Raising Hell

1. In Which Everything Goes Wonderfully Wrong

"This is amazing," I say excitedly, "did you decorate this yourself?"

Lyla shrugs, looking around the room with the same critical eyes I use when I am training Julian's younger siblings. "I had help from my old roommate. She took some of the artwork so I had to make some more to put up."

My eyes widen as I look over at her. "You made the art?"

She smiles proudly. "Yeah! Most of them were old projects from school."

"That's incredible." My eyes scan the art again, this time with more amazement. "I've always wanted to be an artist, but I never had the patience. One of my friends back home was an artist but he never pursued it." My heart aches as I mention Julian. The hardest part about leaving him was leaving him behind.

She laughs and takes my suitcase from me. "Wait until you see your room." She leads me down a small hallway to the right and through the second door on the left. She swings the door open to reveal a bedroom that is decorated just as stylishly as the rest of the apartment. The queen bed is dressed in simple grey sheets and a white comforter. There are yellow accent pillows paired with a grey throw blanket. There is a wooden dresser on the opposite wall and a small closet next to it. There is a small mirror with a yellow frame hanging on the back of the closet door that ties the color scheme together.

"I might have gone a little overboard with the decorating," she admits. "I guess I was excited to have a new roommate."

Still, in awe, I move to sit on the bed. "This is perfect, Lyla. Thank you."

"Of course!" She says happily. "Now, I need to head to work. If you're up to it, you can come and meet everyone. My boss is very excited to meet you."

I give her a nod. "I'll stop by when I'm finished unpacking."

"Sounds good. I'll see you in a little bit, then." She leaves the room and a couple of seconds later I hear the front door close.

It doesn't take me very long to unpack my small suitcase. My small selection of clothes fit easily in the closet and the small mementos I decided to bring are placed on top of my dresser: a framed picture of me and Tavvy, a photo strip that Emma, Julian, and me from one of our "mundane outings," and a cylinder about as wide around as a pencil with markings all around it. My fingers linger on the stele for a second before I finish unpacking the rest of my things. When I get to the bottom of the suitcase, I come across my small collection of daggers. I take the two with engravings of herons out, setting them with my stele, before zipping up my suitcase and burying it in the back of my closet. The paranoid part of me took my stele and glamoured the suitcase so that Lyla wouldn't find it— I could explain away two daggers, but I couldn't explain away a whole collection of them.

As soon as I'm done, I put the location of the cafe Lyla works in my phone and try to navigate the busy streets of New York. Turns out that the cafe was only a short walk from the apartment. When I walked into the comfortable-looking entryway, Lyla greets me instantly. She dropped the rag she was carrying onto one of the tables and walks over to me. "Hey! Did you get all settled?"

"Yeah. I didn't have much to unpack," I explain.

"Well, Ben is in back. I'll go grab him for you." She glances over my shoulder and smiles slightly. "In the meantime—" she takes my hand and drags me over to a table where two people who look about my age are: an excited redheaded girl and a nervous, brown-haired boy. The redhead looks up as we approach, smiling easily at Lyla. The boy notices the redhead's distraction and looks up at Lyla as well. Both of them glance at me in confusion before looking back at Lyla.

"Lyla!" The redhead greets her. "I didn't know you were working today."

"Well, I wasn't supposed to. I'm working a double to cover for Eric." Lyla explains, rolling her eyes. "I wanted to introduce you guys to my new roommate, Rae. She just came in from...California?" She looks at me for confirmation and I nod.