Page 38 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
Another hush, broken only by the fire popping and the snores of Sir James Frazer.
“What if we do,” Becket says. “What then?”
Auden’s eyes—nothing more than dark glitters in the mostly fire-lit room—meet mine and stay there. “Then we do it. Then we do more. We follow this thing till its end.”
“Samhain,” Becket says. His voice sounds dry. And . . . scared? “Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas, Samhain. The Celtic year is a circle, and so Samhain is the end . . . and also the beginning.”
“I like the symmetry
,” Rebecca volunteers.
Delphine’s feet wiggle in my lap and then she makes a sad noise, as if she’d already forgotten about her bruises. “I’ll never say no to more of these,” she adds.
“So we’re committing,” Saint clarifies. “We’re not just saying we’re going to do Beltane, but two others as well?”
“Don’t you want to know?” I ask, tearing my eyes away from Auden’s to look at him. “Don’t you want to know what happens if we do?”
“I always want to know,” he says. “But knowing isn’t the same as doing the right thing.”
“How philosophical,” Auden says, not sounding very impressed.
Becket shoots Auden a quelling look. “I think the two are closer than we give them credit for,” he says.
“Wait, so is this us agreeing?” asks Delphine. “Are we doing this? Oh, please say yes. It’s been such a long week, I’d love something happy to think about when I fall asleep tonight.”
“You think these rituals are about happiness?” St. Sebastian asks at the same time as I say, “I don’t know how happy they’re going to be.”
Delphine pouts at us. “They make me happy. You’re all such curmudgeons; how can you all be so grim about lighting a big fire and having sex?”
“Well, we don’t know what the Beltane ritual involves yet,” Becket points out.
She waves her hand. “Details. It’ll be sexy and fun and who cares about whatever words we have to say or circles we have to walk? It’s all the same, really. Say some words at the same time, move all at the same time, do something that makes chemicals surge through our brain. Voila, un rituel.”
Becket looks pained, and to spare us all the priest explaining the modality of ritual, I say quickly, “I think we’re all agreed, right? Beltane and everything else? Samhain or bust?”
“Samhain or bust,” Delphine repeats, her mouth twitching around the expression. “I like it.”
“Yes,” Rebecca says, “I’m agreed.”
“Me as well,” Becket says, although he still looks like he dearly wants to complicate Delphine’s ritual theory.
“I’m in,” St. Sebastian says, and Auden just nods, knocking back the rest of his whisky in one go and then dropping his glass carelessly on the mantel.
“Okay, then,” I say. “Then we’re doing this.”
Chapter 14
St. Sebastian
Present Day
* * *
At some point, Becket turns on his music, and the conversation moves from rituals to gossip about people I’ve never been rich enough to meet. I’m mostly grateful for the shift, although there’s an old, familiar bitterness at being on the outside of their world. A bitterness soothed somewhat by seeing that Poe is just as lost as I am at picking apart the Olivers from the Tobys and that she also has no idea whether the Plum they’re laughing about is the name of a girl or maybe someone’s pet.
She drifts over to where I’m leaning against the edge of one of the long tables, and then she perches herself atop it. She’s short enough that her legs swing off the floor after she’s sat, and the hem of her tweed skirt pulls higher on her thighs, which are covered in bright yellow tights. It takes more control than I knew I had to keep myself from stepping between her legs and sliding my palms up those tight-covered legs. Sliding under her skirt and finding the soft place where her thighs join her body, pressing in with my thumbs until she squirms against me. Tearing a hole in those tights and then pumping into her right here on the table. Riding her while I’m still in boots and jeans, feeling her curvy arse and hips overflow my hands as I hold her close for fucking.
“. . . now is as good a time as any,” she’s saying, and I force myself away from my needful thoughts. I adjust my rigid length as subtly as I can.
