Page 164 of Devils' Day Party
“I love you, too, Karma,” Katie replies, and when I pull back from her, I see that her eyes are the same as mine, just a little fearful, but also depthless, hope burning deep within. She and I are more alike than I ever realized. Tucking some dark hair behind her ear, I swallow back the tears. Tonight is not a night for tears.
I don’t have the time or luxury to indulge them.
“And me?” Emma asks, bouncing off the bed to rush over to me. She throws her arms around my waist and squeezes me as hard as she can, knocking the breath from my lungs. I laugh, reaching down to run my fingers through her silky hair. “I love you; do you love me?”
“I love you more than the moon and the stars,” I tell her, and she grins, looking up at me from blue-gray eyes. “And thank you for letting me help you with the mural today.”
“No, thank you,” she says, giving me another squeeze. “You painted better than me or Katie anyway.” Emma releases me and then grabs a lollipop off my nightstand, one I don’t remember putting there before. In fact … it looks almost like the one Barron gave her on the day the boys and I had tea together.
I exhale sharply as she unwraps the candy and turns to look at me.
“Are you okay?” she asks, blinking long lashes at me. “You look like you might cry.”
“I’m fine, I promise,” I tell her, giving her a kiss on the top of the head.
“Karma, your friends are here!” Jane calls out, and I sigh, glancing at myself one, last time in the mirror before I slip my glittering black mask over my face, the antlers tall and curved above my loose, purple hair.
I head down the hall and find all three boys waiting, dressed in their Devils’ Day finest.
“You actually came,” I say, when I get close enough that they can hear me, but my mothers can’t. “I’ll admit: I wasn’t sure that you would.”
“It’s Devils’ Day,” Barron tells me, reaching out to cup the side of my face, his eyes dancing with a dozen shared memories I’m not sure he’s even aware of. “It’s a night for the wicked. We three are wicked, and we’ve come to take you away.”
Raz snorts and shakes his head, offering up a single rose.
“I don’t know what you’re up to today,” he tells me, grabbing my hand and pulling me close. He stops just short of kissing me when he notices my moms hovering nearby. “But either way,” Raz leans down to put his lips near my ear, “I like it.” He presses a quick kiss against the side of my face before pulling back.
I clutch the rose against my chest as Calix and I lock gazes.
“I talked to Erina,” he tells me as I stand there, waiting, my heart racing like crazy as I study his dark eyes beneath the black leather of his mask. “She isn’t going to do anything with …” He pauses and looks over at the moms again.
“Oh, come on, Jane,” Cathy murmurs, dragging my mother down the hall so we can have some privacy. “We can do the spell another time.”
But, of course, we can’t.
She just doesn’t know that yet.
And no fucking way am I going to tell her.
I turn back to Calix and see that his lips are turned up in a slight smile. A real one, this time.
“She isn’t going to post the video … at least not tonight. I don’t know how you knew about it, but I’m glad.” Calix pauses and exhales sharply, like this is a hard thing for him to talk about. “Apparently, her mother is sick, and she’s going through a lot. I’m not sure that she even really wanted to post it. I think she just wanted someone to pay attention to her or talk to her. Considering she followed me to Crescent Prep in some fucked-up attempt at making us the perfect couple, I guess it was only fair that that person should be me.”
“Well then,” I say, holding out my arm and letting him take it. “I’m glad you did.”
“Are you sure you’re not pulling a Devils’ Day prank on us?” Raz asks as the four of us head outside and down the ramp toward the Aston Martin. “Because there’s just something all of this that feels … different.”
“You’re not wrong about that,” I tell him as I move around the front of the car and Barron steps up to open the door for me. “Because everything will be different after today.” I smile just before I climb in the car, pausing to look up at the crescent moon and the splatter of beautiful cosmos across the night sky. “Everything.”Once we hand over our phones to the gatekeeper, Calix heads up the winding road to the parking lot, taking up the frontmost space that’s been left open specifically for him and the other high-ranking members of the Knight Crew.
