As we head for the door underneath the EXIT sign, the bright light of the room dims considerably, exposing stone walls and floors that were there all along.I look back just to confirm and see an empty room, the floor the same color as the creche where Pox had been sleeping.No sign of the other apocalypses my parents stole are here and must be stored somewhere else within the manor.

  I’m sure I can wrap that up some other time. It definitely won’t come back to bite me in the Morecroft.

  Through the door we end up in a more normal basement room with not one door, but three of them. A staircase heading up, with a door at the top. A door across the room on the far wall. And a staircase heading down to another floor.

  Each of the doorways is a different aesthetic. The door heading up looks like an ordinary basement door. The other two are…less so. The door across the hall is made of a blue-green material and ends in a pointed arch at the top. The walls around are noticeably a dusty gold color, though it’s hard to see where the white-gray of the walls near us change, it’s so gradual. The stairway down disappears into a creeping blackness.The shadows seem like they have tails.I’ll avoid it for now.

  Nico studies the mundanity of the room. “Huh.” After the ash fall nursery, it’s a bit of a letdown.

  “Hmm. I feel like I’ve been here before.” It feels more like a dream, though, a faint impression of familiarity.

  “You have?”

  I nod. “I think one of these leads to the vault,” I say, gesturing towards the dusty gold path.

  “The vault?” Nico suddenly seems to be paying attention.

  I make a noncommittal gesture. “That’s what Wrath always called it. I don’t know what’s in there. Maybe more cosmic nightmares like Pox, I don’t know.”

  The Order collected apocalypses, Wrath said, but he’s never said if that was all they’d collected. They were a cult, so it could have only been the insidious cherry on their creepy ice cream sundaes. From what little I knew about cults, or anyone who dug too deep into the occult, they rarely specialized in just one thing. They liked to dabble. To get their hands dirty. I don’t even know if the vault predates my parents. Did the Morecrofts have a vault? As dark as they were, what kinds of things would they collect and hide away?

  “That’s the one back to the house,” I say, gesturing to the stairs leading up.

  It’s anticlimactic the way we take the stairs, open the door, and emerge back into the kitchen like nothing’s happened. My hands are still full with Pox, keeping him carefully against my chest as we ascend, but there’s nowhere to set him down at, so I just keep holding him.Being out of the basement, though, I immediately take a deep breath. It’s over.

  “The windows aren’t blocked anymore,” Nico points out. I take a moment to look around.The kitchen is the way that we left it, but the windows are open and streaming afternoon light into the house.The only thing that remains from our earlier apocalypse is the coffee machine, still a blackened blur on the counter.

  Nico was standing to my left while I surveyed the room, but when I turn back he’s already gone back towards the front of the house.I follow behind to find him in the foyer near the front door, which he opens easily.

  “Okay, good,” he says, letting out a long breath. A tension that’s been with him the entire afternoon is suddenly gone, and he seems taller than he was even a few moments ago. He checks his pockets, as though making sure he didn’t forget anything, and takes a step towards the open doorway.

  “You’re leaving?” I ask immediately, and Pox stirs at the loudness of my tone.

  Nico turns. He looks relieved in a way that really should be familiar to me by now. Everyone who escapes Morecroft Manor gives me a version of that look. “I… I mean, yeah?”

  “No, that’s fine,” I respond quickly. “I just didn’t realize you were going to run out of here so fast.” I shouldn’t be surprised. My heart sinks, and this time when I pull Pox closer, it’s more for my own comfort than for his.

  “Listen, this was…” he trails off, and I think that he doesn’t want to lie to me, which is both nice and sad at the same time. “I’ll see you around.”

  I watch him jog down the front steps and down the walk. When he opens the front gate the metal groans out a protest, but lets him pass. He doesn’t look back.

  “It was always going to end like this,” I say to Pox, carrying him into the kitchen. The Doom Clock sleepily rumbles an orchestral soundtrack of the end of the world. “Me too, buddy.Me too.”

  When I walk back into the kitchen, Wrath is seated at the kitchen table like nothing’s happened. He’s hunched over a glass of water, wearing a pair of wire-frame glasses, and reading the copy of I Touched Ghost Boob from the library.

  “Took you long enough,” he grumbles.

  “I missed you, too.” I don’t let his nonchalance get to me.Better that he doesn’t know I was freaking out without him. He already does too much for me.“Let me guess.You’ve just been hanging around all afternoon with nothing to do?Maybe a quick trip to Build-a-Banshee to pick up something new to cuddle with?”

  Wrath turns, his eyes narrowing at Pox in my arms. “What… is that?” he asks in deadly quiet.

  “The Doom Clock,” I say, making sure to keep my tone casual.Wrath dug up the box that the coffee maker came in, presumably to get it replaced or repaired, and left it on the table. I decide to make better use of it.

  There’s a pair of tablecloths, so I bunch one up into a makeshift pillow, and gently lift Pox from my shirt and lay him down on it inside the box. It’s made more difficult by the fact that he’s got his cloth hands bunched up in the fabric of my shirt, but eventually I manage to pry him free. Then I take the other cloth and lay it over him like a blanket. The box is big enough that he shouldn’t be able to jump out of it and sturdy enough that he won’t knock it off the table.

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

  “I can see what it is.” Wrath pushes his chair back and stands. “Why did you bring it up here?”

  “He’s cute!”

  “Oh that’s exactly what you said when you were five,” Wrath retorts with disgust. “Of course you think it’s cute.”

  “Keep your voice down. I don’t want Pox hearing you.”

  “And you named it?” Wrath throws his claws in the air. “I can’t believe this. Betrayed, by my best friend. My mom always told me never to trust humans, but no, I didn’t listen.”

  “I didn’t think you had a mother.”

  “Of course I don’t have a mother. Now you don’t even understand sarcasm. That thing has ruined all the hard work I put into you!”

  “I still understand sarcasm. Stop being so dramatic.”

  “I am not being dramatic,” he says huffily, before he throws an invisible scarf around him and begins to stalk out of the room. He leaves, and then a moment later adds in an annoyed shout, “Follow me!”

  It’s less a command and more a needy plea for more attention, but I follow him quietly and turn the lights out before I go.

  “If I knew you were just going to invite it into our home, I would have kicked it out the last time it threw it tantrum,” Wrath calls behind him before going into the drawing room and pulling the pocket doors closed behind him. By the time I cross the room and open the doors, he’s seated himself in one of the arm chairs, and managed to find a pair of glasses that he’s put on to look down at me through.

  “Okay, stop talking about him like that,” I say, taking the seat in the armchair across from him. The drawing room was designed by one of the more gothy and dramatic Morecrofts, with nightshade velvet wallpaper and purple accents everywhere. And for some reason, a theme of peacocks everywhere. There’s a stuffed peacock on the floor, peacock feathers above the fireplace mantle, and a peacock eye design along the ceiling.

  “I will not!” Wrath glares down at me. “Did you even miss me when I was gone? Don’t you realize it did that on purpose? It wants to separate us.”

  “It’s a baby.”

  “It’s an evil baby. Which is an oxymoron, I know. Everyone knows babies are born evil.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I’m the only one being…” he flounders for a moment, “Whatever the opposite of ridiculous is.”

  I stare at him in confusion for a moment. “Are you… jealous?”

  Wrath crosses his arms and frowns. “I’m not some insecure human,” he sneers.“I’m disgusted. Annoyed. Something shows up on your doorstep like a cute and helpless puppy and you invite it in and want to feed it snacks. When it kills you and eats your face, I hope you can look yourself in the mirror.”

  “That…doesn’t make any sense.”

  He growls. “You don’t make any sense.”

  An immediate silence wells up between the two of us.It’s not the harshest insult, but it’s more aggressive than Wrath usually is, and it hangs in the air. Lingers there. Festers. The awkwardness in the room grows until it’s a physical presence, and I can feel Wrath vibrating in his chair even without seeing him. I second guess our friendship again, wondering if what I’d seen means that Wrath was never really my friend in the first place.If he’s only here because my parents trapped him here.If I’m the consolation prize.

  The image of Wrath as the stuffed animal, tortured and in pain, flashes through my head.That was the form he took when he was in public, but that wasn’t really him.Right?

  “Reasonable,” he mutters under his breath. “Reasonable is the opposite of ridiculous.”

  Just then the air conditioning kicks on, enough to stir up a small breeze in the drawing room. I grab the edges of the armchair, waiting to see if this is another overreaction from the furnace, but the room stays a pleasant, cool temperature. Perfect for bedtime, as though the house is trying to make amends for panicking earlier.

  I’m quiet for a long moment.“Do you think he’ll ever come back?”

  “Of course he will,” he says, the answer immediate.

  “You have to say that. You’re my best friend.”

  He sniffs. “I’m a demon. I don’t have to do anything.” He stands. “Let’s go make some cocoa.”

  I follow him into the kitchen, but even the offer of a chocolatey drink isn’t enough to wipe the rest of the day from my mind. “You don’t have to…”

  He shakes his head and points a claw at me. “Cocoa is necessary when you’ve had a rough day, and I think you’ve had a pretty bad one.” It’s things like this that keep me from spiraling more than I already do.Wrath looks out for me, and not because he has to.It seems like he wants to.At least that’s what I tell myself.

  I head over to the box on the table, and check in on Pox. He’s still soundly sleeping, and the corner of his arm cloth is pressed up against where his mouth would be, like he’s sucking his thumb. “Come on,” I say softly. “You have to admit he’s kind of cute.”

  Wrath looks down at the Doom Clock, his face expressionless. “Your parents stole it from The Order. It’s dangerous, Theo. You saw what it could do, and it’s just a baby now. What happens if you feed it, and care for it, and it consumes your soul. Like those magicians who kept tiger demons as pets, and then one of them wriggled free from its contract and ate him.” Deep chimes rumble quietly, vibrating along the floorboards as he squirms.

  “So you’re saying I’m like a Las Vegas magician?” I ask skeptically.

  Wrath makes a noise of disgust. “Magicians is such a boring word. Can’t you humans go back to calling them ‘diabolists’? That was so much more evocative. It just rolls off the tongue. Diabolist.”

  The only thing rolling is my eyes. My mood feels lighter, though, infinitely mores when Wrath sets the steaming mug of cocoa in front of me. I take a sip, and feel all the tension in my chest begin to ease.

  “Pox will be a good boy.” I peek over the top of the box just to make sure he’s still sleeping, which he is. “Besides it’s not like I could leave him down there by himself. He was scared.”

  “He was scared,” Wrath repeats mockingly. “He already knows how to play with your emotions.”

  “Stop being so grumpy.”

  Wrath takes a slow and deep breath. “Only if you tell me about the hot boy. You’re lucky the house got you a first date.Tell me the Doom Clock didn’t ruin it with its tantrum.”

  I stare at Wrath, and then gently correct. “His meltdown. Don’t be a jerk.”

  “Fine, whatever.”

  “Nico is… kind of a jerk. But also kind of nice?” I shake my head and sip at my cocoa. “I thought it was cool he didn’t run screaming from the house the minute things got weird, but he still left in a bit of a hurry. But he didn’t panic when everything went crazy.”

  “That’s kind of weird.”

  “It seemed like he knew what he was getting into.”

  Wrath taps a claw against his lips pensively. “He didn’t immediately shut you down, so that’s a good first step.”

  The last guy I’d been interested was Stephen my freshmen year. We’d gone out on a couple of dates, and they were okay, but it seemed like we never had things to talk about. Every time I brought up something I was interested in, he changed the subject. And then there was the awful birthday experience. And then he went radio silent.

  But with Nico, it wasn’t like that. He could actually have a conversation with me. Granted, we talked about Doom Clocks and the end of the world, but it hadn’t made me feel entirely out of place.

  “So you want to see him again?” Wrath presses.

  I shrug. “Maybe. Who knows what will happen next.”

  * * *

  Nico stops outside of his front door and takes a look around him. The lights at the front of Morecroft Manor are on, but the rooms inside are dim. He has to assume that Theo could still be watching him, so he waits, and instead of going inside, ducks into a corner of the porch that is swallowed up in evening shadows.

  Eventually the lights go off, and only the street lights leading into town offer any illumination at all. Only then does he pull the cell phone out of his pocket.

  He scrolls through his contacts, most of whom have ordinary names like Aunt Honey, Cousin Fritz, Eihort’s Pizza, and settles on the contact that has a symbol instead of a name. It looks partially like a shepherd’s crook or a reaper’s scythe, and behind it, an eye with a misshapen iris.

  He clicks the phone icon, and the device begins to ring. When it connects, there is silence on the other end, waiting for him to speak.

  “You got it wrong,” Nico says. “Someone’s living across the street.That’s why it wasn’t for sale.”

  The person on the other end of the phone ends the call a moment later without responding.

  Theo doesn’t know how much danger he is in.