23. Azriel
Oh, Harlowe Lopez was dangerous. I was officially obsessed as I watched her build a cat house with Misha. He loved those cats. I didn’t throw the term muse around lightly. They had to inspire me, but they needed to be decent people too because I wasn’t.
I’d already made an audio file from her subway video so I could listen to it with headphones while I painted.
I was supposed to be in figure painting, but I’d been skipping most of the class to watch Misha feed his cats.
Most of the students here didn’t have time for outside jobs, but there were on-campus jobs.
Which meant fucking Belinda signed up to model for my figure painting classes.
I was stuck in figure painting, but I did not have to immortalize that arsehole’s tits.
She’d been posing for weeks and hadn’t seen my painting yet.
No one had because I only showed up for the last five minutes of class and worked on it in my studio.
Let’s just say if she didn’t like me tripping her with my stilts, she was going to hate my painting.
She didn’t need the money. She was a trust fund kid.
There was a mix of legitimately talented people here and people whose daddy bought them a spot.
Belinda wanted to dance, but she didn’t have the spark and Misha said she was lazy.
I was pretty sure she signed up to model for my class to get a free Azriel Ivy portrait out of me.
I didn’t enjoy portraits. Been there, done that, but I was very good at them.
I still did them if it benefitted Immortal Nightmare, the same way Orion did collaborations with people he loathed, and Misha would take guest roles in ballets he didn’t like.
Everyone thought being an artist was about following your muse and doing what you wanted, but sometimes, you had to do shit you very much didn’t want to do and make it seem like you loved every minute for either the connections or to not starve to death.
But yeah, Belinda would not manipulate me. She wasn’t subtle. Every time she put her robe on at the end of class, she’d walk around looking at paintings. She was very interested in mine, but I wasn’t going to give it to her.
I was painting her how I saw her after she made those vile images of Misha and I was going to mount it on the wall like hunters did with deer heads until I got tired of looking at it or Misha asked me to take it down.
I was on my way to make an entrance in figure painting and maybe torment Belinda some more when I heard someone say Harlowe’s name.
She wasn’t my muse. I’d never spoken to her and since I wasn’t in the music program, I had no reason to.
Orion was striking out left and right, which was weird because he was talented and hot. Misha just lucked out with his cats.
Still, I felt my protective urges rising and decided to do a little recon. The decent dancers had befriended her, but there was jealousy in every single department here. The art department was way less competitive than music, dance, or theatre, but it was still there.
I didn’t care about most of the people here.
I stopped caring a long time ago. Even if I could warn them, they wouldn’t listen.
I didn’t learn their names, and I didn’t get attached anymore.
I could lock myself in my studio and ignore everyone here.
It was different for Orion and Misha because they performed with other people.
There was one person I could see myself getting attached to because I could feel how her music fit with us, but I couldn’t save her either. I didn’t know how to deal with that, so I was going to break some toys.
Some idiot girl was ranting about Harlowe. Since I crashed auditions and had a part, I had a better reason to be at Nutcracker rehearsals than just being obsessed with watching Orion make music Misha danced to.
She was mad Harlowe pointed out she was out of tune.
Except she was out of tune and this was a frequent thing at rehearsals since the orchestra joined us.
And Harlowe didn’t say she was out of tune, just that someone was.
Everyone who’d been at more than one rehearsal knew if a violin was out of tune, it was her.
Interesting. Harlowe didn’t ask me to destroy her enemies. She didn’t even know me. First, I needed to find out if this was a rant or we were entering enemy territory. I was good at multitasking. I could deal with two nemeses. Belinda was staring to bore me a little.
“She fucked me over to get in good with Klaus. You know she probably slept with Faustus to get in. She looks like that’s the kind of thing she does.”
Oh, new nemesis, welcome. We do not slut shame here.
No one wanted to fuck Faustus for any reason, but I was not judging if they went there.
I didn’t know her name, but I asked Orion about her after the third time Klaus threw something because she wasn’t properly tuned.
She was at Blackvale because her daddy made a donation and she only ended up in the orchestra because there weren’t many violin students currently enrolled after a big crop graduated.
Orion told me a lot of the current violin students didn’t audition because they weren’t on that tract of study.
Orion said there wasn’t a lot of violin players at orchestra auditions and Klaus only didn’t pick one of them.
He had to let her in after one of the violin players got accepted into their first choice orchestra and decided they didn’t need their degree.
That happened sometimes, and it was the best thing for them.
I knew if Harlowe decided she wanted to play in the orchestra, Klaus would give Harlowe this girl’s spot once he heard her play, even if he kept calling her a succubus.
Klaus was a bigger dick than I was, but he knew talent and respected it.
I needed to know if this girl knew Harlowe was going to take her spot and was planning some sabotage.
Because that wasn’t unheard of.
“Did you see her video, Isobel? There’s a video of her playing her violin on the subway. She’s good, but it went viral. She could just be here because she got internet famous and Faustus wants to brag about it.”
Which was a lot more logical than her fucking Faustus.
He was a disgusting little goat man. No one wanted to fuck Faustus.
I’d say he needed to make an appointment for a full body wax, but even a waxer who’d seen some shit wasn’t prepared for that.
Even with his shirt buttoned up tight, he looked like he should be playing the flute and pestering maenads at one of Dionysus’s orgies.
The girl who pointed out the video was removed from my shit list, but I could easily put her back. I was flexible like that.
“What video?” Isobel demanded.
“Leif found it before she even got here. He was showing everyone and wanted to find her for his thesis project. Then, she just showed up.”
Who the fuck was Leif and why was he trying to do anything with my muse? Fuck me. I knew this kind of jealousy. She was officially my new muse, even though I’d never spoken to her. This Leif guy was just going to have to understand that.
“Leif should be making music with me,” Isobel snarled. “I earned that. We could be as good Immortal Nightmare and just as famous.”
No, they couldn’t. I tried not to belly laugh and give away that I was spying. Oh, Leif. He was playing the Nutcracker Prince. Misha said he was nice and wanted to be a choreographer more than he wanted to be a ballet dancer.
Misha said he had a lot of talent and a future in it.
No one could recreate Immortal Nightmare.
Misha could easily switch between ballet, contemporary, traditional dances from various cultures, or hip hop and sometimes, he’d mash them up.
Orion was classically trained, but he was amazing at blues, jazz, and could do electronic if you asked him nicely.
I could whip out any style of art I wanted to.
And who wanted to do what someone else already did? The girl who couldn’t tune her violin, apparently. She picked Leif, and I was guessing she had her eye on someone in my department.
The rest of the group looked uncomfortable. I was guessing they didn’t want to tell Isobel to stop throwing herself at ballet dancers and learn how to tune her instrument.
“Leif might not want what you want. He doesn’t talk much when you’re fetching everything for him.”
“Leif wants to be famous. We all do. That’s why we’re here. He wants what I’m offering. We could be a power couple.”
Oh, hon. Not everyone wanted to be famous. There was a lot of bullshit involved with it that got in the way of making art. Leif might be that guy who wanted other people to bring his creations to life while he hardly showed his face.
“We need a plan,” Isobel said. “That girl is going to take my spot in orchestra and she’s going to steal Leif. I want her gone.”
Welcome to the Nemesis Club, bitch. I was pretty sure I had a better chance of stealing Leif from Isobel than Harlowe did, so that was the kind of delusional we were dealing with.
I needed to come up with a plan for this one. For Harlowe and for Leif, because it sounded like this girl was pestering him.
I just needed to hear what kind of petty bullshit she was going to try, first.