Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Iwake up with my face glued to the carpet by what I sincerely hope is candle wax and not…anything else.
The chalk circle has collapsed into chalk hieroglyphics, like a ghost had a seizure and tried to write me a love letter with its feet.
The fog machine is still hiccuping little burps, embarrassed at itself.
The candles are dead soldiers, puddled into skull mugs.
A jack-o’-lantern has fused to a steak knife, which feels symbolic in a way I refuse to examine before coffee.
My body sings. Not a lullaby. Sirens. Opera.
The good kind of ache—cathedral bells rung with bare fists.
Every ache is sweet, overstretched, and a delicious hollowed-out soreness like somebody evacuated the tenants of my bones and installed worship there instead.
When I try to roll, my muscles file a noise complaint.
“Don’t move,” Marrow breathes against the curve of my neck, a hush that warms. One hand is under my ribs; the other draws a slow line down my spine, vertebra by vertebra, as if counting rosary beads. “The blessing is still settling.”
“If she doesn’t move,” Skully says from somewhere south of my shoulder blade—half on the couch, half on my legs, all attitude—“she’s going to drown in glitter. Which, for the record, would be the funniest coroners’ note in history.”
A large, pleased sound rumbles to my left.
Bonehead. He’s sprawled across the wreckage like a toppled pillar in a ruined temple, one thigh slung possessively over mine, one heavy palm cupping the back of my hip like he’s trying to keep my soul from spilling out.
“October awake,” he announces, and then soft, and as greedy as a prayer that already knows it’s been answered: “Mine.”
I should tell him I belong to no man, that I am a sovereign nation of one gremlin, that ownership implies property and I am a condemned funhouse at best. Instead my lungs forget the choreography and I make a sound that would embarrass me if shame still lived inside of me.
Skully props his chin on my thigh like he’s testing its integrity. There’s a smear of my lipstick at the corner of his mouth and my eyes track it like I intend to lick it off later. “You look like you got hit by a hearse filled with velvet and regrets.”
“Compliment accepted.” I pry my cheek off the carpet. There’s a perfect stamp of my black mouth printed in the chalk ring. Did I kiss the circle goodnight? It probably deserved it. “Ow.”
Bonehead pats my ass—careful, somehow, for a man who views doors as removable suggestions. “October sore?” he asks, anxious and proud in the same breath.
“In every language,” I say, my wince turning into a smile. Between my thighs is a tender ache, an impressive throb that follows the echo of last night’s ruin. I am a cathedral someone set on fire and then decided to worship anyway.
Bonehead surges up like a sunrise and scoops me up as if I weigh nothing but audacity. “Kitchen,” I command, because my brain has filed coffee under Sacrament and refuses to open any other tabs.
We pass my living room’s casualties: a garland strangled by its own lights; a toppled candelabra dribbling black wax like mascara tears; a plush skeleton, Detective Clawson, mashed face-down into a throw pillow like he saw too much and opted out.
The air smells like burnt sugar and fake fog and something wicked my neighbors will never identify in a court of law.
Bonehead sets me on the counter with reverence that borders on apology.
He hovers until I bracket his wrists with my knees, forcing him to stop fussing.
“Look,” I tell him, tipping my chin toward the window.
Outside, the early sun drizzles through my cheap blinds and paints ribs of light across his new flesh.
He’s still impossibly…fresh. Like skin from a catalog with too-many adjectives—honey-warm, candle-lit, sinner-soft.
I drag my teeth across his collarbone. He shudders, the quake traveling through all of him, then back into me.
Skully flips the switch on the coffee maker like he’s arming a trap. “If your machine screams, I’m throwing it out the window.”
“She screams because she’s passionate.” I pat the stainless steel appliance affectionately. “Be kind to Morgana la Beans.”
He squints at me. “You named your coffee maker.”
“I name all my appliances,” I say. “Microwave is Micah Wave, toaster is Crispin Glover, blender is—”
“—Blenda Carlisle,” he finishes, like he hates himself for getting it right. He doesn’t move away from me, though; he never does, for all the sighing. He stands exactly within touching distance and pretends not to watch my mouth.
Marrow chooses my skull mug with the tiny bat-wing handle and pours like he’s decanting holy water. He blows across the surface. When he passes it to me, his fingers cradle mine, steadying the tremor. “Drink,” he says, his command as soft as velvet.
Bonehead makes a proud noise. “Smash make toast.” He drops bread into the toaster with the same delicacy he applied to my thighs last night—none—and attempts to jam a spoon in after it, before looking to me for approval like a golden retriever who found a grenade.
Skully yanks him back by his bicep, muttering, “Out.” Bonehead snorts, then bends down so his forehead touches my knee as if to apologize to my kneecap specifically.
I swing my legs. It hurts and delights at the same time.
Everything hurts. Every inch of me has been freshly reminded of its existence.
There’s a fingertip bruise on my hip that is the exact shape of Marrow’s reverence.
There’s a bite mark on my shoulder in the language of Skully’s sarcasm.
There is an ache that spells Bonehead in blunt, block letters down my spine.
“I’m sore,” I announce, in case anyone didn’t get the memo from the constant moaning.
Skully taps the ibuprofen bottle in front of me like he’s conjuring it from thin air. “Take four. Drink water. Hydrate, slut.”
I choke on my own air. Bonehead bristles. “Skully call October bad word?”
Skully tosses me a look that says sorry-not-sorry and—God help me—I laugh because I am a slut, specifically for these men, for their hands on me, their eyes on me, their fixation like a haunted beam of moonlight that never moves off my face.
“It’s a good word,” I tell Bonehead, and pop four pills with a swallow of coffee that tastes like sin and survival. “It means he thinks I’m hot.”
Bonehead considers this, then scowls at Skully with exaggerated suspicion. “Good. But watch mouth.”
“Always do,” Skully says, and looks at my mouth like he would put a ring on it if he could find a jeweler to make one.
We eat…something. Toast that’s half charcoal, coffee that tastes like someone harvested autumn’s ghost and milked it, and leftover ritual candy because dignity is for the living.
The kitchen looks like Halloween exploded in a thrift store and then repented.
There’s chalk on the cabinets and a ribbon wrapped around the fridge handle convincing itself it’s couture.
Yet…I could live here, in this stupid little kitchen apocalypse, forever. Which is a dangerous thought I put in a jar and label: do not touch unless drunk on grief or cinnamon.
“I’m declaring an emergency,” I tell them, once my bloodstream has accepted caffeine as its liege lord.
“You cannot keep strutting around in rope and duct-tape like you’re auditioning for Haunted Project Runway.
I love my arts and crafts, but the HOA already slipped a nastygram under my door about odors and moans after midnight.
If you’re going to haunt me for three weeks, you need clothes. ”
Skully’s mouth tilts. “Clothes,” he repeats, like it’s a slur he might learn to love on my tongue.
“Real ones,” I say. “Sexy ones. Possibly ones that won’t get us arrested for indecent exposure.”
Bonehead thumps his chest like a drum. “Pretty for October.”
Marrow bows his head as if I’ve promoted him to knight. “Direct me.”
“I’m driving,” Skully declares, plucking my keys from the hook.
I give him a flat stare and hold out my hand. He sighs like I just told him he had to eat his vegetables and slaps them into my palm, his pinkie brushing my ring finger. A sharp little spark snaps between us—not painful, just electric enough to make my pulse stutter. We both freeze.
I gasp, then squeal like I just discovered a new sex toy. “Oh my God, do it again. I love pain that’s flirty.”
Skully stares at me like he’s debating exorcism, then huffs a laugh that sounds half-wrecked, half-resigned. He doesn’t try it again, but he also doesn’t move his hand away.
Bonehead looks confused. Marrow looks like he just witnessed a sacrament. And me? I wiggle my fingers like I’m trying to coax another jolt out of him, already plotting how to weaponize static electricity into foreplay.
“You can navigate,” I offer in lieu of driving. “Say mean things about the signage.”
“Done,” he says, and looks unreasonably pleased to be assigned that specific role.
I slide off the counter and my thighs instantly file a formal complaint. Three sets of hands rise instinctively to steady me. It’s obscene how safe I feel braced by three very specific kinds of danger. “Bathroom,” I announce. “I have to make my face legal.”
Skully’s laugh hits the underside of my ribs. “Your face is a felony in at least seven jurisdictions.”
“Hot.” I kiss his jaw and flee, because if I don’t, we’ll never leave this kitchen and I will happily starve on a diet of their mouths and cocks. We wouldn’t make it to Halloween.