Page 8 of Consume Me

On the third night, I came back from dinner to find an envelope slipped under my door. It was heavy cardstock, embossed with gold leaf, and it smelled faintly of something bitter yet sweet. Inside, an invitation: A Halloween masquerade at the Old Slave Mart Museum on Chalmers Street. It was invitation-only and costume-required.

Below the printed text, in handwriting I now recognized—elegant, old-fashioned, the letters looping like veins—she'd written:

Come as yourself or come as who you wish to be. I'll know you either way because I always have. —A.

I sat on the bed, holding the card longer than I intended. Then I went to a costume shop on King Street and bought a plain black domino mask. I didn't know what I was coming as, except hungry and ready.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MASKED BY PASSION

The Old Slave Mart on Chalmers Street was a brick building that had once been the site of human auctions and was now a museum that white tourists visited to feel solemn for twenty minutes before getting ice cream. I'd walked past it twice that week and couldn't make myself go in. Tonight it had been transformed into something else—something that brought out the masses.

Halloween in Charleston was serious business. Ghost tours clotted the sidewalks. Costumed drunks packed the bars on King Street, and the wealthy threw parties like this one. I was sure it was a mix of genuine Gullah traditions, performative spookiness, and a desperate desire to summon the spirits they’d grown up hearing about in folklore. The crowd inside was a mix of Black and white folks in costumes ranging from elegant to obscene. Candles were everywhere as a jazz trio parked in the corner played something slow and heavy on the saxophone while the brick walls sweated in the heat of too many bodies.

I wore my black domino mask and a dark suit. The simplicity made me feel and look like a man who'd come to the wrong party. I was here for her, and as I looked around, I found her immediately, and if I were to be honest with myself, I would’ve found her blindfolded.

She stood at the center of the main room, surrounded by admirers who didn't know what she was, only seeing a stunning, plus-sized Black woman in a gown. They wanted to possess her without realizing she was the one doing the possessing. The gown was a gold-and-scarlet wax print that looked like kente but wasn't. It was something older, that her body seemed to breathe life into. It was cut low, showing the deep swell of her breasts, the soft strength of her arms, and the abundance of her hips. She wore a masquerade mask made of beaten gold. While partygoers were oblivious to her, the mask was pointless to me, seeing as her eyes gave her away: golden, slit-pupils, burning with desire. She saw me and probably smelled me from the street.

"Malik." She dismissed her admirers with a flick of her fingers. They scattered like startled birds, like men who knew they'd been outclassed. "You came."

"I got your invitation,” I let her know.

"I've been sending you invitations for days. In your dreams. In the wind. In the way the marsh smells at three in the morning." She took my hand. Her skin was cool this time, smooth, soft, and I wanted to taste it. "Dance with me."

"I don't dance,” I shook my head.

"You'll dance with me."

She pulled me into the center of the floor. The saxophone played jazz smooth enough to make you sway even against your own will. She put her arms around my neck, and I had no choice but to put my hands on her waist—her hips filling my palms, her body pressing against mine with a weight that was consuming. She was voluminous; even through the dress, I could feel her density, her gravity, the pull of her. I wanted her all over me.

"Do you feel it?" Her lips were at my ear. Her breath cold and hot. “The way the room moves around us and time bends?”

I did. The other dancers were moving in slow motion, or we were moving faster. The music had gone distant, underwater, like the heartbeat of something vast.

"I've been watching you," she murmured. Her hand slid to the back of my neck, nails sharp against my skin. "Watching you learn to weave. Watching you bleed on the grass. Watching you touch yourself at three in the morning with my name in your mouth until you spilled your desires for me all over yourself."

Heat flooded my face, my chest, and my dick. "I didn't⁠—"

"You did. I can still smell it on you. The want that’s afraid to blossom because the shame lives there. I heard the way you wept after." She rolled her hips against mine, making my erection grow even more. I was already hard and had been since I walked in. "You want to know what it feels like, don't you? To be taken and consumed. To be loved by something that's had three hundred years to learn exactly what you need."

"You're manipulating me."

"I'm seducing you; there’s a difference." She pulled back enough to look at me. Her mask had slipped, showing more of her face—the inhuman beauty with cheekbones too sharp and a mouth that could open wider than human jaws allow. "I could take you right now, right now. Drain you dry and leave you smiling on this floor, and everyone would think you'd had a stroke. A happy one, but I won't because you haven't asked nor have you surrendered to me."

"And if I do?"

"Then I give you everything. Ecstasy that lasts for a lifetime. Dreams of Ghana so real you'll wake speaking Ewe. My Love, I can give purpose. Give you a home and love that doesn't leave you alone in the dark wondering if you're worth it." She pressed her forehead to mine, and I felt her in my mind—soft tendrils of thought, exploring, learning, and claiming me. "Your grandmother sent you to me. She prayed for it because she wanted you to find love and home so you’d stop being so goddamned lonely."

"My grandmother's dead."

"Yes, but she watches. She wants to see you happy, Malik. She wants to see you fed."

The music stopped. The room snapped back into focus—noise, merriment, laughter, and the clink of glasses. Addie stepped back, her mask restored, her smile deceptive to them yet filled with yearning only I could see.

"Tomorrow night," she said. "My house. Come ready to weave and ready to be woven."

She turned, her dress swirling like blood in water, and disappeared into the crowd before I could speak. I stood on the dance floor, shaking harder than I ever had before, as my heart hammered with terror, but also with want and the overwhelming need to follow her. I wanted to find her and drop to my knees. I knew I should leave Charleston. Fly home to London and forget her, forget David, forget every feeling this journey ignited in me.