My Demon Husband novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Red Notice

I read the notice twice through the glass.

Then I opened the door and read it a third time from the outside, where the print faced.

It had a city seal, a case number and a signature in black ink.

The signature belonged to a building inspector from the city building department.

Under it, a line said: INSPECTION CONDUCTED WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2:00 P.M.

Structural rot in load-bearing beams. Failed wiring. Imminent danger of collapse.

Behind me, the elevator opened.

Malphas stepped out, still in last night's shirt, with the scar on my thumb still warm from his mouth.

He read the notice over my head.

Every light in the lobby went out at once.

"Rot," he said.

"Mal."

"I set those beams with my own hands. There is no rot in my house."

He reached for the notice.

I caught his wrist.

"Don't. Tearing down a city notice is a crime. They'd love that."

He looked at my hand on his wrist.

Then he let me hold it, and the lights came back on.

By nine, the whole building knew.

By ten, the young couple with the baby were carrying boxes down the stairs.

"We can't wait thirty days," the young father said. "If they put us out with a baby, we've got nowhere."

The two old men stood in the door of 1A with a laundry basket of dishes between them.

They weren't arguing about baseball.

That scared me worse than the notice.

The night nurse from 3A came down in her scrubs with her phone at her ear.

She hung up the second she saw me.

"My sister's," she said. "I can stay at my sister's."

She wouldn't look at me. She went back upstairs fast.

The boy from 4D sat on the bottom step with his sign from the Tenant Desk in his lap.

"Are we moving?" he asked me.

"No."

"Mom's packing."

"Then I'm going to go talk to your mom."

Opal came out of 2B with her cardigan buttoned wrong.

She looked at the boxes, and the basket, and the baby.

"Fifty-five years," she said, very small. "I don't know how to pack fifty-five years."

That did it.

I climbed onto my own folding table, in my socks, right next to the brass mailboxes.

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