Page 39 of Interior Design for Demons
“Good luck,” I tell him, gently ushering him out. “And thank you!”
“Don’t thank a demon, sweetie. It’s terrible luck.”
“If you’re showing up early, swing by and get me, would you? I don’t want Rath seeing my costume right away.”
“Aiming to surprise him, are we?” Rusala smirks. “Fine. I’ll stop by. Always glad to see those upper-level demons squirm.”
When he leaves I set to work, clipping and stitching, daubing and pasting.
Hours later, it’s done. And it’s a masterpiece, if I do say so myself.
The lower half of my face is covered in a black leather mask, with thin metal bars laced across the mouth opening and tiny brass spikes jutting from it. My headdress replicates the veiny forehead and ridged ram’s horns of a stereotypical demon, with a beaklike piece to cover my nose. My hair is tightly braided and pinned to my head, covered by black bandages that wrap around my neck as well. My collarbones and shoulders are bare, and the rest of my outfit is an amalgamation of the other costumes from my closet—strips of black fur, leather, and gauze, fastened by more of the bronze pins and chains and spikes Rusala gave me. It covers the essentials—barely. I add the taloned rings last, after strapping on some very dangerous heels.
A look in the bathroom mirror shows me I’ve achieved my goal. I look like a demon. Erotic, yet dangerous. Forbidding, with spikes jutting out in random places and claws tipping my soft human fingers. I clack the talons along the glossy black counter, enjoying the threatening rattle.
When Rusala knocks, I open the door, and for a second he shivers out of human aspect into something lizardlike and thorny. The next second he’s back in his usual form, looking thoroughly awed.
“You, little human, are a genius with clothing as well as rooms,” he says. “I would perhaps have done a few things differently—added some piercings here, and here—” he touches the tender flesh of my stomach, exposed between leather straps— “but overall it is delightful. Rath will not recognize you.”
“That’s the plan. I don’t want anyone to recognize me.”
Rusala’s eyes narrow. “And you’re trusting me to keep your secret?”
“I’m trusting you to enjoy the joke with me.” I link my arm with his and nod to the mask in his hand. “That’s a pretty thing.”
“It’s a geisha mask.”
“Isn’t that cultural appropriation?”
“We’re demons, snackling. We’re beyond those rules. And even if we weren’t, we wouldn’t care.”
“Right.” My eyes travel the length of his silky kimono. “Okay then, let’s go. Do you know a spot where I can make a grand entrance?”
“Surely, sweet thing. It’ll be the very grandest.”
I can hear the music pounding through the walls before we get anywhere near the party space. We’re in a different venue this time—somewhere lower down, beneath the ground floor of the big building that’s been both home and workplace since the other contestants and I arrived in Hell. Rusala steers me into a side corridor that’s hewn from blue-black rock, dripping with moisture. There’s a breath of clammy, cool air rushing along the passage, and freaky blue lights glow at intervals near the ceiling.
“It’s going to be dark in there,” Rusala warns, pushing me toward a pair of ebony doors inlaid with something white—I hope to heaven it’s mother-of-pearl and not bone. “Stand at the edge for a minute, until the lights pass over you and they all notice you.”
“The edge of what?”
But Rusala is already gone. It’s just me and the cavelike tunnel, and the muffled thunder of the music.
I fortify my courage by recalling the image of myself in the mirror—horned and spiked and savage, with bars across my mouth and eyes glaring from blackened sockets. I am a demoness, maneater, queen of Hell. The rhythm from Hall & Oates’s “Maneater” starts playing in my head, and I nod to my internal beat as I surge forward and push open the doors.
I’m lucky, because as I step forward, a beam of yellow light sweeps over me, illuminating a sharp dropoff just two feet from where I’m standing. If I’d fallen off, I’d have broken a few bones for sure, because I’m like two stories above the crowd, and there’s no railing between me and empty air.
More lights slash across me, and I’m at their blazing apex, standing with my horned head high, legs braced, and both arms splayed wide, holding the doors open.
There’s a rush of sound from the audience as they notice me, and a sea of half-shadowed faces tilt up. Mouths snarl or laugh—someone whoops and someone else whistles. But I can barely enjoy the effect of my own entrance, because what I’m seeing is so unexpected and so laughably, horribly demonic.
Many of the demons are wearing masks like Rusala’s—lacy eye-masks, jester masks, Phantom-like half-masks. Things I’d expect to see at a masquerade. Others wear cages of woven bones, animal skulls, or stitched skin bags over their heads. Gross, but it’s Hell, so I kind of anticipated that too. What I didn’t expect was that about fifty percent of the crowd are wearingfaces. Human faces. And not just any faces, but the faces of the competitors. There are dozens of Aghilas, several Linneas, a score of Amandas, and a whole bunch of me. My face is everywhere, sprinkled throughout the churning crowd, and each person wearing me has a wig of flowing golden-brown hair, just like mine.
I can’t show them how much I’m freaking out. I’m supposed to look powerful and sexy and cool right now. In the immortal words of Lady Gaga, I’m here to marry the fucking night, and I won’t let these hell-creeps and their sick joke ruin my fun.
I let the doors fall shut, and I stalk down the stone steps to my right, trying to look carelessly jaunty without falling on my ass. Underneath the seductive cloud of the demons’ fragrance, there’s another scent, a truer one—a smell like burning, like charcoal and violence, like bitter chocolate and the harsh sour scent of old metal. The pounding music shakes the floor, the stone steps, my very bones—it reverberates through my heart and blood and brain.
Once I’m in the crowd, among the bodies and faces, it’s even harder to stay calm. Sure I’m incognito, but that also means I don’t have protection, or friends to form a protective pack with.
