Twisted - Esme Devlin Page 0,53
to anticipate his next move. And now I think he’s playing with me, even though he’s absent. His absence is the game. I told him I was lonely, I told him he wasn’t enough for me, and now he’s showing me exactly what that means.
And when I think about him, even if it starts with something horrible he has done… it always ends up in the same place. The night when he kissed me so gently and hurt me so brilliantly.
I’ve come to realize just how much I miss the way he made me feel. I was always walking on a razor’s edge with him—and there was something exciting about that. But not only that, it was the way he made me think. I had to be alert around him at all times. One wrong word or sentence could set off something unexpected. With Baron, I was never sleepwalking through life. I was wide awake and living through every second of it.
The first time I ever felt that way was the night he looked at me for the first time. And I never realized how much I’d come to enjoy that.
So I find myself sitting in his office tonight. I’ve been doing this more and more. The fire is lit, even though he is never here. I’m reading a book written in English—The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—repeating the same paragraphs again and again because my mind keeps wandering elsewhere.
I hear the click of the door opening, and my head pops up at the same time my heart stops.
But moments later, I feel the disappointment wash over me. It’s not Baron. It’s Andrei. Probably coming to fetch me to bed.
He holds the door open, and I sit up in my chair, placing the book down on my lap. A woman enters, her cane tapping across the floor with every second step. I recognize her as the woman I saw on the very first night.
The one who talked back to Baron.
Andrei pulls a chair out at the table for her. “Can I bring you anything, Celeste? Tea?”
“Tea? Nonsense. Bring us wine. And find something covered in chocolate. Bring us that, too.”
Andrei smiles at her and turns to leave.
The woman stares at me, saying nothing.
She’s dressed from head to toe in black, a shawl covering silver curls and providing warmth on her shoulders. From her face, I can see she carries some extra weight, and that is unusual in a world where food is so scarce.
“Pass me that vase, will you?” she asks, nodding toward Baron’s desk behind me.
I get up to do her bidding and spot the empty glass. By the time I’ve fetched it and turned around, she is already lighting up a cigarette.
“You want one?”
“No thank you,” I reply, placing the vase down next to her. “I never started.”
She nods. “Good thing, too. Baron would likely have your fingers. Come. Sit.” She nods again, this time to the chair opposite.
I do as I’m told. The woman strikes me as someone who doesn’t take any nonsense, and to be honest, I’m just glad someone is actually talking to me.
“You are Baron’s… mother?”
She lifts an eyebrow at me before inhaling a draw of smoke and letting it out between thin lips. “Baron told me you were sweet,” she says. “No. I’m his grandmother.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I offer. “I’m Sapphire.”
“I know.” She taps the end of her cigarette on the edge of the vase. “Now. Tell me, what’s this all about?”
I stare at her blankly for a moment. “What is what about?”
“Has your bleeding started?” she asks.
Again I find myself staring at her, blinking in confusion. Then it dawns on me. I told Baron I needed a female friend. “I… I’ve been bleeding for years,” I tell her.
She lets out a hmm sound. “Well, ’tis hard to tell with all that muck on your face. Baron did try to explain what this conversation would be about, but, well, you always have to make assumptions with him.”
“You’ve spoken to him?”
She flicks her cigarette against the vase as if she’s angry with it. “I have.”
Just then, Andrei comes back with a tray in his hand and places it down on the table between us. There are two small glasses with a bigger decanter and what looks like a chocolate cake, about the size of my palm, sliced in two.
Andrei nods at the cake. “I didn’t know if you wanted it halv—”
“You think me a greedy, old ogre,