Chapter 1 Diantha #2
“Occult?” The voice beside me snaps me out of the daydream.
I look up, forgetting myself, and find that this…
this Orfeo is looking right at me. Heavy brows drawn down into a frown, lips puckered into an inquisitive pout.
When his mouth relaxes, I see his cupid’s bow, the dimple above his lip so deep I immediately imagine pressing my pinky into it.
He’s delicious, I think. And the thought feels as embarrassing as any involuntary bodily function.
Jesus.
“Like, uh—” My cheeks are heating rapidly. He’s watching me with a gentle curiosity, light brown eyes reflecting every flicker of light from overhead. They look like honey—sticky, sweet honey. “Tarot cards, crystal balls—”
“Broomsticks,” Bowen interrupts me, marking something down on the paper in front of him with a freshly sharpened number two pencil. “Big pointy hats. Eye of newt. Dung of bat.”
I want to grab that pencil and shove it through his voice box.
“Well…” A microsecond internal debate happens inside me and I decide I’m not going to get into an argument with Bowen on the first day of class.
“Sure. I’m hoping to better understand Southern European rituals,” I conclude.
Orfeo’s brows twitch and I swear he inches forward in the old seat, leaning toward me.
“Thank you, Diantha. Orfeo, you made quite the impression already, but go on, tell us what you’re here to do—other than interrupt Diantha and stun Laila.”
“Of course,” he says with a good-natured laugh, indulging Bowen.
“My name is Orfeo. I just transferred this semester. I am also a master’s student—receiving my MFA with a focus on sculpture and painting.
I’m beginning my final project this semester, but I’m always studying the greats.
To maybe pick up a thing or two.” His eyes crinkle at the corners and his lips pull into a coy sideways smile. “Through osmosis.”
“Yes! Exactly. Love that European mentality. It is only by studying the greats that we too may become one of them!”
I hold back an eye roll. I can imagine how the rest of this class is will go.
Every time Orfeo opens his gorgeous lips and delivers a witticism with that soft, rolling accent, Bowen is going to do a victory lap around the room, declaring the absolute unbelievable superiority of Europe.
As if what happens in Italy has any-fucking-thing to do with Professor Cormac Bowen in Echidna, Pennsylvania.
Enthused and revitalized, Bowen shuts off the lights and begins clicking through his droll slides. I finish ripping off my rain jacket and settle in to listen. This is why I’m here.
Taking notes is not totally necessary, but I don’t have internet in my apartment and I want to make sure I know what books I’ll need and when readings are due. I scribble out the reading schedule and try not to panic. Bowen has us reading almost a book a week.
“Hey.” Orfeo’s voice pulls at me. I ignore him. “Hey, Diantha.” His tongue stalls on the th sound in my name and a lump jumps in my throat.
“Hm?”
He’s leaning forward in his chair, arms pressing into the desk. He pulls his teeth over his bottom lip. “Do you…have a pen?”
Of course. Instantly, I’m transported back to high school. I narrow my eyes at him. “No.”
He points at the one in my hand. “But you do.”
“I’m using it.”
“Can I borrow it? Just for a moment.” He lifts his fingers in an illustrative pinch moment. Like I might be confused about how small a moment is.
“No,” I hiss back. “You cannot borrow my pen that I am using.”
He blinks slowly, long lashes flashing. I’m reminded of peacocks and their immense plumage. “Please?” Does he think he can charm me? Please.
“No.”
He pouts. He literally pouts, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “Vabbene.”
“Use your phone.” I can’t believe I’m offering a solution.
Bowen is going on and on about the 11th century illuminated manuscripts and here I am whispering.
As if this class isn’t costing me north of five thousand US dollars!
I point my pen at the rectangle straining against his front pocket. “Take notes on your phone.”
Orfeo doesn’t like this. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. No, baby boy wants a pen.
The lecture hall is becoming almost unbearably hot.
I slouch off my sweater so I’m in only my soft cotton tank top and twist my (unmanageably curly, altogether too long) hair up into a clip.
As my hands move, I can feel his eyes on me—on my body.
Hot on the side of my neck, tracing down over the swell of my chest. I can even feel when his eyes land, finally, on my waist. He shifts in his chair.
Sits up straight again. I want to ignore him—ignore that drag of his gaze over me—but there’s a pressure low in my belly, behind the zipper of my jeans.
This is what Italian men do, right? They worship your body; they woo you with sweet, delicious words and an overfamiliarity that feels like love.
I’d watched my mother get her heart stomped on by enough Orfeos.
Handsome, brown-eyed devils who swept into our lives and then left her a sobbing half-human.
A mess on our kitchen floor for me to clean up.
Okay, maybe it’s not fair to put this all on Italy. Honestly, if any one geographic location was to blame, it would be Brooklyn and all the gorgeous, evil creatures that seemed to spawn there with the explicit intent of torturing my mother.
Bowen switches from illuminated manuscripts to Romanesque frescoes, and I lean forward, ignoring the swell of heat inside me.
All night school classes end at nine-fifteen, and for a brief moment, as we rush out into the wet, cold January air, the campus comes back to life.
Thien and Laila breeze past me arm-in-arm, heads bowed in a fit of communal giggling, and disappear down the stone path into the fog.
In the distance, I hear the high-pitched hysterics of undergrads.
I got a handful of texts during class. One from my best friend/sometimes boss Evie (“where r u bestieeeeee”) and my shift manager at the library (“can you cover for Dion on sat 1/24?”) and another from my Great Aunt Ritza (“new moon in Aquarius … do not forget to set out your decks, your crystals, your amulets…! blessed be …!”).
Nothing urgent, which makes my heart pang, oddly. After living for so many years in complete chaos, the quiet of my life without my mother keeps me on my back foot.
Outside the iron gates that separate U of E from downtown Echidna, Main Street is a long, dark stretch of bistros, antique shops, and candle stores that eventually turn into a stretch of rowdy bars with neon signs, ominously nicknamed Devil’s Row.
This is a detail I still can’t wrap my head around, even after living here for a year and a half.
What the hell could be happening in a sleepy town like this?
Echidna is like most university towns—an odd mix of eclectic, academically minded weirdos, badly behaved underaged students, and a small but mighty contingency of WASPs compulsively obsessed with returning to the good old days.
It starts misting again, and I pull up my hood and pick up my pace. A group of rowdy, zigzagging frat boys passes me without even a sideways glance, followed close behind by girls in stilettos and miniskirts, huddled together for warmth.
Fragments of their frenetic chatter drift on the frigid wind toward me.
“Did you see the blond? He looked like a fucking thug…”
“…my dad has been paying dues for the last thirty-fucking-years and they want to turn me away? Just you fucking wait until I tell him. Just you fucking wait…”
“…Tabby told Zoe this was happening, but obviously we didn’t believe her.”
“Obviously. It’s Tabby.”
I slow to match their pace, melting into the shadows of the last few shops before reaching Devil’s Row.
“Hades House wouldn’t even exist without our grandparents—this won’t fly for long. Mark my words, bitches.”
They were coming from Hades House. That would explain their marked doucheyness.
I can see the club across the four-way intersection, with its chic black shutters and off-white gingerbread trim along the low-slung portico.
Gas lamp sconces flicker on either side of the dark wood door.
A man leans back against it and, from my vantage point, I can just make out the orange tip of a cigarette and a plume of gray smoke.
Smoking outside Hades House? An offense punishable by death. Where were the sentient cable knit sweaters to arrest him and commence the public spanking, post-haste?
Suddenly the door behind him swings open, sending the smoker stumbling forward and cursing. A crash of laughter, thudding EDM, and shouting spills out before the men dissolve into their own raucous laughter.
What the fuck?
Devil’s Row is brightly lit and there are a few people milling around, smoking and staggering from bar to bar. The light turns green, but I don’t cross Main Street. Instead, I sink back into the shadows and watch.
The men gathered around the door are unlike anyone I’ve ever seen in Echidna. It’s not just the cigarette smoking and the hard angles of their faces that make them stand out—almost garishly—in comparison to their environment. It’s not even the thumping dance music.
What the hell are they doing here? And at Hades House? I thought you had to be the son of the son of the son of the guy who discovered botulism in order to get in.
These guys are…
I have no idea what their deal is.
But there is one way for me to find out.
I don’t usually do this. In fact, I almost never do this anymore.
But tonight? I don’t know why tonight feels like the right time to bust out my party trick.
Maybe it’s the gentle energetic vibrations climbing up through my fingers, wrapping around my wrists, pulling me toward them.
Piquing my curiosity even more than their bone structure and fashion choices.
I close my eyes and let my power loose.
It’s uncomfortable at first. The buzzing in my fingertips turns into a burn, my blood pressure plummets, my heart hammers against my ribcage. I try to keep my breathing even, slow. Which is almost impossible when your ancient, little lizard brain thinks you’re dying.
Then, in an instant, I’m under the portico with them. Not physically, but all my senses are there. I can smell burning tobacco. I can feel the heat radiating from Hades House.
Up close, the smoker is tall and broad, with a solid, square jaw and tanned skin. His curly hair is a dusty, golden shade of blond; his eyes are a deep, warm green. He’s more than handsome—he’s beautiful. And it’s terrifying.
He brings thick fingers to his mouth and sucks brutally on his cigarette.
“Shithead kids are going to call their daddies.”
“What the fuck do you care, Leo?” The other man, the one who just swung open the door, is much smaller than the blond, slighter in build with impish features.
Dark purple circles hang under his chocolate-brown eyes.
“We fucking own this place now. Bought it with cold, hard cash. So they can cry to their mommy and daddy all they fucking want.” He punctuates this by hacking a wad of spit onto the sidewalk between them.
Leo jumps back. “What the fuck, Nis? Seriously, man? Watch my fucking sneakers.”
“Sorry, chief.” Nis snickers and presses a cigarette between his lips, lighting it. “Orfeo is still MIA.”
A zap of shock ripples through me and for a moment, my energy surges, causing the sconces to flicker. Leo and Nis give them half a second of consideration.
“He’s not back yet?”
“Nah, and he’s not picking up his goddamn phone. Fucking Italians.”
“Watch it.”
Nis laughs. “Sorry, man.”
Leo tosses his cigarette and drags his hand down his face. “Do we need to be worried? Or is he just out with one of his girls again?”
Girls. Plural.
“I don’t give a shit about his personal well-being. I’m worried he’s going to screw us over, and we’re going to be left with the mess once he scampers back to his palazzo on the Roman seaside.”
Leo snorts. “There’s no palazzo, Nis. Unless you wanna count the hotel room he’s camping out in. Why the fuck do you think he’s here? Because he’s bored of being a fucking prince? If there was a palazzo, would he really be in Echidna, Pennsylvania, working in a fucking demon’s nightclub?”
“You think he’s in debt?”
Leo’s broad mouth twists into a cold smile. “I know he’s in debt. A blood debt.”
A blood debt?
I can’t take it anymore.
The air warbles around me. For a second, my vision constricts to a pinhole.
I hear the smaller man—Nis, I think—yelling something.
But there’s a swell of fear and anxiety so powerful inside me, it’s almost impossible to stay decoupled from my physical body. I try to bear down, to anchor my spirit to this spot. I’m desperate to know more about Orfeo, about the demon nightclub.
But I can’t.
I snap back into myself with a shudder and a yelp.
The January air hits me like a softball right in the diaphragm and I double over, gasping for air.
I try to keep quiet, but the wind and rain feel like a thousand white-hot needles tearing through my cheeks and down my throat, and I choke on a swell of saliva in my mouth.
How long has it been since I decoupled? I don’t remember it ever being like this.
Mom was right.
Another rattling gasp rips from my chest as my knees buckle. I’m falling forward. Shit.
I try to extend a hand to stop myself from face-planting into the icy, wet concrete. But as I reach forward, I feel a palm close over my mouth.
The last thing I see before darkness consumes me is the crescent moon as I’m pulled into a dark alley.