into himself to sate his own lust for revenge. He slips under my skin to wear my misdeeds as his own.
As Noah wraps his arms around me and pulls me closer, melding our bodies together, I believe. For the first time, I believe that he sees what’s underneath, the black heart at the center of me, the heart-shaped box I’d carried since Brutus took my parents from me. That it doesn’t frighten him. That he could even be falling in love with it.
And that is the biggest lie of all.
I pull away, because he is everything I crave and I will not destroy him. I look into those eyes that reflect my heart-shaped box back at me, and I find the words to break the spell that binds us. “Where’s Gabe?”
Noah blinks. I don’t think he’s heard me, so I repeat the question. As the words leave my mouth, the spell unknits. Noah has let go of my sins, for now.
I haven’t seen my rock-god since he was pulled away to talk music. I cast my eyes over the people on the deck. The party has filled up since Noah and I moved out here, and I hardly recognize anyone. I can’t see Gabriel anywhere. A knot of worry tightens in my chest. We’d neutralized our enemies, for now, but I didn’t like having Gabriel out of sight.
Noah must be thinking the same thing, because he threads his fingers through mine. “Come on. Don’t let go.” We shove our way back into the fray, checking every group for Gabriel’s beautiful face. He’s not on the terrace, and I can’t see in him the blue-lit swimming pool on the floor below.
Inside, the place is wall-to-wall people. Noah charges ahead, using those broad shoulders of his to force our way through, like his namesake parting the Red Sea. Rising over the music is someone laughing – wild and throaty and slightly unhinged. Gabriel’s laugh.
My heart thumps harder.
We find him in the kitchen, gripping the counter as he battles some punk-looking guy at a drinking game. I don’t understand the rules, but Gabriel is holding some kind of elaborately-carved horn aloft, sloshing liquid from the brim. The punk recites a poem with his hand across his heart. Both of them have runic symbols scrawled on their cheeks with hot sauce, and the crowd around them roars with laughter, phones raised to capture the magic.
As we draw near, I recognize the punk kid from a popular Emerald Beach band. He’s got two bananas strapped to his head, sticking out like horns, and he seems to be improvising a drinking poem. “Fill your cups, feel no distress… your brain cells will soon be less… For what’s there to do when you don’t wanna think? Join Gabriel Fallen for another drink.”
Everyone claps, and Gabriel hands over the horn for the punk to drink from. A girl reaches up with a squeezy bottle of hot sauce to scrawl another rune on his cheek.
“Claaaaawwws,” Gabriel drawls. He throws an arm around my shoulders, not knowing or caring that he’s leaned his entire body weight on me, and we’re going to topple over at any moment. “Come here, my beauty, my love, my musey muse muse. We’re singing bard songs. Songs of drinking! Now that you’re here, I feel words of profound wisdom coming to me…” He whips the horn from the punk’s hands and holds it out to me. I push it aside but that’s a mistake, because Gabriel sloshes it everywhere as he sweeps his arm through the air and pronounces dramatically, “Booze goes in my mouth, and love goes in my heart. But if your hand goes up my ass, you’ll get the mother of all—”
“Gabe.” Noah barrels into us, dragging Gabriel away before he can finish his poem. Gabe doesn’t seem to notice. He raises the horn to his lips and starts guzzling the contents. I remember that conversation we had in the hallway of Malloy Manor, where he told me why he doesn’t drink. I slap the horn from out of his hands.
“Fuck, you bitch,” the punk swears at me. He’s covered in sticky, sweet-smelling alcohol.
“Bollocks. My mead is gone,” Gabriel slurs, reaching for the horn. He teeters and falls into me. My knee slams into the cabinets and it fucking hurts, but not as much as the crazed look in Gabriel’s eyes.
I don’t like seeing him like this – the fallen angel a booze-soaked mess. He said he didn’t drink, and yet this