Talking about the devil
Chapter 14
SOPHIA
The Devil himself is in the doorway.
Shoulder against the frame, arms loosely crossed, jacket open the posture of someone who never arrives anywhere urgently because he has long since understood that being the most significant thing in a room is not a function of timing.
His eyes move from Maria to me, and the corner of his mouth lifts into something that is not quite a smile and not quite not one.
"Oh," he says, the accent settling into the English the way it always does unhurried, like it has nowhere else to be. "Miss innocent." A slight tilt of his head.
"That's a choice of words I wasn't expecting."
The fire crackles. Maria has gone completely still on the other sofa in the specific way of someone who has decided, wisely, not to involve herself in whatever is about to happen. I look at him.
He looks back.
"How long have you been standing there," I say.
He smiles — not the sharp one, not the weapon. Something slower, something that means he has heard enough and finds the whole thing genuinely funny, which is so much worse than anger would have been.
"Long enough," he says, "to find out that Miss Innocent has opinions about me." His eyes move to Maria — easy, unhurried, like he is sharing a private observation with the room itself. "Our little Sophia."
Our?
The word lands somewhere it isn't supposed to.
"Excuse me," I say.
He isn't listening. Still looking at Maria with that expression the one that says the world is a mildly entertaining place and he is in no particular rush to leave it.
"Excuse me."
I stand up. Cross the room. Stop directly in front of him close enough that I have to tilt my chin upward slightly, which I resent immediately, which he notices immediately, which I resent more.
"We are in the middle of something," I say.
He looks down at me. One eyebrow lifts — the particular expression of someone who has never once been interrupted in his life and finds it more charming than irritating.
"So," he says pleasantly, "you were talking about who's been in my bed."
"That is not what—"
"No reason to go red."
I am not red you idiot
And then — quieter, closer, the words finding the space just beside my ear with a warmth I have not prepared for: "Stalker."
I don't move.
I should have moved.
The warmth of his breath touches the side of my neck and something sharp and inconvenient and entirely unwelcome moves through my chest — not interested, I am not interested — and I stand there and do not step back because stepping back would mean he has won something,
and I am not going to let him win something.
Not this. The smell of leather and something expensive reaches me, cool and deliberate, and I keep my eyes level and my breathing even.
"What do you dream about at night," I say, and look straight up at him, and do not blink.
Something shifts in his expression.
Not the amusement .But underneath it, something else moves. Something that looks almost like surprise, covered quickly but not quickly enough, like I have said something that lands differently than he expected and he is still working out what to do about that.
He holds my gaze for one second too long.
Then he looks down at my hands. I have, without realising it, picked something up from Maria's table — a folder, a pen, something — because apparently I have needed something physical between me and the specific problem of standing this close to him.
"Party planning," I say. Steady. "We are planning a party."
"I see." He says it with the tone of someone who does not entirely believe this.
"Yeah."
"So you won't need this."
He reaches into his jacket with all the time in the world, like the room has agreed to wait and he sees no reason to hurry. He pulls out a folded sheet of paper and holds it between two fingers with the ease of someone laying down a hand they have been holding all evening.
My stomach drops.
The measurement sheet.
My hand moves fast, automatic before I have consciously made a decision about it and he pulls it back without even looking, a reflex so practised it barely registers as effort. And suddenly there is almost no space between us, and his eyes are on mine, and neither of us is smiling anymore.
"Give it to me," I say.
Something shifts in his jaw. He looks at me as though I am something he is still in the process of figuring out and is not entirely pleased about how long it is taking.
A beat.
Then: "Chill, stalker."
He holds the paper out and places it in my hand — directly, simply, without theatre — and does not look away while he does it.
"Completely filled out," he says. "Every measurement."
I look down at it.
Then back up at him.
I do not know which part confuses me more the fact that I have, for approximately three seconds, lost myself somewhere in his eyes without meaning to, or the fact that he has simply given me the paper.
No conditions. No transaction. Two hours ago he said tomorrow.
Two hours ago he was a different version of this same infuriating person, and now he is standing here with an expression I have no name for, and the paper is in my hand, and nothing about any of it adds up.
"Why," I say. Stop. Hear how it sounds. Try again. "I mean — why now? Why suddenly—"
He watches me work through the sentence with an expression that confirms, without cruelty, that yes, I sound exactly as confused as I feel.
"Let's just say—" He pauses. The corner of his mouth moves — not quite a smile, something more considered. "We should start over."
He straightens slightly.
"I'm Lorenzo Calloway."
I stare at him.
He says it like it is the most natural thing in the world.
Like we are at a dinner party. Like the last three weeks have not happened — like the garden and the sketchbook and the pen and the specific warmth of his breath against my neck twenty minutes ago — like none of it exists, and we are simply two people meeting for the first time,
and this is simply how you begin.
"What?"
He waits with the patience of someone who has made a decision and is entirely comfortable letting it land at its own pace.
I open my mouth. Close it.
He tilts his head — that small movement I have started, without meaning to, to recognize. The one that appears when something amuses him against his own better judgment.
"So." Easy. Unhurried. "We have a game later. And an after-party at Pier Seven. Everyone's invited."
"Pier Seven?" Maria materializes at my shoulder from nowhere, already radiant, already committed to an idea she has formed in under two seconds.
I do not turn around.
I do not look away from him.
"Are you serious," I say. "Why would I want to go anywhere with you."
"Be my guest." A slight lift of one shoulder — the shrug of a man who has extended an invitation and is genuinely unbothered by either answer. "The offer stands either way."
"Sure." I hold his gaze. "And what exactly is the plan — push me overboard? Poison the drinks?"
His eyes move, slow and deliberate, to somewhere just behind my left shoulder.
"Your friend," he says, with the measured calm of someone making a clinical observation, "has serious trust issues."
From directly beside me, I feel Maria nod.
I turn and give her a look that should be classified as a weapon.
She has the expression of someone who has just agreed with the enemy, found it completely reasonable, and is prepared to defend the position indefinitely.
The fire crackles.
I turn back to Lorenzo.
He is still there — steady, close, patient in a way that feels less like calm and more like someone who has already decided how this ends and is simply waiting, without urgency, for me to arrive at the same conclusion.
And I become aware — suddenly, completely, against my will — of exactly how close we are standing.
Of the fact that this is not enough space.
Of the fact that it has not been enough space for some time, and I have been making a careful, deliberate, ongoing choice not to acknowledge that.
I acknowledge it now.
I hate that I acknowledge it.
"Why are you playing this game," I say. Quietly. The words arrive before I have decided to give them to him, and the moment they do I know I cannot take them back.
Something moves through his eyes — quick, warm, gone before I can name it or decide what to do with having seen it.
"Midnight, Sophia." Just as quietly. Like Maria and the fire and the whole carefully furnished room have stopped existing, and there is only this — this specific, insufficient distance, and his voice in it. "Don't be late."
One more second.
One more second than necessary.
One more than appropriate.
One more than I have any use for, landing somewhere behind my sternum and staying there long after it should have dissolved.
Then he steps back — easy, unhurried, on his own terms. At the door he pauses without turning around, existing in the space one moment longer than he needs to.
"Nice party planning," he says.
I can hear the smile in it from across the room.
And then he is gone.
The room resettles slowly around me. The fire crackles.
Maria, who has apparently been enjoying the entire exchange so thoroughly that she has produced a bag of mixed nuts from somewhere and is working through them with the focused contentment of someone at a private screening, looks at me with wide, delighted eyes.
I stare at the empty doorway.
The paper is still in my hand.
"What," Maria says finally, in the voice of someone who has witnessed something they need processed immediately and out loud, "was that? Did Lorenzo Calloway just invite you to his game and his after-party?" She squeaks slightly and promptly chokes on a nut.
I don't answer.
I am still standing in the same spot, holding the paper he has given me without asking for anything in return, turning over let's start over in my mind — simple, direct, said like a choice, like a door held open and trying to find the manipulation in it.
The architecture underneath it. The part that makes sense as a game.
I can't find it.
And I don't know which possibility frightens me more.
That it is one.
Or that it isn't.