Chapter 18 #3
When I finally look away from him, there’s a clerk hovering at the end of the hall, tablet in trembling hands, eyes soft with the kind of curiosity that makes people walk into abysses. My smile snaps at her. I don’t even know I’m going to speak until the words come out.
“Hi,” I say, sugar with a crack in it. “You’re very brave. Do you need anything?”
They squeak, “Do—you—are you…okay in there?” and nod at the dressing rooms like maybe we’re shoplifting sins. Her eyes flick to Skully’s hips and back to me, and my heart opens a trapdoor under itself and drops me down.
“Look somewhere safe,” I say, low. “Hands where I can see them.”
She blinks. “I—work here.”
“Then go work somewhere else,” I suggest sweetly, and turn my head in a way that makes my crown catch light like a warning. “This aisle is haunted.”
Skully’s laugh is husked-out and fond in equal parts. Bonehead shifts, looming; not threatening, just present enough to create shade. Marrow is very still in a way that tells me he could move very fast. The clerk evaporates.
I exhale and it feels like I’ve been holding my breath since yesterday. Maybe longer.
“All right,” I say briskly, clapping so loud the sound bounces off the mirrors. “My turn.”
“Yours?” Bonehead echoes.
“Mine,” I confirm, and vanish behind a curtain with an armful of black that feels like it could eat me.
The dress I picked is not subtle. Black sheer that behaves like smoke, bone-white beading down the spine that will be a roadmap for someone’s mouth if they’re literate, and a slit that says laws are stories and I’m choosing a different ending.
The bodice is a negotiation I win. The crown is heavier than it looks. Queenship usually is.
It takes longer than it should because I start laughing halfway through for no reason and have to stuff my own fist in my mouth to stop, because if I don’t it might turn into the wrong sound.
I wrestle the zipper. I adjust the slit to an angle that would get me banished if this kingdom had standards.
I stare at myself under fluorescent light that hates women and decide I’ve never looked more like the problem.
When I shove the curtain aside, the air catches. Like the store itself is holding its breath.
Bonehead’s inhale is a sound, loud and startled, like he just got punched.
His eyes go wide, then soft, and his whole face lights up like a kid at Christmas.
If Christmas was half-naked and ready to ruin lives.
“October…” he groans, low and reverent, like my name just did something indecent to his throat.
Skully doesn’t joke. Doesn’t smirk. For one electric second he just stares—mouth parted, eyes dark and dangerous. Then he swears under his breath, almost like he hates me, or like he loves me too much to stand it. “Baby…fuck.” His voice is hoarse, and it shoots straight down my spine.
Marrow doesn’t move closer, but his eyes do, dragging up my frame like silk encased hands.
His composure cracks just enough that I see the hunger burning under the poetry.
“You are…unbearable,” he murmurs, not with annoyance but with awe, like beauty this sharp is painful to look at. “Your beauty…it wounds me.”
Their stares knock me sideways. Three men wrecked in three different flavors, all aimed at me. It hits me in places I didn’t know I had places. And I’m not talking about that place between my legs.
My stomach flips, my knees want to give, my grin stretches too wide. I spin once because if I don’t, I’ll scream or cry, or both. The rhinestones scatter light across the cracked mirror, and I feel them watching me like they’ve never seen a woman before. Like I’m the only woman who’s ever lived.
It’s not a throne. It’s not a stage. It’s worse. It’s better. It’s love, rabid and relentless, hitting me all at once from three directions, and it makes my insides feel like unstable fireworks.
Bonehead is the first to move, because of course he is.
He lumbers forward with his mantle slipping off one shoulder, harness tight across his chest, crown crooked like it’s already survived a bar fight.
His hand twitches like he wants to scoop me up and run out of the store with me clutched against him, prize in tow.
“Pretty October,” he blurts, blunt as always.
Then he shakes his head, grinning so wide it almost splits him. “No. Prettiest October.”
My stomach turns inside out. I laugh too loud, wobbling on my boots, half-ready to let him do it—just haul me out the door like I’m a jack-o’-lantern he carved himself.
Skully stalks closer, slower, leather pants squeaking with every step.
He drags his eyes down me so shameless it should be illegal, then back up, pausing at my throat like he’s daring himself to bite.
He breathes out a laugh, harsh and cracked.
“You’re-” He stops, shakes his head, laughs again. “You’re gonna fucking kill me, Baby.”
He says it like he means it. Like dying from me would be the best way to go. My pulse does a little tap dance and I hide it by tossing my hair, crown sliding down sideways.
Marrow doesn’t say anything for a long time. Just looks. The kind of look that makes me want to crawl into his chest cavity and live there, rent free. When he finally speaks, it’s barely more than a whisper, but it cuts through everything else: “You are every poem I burned before I met you.”
And that’s it. I almost drop to my knees, not because he wants me to but because my legs stop working.
Instead, I spin—a full, ridiculous twirl.
The slit in my dress flashes indecent, rhinestones scatter light like a disco ball at a funeral, and all three of them drink me in like they’ll never get another chance.
I feel their stares like hands. Bonehead’s, hot and solid, Skully’s, sharp and filthy, Marrow’s, reverent and devastating.
A clerk passes at the end of the aisle, slowing, staring. Wrong move. My smile slices wide. “Keep walking,” I chirp, too sweet. “Unless you want me to rearrange your bones in alphabetical order.”
The clerk scuttles off. The boys don’t even pretend not to love it.
We drift toward the mirrors together, not planned, just pulled by the same gravity.
The bulbs frame us like a crime scene, and for once I don’t hate my reflection.
Bonehead looms behind me, grin proud and feral.
Skully’s hand finds my waist, thumb brushing the curve of my hip like a warning and a promise.
Marrow hovers close enough that his coat brushes mine, his fingers ghosting over my shoulder without touching.
We look like a nightmare family portrait. We look like forever.
Something cracks in my chest. I laugh too loud again, because if I don’t, I’ll cry.
“Alright, get changed,” I say, grabbing for a distraction. Always a distraction. “We need accessories. Weapons. Jewelry that screams the afterlife is slutty now. Move, move, move!”
They obey, but not because I told them to.
Because they’re grinning, smirking, hungry—feeding on my mania like it’s candy.
Once we’re back taking over the main floor of the store, Bonehead starts piling swords over his arm like he’s stocking up for battle.
Skully finds necklaces that dangle sharp enough to wound.
Marrow slides a set of jeweled black rings onto his hand and flexes his fingers like a vow.
I make a personal detour to grab some things for my next big idea before tossing handfuls of fake jewels into the cart, loving the way they clatter like rain. Each sound buys me another thirty seconds of not thinking about time.
Tick-tock.
At the checkout, the clerk is pale, scanner gun trembling. Bonehead leans in too close, voice booming: “We fight in these?”
“Yes,” I chirp, patting his chest. “But with style.”
Skully crowds the other side of the counter, smirk back in place, eyes on me even as he toys with the poor cashier. “Or we perform. Opening act: hot mess and her monsters.”
Marrow lingers just behind me, steady, gloved fingers brushing the back of my arm like a secret. “October,” he murmurs, so soft it’s only for me. “Breathe.”
Breathe.
Tick-Tock.
The scanner beeps. Beep. Beep. Beep. Every sound is a countdown clock I refuse to hear. I dig in my tote, slap my card on the counter, and grin at the clerk like he should thank me for letting him witness history.
The receipt prints long, too long, a snake of paper that flutters into my hand. I crumple it into my bra and tip my crown with both hands, rhinestones flashing like tiny sirens.
“Gentlemen,” I announce, loud enough for the whole store, “Halloween is officially ours.”
Bonehead cheers. Skully snorts, shaking his head but smiling like a man undone. Marrow whispers something I don’t catch, but the way he looks at me makes me feel immortal.
We leave with bags swinging, crowns crooked, hearts too loud. People stare. I stare back harder, baring teeth until they look away. My monsters fall into step around me, just mine. And I’m theirs.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.