point any fingers.” I left him to set up his own sleeping area and retreated to the kitchen, where I started making a salad. I wasn’t kidding about my vegetarianism—while I would gladly have made that my diet just to piss him off, I really did avoid meat and had for a few years. I’d come to embrace cooking as a “safe” hobby that helped me keep my mind off of other things. Now, raging at this home invasion, I chopped yellow peppers with my teeth clenched in fury, slicing tomatoes and shredding carrots and ripping chunks of lettuce with my bare hands. I covered the mass of vegetables with sunflower seeds and olive oil and sat down at the kitchen table with my mind still roiling. There was no wall between the meager kitchen and the tiny front room, so I watched Potash in angry silence as he finished his spartan preparations. Maybe if I burned the apartment down they’d let me be alone again. I was only halfway finished with my dinner when he stowed his bag in the corner and sat down across from me at the table.
    “I eat alone,” I said.
    “You used to do everything alone,” he responded. “Eating is one of many things that will have to change under this arrangement.”
    “Or you could just go, and I can keep my routine the way I like it.”
    Nathan or Ostler or Trujillo would have sighed, or shaken their heads, or given some outward expression of frustration. Potash only looked at me. “I have trouble believing that while our entire team is being hunted by monsters, putting your life in direct and immediate danger, you care more about your routine than your safety.”
    “My routine is my safety,” I said. “I have a specific way of doing things. I have rules.”
    “And what happens if you don’t follow them?”
    I held myself as still as I could, focusing on the wall so no other images could enter my mind. “I’d rather not be forced into a demonstration.”
    “I can buy my own food,” he said simply, “but you’ll have to go with me to the store, or this whole living arrangement is meaningless. We’re always together. It’s late now, so we can go tomorrow.”
    “I can be out late,” I said, “I’m not a child.”
    “No one ever says that but children.”
    I pushed my salad away, suddenly sickened by the idea of food. The kitchen table was mostly covered in papers, and I gestured to them as calmly as I could. “This is where I study—another thing I do alone. I need to figure out how to kill Mary Gardner, so just … back off for a while, okay? Disappear.”
    “You only have three rooms,” said Potash. “I either invade your bedroom, which I doubt you want, or I sit in the bathroom all night, or you see me out here.”
    “I choose bathroom.”
    “I wasn’t offering you a choice,” said Potash, “I was pointing out that full avoidance is impossible.” His voice was maddeningly calm, and I had to exert every ounce of my self-control to maintain a similar expression. I felt like a tornado turned inside out: the windless eye of the storm was on the outside, placid and emotionless, but trapped in the middle was a raging vortex of movement and fury and violence. I took a deep breath, staring at my half-eaten salad and my piles of carefully ordered papers and my living room without a couch. I should move to the bedroom, I knew—it was the only way to work in privacy—but that would mean giving in, and I felt a hot, irrational aversion to even considering it. Better