Chapter Twenty-One
DEVLIN
On the night of the Haunted Halloween Ball, after an exhausting afternoon passing out candy to non-paying, goblin-faced children during the town’s annual shop crawl, I wait for my non-date down in the café.
There, in the fine feline company of Grumpy and Sunshine, I enjoy a glass of mulled wine by the fire—a simple pleasure I’ve sorely neglected in recent years. The purring cats and the dance and sway of the flames lulls me into a sense of peace so complete, I don’t even hear Violet coming until she’s already descending the final stair.
I rise from the couch when I see her, and across the quiet space, she smiles at me, and something in my chest warms and expands as though it might at any moment burst.
She enters the room like a princess from an enchanting storybook, floating toward me as if her feet never touch the ground. Her face is dusted with glitter, her hair free of its usual bun, a cascade of loose chestnut waves falling over soft, bare shoulders. The dress is exquisite—a perfectly fitted beaded white bodice over skirts that fall to her feet in shimmering shades of silver and white, as though the fabric was spun from moonlight. A pair of gossamer wings blooms from the back, so fine and lovely it’s a wonder they’re not real.
“You look…” My ability to speak in coherent sentences evaporates in the wake of her ethereal beauty. Eons upon eons roaming this earth and all the realms above and below, yet this one moment—this one woman reduces me to a bumbling adolescent with a hard-on and a fat, clumsy tongue that can only manage one more word. “…Nice.”
Nice. I ought to be drawn and quartered. Even the cats are looking at me as if I need lessons on how to speak to a woman from Ambrosia Divine.
Yet the little mushroom doesn’t seem bothered by my ineptitude. Quite the opposite, actually.
“Yeah?” Her smile brightens as she smooths her hands over the skirts, then twirls for me, the wings fluttering behind her, iridescent fabric glittering in the firelight. “I took some liberties with the whole fairy thing. Fae don’t actually look like this. Only in kids’ books, you know? But I figured it would still work for Halloween. Right?”
“Right,” I say, because at this particular moment, she could ask me if I’d like my balls removed and I’d probably just smile and nod, what a fine idea, let’s do exactly that.
Her effect on me is utterly stupefying, and after far too many moments of blatantly staring, I finally force my eyes back to the flames and tip back the last of the wine.
She walks a circle around me and takes stock of my outfit, a smile quirking her lips, laughter dancing in her eyes.
Bleeding skies, what I wouldn’t give to put that look on your face every night…
“You’re not the only one who took a few liberties in the costume department,” I confirm, smoothing a hand down my lacy black slip. It stops just above the knee, with a flirty slit up one side trimmed in red and topped with a dainty bow. The black silk is embroidered with words in a fine, white script: Id, Superego, Transference, Regression, Oedipal Complex, and my personal favorite—Penis Envy, to name a few.
“Interesting interpretation,” she says. “I’ll give you that.”
“It’s a Freudian slip.”
“So I gathered.”
“Too clever?”
She laughs her sweet little laugh-snort, the jarring shudder making the glasses slide down her nose, the wings flutter. “Not exactly the word that springs to mind, no.”
I push the glasses back where they belong. “What is the word that springs to mind?”
“Probably best kept to myself.” She tries to wink at me, fails miserably, laughs again, and I’m about ready to suggest we abandon this whole Halloween Ball idea and celebrate the holiday alone. In bed. Without costumes. Which is problematic on several levels, none of which I’m interested in looking at right now, so into the dungeon of denial they go, thank you very much, Dr. Freud!
“Anyway,” she says, “I’m just glad you’re not naked.”
“I’m quite certain you’re the only woman in the history of womankind who’s ever said that to me. Shall we?” I hold out my arm. She tucks her hand into the crook. For the span of several heartbeats, I can’t move. Can’t breathe. All I can feel is the warmth of her touch, the certainty of it. The familiarity—no pretense, no hesitation. It’s just like the night we ordered pineapple pizza and sat together on the couch watching her witchy show, and all the Ambrosia Divine laughs we’ve shared since.
Like something we’ve done a dozen times together. A hundred.
Something I want to keep doing with her every night for an eternity.
“Devlin?” She blinks up at me with those big blue eyes, and the air fills with the burned-sugar scent of her magic. I feel it wrapping around me, entangling, enticing, a bittersweet reminder of what this thing between us actually is.
A spell to break. A task to complete. A little fun along the way.
So why does my chest hurt when I think about getting the job done? When I think about leaving her to the tea and pumpkins and sister-witches and saucy aunts that comprise her life in Wayward Bay?
“You feeling okay?” she asks, because of course she can sense it. The sudden heaviness. The regret for something I haven’t quite lost yet, but will, all too soon.
So once again, I don the mask. For her. For myself. For the father so sure I will never be anything but the careless, irresponsible, worthless playboy.
The Devil.
“It’s Halloween, darling,” I say with a laugh and a dramatic flourish. “How could I be feeling anything but positively ghoulish?”