Asa had lived in the Onyx District since he had been forced to leave the House, which still felt strange after all this time. He had been born in the Ruby District, had lived inside the Vermilion House for the first sixteen years of his life. The Onyx District was an ice-water bath to his senses—cold, dirty, inelegant. He had laid awake on a small pallet in his studio room all night, his body stiff with shock, wondering if he would ever get used to this.

  The Crystal Tower was a high-rise building with thirty-five floors, forty rooms crammed into each floor, with communal bathrooms and kitchens stationed at varying points. The windows of the first floor were boarded with large sheets of metal. The elevator hadn’t worked in a week, so they climbed the stairs to the fifteenth floor where Asa’s apartment was located.

  The demon gave up walking after the second floor and draped himself around Asa’s neck again, so by the fifteenth floor, Asa was over-heated and grimly thinking that Madame Katusha was probably right that he was spoiling his demon. Asa unlocked the door to his room with an old-fashioned metal key because the ID scanner was broken. Mouse didn’t look winded at all, jumping with energy all over Asa’s living space.

  “Hey, stop jumping on that,” Asa scolded, as Mouse started to bounce on the purple pull-out couch. “You’re going to break it.”

  Mouse had already abandoned the couch to inspect the cabinets of shelf-stable food, the two bowls and two utensils that his mother had bought him, the metal parts of the commissions that littered the floor. PQ-9 followed Mouse, lecturing her as she left Asa’s bowls on the coffee table and kicked aside the parts of commissions that were in her way. Not that she was able to make too much of a mess, as Asa didn’t own very much. Mouse pressed the push-door in the wall, which opened to reveal his clothes and shoes. Asa’s pod was stored at Mick’s garage in exchange for Asa’s part-time mechanic work.

  “Wow, this is sad,” the demon said, flopping onto the pull-out couch. “You don’t even have any art.”

  “You just came from the demonic realms, what do you know about interior design,” Asa said, indignant. He hadn’t been able to take any of his stuff from the House. The House had kept all of his possessions except for his collar as part of their property, even though none of it had been worth much. They had only had value to Asa.

  “Do you have any games?” Mouse said, messing around with one of the half-broken computers that Asa was being paid to repair.

  “Stop that,” Asa said, lightly prodding her hand with his foot. “No. It’s time for dinner and then you’re going to bed.”

  “But I’m not tired,” Mouse said, scowling at him.

  “I don’t care,” Asa informed her, as he rifled through his cabinets for food. “You’re the one who didn’t want to go back to the House, and I’m exhausted.”

  He piled rehydratable pasta and canned vegetables into the bowls, and then piled everything onto a floating, magnetic tray.

  “Where’s my bowl?” the demon said, jumping up onto the floating tray, causing it to dip dangerously.

  Asa grabbed the demon under ihis little fuzzy arms to drop him unceremoniously onto the floor. “Demons don’t eat human food,” he said.

  “Yes, I do!” the demon said. “I want human food too, it tastes good.”

  “Let him have food!” Mouse chanted, joining the protest.

  “Okay, fine, whatever!” Asa said, throwing up his hands in defeat. “If you get demon food poisoning, do NOT get body fluids on my floor.”

  They strolled down the fifteenth floor hall to the communal kitchen, where there were no people because most of the tenants on Asa’s floor worked the night shift. Everyone had already left for work. Asa emptied two precious cans of vegetables in a bowel while Mouse and the demon inspected the kitchen. They turned on and off the water—completely ignoring the sign that warned of the water rationing limits. They shoved their faces into cabinets, took out cleaning supplies, didn’t read any of the increasingly demanding neon signs about cleaning up after yourself.

  Since Asa only had two bowls, he made Mouse and the demon share one bowl while he used the other one. Mouse fed herself one bite and then the demon the second bite, alternating until all of the food was gone. When Mouse and the demon turned their large, covetous gazes on Asa’s food, Asa gave up in disgust and shoved his food toward them, which they fell on immediately.

  Asa himself was still oddly hungry even though he had eaten more than his usual portion. But he just didn’t have enough food to eat more tonight and then have enough for tomorrow, especially with two extra mouths to feed. At least PQ-9 still stuck up his nose in disgust at human food.

  “Okay,” Asa announced once all the dishes were clean and put away back in his apartment. “Time for a bath.”

  “Bath?” Mouse said suspiciously.

  “Yes, you’re filthy,” Asa said patiently. “You have dirt all over your face. We need to wash your jumpsuit.”

  “No more baths,” Mouse proclaimed, making an X with her arms. “I already had a bath!”

  “Uhh, then why did Jury send me a very annoying message about how you tried to punch the bath attendants?” Asa said, exasperated. “You are not sleeping on the couch like this.”

  Mouse looked cagey. “Water makes me melt,” she said. “Like an icicle.”

  Now Asa started to frown. He wondered where she had even seen an icicle in the first place, as the Station didn’t have that kind of weather. Maybe she was referencing a holo? Or maybe she had contact with a freezer at some point. Whatever. “Well,” Asa said slowly. “If you want to sleep here, you have to take a bath. Otherwise, I am very happy to return you to the House.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Mouse looked at him with betrayal in her large brown eyes, but Asa held strong. He crossed his arms to guard himself even more firmly. PQ-9 backed him up by beeping once, loudly and firmly.

  “What’s a bath?” the demon asked curiously.

  Asa eyed the demon’s fur, which was a little matted and also dirty from the fight from earlier. “Good question,” Asa said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Asa gathered his bath caddy and towels, extra clothes for Mouse, and then scooped the demon up to toss him over his shoulder. Then he turned toward the door, pretending to ignore Mouse standing there with her arms crossed.

  “Are you just going to leave me here?” Mouse said, sounding mostly defiant. There was a little waver to her voice at the end.

  “Are you going to wash up?” Asa said patiently. It reminded him, unwillingly, of being the Head Apprentice in the House, when he had been in charge of the little ones. They had followed him like ducklings everywhere. Asa ignored the aching in his chest when he thought of what they were doing now. “I can show you my projects after you’re done.”

  Mouse slowly moved closer to him, reluctant, as if he was leading her to her death instead of down the hall to the communal baths. “Okay,” she said, looking up at him with wide, sad eyes. “I’ll wash.”

  “Thank you,” Asa said, feeling exhausted already and he had only known Mouse a single day.

  “If I die in there, my blood is on your hands,” Mouse said, extremely dramatically.

  “You can die in the bath?” the demon said, sounding very alarmed.

  Asa sighed.

  #

  PQ-9 had stayed behind during bathtime, claiming that he needed to charge, but Asa knew better. PQ-9 had wanted to avoid the splash zone. He couldn’t blame the robot, but still, Asa was definitely the worse for wear with no splash zone support. At least Mouse and the demon were clean, and Mouse was much brighter now that she had been washed and dried and put in fresh clothing.

  “We have to do something about your hair,” Asa informed her as she rolled all over the couch like a cat.

  “Brushing hurts,” Mouse whined, covering her head with her hands.

  “It looks like you’ve never brushed your hair once in your life,” Asa said dryly, fetching hair supplies. All the apprentices in the House trained in hair, make-up, clothing, contracts, serving, musical instruments, singing. If they survived the cut after all of that, then they specialized in their talents. Asa didn’t bother with all of that himself anymore since he had left the House, but he still remembered everything he had learned.

  Mouse was suspiciously quiet, and when he looked next, she was wiggling across the floor like a greenhouse inch-worm, trying to escape from his sight.

  “Uh. No,” Asa said, stepping on the edge of her sleep t-shirt to stop her from being able to move farther away. “Do you want me to show you my projects or not?”

  “Now?” Mouse said, looking up at him from the floor.

  “If you let me brush your hair,” Asa bargained. He didn’t know how he would bargain with her to brush her teeth. This would be so much easier if she had just agreed to go back to the House.

  Mouse looked tortured with indecision about the dilemma that was in front of her. "You have to teach me chess too," she bargained. "Like what you and Rose played."

  "I'll teach you chess if you also brush your teeth and go to bed without complaining," Asa said immediately.

  "Deal," Mouse pronounced, but she was looking around shiftily. PQ-9 sent Asa a picture of Mouse's hand behind her back, her fingers crossed. A series of scolding emojis accompanied the text. Asa felt his mouth drop into a straight, unimpressed line, even as the demon pawed at his shins.

  "I want to watch a holo," the demon demanded. "All the humans were watching holos at that bar."

  "Holo and then projects and then chess!" Mouse said excitedly, jumping around. Asa wondered if she ever ran out of energy.

  Even though Mouse clearly hadn't earned all of these rewards—between stealing his collar, causing problems at the House, and then that final damning photo—Asa still turned on a holo for Mouse and the demon. Asa sat on the couch and motioned for Mouse to sit on the floor in front of him, which she reluctantly obliged with excessive fanfare. The demon piled into her lap, curling up to watch the holo with live-action commentary. Asa had just turned on whatever PQ-9 had been watching, rewinding it to the beginning, which turned out to be a really long and cheesy space soap opera that was dense with both plot and plot-holes.

  Asa ran his hands through Mouse's waist-length hair to feel for knots and matting, of which there was plenty. He frowned as he wondered for the first time: where had Mouse come from?

  He had never seen her on the Station before. Nora and Galatea—albeit in another time-line—hadn't seemed to know her either. Rose also hadn't known her in this time-line. It wasn't likely, then, that Mouse was from that other time-line Station or even this time-line Station. But it wasn’t impossible either.

  Asa wet Mouse's hair with detangler product and started the long and tedious process of untangling Mouse's knots. "Where are your parents?" Asa said casually, carefully separating her hair into sections with his comb.

  Mouse shrugged, which caused Asa's comb to catch briefly in her hair before he unhooked the comb. "Dunno," she said. "Don't have any."

  "So where do you live?" Asa prodded.

  "Here and there," she said, starting to sound shifty again.

  "Here and there," Asa repeated. "So where were you going when I found you?"

  "You didn't find me," Mouse said, indignant. "I found you."

  Asa snorted. "Yeah, okay," he said. "Don't you have somewhere you want to return to?"

  "Nope," Mouse said cheerfully. "I go wherever the solar wind takes me!"

  Asa couldn't help thinking of Rose, who had also been orphaned at an early age. Rose had never known his parents and had been taken in by the Red Seal Syndicate. The RSS didn't specialize in demon contracts like the House did, but they still had their own system of debts and obligations. Rose wouldn't have been able to leave, even if he had wanted to. It had often been a point of contention between Asa and Rose because Rose had refused to contemplate the possibility that they could leave the Station. Asa had Galatea, but Rose hadn't had anybody to really watch over him.

  "That sounds pretty lonely," Asa said quietly.

  "I have friends," Mouse said insistently. "Bear is my friend."

  "Who?” Asa said, bewildered.

  “My demon friend,” she said.

  “You mean, you have a contract with Bear," Asa corrected, ignoring the fact that a wolf-shaped demon was named bear. He wondered if Mouse had named the demon, and if so, where she had come into contact with a bear when it was clear she had rare and passing contact with even a hairbrush.

  "No!" Mouse said, starting to stand and turn to face Asa, but Asa's comb was still in her hair. "Ow!"

  "Then stay still," Asa said, amused, nudging her side with his leg to sit back down.

  "I don't have a contract with Bear," Mouse said sulkily. "She’s with me because she wants to be. If she ever wanted to leave, she can leave whenever she wants."

  Asa frowned. He had never known a demon to stick around without a contract—what would be the point? They wouldn’t get anything out of it. Asa waited for the demon in Mouse's lap to respond with commentary but when he looked over, the demon was asleep again. Typical. Demons slept quite a bit after using mass amounts of energy, and this demon was particularly weak since he was newly born—he never would have been invited into the House.

  “Where's your demon friend now then?" Asa said.