On Monday morning, Selena Beer woke up to the sound of her neighbor screaming at a blender.
It took her groggy brain a full five seconds to remember she did not, in fact, live in a peaceful student dorm but in a thin-walled shoebox above a convenience store, where people held entire arguments with kitchen appliances at seven a.m. sharp. Her alarm buzzed on the crate she called a nightstand, vibrating dangerously close to the edge.
She rolled over, slapped it silent, and stared at the ceiling.
The silver business card sat exactly where she'd left it the night before: on the shelf above her bed, dead center between her Introduction to Criminology textbook and a mug full of dying pens. It gleamed in the weak light leaking through the cheap curtains, a quiet, polite threat.
DEVEREUX HOLDINGS.
Lucian Devereux, Executive Director.
Her empty rent envelope lay beside it, flattened and accusing.
Selena exhaled through her nose, long and slow. "Good morning to you too, capitalism."
She checked the time again. If she moved now, she could still make her first lecture. If she didn't, she would be voluntarily lowering her attendance percentage and giving her scholarship committee another reason to breathe down her neck. Scholarships were like Seraph City contracts: miss too many conditions and you vanished from the list.
Her mother would tell her to eat breakfast first.
Her landlord would tell her to stop making excuses and bring the money "today, without drama."
The man in the suit had told her, very calmly, to call if the devil troubled her.
Selena swung her legs off the bed.
"Shower, coffee, panic," she muttered. "In that order."
The shower was barely a trickle and more lukewarm than hot, but it chased the last of the sleep from her skull. She scrubbed her hair, brushed her teeth with one foot already stepping out, and pulled on ripped black jeans and an oversized white T-shirt with a cracked, faded graphic of a cartoon crime scene. Over that went her black hoodie—the one the card had mysteriously migrated into last night.
She hesitated, then picked the card up.
Thick. Heavy. More expensive than her entire outfit.
The normal thing to do would be to throw it away and file the whole encounter under "random city creep." The smarter thing, her criminology brain whispered, would be to take it to campus security or the police and report the theft. The realistic thing was understanding exactly how far that would go against someone whose surname sat on the tallest building in Seraph City.
Selena slid the card into the pocket of her jeans.
"Evidence," she told herself. "Not… anything else."
Her bus was, as usual, late and, as usual, packed. The morning rush pressed everyone together in a shared soup of deodorant, stress, and cheap perfume. Selena grabbed the overhead rail and counted each lurching step of the bus out of habit. One, two, three, four—breathe—five, six, seven, eight—don't think about rent—nine, ten—
Outside, Seraph City rolled by in layers.
First the tired storefronts and peeling posters of the riverfront streets, then the older stone buildings with ivy clinging stubbornly to their sides, and finally the gleaming glass towers of the financial center, cutting into the sky like knives. Devereux Holdings towered over them all, its mirrored surface reflecting the clouds back at themselves.
From this distance, the logo at the top—those sharp, intersecting wings—looked almost like a pair of horns.
"You're glaring at the skyline again," someone said beside her.
Selena blinked and turned.
Laura Michelle hovered in the aisle, hair in a messy bun held together by a pen, satchel bag wedged against her knees. She wore the university hoodie Selena could never justify buying and a grin that made the overcrowded bus feel almost tolerable.
"I'm not glaring," Selena said. "I'm… observing."
"Yeah?" Laura leaned closer to the window. "And what do you observe, Detective Beer?"
"Devereux's building looks smug."
Laura laughed. "You say that like skyscrapers can have a personality."
"They can," Selena said. "That one definitely charges interest."
Laura's smile faded a notch as her eyes followed Selena's line of sight. "They announced another acquisition this morning," she said quietly. "Some family-owned hospital on the east side. News feeds are all calling it a rescue."
"Of course they are." Selena's throat tightened. Her mother's hospital wasn't owned by Devereux—yet—but the rumors had started already. "In Seraph City, nothing bleeds for free."
Laura studied her face. "You okay?"
Selena rearranged her expression into something resembling okay. "Totally. I just have a quiz, two shifts, and a landlord who may or may not attempt murder if I don't pay him by tonight. Perfectly average Monday."
Laura winced. "I can lend you—"
"No." The word came out quicker and sharper than she intended. Guilt pricked, but she did not take it back. "You're already splitting rent with your cousin. I'm not adding to that."
"Sel," Laura said, brows pulling together. "That's what friends are for."
"Friends are for sending memes," Selena said. "Not covering each other's financial crimes."
Laura opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Fine," she sighed. "At least let me buy you coffee."
The bus shuddered to a halt outside campus.
The university spilled out around them in a blur of concrete, glass, and half-dead trees pretending to be landscaping. Students moved in clumps, backpacks sagging, headphones firmly in place, eyes already glossing over from too many screens and not enough sleep.
Selena stepped off the bus and inhaled the familiar air: a blend of burnt espresso, overheated electronics, and academic panic.
Laura fell into step beside her. "Seriously," she said. "Coffee. The journalism club got a discount deal with that new kiosk near the law building. Industrial-strength caffeine for the price of a kidney."
"Tempting," Selena admitted. "But I have exactly enough coins for lunch from the vending machine and maybe a bus ride home if the universe is kind."
Laura gave her a long, searching look. "Since when do you trust the universe?"
"Since never," Selena said. "Which is why I am not gambling my last coins on coffee."
The campus café was already crowded. Selena waved off Laura's pout and headed toward the law building, hugging her notes to her chest. Her first lecture of the day—Criminal Psychology—was in a tiered hall that smelled faintly of chalk dust and ambition.
She slid into a seat near the back, letting the low buzz of student chatter wash over her. The professor, a tired man with kind eyes and a caffeine dependency, shuffled his papers at the front.
"Today," he began, "we're talking about masks. Not the literal kind. The social ones. The faces people wear to survive in a city like ours."
Selena's hand tightened around her pen.
"People think dangerous individuals are easy to spot," he continued. "That they twitch, or scowl, or announce themselves. That's comforting. It's also wrong. The most effective predators are often charming, polite, and very good with paperwork."
A ripple of laughter moved through the room. Selena did not join it.
Her mind flicked, uninvited, to polished shoes on wet pavement. To a red tie like a slit of color through the rain. To a voice saying, The devil is out tonight, as if that were a simple weather report.
"The mask," the professor said, tapping the board, "isn't always a lie. Sometimes it is one part of them, magnified. Their kindness, their competence, their generosity. That's what makes it work."
Selena stared down at her notebook and realized she had written the same word three times: DEVIL.
She scratched it out, heart drumming too fast in her ears.
After class, Laura caught up with her on the steps. "You looked like you were having an internal monologue death match," she said. "Everything good?"
"Yeah." Selena forced a shrug. "Just thinking about the assignment."
"The 'profile a local urban legend' thing?" Laura's eyes lit up. "You have to do the Devil in a Suit, right? It's basically free marks."
Selena stopped. "The what?"
Laura blinked. "You live in this city and you don't know? Wow. And here I thought you were Seraph-born and rumor-fed." She shifted her bag on her shoulder. "Okay, so. The legend goes: every Sunday night, a devil in a perfectly tailored suit walks downtown. He finds people in trouble—financial, legal, whatever—and offers them a way out. Contract, handshake, poof. Problem solved. Until the payment comes due."
"That's just… Devereux Holdings," Selena said.
"Exactly." Laura grinned, sharp and amused. "Some say the legend started about him. Some say it's older, and he just makes good PR for it. Either way, people swear they've seen him."
A memory flashed: his hand sliding into her pocket like a magician's trick, the card appearing where her money vanished.
"Do they describe him?" she asked, keeping her tone casual.
"Depends on who you ask." Laura counted off on her fingers. "Gorgeous, terrifying, completely normal, tall, average height, dark hair, light hair, foreign, local. You know how eyewitnesses are. The only consistent detail is the suit and this line." She cleared her throat and dropped her voice into something mock-dramatic. "'The devil is out tonight.'"
Selena's skin crawled.
"It's probably just something bored bankers made up to feel interesting," Laura added lightly. "But it makes a good story. Hey, maybe I'll do a piece on it for the journalism club. 'Urban Myths and Who Profits from Them.'"
"You should," Selena said, because it was easier than talking.
They split at the courtyard—Laura toward the humanities building, Selena toward the small library annex where she worked part-time. The sky had brightened to a low, hazy gray, the kind that made everything look like a photocopy.
Inside the library, the air was cool and dry, smelling of paper and old hopes.
Selena checked in at the front desk, clipped on her STAFF badge, and spent the next three hours shelving returns, answering questions about citation formats, and politely redirecting people who thought "quiet floor" was a suggestion. The rhythm soothed her: cart, stack, shelf, repeat.
But every time she passed a window, her eyes snagged on the distant silver tower on the horizon.
At lunch, she took her coins to the vending machine, punched in the number for the cheapest sandwich that didn't look like a hate crime, and leaned against the wall while it clunked into the tray.
Her phone buzzed. A message from her landlord.
WHERE IS MY MONEY?
No greeting. No punctuation. Just raw demand.
Her stomach clenched. She typed, Fingers trembling:
I'll get it to you by tonight. Please give me a few more hours.
The typing dots did not appear. The answer came as fast as a reflex.
YOU PAY BY 8 OR YOU'RE OUT.
The sandwich suddenly tasted like cardboard.
She could call her mother and hear the soft worry in her voice. She could swallow her pride and let Laura cover part of the damage. She could beg the university office for some emergency fund she already knew she did not qualify for.
Or—
Her fingers slipped into her pocket, closing around smooth, cold edges.
Lucian Devereux, Executive Director.
Selena stared at the name until it blurred. The man had robbed her and given her a solution in the same breath. A clean crime. A closed loop. A lesson: in Seraph City, every favor carried its own leash.
Her phone buzzed again. This time, it was her mother.
How is my detective today? ʕ- ᴥ- ʔ
A stupid little bear face.
Selena's throat went hot.
She typed back: Alive. Heading to work. Don't worry.
Tell that to your eye bags, her mother replied. Send me a picture later. And eat.
Selena shoved the sandwich into her mouth, more out of obedience than hunger.
The rest of the day blurred—another shift at the café off-campus, the hiss of the espresso machine, the ache in her wrists, the constant jangle of the tip jar mocking her with coins that weren't hers. She checked the clock every ten minutes. Time kept moving. Her bank balance did not.
By the time her shift ended, the sky outside had darkened to purple. The city lights blinked awake one by one. Sunday night, the professor had said, was about masks. Monday night, Selena decided, was about consequences.
She clocked out, grabbed her bag, and stepped into the cool air.
Her phone read 7:14 p.m.
The landlord's deadline: 8.
It was a twenty-minute ride back to her place if the bus behaved. Longer if it didn't. Shorter if she didn't go home at all.
Her hand drifted back to the card.
There it was again: the name that sat on the skyline, the number printed beneath it like a dare.
You're not seriously considering this, she told herself.
Another part of her—tired, cornered, pragmatic—answered anyway.
If you don't, you lose the apartment. If you lose the apartment, you lose the stable address. If you lose the address, the scholarship committee notices. If they notice, you lose the scholarship. If you lose the scholarship, your mother's bills become a fantasy.
Seraph City had rules. None of them were kind.
Selena pulled the card out.
It looked wrong in her hand, framed by chipped black nail polish and calluses from too many double shifts. She thumbed the embossed wings, then turned it over, half expecting the handwritten line from last night.
The back was blank.
For some reason, that made her more nervous.
She dialed the number before she could talk herself out of it.
The call barely rang once.
"Selena Beer," a familiar voice said, smooth and amused in her ear. "I was starting to think you believed in miracles."
She stopped walking. The street noise blurred around her—engines, distant music, footsteps, a dog barking somewhere behind a fence.
"Lucian Devereux," she said, because pretending otherwise would be pathetic. "You stole my rent."
"Incorrect," he replied easily. "I relocated it. Unsecured assets are an invitation, Miss Beer. You of all people should know how that ends."
"I work at a library and a café," she said. "Not the stock market."
"In this city, it's the same game." A pause, light as a shrug. "Regardless, you called. Which means you need something."
She swallowed. Pride tasted like rust.
"I need my money back," she said. "Tonight."
"Mm." He sounded thoughtful, like she'd just made an interesting move in a game he'd been playing alone. "That specific pile of paper has already been repurposed. But what you require is not the notes themselves, is it? What you require is the amount."
Selena's grip tightened on the phone. "You're unbelievable."
"On the contrary, I am painfully real. Tell me the number."
Her heart sank toward her shoes. "Why?"
"So I can decide," he said, as if it were obvious, "whether you're worth the investment."
Heat flared in her chest—anger, humiliation, a sharp crack of something almost like fear. "I'm not a stock."
"No," Lucian agreed. "You're collateral. There's a difference."
She considered hanging up.
She considered throwing the phone into the nearest storm drain, walking home, and accepting that she would spend the night packing her life into two suitcases.
Instead, she heard herself say the amount.
Silence stretched on the line, thin and exacting.
Finally, Lucian let out a soft breath. "Modest," he said. "Relatively speaking. I expected you to be more expensive."
"I'm sorry to disappoint," she snapped.
"Oh, you don't," he murmured, and something in his tone made goosebumps rise along her arms. "Come to Devereux Tower. Reception will send you up."
Selena almost laughed. "You think I'm just going to walk into your building and—"
"You have forty minutes before your landlord's deadline," he said, voice gentle in a way that made it worse. "Even if you chose to grovel to friends and strangers, you would not make it in time. I, however, can have the exact amount deposited into his account before you reach your street."
Her mouth went dry. "You know where I live."
"Seraph City is very small," he said again. "When you stand high enough."
The neon sign of the bus stop flickered above her. A tram rattled by, carrying people whose lives were not currently dangling between a stranger's amusement and a landlord's temper.
"What do you want in return?" she asked.
"Ah." He sounded pleased. "Now we're speaking the same language."
The pause this time felt deliberate, a small lesson in patience.
"Three months," Lucian said at last. "You work as my assistant. I pay your rent in full, clear your immediate debts, and cover your mother's next hospital bill. At the end of three months, we renegotiate. Or you walk away. With your life intact and your conscience… adjusted."
Her heart stuttered. "You think my conscience is for sale?"
"No," he said. "I think it's… flexible. Or it will be."
Selena glanced at the tower in the distance. It loomed over the city, a vertical threat wrapped in reflective glass. Somewhere near the top, in an office she could not see, a man in a charcoal suit waited for her answer.
"And if I say no?" she asked.
"Then you're evicted tonight," he replied, almost kindly. "Your scholarship wobbles. Your mother's treatment becomes… complicated. The city will not hear your story. I will forget your name."
He let that sit for a heartbeat.
"But if you say yes, Selena Beer," he added softly, "you step into a world where devils use contracts instead of claws. And you, of all people, will get to see which monsters wear the better masks."
Her fingers trembled around the phone.
Somewhere beneath the fear and anger, something else stirred—curiosity, stubbornness, the same reckless spark that had pushed her into criminology in the first place. The urge to look at the monster up close and see what he was really made of.
"Three months," she repeated. "No hidden fine print."
"Oh, there will be plenty of fine print," Lucian said, amused. "But I prefer my traps honest. You'll read every line."
She closed her eyes. Saw her mother's tired smile. Her landlord's messages. The empty envelope.
When she spoke, her voice surprised her with how steady it sounded.
"Fine," Selena said. "I'll come."
"Good girl," he murmured.
The words made something bristle inside her. "Don't call me that."
Lucian chuckled, low and pleased. "Very well. Hurry, Miss Beer. The devil is on a tight schedule."
The call ended.
Selena lowered the phone, pulse pounding in her ears.
Above the city, Devereux Tower cut a clean line into the darkening sky, lights flickering on one by one like eyes.
She shoved the card back into her pocket and started walking.