Page 30 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
We walk into the kitchen, where I say, “I’ll make you some tea. Warm you up.”
“Do you mind if I . . . ?” She gestures back to the rest of the house.
I decide it’s easier if she explores without me haunting her steps, fretting about what she’ll think of me and my pointless, bookish life. “Go ahead.”
She goes.
I know what she’ll see. She’ll see my mother’s office, still left as it has been for this last year, piled high with papers and clippings and books, with only a small space cleared for the inevitable mug. The visible spill of a busy and inquisitive mind—research for articles, think pieces, and of course, her precious Thorncombe Historical Society. Then Poe will go upstairs and see my mother’s bedroom—as untouched as her rosaries, a realm of clothes never to be worn again—and then my room, which might as well be a library in its own right.
Aside from some of the dust on my mother’s things, this drab hellhole isn’t dirty. It’s just a testament to a poor and boring life. And bless every moment of self-recrimination I’ve ever had about my habits, because at least I know the poor and boring life is all she’ll see. She won’t see the hidden things I keep for my needs. My shameful little shrine, the one I worship at nightly.
I stand with my hands braced on the counter while I wait for the water to boil, wondering what’s wrong with me. Why I need the things I need, why I’m consumed with desires more potent than any curse. Wondering why I can’t finish college and wear the clothes Auden wears and talk with the polished ease of a scholar like Becket can. Wondering why grief seems so natural to me, and the same with sadness. Why when my mother died, I thought, of course of course, as if death was more familiar than life, as if I were being robbed by an old friend and not by the sucking void of entropy and decay.
I wonder why I can’t say the things to Proserpina I want to say.
I wonder why I don’t follow her upstairs and walk her backwards into my room, onto my bed, cage her with my body and kiss her until she melts. Until she parts her legs for me and I can settle on my belly between them, hooking my arms around her thighs and fucking her with my mouth until I bring back that smile of hers that means so much to me.
The water goes; I steep the tea, add enough milk and sugar to make even the pickiest child happy—the way Proserpina likes it—and then turn when I hear her footsteps coming down the stairs. She comes into the kitchen, still fresh and curious and in no way pitying at all.
“Thank you for letting me in,” she says, and I know she means more than the house. “I want . . . to be close to you.”
Fuck, what can I say to that? Except the truth?
“There’s nothing I want more, Poe. I just . . . ”
I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I can’t tell her that I feel like I owe her to Auden, because my rational mind knows that she has complete romantic and sexual autonomy. And for the same reason and others, I can’t reiterate why I feel like she belongs with Auden anyway.
But she knows. She sees me more than anyone other than my mother and maybe Auden.
“Is this about him?”
I look down at my boots and then back up to her, sucking on my lip ring while I think about how to answer. “Yes. Some.”
She sighs and steps into me, sliding her hands underneath my open leather jacket and burying her face in my chest the same way she does to Auden sometimes. It makes me feel about eight feet tall. It also gets me hard.
“You, Auden, and I need to talk,” she says into my shirt, as her hand drops to play with my belt. My head drops back and I let out a low unh when her palm brushes over my zipper and the erection straining there. “I’m tired of dancing around what happened on Imbolc night and the night after.”
“Mm.” It’s hard to think when she’s stroking me, even over the denim.
“Can I ask? What happened between you two?”
I tense, all desire tightening into barbed wire around my chest and throat. “It’s—I—”
She holds me tighter, but doesn’t speak. Doesn’t interrupt. Just waits.
“I hurt him first,” I manage. “I started it.”
“And him? Did he finish it?”
I close my eyes, thinking about the money. About my mother’s tears, about hunting him down at his fancy fucking university to confront him. “Yeah. He finished it.”
“Will you ever be able to move past it?”
What was the M for?
Mistake.
“I don’t know,” I say, but it’s in my voic
