sits down on my right side, his sketchbook tucked under his arm, another lollipop in his mouth.
“I heard a rumor once,” I slur as the Knight Crew gathers around the fire, one of their lackeys setting up a net near the parking area to collect phones. No phone, no entry. If you don’t have a phone, well, you’re clearly not a student at Crescent Prep because every goddamn kid there has the latest technology in their hands at all times. It’s considered taboo to share anything that happens at the Devils’ Day Party anywhere outside of it.
What happens here, stays here.
Or it’s supposed to.
If that first day was somehow real—although as I’m sitting here, drunk off my ass, I can’t for the life of me figure out how it could be—then someone has a video of me and Calix. More than likely, one of the people in this circle of firelight does.
“A rumor about what?” Barron asks absently, still sucking on the candy and staring at me with that penetrating gaze of his. On the right, his brown eye seems contemplative, almost warm while the icy blue of his left comes across as cold and distant. A dichotomy. Heterochromia of the soul as well as the eyes. I laugh and reach for one of the bottles of wine, fumbling as I try to get the cork out.
“That you eat all that candy because you’re trying not to drink,” I slur as Barron finally takes the wine bottle from my shaking hands. He doesn’t give it back though. Instead, he hands it over to Sonja and I scowl, swaying in my seat. Stupid Barron and his white sweatshirt smeared with charcoal, the smell of watermelons, and that weird way he always defends me and destroys me at the same time. Once, after I fell off a horse during a riding lesson—yeah, our school is so posh we have riding lessons for PE sometimes—Barron picked me up and carried me to the nurse’s office while everyone else in the Knight Crew laughed.
Of course, as soon as I finished up there and headed into the locker room to change, I found my uniform shredded into pieces. Barron wore my bow tie around his neck for the rest of the week, while my moms struggled to come up with the money to afford a new uniform. They ended up selling several original paintings at a steep discount.
“Is that what the rumors say?” he asks, but I notice he doesn’t take any of the bottles making their way around the campfire. I blink at him, but my alcohol-addled brain can’t decide if he just answered my question, or presented me with a whole new one. Instead, I lean forward and squint, trying to make out the ink on his chest. He’s wearing the same outfit as before, the white jacket with the curled coattails, black leather pants, and boots. When I reach out to run a finger down his bare chest, he snatches my hand in a crushing grip and then pulls me into his lap.
My head spins, but at least I can finally see what his tattoo is.
It’s a butterfly, but not just any butterfly, it’s a Diana fritillary, that same orange and black insect that I received as an anonymous gift. How did I miss that the other day? I wonder, bringing up the memory of our kiss. It was too dark, the night filled with too many shadows.
My eyes lift to Barron’s, but he isn’t looking at me. Instead, he’s watching as Calix saunters into the clearing with an entourage of his own, wearing that stupid crown with the berries that drip red onto his pale skin like blood. The raven-haired girl with the ice-blue eyes, from the Devils’ Day Committee, is clinging to his arm. He shakes her off with a bit of a scowl before turning his attention to me.
“It seems we have a willing guest,” Barron says, his voice rumbling beneath me as I struggle to put together my thoughts. Did he send me that necklace? And if he did, why? If it was Barron, I can only assume it was both a gift and a punishment, the beginning of some cruel trick. That’s how he works, in dichotomies. I just can’t figure the angle on this one. Or maybe I just don’t care?
“Oh?” Calix asks, like he’s bored, his black velvet doublet unbuttoned to the navel, his crown askew on his head. “You actually showed up. More’s the