If Center City was the American Dream, North Philly was the part of the dream where you realize you're naked in front of your entire school and your teeth are falling out.
Jax stepped off the bus at Allegheny and started walking. The sun was starting to dip, throwing long shadows across streets that hadn't seen a city cleaning crew since the Reagan administration. Trash pressed against chain-link fences in drifts; plastic bags, fast food wrappers, broken glass, and the ever-present e-waste that seemed to multiply overnight. A busted monitor here. A gutted printer there. Keyboards with the keys picked off like bones stripped by scavengers.
Some of it had been there so long that weeds were growing through it, nature reclaiming the garbage that humans couldn't be bothered to move.
A group of kids kicked a soccer ball down the middle of the street, dodging a car that probably hadn't passed inspection since '94. Someone was grilling on their front steps, the smell of cheap hot dogs cutting through the general stench of the neighborhood. An old man sat on a milk crate outside a corner store, watching Jax walk past with the kind of look that said I've seen everything and none of it impressed me.
Home.
Jax's building was a narrow rowhouse on a block where half the units were boarded up and the other half probably should've been. The brick was black with decades of exhaust and neglect. The front steps were cracked. Someone had spray-painted a phone number on the door at some point—"CALL FOR GOOD TIME"—and nobody had bothered to clean it off, probably because the door itself was barely holding together anyway.
He climbed the steps, unlocked the three separate locks that were the only thing standing between him and anyone who wanted his stuff (not that there was anything worth taking), and pushed inside.
The smell hit him first. Mildew, old food, and something that might have been a dead mouse in the walls. He'd stopped noticing it months ago, but after a few hours breathing the comparatively fresh air of West Philly, it came back with a vengeance.
The apartment was exactly how he'd left it, which meant it looked like a bomb had gone off in a Goodwill. Clothes piled on the floor, dirty and clean mixed together, because what was the point of separating them when he didn't have quarters for the laundromat anyway. Empty takeout containers stacked on the counter. A mattress on the floor in the corner, sheets gray with age and use. The ceiling had a water stain shaped like Florida, and the window had a crack running through it that he'd taped over with duct tape back in November.
Jax dropped onto the mattress and pulled the crumpled bills from his pocket.
Sixty-two dollars. Minus three for the bus to West Philly. Minus one-fifty for the bus home.
Fifty-seven dollars and fifty cents.
He stared at the bills like they'd personally wronged him.
Twelve dollars. Twelve dollars plus tip, that's what the Patterson job was supposed to be. If that thing hadn't gotten to them first, he'd be sitting on seventy bucks right now. Maybe seventy-five if the lady had been generous. Enough to buy groceries. Enough to eat something that wasn't—
His stomach growled.
Jax looked at the mini-fridge in the corner. It was older than he was, humming with the strained effort of a machine that wanted desperately to die. He already knew what was in it. He'd known for two weeks.
He got up anyway, crossed the room, and opened it.
The pizza box sat on the middle shelf like a sad monument to better times. Two slices left. He'd ordered it fourteen days ago after a good run; three demons in one night, forty-two bucks total, and had been rationing it ever since. The cheese had gone from yellow to orange to a color that didn't have a name. The crust had the texture of cardboard. The pepperoni had developed a slight sheen that probably meant something bad.
Jax grabbed a slice, sniffed it, shrugged, and took a bite.
It tasted like regret and preservatives. He ate it anyway.
"Twelve dollars," he muttered around a mouthful of questionable cheese. "Twelve goddamn dollars."
He thought about Mrs. Patterson. About her kid. About the way the hallway had looked, all that red against the beige wallpaper.
Then he thought about the twelve dollars again, and that's the thought that stuck.
It wasn't that he didn't care. It was that caring didn't pay rent. Caring didn't put food in his fridge. Caring didn't do a goddamn thing except make you slow and sad, and slow and sad got you killed in this line of work. He'd learned that early. You see a body, you move on. You do the job, you get paid, you go home. Anything else was a luxury he couldn't afford.
The pizza was gone. One slice left in the box now. He'd save it for tomorrow. Maybe the day after, if he could stand it.
Jax wiped his hands on his jeans and walked over to the TV.
The TV was a 19-inch Magnavox that he'd pulled out of someone's trash three years ago. It had a crack across the bottom of the screen and only picked up four channels, but it worked. Mostly. When it felt like it.
He kicked the power button. The screen flickered, buzzed, and died.
"Come on."
He kicked it again. Harder this time.
The screen exploded into static, then resolved into a picture. A news anchor in a red blazer, teeth too white, hair too perfect, sitting behind a desk with the Channel 6 logo spinning in the corner.
"—approved the construction of a new electronics recycling facility in the North Philadelphia area. The plant, which will be operated by Keystone Waste Solutions, is expected to bring dozens of jobs to the neighborhood and help address the city's growing e-waste problem."
The image cut to Mayor McFadden standing at a podium, surrounded by men in suits who all had the same haircut.
"This is a win-win for Philadelphia," the mayor said. "We're creating jobs, we're cleaning up our environment, and we're showing the rest of the country that our city is ready to lead on the issues that matter."
It cut to a reporter on the street in Center City, microphone out, stopping pedestrians.
"I think it's great," said a woman in a peacoat. "Those neighborhoods need the investment. And honestly, if it keeps the e-waste out of our area, I'm all for it."
"Long overdue," said a man with a briefcase. "Centralize the problem, contain the problem. It just makes sense."
"I heard property values in North Philly are actually going up because of all the redevelopment," said a third person, a younger guy in a university hoodie. "So really, this is good for everyone."
Jax stared at the screen.
Another recycling plant. Another few hundred tons of old computers and dead servers and toxic bullshit, trucked into his neighborhood and dumped in a big concrete building where it would sit and rot and eventually, inevitably, spawn more demons for people like him to clean up for ten bucks a pop.
Good for everyone. Sure.
"I heard property values in North Philly are actually going up," he repeated in a mocking falsetto. "Suck my—"
A knock at the door.
Jax froze.
He knew that knock. Three sharp raps, a pause, then two more. It was the knock of someone who'd been knocking on doors for decades and had long since lost patience for anyone who pretended not to be home.
Mrs. Reyes.
Jax looked at the fifty-seven dollars on his mattress. Looked at the door. Looked back at the money.
"Jax." Her voice came through the wood, tired and flat. "I know you're in there. I saw you come up the street."
He briefly considered climbing out the window. The fire escape was rusted but probably still functional. He could shimmy down, hit the alley, disappear for a few hours until she gave up.
"And don't think about the fire escape. I had Mr. Gutierrez put a padlock on it last week."
Shit.
Jax took a breath, arranged his face into something he hoped looked friendly and trustworthy, and opened the door.
"Mrs. Reyes! Hey! I was just thinking about you!"
The woman in the hallway was maybe sixty-five, maybe seventy; it was hard to tell with people who'd spent their whole lives working. She was short, barely five feet, with gray hair pulled back in a tight bun and glasses that made her eyes look enormous. She wore a floral housecoat and slippers, and she was holding a small notebook that Jax knew contained the names and balances of every tenant in the building.
She did not look impressed by his enthusiasm.
"You were thinking about me," she repeated.
"Yeah! Absolutely! I was gonna come find you later, actually, because I've got some really exciting news about my financial situation—"
"Cállate."
Jax shut up.
Mrs. Reyes flipped open her notebook, licked her thumb, and found his page. Her eyes scanned the numbers. Her expression did not change, which was somehow worse than if she'd started yelling.
"Four months," she said. "Fourteen hundred dollars."
"See, about that—"
"You said last month you would have it."
"I know, but—"
"You said the month before that you would have it."
"Right, and I appreciate your patience—"
"You said in September—" She looked up from the notebook, and her eyes were hard. "—that you had a 'big job' coming. That everything would be fine. That I should trust you."
Jax winced. He remembered saying that. He'd believed it at the time; some guy in Fairmount had posted a Class C listing, two hundred dollars, enough to cover two months of rent in one shot. By the time he'd gotten there, the DCB had already shown up and taken the job. Didn't matter that he'd called first. Didn't matter that he'd been on the bus for an hour. The Bureau swooped in, flashed their badges, and that was that.
Story of his life.
"Look," he said. "I had a rough day. A job fell through. But I've got—" He did the math in his head. "—fifty-seven fifty. I can give you that right now, and then next week—"
"Fifty-seven dollars." Mrs. Reyes closed the notebook. "And fifty cents."
"It's a start."
"Mijo." The word came out tired, not affectionate. "I understand things are hard. I do. You think I don't know hard? I raised four kids in this neighborhood. I buried a husband. I've been robbed three times." She shook her head. "But demon hunting? Really? This is what you choose?"
"It's not exactly a choice—"
"There are jobs. Real jobs. Mr. Fernandez at the bodega, he's always looking for help. The warehouse on Lehigh, they hire anyone who shows up on time." She jabbed a finger at him. "But no. You want to run around with a knife, chasing monsters, getting yourself killed for pocket change."
"It pays better than the bodega."
"Does it?" She gestured at his apartment; the trash, the mattress on the floor, the crack in the window. "Does it really?"
Jax didn't have an answer for that.
Mrs. Reyes sighed. For a moment, she looked every one of her years, tired in a way that went deeper than sleep could fix.
"You know how people feel about that stuff," she said, quieter now. "The demons, the DCB, all of it. My neighbors, they see you come home with blood on your clothes, they talk. They say I'm renting to trouble. They say the Bureau is going to come knocking one day, and then what? They shut down my building? They put us all on some list?"
"The DCB doesn't care about unlicensed contractors. They've got bigger problems."
"And the taxpayers? You know what they say about the Bureau? Government money, going to fight demons that shouldn't exist in the first place." She shook her head. "My sister, she says the whole thing is a scam. Create the problem, fund the solution, keep the money flowing. You want to be part of that?"
"I want to pay my rent," Jax said. "That's all I want."
They stood there for a moment, the two of them, in the dim hallway with its peeling wallpaper and flickering light. Somewhere in the building, someone was playing music; salsa, turned up loud enough to vibrate through the walls.
Finally, Mrs. Reyes tucked the notebook under her arm.
"One more week," she said. "You bring me something real. Not fifty dollars, not a hundred dollars. Something that shows me you're serious. Or I find someone else for this apartment." She turned to go, then paused. "And take a shower. You smell like death."
She walked down the hall, slippers scuffing against the worn carpet. Jax heard her muttering as she went; Spanish, too fast for him to catch most of it, but he picked out a few words. Estúpido. Demonio. Madre de Dios.
He closed the door and leaned against it.
One week. Something real.
He looked at the TV, still droning about the new recycling plant. At the pizza box with its single remaining slice. At the fifty-seven dollars and fifty cents sitting on his mattress like a joke.
Something real.
"Yeah," he said to the empty room. "I'll get right on that."