Page 82 of Devils' Day Party
“My parents wanted me to chaperone tonight, so they got me a set of keys.” Barron looks back at me, his wicked mouth curving into a slight smile. “Let's draw something.” He heads up the aisle and takes a seat on the frontmost pew. After a moment of hesitation, I move up to sit beside him. “I like the new hair color,” he says casually, glancing my way and admiring the half-black, half-red locks cascading over my shoulders. “Very Devils' Day of you.”
We sit close, our thighs maybe six inches apart.
Barron flips his sketchbook to a fresh page and lifts his pencil, his already-stained hand smearing charcoal as he starts drawing the dais, and the giant ferns on either side. He sketches me as I am now, wearing the ballgown and gloves, sitting on top of the podium. After a moment, I decide to humor him, and take up the same position.
“How do you know about the butterflies?” he asks me, still sketching. “Did you follow me?”
“Don't rationalize or justify tonight,” I tell him, feeling my skin sparkle with moonlight and magic. “It's Devils' Day. Nothing makes sense.”
Barron's smile gets a little wider as he continues to draw, finishing the picture relatively quickly and then standing up to bring it over to me. I'm perched on the edge of the podium, my booted feet crossed, my skirts frothing in black tulle around me.
“What do you think?” he asks, handing me his sketchbook.
The rawness in his face as he passes it over, the look in his dual-colored eyes … I can tell that he knows the jig is up. You don't just draw someone you don't like over and over again, for years. And you most definitely don't draw them so passionately. All the coldness and impersonal feeling I've seen in Barron's other art … that’s missing here. What’s in this sketchbook brims with possibilities, with passion. There’s an organic fluidity to it that speaks of understanding, of both his subject and how he sees her.
How he sees me.
Barron moves around behind me, so we can look at the drawings together.
“It's beautiful,” I whisper as he presses a kiss to the side of my neck, and I exhale in a wild rush. Sensation shivers across my skin as Barron reaches around me and hands over the necklace. “A male Diana fritillary, in orange and black, encased in resin and spattered with blood.” I open the box as Barron curses under his breath behind me. “Thank you, Barron.”
“I still don't understand how you know all these things,” he says, but there's a dark wonder in his voice that says he's willing to leave it to the devilish spirits that are supposedly roaming the earth tonight.
Barron takes the necklace and hooks it around my neck, my eyes closing in pleasure as his fingers tease over my clavicle. The necklace sits heavy above the mounds of my breasts, propped up by the corset portion of the dress.
“I remember when you wore this for Halloween last year. I got home at dawn, and I started to draw you. I didn't stop until my hand was bleeding from rubbing across the paper so much.” I shiver, realizing that in its own way, Barron's love is just as dark and dangerous and toxic as Raz's.
Love. Did I just think the word 'love'? This isn't love; it's obsession.
And it isn't sweet or lovely, it's nightmarish, wicked, lurid at best.
There's no part of me that wants to leave right now.
“That's how you knew it was me?” I ask, almost disappointed. “The dress?”
Barron comes around to stand in front of me, and I open my thighs so he can step between them, cupping my face in his right hand. I lean my cheek into his palm, leaving it to my mask to keep me safe here, to protect me. Because this obsession, it's going to hurt in the best possible way.
“No, it wasn't the dress,” he says, leaning in, wearing the red devil’s mask. He seems to only wear the butterfly mask on days when I've managed to impress him before the party starts. “It was the curve of your lips, the shape of your face, your eyes. I've drawn you enough times, Karma; I could pick you out of any crowd.”
Barron leans in, teasing my mouth with his, cupping my chin in tight fingers as he licks my lower lip. For a long time now, my bullies have been hiding just this side of confession, hovering, waiting with their secret desires while they burned me on the outside by taunting me with mine.
Here we are, stripped bare together.
Just like me and Raz.
Is there some way to get them both to confess on one day? Even if they did, what would I do with that? How would I ever survive a tomorrow knowing I had to choose between them?
