19. Poison Candy
Poison Candy
Elias
Maybe it’s a mistake not arriving at the Halloween party with Desdemona, but my hand is forced. After my last period, Mr Mazzati, my physics teacher, asks me to stay behind.
“You’re a bright young man and you’ve a bright future ahead of you,” is how he starts our meeting. “There’s this physics scholarship at Harvard you would be perfect for. The board has some of my old colleagues on it, and I’d be honoured to write your letter of recommendation.”
It’s the absolute last thing I expect him to say. For a moment, I can do nothing but stare at him, speechless. A physics scholarship at Harvard—what? I never even told Mazzati I was thinking of applying to Harvard. I’ve not told a soul, actually. Who would care anyway?
University in America has always been the plan: getting as far from the Pearsons as I can. But the reality is a different thing altogether. University in America is insanely expensive. Getting into Harvard has always been pure unchecked ambition on my part, quite divorced from reality.
And just like that, Mazzati’s just talked it into existence.
I stare at him, and he stares back hard, like he’s trying to see something in me that I’m trying to keep from him on purpose.
“Don’t look so gobsmacked now,” he says finally, slapping my arm bracingly. “With my good word and your brilliant mind, Elias, there’s no reason whatsoever you wouldn’t be perfect for the scholarship.”
Except that I might be arrested before the year’s out.
Which will mean a criminal record, maybe even jail time.
Which will piss off the Pearsons—who were probably going to get rid of me the moment the elections are over, but will destroy me if they can pin their inevitable loss on me.
Which means I’ll be back to being the old Elias Lennox, with nothing to my name except whatever I have in my pockets.
Unless I manage to make my time here count.
The bargain, the Brotherhood, Desdemona.
Mazzati lives in a world where a brilliant mind is a useful tool, and hard work pays off. But this isn’t the world I live in. Can’t pop his bubble, though, can I?
“Sure, sir,” I lie with a smile. “I’ll apply.”
The Montgomery estate is just like Benjamin himself: lofty, over the top and painfully posh. It’s set deep into acres of land, with an endlessly long gravel path lined with columns of Italian-style cypresses.
Montgomery, for such an uptight overachiever, must really have something to prove, because he’s gone all out for this party.
There are black draperies and blood-red lamps and candelabras ablaze with actual candles—the Halloween decorations are so goddamn lavish they’re not even tacky.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out the skeletons were from actual dead people.
That’s exactly the kind of thing a filthy rich creep like Montgomery would have on hand.
I’m distracted from the moment I arrive—Mazzati’s words stick to me like a tiny bit of tape you can’t seem to flick away. With my good word and your brilliant mind, Elias. No reason whatsoever you wouldn’t be perfect for the scholarship.
Except a million reasons.
I shake my head, annoyed, and look around. I underestimated how difficult it would be to find Desdemona in such a huge place, especially when everyone is dressed up or in disguise.
Just like the decorations, no expense has been spared on costumes, that much is obvious. With my black jeans, black T-shirt, black gloves and cheap plastic ghost mask, I must look barely one step above staff.
Actually, scratch that. Two waitresses walk past me, carrying trays of some gruesome-looking cocktails.
I laugh to myself.
I look way poorer than the staff.
With a shrug, I turn and follow the strident music into a big drawing room so fancy it has a grand piano in one corner.
Two mermaids sit on the black velvet bench, and a nurse with long black hair and a slit throat half lies on the glossy lid.
None of them are the beautiful monster I’m hunting, though.
It was definitely a mistake not arriving here with her. She should be on my arm, fake laughing at my jokes and fake trembling at my touch. Fucking Mazzati—with his well-meaning teacher optimism.
As if I could ever even afford to dream of Harvard. As if hard work has ever been enough to get me into the places I need to get into. As if my life has ever been that—
And then I finally spot Desdemona.
And Mr Mazzati and Harvard and the scholarship and physics all go flying out of my mind.
In a sea of girls dressed like slutty devils and slutty angels and slutty zombies, I expected Desdemona to be a beacon of restrained elegance. Maybe wearing a long pale gown with a splash of blood for effect, or the toga of some Roman dictator.
But in fact—Desdemona is just as slutty as any other girl.
She’s wearing a cheerleader uniform: a tiny blue top with long sleeves, cropped right beneath her breasts, exposing a flat stomach, taut with muscles.
Her skirt, blue with flashes of silver within the pleats, is just as tiny as her top, exposing long, toned thighs.
She’s wearing thigh-high socks, tennis shoes, and her golden hair is in two long pigtails.
There’s a slash of blood in the middle of her belly, like she’s been sliced across her abdomen—right where I left a trail of my own very real blood, what feels like a lifetime ago.
“Fuck,” I bite out beneath my ghost mask.
Remember why you’re really here, Lennox.
But she’s looking up as if she heard me, even though it’s impossible that she would have, because the music is so loud and there’s so much noise and so many bodies all around us. Our eyes meet. My breath catches, sputters—the scratching of an empty lighter.
Desdemona curves her lips and arches her back, the muscles rippling in her thighs and stomach, and god—why wouldn’t I go to prison for her?
She’s holding a silver-and-blue pompom in one hand, the other wedged under her arm, but she raises her free hand in the air between us, palm tilted up, and she crooks her finger at me.
Come, the gesture says.
I obey.
Am I fucking up? Is this the plan working, or is this me walking into a trap I set myself?
When I reach her, in the red lights of Montgomery’s house, under the flickering of all those candles, of all this silverware and crystal, with the smell of alcohol and candy apples and caramel and sweat and perfume in the air, I feel like I’ve been caught in some sort of spell.
I curl an arm around Desdemona’s shoulders and she plasters her body into mine, thighs pressing right against me, where there’s no chance she can’t feel the hard bulge she’s causing.
“You’re late,” she whispers into my ear.
Her breath is hot and smells like blackberries and aniseed. I grin beneath my mask. I don’t think she’s putting this on, but maybe she is—and the not-knowing is sort of a game.
And because I also don’t know if I’m putting this on, and since my life is a fucked up mess anyway, a cosmic joke with my existence as the grand punchline—why not play?
“Impatient girls don’t get rewards.”
Her friends are all around us: I even spot the hulking, beastly form of Dimitri Kavinski nearby. They’re all looking, and the Inquisitor, whoever he is, is no doubt nearby, too.
This is all for them, right?
Desdemona’s fingers dig into my arms: the sleeves of my T-shirt are short enough that her fingernails make contact with the skin over my biceps. I’m not big and thick, like her cousin Dimitri, and I don’t have washboard abs like the rest of the Spearcrest boy-dolls.
But I’m strong because I’ve had no choice but to be, and there’s not a lot of fat to me. My body’s always been in the midst of an emergency, and so there’s nothing for her to grasp except muscle and skin.
“I don’t want to be patient,” she says into my ear. And, like she can’t help herself, “What rewards?”
“Be a good girl, love, and you might find out.”
Her body still pressed into mine, she pulls slightly away, staring into my face, but there’s only a plastic mask for her to see, and the eye slits are too narrow for her to make out my eyes clearly, especially in the dim bloodied light.
I, on the other hand, get a good look at her face: she’s wearing no make-up except for the lines of black and silver framing her pretty brown eyes.
Her mouth is soft and fleshy, there’s the low flush of alcohol in her cheeks, messy enough to be wholly authentic.
She’s a little drunk, and a little restless, and—yes, impatient.
Have you been thinking of me, love?
When I spread Desdemona’s pretty legs open on her fancy little desk, and when I slid my fingers inside her and worked her with a patient, steady thumb, I had a vague idea in my mind that this might be enough to throw her off balance, to let her taste something she’s never tasted before.
Like placing a sweet candy on my enemy’s tongue for her to suck, poisoning her before she could even know she’d been poisoned.
Instead of saying something biting or mean, she leans forward to speak right against the shell of my ear.
“What do you want me to do?”
There’s a flash of panic in my chest, and I have to force myself to get a grip.
This is all part of the plan, isn’t it? Even if it doesn’t feel like it is.
Especially because it doesn’t feel like it is.
“Let’s do what we do best, love.” My husky whisper doesn’t give away the sudden flutter of fear in my belly. “Let’s blur the lines.”