This is what Italian men do, right? They worship your body; they woo you with sweet, delicious words and an overfamiliarity that feels like love. I’d watched my mother get her heart stomped on by enough Orfeos. Handsome, brown-eyed devils who swept into our lives and then left her a sobbing half-human. A mess on our kitchen floor for me to clean up.
Okay, maybe it’s not fair to put this all on Italy. Honestly, if any one geographic location was to blame, it would be Brooklynand all the gorgeous, evil creatures that seemed to spawn there with the explicit intent of torturing my mother.
Bowen switches from illuminated manuscripts to Romanesque frescoes, and I lean forward, ignoring the swell of heat inside me.
All night school classes end at nine-fifteen, and for a brief moment, as we rush out into the wet, cold January air, the campus comes back to life. Thien and Laila breeze past me arm-in-arm, heads bowed in a fit of communal giggling, and disappear down the stone path into the fog. In the distance, I hear the high-pitched hysterics of undergrads.
I got a handful of texts during class. One from my best friend/sometimes boss Evie (“where r u bestieeeeee”) and my shift manager at the library (“can you cover for Dion on sat 1/24?”) and another from my Great Aunt Ritza (“new moon in Aquarius … do not forget to set out your decks, your crystals, your amulets…! blessed be …!”).
Nothing urgent, which makes my heart pang, oddly. After living for so many years in complete chaos, the quiet of my life without my mother keeps me on my back foot.
Outside the iron gates that separate U of E from downtown Echidna, Main Street is a long, dark stretch of bistros, antique shops, and candle stores that eventually turn into a stretch of rowdy bars with neon signs, ominously nicknamed Devil’s Row. This is a detail I still can’t wrap my head around, even after living here for a year and a half. What the hell could be happening in a sleepy town like this?
Echidna is like most university towns—an odd mix of eclectic, academically minded weirdos, badly behavedunderaged students, and a small but mighty contingency of WASPs compulsively obsessed with returning to thegood old days.
It starts misting again, and I pull up my hood and pick up my pace. A group of rowdy, zigzagging frat boys passes me without even a sideways glance, followed close behind by girls in stilettos and miniskirts, huddled together for warmth.
Fragments of their frenetic chatter drift on the frigid wind toward me.
“Did you see the blond? He looked like a fucking thug…”
“…my dad has been paying dues for the last thirty-fucking-years and they want to turnmeaway? Just you fucking wait until I tell him. Just youfuckingwait…”
“…Tabby told Zoe this was happening, butobviouslywe didn’t believe her.”
“Obviously. It’s Tabby.”
I slow to match their pace, melting into the shadows of the last few shops before reaching Devil’s Row.
“Hades House wouldn’t even exist without our grandparents—this won’t fly for long. Mark my words, bitches.”
They were coming from Hades House. That would explain their marked doucheyness.
I can see the club across the four-way intersection, with its chic black shutters and off-white gingerbread trim along the low-slung portico. Gas lamp sconces flicker on either side of the dark wood door. A man leans back against it and, from my vantage point, I can just make out the orange tip of a cigarette and a plume of gray smoke.
Smoking outside Hades House? An offense punishable by death. Where were the sentient cable knit sweaters to arrest him and commence the public spanking, post-haste?
Suddenly the door behind him swings open, sending the smoker stumbling forward and cursing. A crash of laughter,thudding EDM, and shouting spills out before the men dissolve into their own raucous laughter.
What the fuck?
Devil’s Row is brightly lit and there are a few people milling around, smoking and staggering from bar to bar. The light turns green, but I don’t cross Main Street. Instead, I sink back into the shadows and watch.
The men gathered around the door are unlike anyone I’ve ever seen in Echidna. It’s not just the cigarette smoking and the hard angles of their faces that make them stand out—almost garishly—in comparison to their environment. It’s not even the thumping dance music.
What the hell are they doing here?And at Hades House? I thought you had to be the son of the son of the son of the guy who discovered botulism in order to get in.
These guys are…
I have no idea what their deal is.
But there is one way for me to find out.
I don’t usually do this. In fact, I almost never do this anymore. But tonight? I don’t know why tonight feels like the right time to bust out my party trick. Maybe it’s the gentle energetic vibrations climbing up through my fingers, wrapping around my wrists, pulling me toward them. Piquing my curiosity even more than their bone structure and fashion choices.
I close my eyes and let my power loose.
It’s uncomfortable at first. The buzzing in my fingertips turns into a burn, my blood pressure plummets, my heart hammers against my ribcage. I try to keep my breathing even, slow. Which is almost impossible when your ancient, little lizard brain thinks you’re dying.
