Page 166 of Devils' Day Party
“Oh, will you?” Sonja quips, flashing me a saucy smile from beneath her red leather mask. “That’s quite the challenge. How about I promise to leave you be if Raz promises to leave Luke alone?”
“I hear she paints tiny orc figures and stages mock bottles with them,” Raz says, squinting like he can’t quite remember when or how he heard that before. I smile, hoping that’s not the only memory of me from the time loop that he can recall when he thinks about my face or my art or our back and forth quips to one another. “So, that’ll be a hard promise to keep, but I’ll sure as fuck try.”
“You better try hard,” Sonja purrs as Barron and Calix step up to join our group.
“Shall we take this to the train car?” Calix suggests, wearing a crown made of purple flowers and thorny twigs. Today, he’s got on an emerald green velvet coat, black jeans, and white boots with bones hanging from the laces.
“Let’s,” I say, making a small sound of surprise as Raz scoops me up in his arms and carries me over there. I let my head fall back, opening my arms wide and laughing as the smell of bonfire smoke curls around me. Barely visible through the trees, Cami Alhambra and her friends chant around a spell book, several of them dancing in voluminous skirts and nothing else, their breasts bare under the moonlight.
I wish them the best of luck with their magic as Raz carries me up the steps of the train car and sets down, pulling me into his lap. Barron sits beside us, his sketchbook open to a page I well recognize: the one of me on the podium, his head buried between my thighs and beneath my skirts.
“That’s a pervy thing to draw,” Raz tells him as Calix takes a seat on his other side, and Sonja and Luke stretch out on the floor, cuddled up together with a bottle of whiskey.
“I could think of worse things,” Barron drawls, flipping to a drawing of us on the school bus, the four of us naked and connected in the most carnal of ways. Raz curses under his breath, but Calix … he actually laughs. And it doesn’t sound fake or forced. The sound of it makes my heart crack a little as he looks at me.
“Is this what you had in mind when you told us all you loved us this morning?” he asks, and a naughty grin takes over my lips.
“Maybe,” I tease, wondering how this is going to go, what their final, lasting memory of me will be like.
“If so,” Barron adds, pulling a red jewelry box out of his pocket and passing it over to me. “You may as well be wearing this when it happens.”
I open the lid to find the Diana fritillary necklace, speckled with his blood, trapped in resin but forever beautiful. I hope this is how he remembers me, as perfect and eternal as this butterfly. Taking it out of the box, I hand it to him and allow him to clasp it around my neck.
“Here.” Luke slips a black tourmaline bracelet from her pocket and passes it my way with a smile. She snaps the matching one on her wrist for emphasis. “We know each other too well, my friend. Oh, and also, April sent you a cupcake but then she got hungry and ate it. She says you can remind her that she owes you one.”
A laugh slips past my lips, verging on the edge of a sob. Calix glances sharply my way, like he notices, but then Raz carries the conversation on and the sound of my melancholy drifts away like a forgotten nightmare. Laughter replaces the sadness, and I encourage it. I’m not going out of this with a frown on my face. That’s not how I want to leave my friends, with memories of me sobbing and hurting and wanting.
For the next few hours, we stay together in the train car. People come and go, but it’s always the boys and me, Luke and Sonja. April is there for a while, dragging Pearl along with her. Even Erina stops by, but as much empathy as I feel for her, I will never forget what she did to April and Calix. Fortunately, she doesn’t stay long.
Eventually, the fire gets low and couples—or groups—secret themselves away in the shadows for a taste of the forbidden, kissing lips they never thought they’d kiss, fucking strangers or villains or true loves. When Luke and Sonja excuse themselves, leaving the boys and me alone in the train car, we weave lascivious spells with our bodies, a near perfect replica to our time on the school bus.
It’s just as dark, as sensual, as fervid and lush.
It’s also the perfect goodbye.
