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You honestly couldn’t remember him being there last time you checked. You are in some seedy downtown bar, halfway through your third – or was it fifth? – whiskey when you noticed an oddly dressed man sitting beside you, though he was difficult to make out, given your inebriation. He seems to be dressed in some kind of fancy checkered suit, complete with a tall hat that looked straight out of the 1800s. You suppress the urge to laugh as you teeter back and forth on the barstool, just one light push away from landing face-first on the sticky floorboards down below. He turns his head in response, and your smile dies away as you realise that he is wearing a mask. A peculiar, black mask that seems to be smiling one moment and grimacing the next, set with a pair of glittering emeralds where the eyes should be.You stammer out a slurred apology and return your attention to your drink, but the man laughs softly and says your full name, causing you to freeze up.”You’re a hard man to find, you know,” he comments, tapping his gloved fingers against one of your empty glasses.Shaking your head, you ask the stranger if you’ve met him before. You never considered yourself to be terribly social, and your circle of friends didn’t seem to include any sharply-dressed enigmas that you were aware of.”Perhaps. Perhaps not. It does not matter, in any case.”You cock your head. Doesn’t it? How does he know your full name, then? Who is he? Is he even real? Or is the alcohol starting to mess with your head?”I assure you, I am very real. Real enough to have a proposition for you.”Oh no. You heard of this kind of carry-on happening in establishments like this. Some dubious businessmen like to practice their scams on the drunk and disorderly, swindling them for all they’re worth before they’ve even sobered up. You’re shitfaced, but not stupid. Making your excuses, you try to step away from the bar, but the man stops you with a word.”You’re between jobs at the moment, and behind on your rent, are you not?” he states with supernatural accuracy.You bite your tongue and slump back into your seat. He was right. You had pretty much spent the last of your cash drowning your sorrows, and you only had a couple of days left before you were evicted from your apartment. Either that, or your landlord will send men with crowbars around to pay you a visit. You heard it happen to previous tenants through the thin walls.”I believe I have the solution to your problems right here,” the stranger continues, placing a document on the bar top.Squinting and straining, you try to read the fine print, but you’re far too drunk to make anything out. All you recognise is a dotted line at the bottom of the sheet. A contract.”Sign here, and all your financial problems shall become a thing of the past,” he explains, placing a pen in your hand.You tell him that the offer is mighty suspicious, and he nods understandingly.”You have the right to refuse, but know that I’ll only make this offer once.”What were the terms?”It’s all written on the contract.”You roll the pen between your fingers, narrowing your eyes as you struggle to piece your thoughts together. A strange man with a strange offer. What could possibly go wrong?Fuck it. It’s not like your life is going anywhere good anyway.With a resigned sigh, you messily scrawl your name at the bottom of the contract and slide it back over to the businessman, who graciously accepts and slips it back into güvenilir bahis his coat.”A pleasure doing business with you, sir. You have a good night now.”With that, he gets out of his seat and disappears into the miasma of liquour fumes and cigarette smoke that permeated the bar, leaving you alone with your drink once more. You continue to nurse it for some time, silently wondering just what the Hell you signed up for. Before long, last call comes, and you’re eventually tossed out into the street. With naught left to do, you stagger home to your rundown apartment, barely able to pull your trousers off before you collapse onto your mattress and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.—You are rudely awoken the next morning by no less than three things; a splitting headache, someone’s car alarm, and the sound of violent thumping on your apartment’s front door. Snorting in a panicked manner, you flop off your mattress and onto the floor. You call for your impatient visitor to calm down as you wrestle with a clean-ish pair of jeans, swearing beneath your breath as the fly refuses to zip. Out in the hallway of the shabby apartment block, you hear a coarse voice calling your name.”I know you’re in there, and I don’t got all day!”As you topple out into the living-dining room, you briefly wonder just who the Hell could be knocking down your door at this hour.You check the clock on the wall. It was 1 pm.Okay, maybe it wasn’t that unreasonable a time.”Quit fucking me around!” barked the voice, punctuated by a heavy fist slamming against your poor door.Frowning, you stumble over some loose trash and unbolt the door, wincing as your head throbs. You call for them to come in.”About bloody time!”A heavy boot kicks the door open, revealing a tall woman dressed in a disheveled suit. Her hair is grey and tied back into a messy ponytail, and for some reason, she is wearing an eyepatch over her left eye. For a split second, you want to ask why, but the way she is glaring at you is anything but friendly, so you shut your mouth. Is she a debt collector, finally sent by your twisted landlord to take back what you owed?Your gaze tracks down to the pistol holstered by her side. Oh shit.”Hey, eyes up here, kid,” grunts the woman, snapping her fingers.You do as you are told, doing your damnedest not to look absolutely terrified, in spite of your knocking knees.”Let’s get introductions out of the way; I’m on a tight schedule. Name’s Lilith, and I’ll be your overseeing coordinator for the time being. I take it you’ve already packed your stuff?”She frowns upon noticing the blank look on your face.”Quit staring at me and grab your stuff already!”Flinching at her words, you stammer out a few half-sentences, before you finally manage to ask her what she is even talking about.”What the- this isn’t funny! For fuck’s sake, where’s your luggage?! I’ll carry it!” barks Lilith, storming into your apartment.You can only stumble out of the way as she surges past, fists balled and brow furrowed. Upon failing to find whatever she was looking for, she faces you with a furious look in her eye.”You were supposed to be packed and ready by the time I got here!”Packed for what?!”The manager position!”The what?!”Are you stupid or something?! Your resume certainly didn’t mention that!”Resume?! Last time you checked, you didn’t even have a resume!”I don’t have time for this! I’ll send Dallas to go grab your shit later! Come on!”Grabbing güvenilir bahis siteleri your wrist tightly, Lilith drags you through the door and down the hallway, not giving you a moment to lock your apartment or even put on a pair of shoes. She mutters beneath her breath as she walks, cursing your apparent lack of sense and complaining about your less-than-orderly appearance.Crippled as you are with a hangover, you can do little to stop her from dragging you out into the midday sun and shoving you into the passenger side seat of a black sportscar.”Right, you listen to me and you listen close, because I do not have the patience to deal with any bullshit today,” she threatens, forgoing her seatbelt in favour of slamming her foot down on the gas.You try to respond, but you can only nod your head as the car lurches forward, dropping your stomach into your feet as it peels off onto the road.”This cultural exchange thing is a big deal, for Earth and Hell alike. You’re gonna need to make a good impression,” Lilith explains, narrowing her good eye at you. It’s a disturbing shade of red.Wait. Did she just say Hell?”For fuck’s sake, did you not read the contract?! All the information you gave us stated that you were perfectly qualified and eager to work with demons!”Demons?!”For the love of – okay, just listen. In mid-2018, a portal opened up in the middle of Paris, one that lead directly to Hell. Humans learn of the existence of demons, panic breaks out, and all Hell breaks loose, excuse the pun. Fast forward three years, and talks initiate between the UN and a council of representatives from Hell’s city-states. Everybody decides that peace is the best option going forward, demon and human governments unite, and the Earth-Hell Initiative – the EHI – is born. That’s who I work for.”She flashes a silver badge at you, but you’re barely able to keep up. You’ve never been one for keeping up with current events and having been living from paycheque to paycheque for the past few years, you didn’t particularly care. Getting told all of this is a little overwhelming, but Lilith isn’t done yet.”We’ve run a few successful homestays and transfers over the last few months, but this one is probably gonna be the toughest to pull off, and I’m gonna need to know that you’re up to it,” she continues, running a red light.Up to what exactly?”The manager position, remember? It was written on the contract like six times, kid.”You furrow your brow as you try to remember. Your befuddled memories from the night before tell you something about a contract, but beyond that, you have no idea what Lilith is talking about.”You stated you could cook, clean, perform maintenance and anything else needed to run a household. Your references checked out too. Have you seriously forgotten all this?”You can’t cook anything more complicated than toast, your apartment hadn’t been cleaned since you moved in, and the last time you attempted to replace a lightbulb you nearly burned your hand right off! And what references was she going on about?! You don’t remember writing any of this!Lilith grips the steering wheel hard and tears off down a highway, gritting her teeth as she dodges traffic.”Look, here’s the catch. There’s gonna be seven demons staying in a purpose-made boarding house, each from some of Hell’s more isolated enclaves. People that have never seen a different race of demon before, never mind a human. Do you iddaa siteleri get where I’m going with this?” she explains, taking her eye off the road in order to stare you down.Heart in your mouth, you shrink into your seat. You have no idea how you managed to land yourself in this situation, and you’re too terrified to ask. So swallowing your fear, you grip the seat of the car tightly and decide to ride out the rest of the journey, so long as Lilith doesn’t crash first.—“There. Sent a text to one of my guys to clean your old place out, kid. Should have your stuff here by tomorrow,” Lilith calls, tapping at her phone as she leans on the hood of the car.You barely register her words, too enraptured by the sight before you.The boarding house is a fairly modern-looking building; lots of glass, steel and concrete, but it doesn’t look cold. It has a small garden out the front as well as a generously-sized garage, and as Lilith finishes up with her phone, you only just realise that you were looking at your new home.”Construction barely got finished a week ago. I swear, the EHI just loves leaving everything to the last minute,” she sighs, tossing you a set of keys.You just about manage to catch them. As the one-eyed agent gets back into her car, however, you raise a quizzical eyebrow and ask her what you’re supposed to do now. She responds with a shrug as she starts the car.”Just settle in for now. Oh, one of your charges should already be here, so make introductions or whatever. I’m counting on you, kid!”And just like that, she pulls off, tearing off down the road at speeds that you knew far exceeded the limit. Swallowing hard, you take a quick moment to steel yourself before entering the boarding house, feeling completely and utterly out of your depth.The door is already unlocked, but that’s not surprising, considering there is already someone living here. A demon.You still can’t believe they were real.The inside of the boarding house takes your breath away. The ground floor is open-plan and boasts a full suite of furniture with a large TV mounted above the fireplace, as well as an impressive dining area that looked to be worth more than your net worth. The kitchen has more appliances than you know what to do with, and as you stagger around with your jaw hanging open, you notice the sound of running water coming from somewhere upstairs.They must be showering.Making your way up a large staircase, you confirm that the bathroom door is locked, and instead decide to stake a claim on one of the bedrooms. There are plenty of empty rooms to choose from; each with a double bed, a desk and more dressers than you reasonably need. You decide to take up residence in the room furthest down the hall, just next to the airing cupboard.Above the sound of pouring water, you can hear feminine humming.Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to get an idea of who you’re going to be living with…?Though most of the bedrooms are empty, one of them is not. Clothes litter the floor, and a suitcase lies unpacked by the ruffled bed. A few leather-bound books have been stacked upon the desk, with titles written in a language you don’t understand. A single stick of incense burns in the windowsill, filling the room with a smoky-sweet scent that makes you feel warm inside.”My my, it seems I’ve caught a snooper.”The sound you make upon hearing this cannot accurately be described.Panic overtakes you as you trip over a lacy brassiere on the floor, getting the garment tangled up in your legs as you topple back onto the bed. A response forms on the tip of your tongue, but upon seeing the woman standing before you, the wind is taken right out of your lungs.
Ben Esra telefonda seni boşaltmamı ister misin?
Telefon Numaram: 00237 8000 92 32