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“So, you want everyone to call you slut and dumpster girl, make fun of you, and make you eat cockroaches?”
I stopped and faced him, shoving my finger into his broad chest.
“You did that. Oh, so you’re talking to me now? You’re following me, too?” I narrowed my eyes at him, but he didn’t back down. He looked at me sternly, his lips slightly pursed. What did he want, anyway? It wasn’t like we had anything to say to each other. “What’s your deal, Sariel? Why were you in Literature today?”
“Because The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my favorite books.”
“Ugh!” I huffed, stomped my foot, then turned on my heels and walked away.
“Do you want me to hurt him, Mistress?” Corri asked.
“What? No!” After a moment’s thought, I couldn’t help myself. “How?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. However you want. I could make him trip and break something. A wing, maybe.”
I laughed at the image of mighty Sariel tripping over his own feet. “Archangels can break their wings?”
“Of course. Wings are like any other limb. Except they have feathers.”
“It’s fine, Corri. He’s not worth our time.”
Before I could break free from the throng of students that poured out of the Literature class and seemed to walk faster than me, Pandora and Kitty caught up, called after me, and when I ignored them, blocked my way. Had Pandora been in Literature? I couldn’t remember.
“Pandora wants to ask you something,” Kitty beamed at me.
I crossed my arms over my chest. Two weeks ago, if these two had stopped me in the hallway, I would have peed my panties. GC and Pazuzu were at my side, but I noticed I didn’t feel like I needed them to protect me anymore. Strange things were happening, and they were happening to me. To my own thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
“Is that so?”
Pandora bit her lower lip, looking at me with her big, green eyes. She and Kitty looked so similar that they could have been sisters. Except one of them was a demoness and the daughter of Satan and Lilith, and the other one was a succubus.
She handed me a flyer. “I wanted to invite you to my Halloween party. It would be so great to have you there.”
“Are you serious right now?” I stared at the flyer as if it was going to bite me. “You want me at your Halloween party. Pandora, we’re not friends. You hate me. So, why?”
“I don’t hate you,” she said quickly. “I mean, yeah… I was a bit upset over Paz,” she shot him a sad look, but recovered in a second. “It’s all in the past, and I don’t care anymore. We weren’t meant to be. I can see that he loves you, and you…” She didn’t finish the sentence the way I’d have expected her to finish it. In fact, she didn’t finish it at all. I felt relieved. Because I wasn’t ready to declare my love for either Paz or GC. I still had a couple of things to figure out before I was ready to go there. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that we’re cool. I’m cool. I want us to be… err… not strangers.”
She knows how to choose her words.
“So, please come to my party?” She pushed the flyer in my hand, and I took it this time. “It’s going to be on the beach, just by the old caves. I don’t know if you know the place. Paz and GC will show you.”
I think I know the place. I shuddered thinking of that dreadful night. I didn’t only know the beach, but I also knew the caves well. And what lay sleeping inside them. Now I knew for sure that I wasn’t going to attend her Halloween party. Paz and GC would have to manage without me, and hopefully, not cheat on me just because I was no fun and I wanted to stay in my room. My own thoughts took me by surprise. Did I really believe Pazuzu and GC would cheat on me at some point? And that was why I wasn’t ready to decide whether I was in love with them or not. In lust. In lust, I was for sure. And a girl could be in lust with two men she didn’t quite trust.
“I’ll think about it,” I told Pandora.
Finally, they let me through, and I walked to my next class. Geography. As Paz and GC went to Anthropology, Klaus caught up with me.
“How do you feel, princess Morningstar?”
“Shut up.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Pandora made sure to ask me a bunch of more times in the following weeks if I was going to her Halloween party. I said “yes” every time, knowing full well it was a lie. The night of Halloween came, and I was holed up in my room with Corri and Lovecraft’s first volume of short novels. GC and Paz had dressed up, and they were now trying to convince me to change my mind.
“Come on,” begged GC. “It’ll be so much fun! I bet that if you ask Corri to find you a costume, she’ll snap her fingers and you’ll be… err… Cinderella! Or Snow White! Or whoever the hell you want to be!”
I chuckled. “Snow White and her two dwarves.” In fact, GC was dressed like his favorite Roman god, Dionysus, with a crown of grapes and vines, and a thyrsus in his hand, and Pazuzu was dressed like a pirate. The demon wasn’t a great fan of Halloween, so he’d gone for a rather bland costume.
