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

be ready, or if it was better to wait until I was out of view of the street. Someone had to have heard the shot; surely the neighbors were watching me now. I pretended to knock, making no noise but trying to give the visual impression that I wasn’t a part of this, that I was just an innocent bystander. I waited, listening, and heard a low crash, like someone had broken a vase or a window somewhere deep in the house. I put my hand on the doorknob, turned it, and went inside.
    The front door led into a narrow hallway papered in a floral pink. A hat rack and umbrella stand stood nearby, and beyond them I glimpsed a small living room that seemed almost Victorian: ornate wooden furniture upholstered with thick, embroidered cushions. The lamp on a small corner table was hung with fringe. The effect was classy but threadbare, the kind of furniture you might see in the home of a ninety-year-old woman. Mary, of course, was much older. I supposed she’d had this furniture since it was first made, over a century ago.
    I heard another crash, maybe upstairs, and pulled the combat knife from my pocket. I stayed as silent as I could, not wanting to alert Mary to a third enemy in her house. I was not a trained fighter, so if I was going to have any meaningful effect on this situation, surprise would be a far more effective weapon than the knife ever could. I unsnapped the sheath and revealed the black blade, holding it in front of me in an upside-down grip, point toward the floor. Another crash, and a grunt. Definitely upstairs, and somehow recognizably feminine. Kelly, or Mary? Where was Potash? I tried the first step, found that it didn’t squeak, and slowly shifted my weight to the second, then the third. The ceiling thumped, somewhere to my right, like something heavy had fallen—heavy but soft; not a piece of furniture, but a body. I moved to the fourth step and, hearing the faintest trace of a creak as I started to place my weight on it, quickly picked up my foot to stop the sound. I tried the other side of the step, slowly and carefully, and when it stayed silent I moved to the next. The thump upstairs was followed by a scrape, then a pause, then a sudden flurry of footsteps. I moved to the sixth stair. The seventh. I was halfway up.
    A window shattered above and behind me, loud and bright, and after a moment of shock I raced back down and threw open the front door, cursing myself for leaving an exit unguarded—if Mary had jumped out a front window she could run for safety, on the wrong side of the building for Diana to stop her. I saw a foot, sprawled in the snow, and stepped out for a better look. Kelly was facedown on the white lawn, her left side covered with blood, her head bent at an impossible angle. Her spine must have been snapped nearly in half, though whether it was from the fall or the fight itself I didn’t know. She hadn’t screamed, during or even before the fall.
    Mary Gardner was more deadly than we’d ever imagined, and now the whole neighborhood knew we were here—and yet I froze, staring at Kelly’s twisted body like I was in a trance. Her broken shape in the snow was curled beautifully, like a flower, her arms splayed out like the tendrils of a dark black fern. Black and gray, with drops of bright red blood melting deep pink pockets in the snow. Her hair billowed around her head like she was a mermaid in a pale white sea, frozen in a moment of single, perfect beauty. I took a step toward it, then a few more. I was halfway down the stairs from the porch before the sound of another crash echoed down from upstairs. Potash was still up there, and the fight was still going. I took another step forward. How many times had I imagined Kelly dead, and now here she was, right in front of me. The Withered disintegrated when they died; I hadn’t touched a body in months. I reached out to it—and saw the knife in my hand.
    A knife. Mary Gardner was still upstairs. I looked up at the window, then back at the