Feast of Sparks Read online

  St. Sebastian blinked at him.

  “My family is at Thornchapel for the summer,” Auden said, his eyes raking over the boy he had pinned against a gravestone. “You should come visit.”

  It was that peremptory, lordly tone—not we should hang out, not it’d be cool to see you, but the invitation that St. Sebastian could come to Auden—that broke through St. Sebastian’s shock. He shook Auden off so violently that any other boy would have fallen on his ass; Auden, of course, only rolled gracefully to his feet and stared down at St. Sebastian with a curled mouth.

  “Or don’t come visit,” Auden said, looking entertained by St. Sebastian’s expression.

  That finally pushed the angry, embarrassed, defensive words out of his throat. “All of a sudden you want to be friends? After we haven’t seen each other any other time you’ve come back here?”

  “Oh, St. Sebastian,” Auden said, giving him an expression of pity and private amusement. “I always see you.”

  And St. Sebastian didn’t have an answer to that either.

  Chapter 4

  Proserpina

  Present day

  * * *

  My tea’s gone cold enough that the milk makes a streaky film on top; I push it away with a sigh. The hand that pushes it away aches and throbs under several small bandages—each bandage marking the bite of a thorn. Marking Auden’s reverent kisses afterward.

  The police officer across the table from me gives me a sympathetic smile.

  “Almost finished,” she says kindly. “Just a few more things and then I’ll be off to take Mr. Martinez’s report.”

  I nod, glance out the library windows at the gross day outside. All my life I’ve romanticized English rain; this past month, I’ve been downright rhapsodizing about the stark, sublime beauty of winter—but right now I hate all of it. I hate the cold and the wet and the brown, I’m sick of the insidious damp and the fucking mud. I want color and light and asphalt baked so hot it makes the air shimmer. I want the sounds of children screeching as they jump through sprinklers and parties blaring music into the night—I want life, full and summery, so thick and lush that it makes every moment a whispering joy.

  Convivificat.

  God, what a lie. Nothing will stir or quicken ever again.

  As if able to sense my unhappiness, Sir James Frazer stands up from where he was sitting only a few feet away and walks over to me, nosing at my elbow until I drop a hand to pet him. He tries to lick the hand that’s petting him, but is baffled by all the bandages there, and so he gives up and curls protectively around my feet, letting out a doggy huff as he does. When the officer chased everyone away earlier, I expected Sir James to follow Auden outside, but the sweet hound refused to leave the library, instead staying next to me for the entire uncomfortable hour.

  An uncomfortable hour that, thankfully, is nearly over.

  Writing on a pad of paper, the officer asks me for my father’s contact information, which I give, and then finally she asks if I know why my mother would’ve come here to Thornchapel the year she went missing.

  The year she died.

  “I think . . . I mean, I know she was involved with the owner of this house at that time,” I answer, trying to be as blunt and informational as possible.

  “Romantically?” the officer asks tactfully.

  “Sexually,” I correct. Both Ralph and my mother are dead, it’s not like it’s going to hurt their feelings.

  Oh God, my mother is dead, she’s really dead . . .

  “That’s very interesting,” she says, and I wonder what interesting is cop-speak for. Then again, what does it matter? She wasn’t the one who had to learn that her parents were polyamorous kinksters who were involved with the parents of the same people that she has been getting kinky with. She didn’t have to learn that her mother was descended from the Kernstow family, and therefore the object of Ralph Guest’s obsession, and that it also made her the object of Ralph Guest’s obsession.

  To the officer, this is just another day on the job. Human remains that happen to be in an unusual place.

  For me, it’s the end of the world.

  After thanking me and promising a detective would be in touch, the officer leaves to find St. Sebastian, and I sit in the library alone with the sound of rain, my cold tea, and the sleeping dog at my feet. I manage a text to my father with the neatest summary of the events I can imagine and tell him I’ll call tomorrow. The idea of calling tonight and talking it through all over again sounds worse than torture.

  I just want to be alone, not only with the bones of my mother’s body, but also with the bones of every hope and dream about her I ever had.

  “Come on, Poe,” a soft voice says near my ear. I look up to see Rebecca standing above me. The tea is gone and there’s a scatter of limp, used bandages on the table that I must have peeled off in my reverie.

  “Are they all gone?” I ask in a whisper. “Are they . . . done?”

  “St. Sebastian is still with them, but the rest are done for now.”

  Just last night, Rebecca guided Delphine and me as we fucked for the first time. She watched as Auden kissed my virgin’s blood from my cunt, and then crawled back up to kiss my mouth. She watched as Saint joined us, as the three of us shared what felt like the inevitable. Rituals and fire and happiness. The consecration of the May Queen, becoming a bride by thorns. All just last night, and now . . .

  I blink up at her.

  “Have you cried since you saw her?” Rebecca asks, her eyes soft and her voice gentle, even though her words are not. Her words mean business; her words don’t shy away from the truth. None of us doubt that the bones buried behind the altar are my mother’s, and while the officer interviewing me told me there would be a confirmation process involving Mom’s teeth, I don’t need their endorsement to see the truth.

  Now all that’s left is to face it.

  I rub at my bleary but dry eyes. “No. I haven’t cried.”

  “I thought so,” she says. “Come on.”

  “Come on where?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer and I stand up anyway. Rebecca isn’t to be resisted , and I’m in no state to resist anyone right now. I’m too tired, too shocked, too sad. I feel like a ghost as we walk out of the library, like my feet don’t even touch the floor, like I’ll pass through any wall I come to. How can I still have a body when my mother is nothing but bones?

  “How did you feel this morning?” Rebecca asks, almost conversationally, as we climb up not the west stairs, but the south stairs, the ones that lead to the nearly renovated wing. “Before, I mean.”

  This morning.

  It feels like years ago—and yet—

  “Strange,” I say. It’s almost a relief to talk about something else, even if that something else is something I don’t understand. “Like I woke up different. Like there’s these moments when I can still feel the thorn chapel, even now.”

  She slows, stopping on the landing to look down at me. At some point today, she’d pulled the top half of her braids into a quick bun, leaving the other half down, and it makes her look younger, like a college student getting ready to study. It’s a look only amplified by her expression, which I’ve heard Auden teasingly call her genius at work look. She looks like I’ve just given her the most puzzling answer of all time.

  “What?” she asks.

  I shrug. I don’t even know what I mean, I don’t even know how someone would even begin describing what I felt last night in the ruins. “The air felt a certain way,” I try, although even that flattens last night down so much as to make it meaningless. How do I describe what I heard? What I saw? What I think Auden saw? “And I can still feel it. Not all the time, but sometimes. It’s like I left the chapel, but the chapel—”

  “Didn’t leave you,” Rebecca finishes for me, seeming to realize something. Then she sighs. “Yes.”

  I peer up at her. “Do you feel the same way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think it’s like . . . a ritua
l hangover or something?”

  “Becket would probably say yes,” she says, but she looks like she doesn’t really believe it herself.

  I’m personally not sure what to believe. Four years in the kink world have acquainted me intimately with the lingering endorphin highs or crashes that can follow a scene—but this feels different than anything I’ve ever felt. It feels more than chemical.

  I push my fingers against my eyes again. It’s too much to think about, too much to hold inside myself, both the heavy, carnal joy of last night and the memory of white bones in dark mud.

  Behind the altar.

  All this time she was right behind the altar.

  All this time, she was right there in the chapel.

  A warm hand circles one of my wrists and gently tugs my hand down. “Shhh,” Rebecca soothes. “I’m glad to know I’m not alone in feeling strange today, but what I really wanted to know was how your body felt this morning. If you were sore.”

  Oh.

  “I am sore, but I like it,” I say. In fact, the sharp ache in my thorn-bitten hand and the dull throb in my pussy have been the twin anchors holding me to the ground all day. The tender, piercing reminders that I am here, I am alive, that last night I was a saint and a goddess and a bride.

  Rebecca gives me a fond smile. “Of course you like it.”

  She slides her fingers from my wrist to my hand and gives it a squeeze; pain blooms hot and fast and I gasp.

  “I want to help you feel better,” she says. “May I?”

  Suddenly, nothing sounds better. Why would anyone give me a blanket and a biscuit when I needed leather and teeth? When I needed tears instead of tea?

  “That sounds amazing,” I reply.

  “May Auden help?” she asks, ducking to catch my eyes. “I’m going to be teaching him.”

  “Teaching?”

  “He asked me last night if I would teach him how to be a Dominant. Surely you’ve noticed he has some interest in kink,” she adds dryly.

  Oh. Yes, I have noticed. It was hard not to with all the blood-kissing and also that time he came in his pants just from spanking me. Or that other time he came just from jerking off Saint in the shower while he held him against the wall by his throat. Rebecca adds, “And I think you’d like him there, learning on you.”

  Learning on me. Does anything sound better? Auden Guest discovering what gets him hard by doing the things that get me wet? To be the one privileged enough to see him vulnerable, student-like, clumsy? To watch as his excitement kindles into a lifelong lust that a thousand beatings, fuckings and suckings can’t sate?

  Rebecca seems to know exactly what I’m thinking. “The two of you have something.”

  I think of last night, of the words we spoke right before Auden slid his fingers into my panties.

  You must know by now what it takes for me to belong to someone.

  One must earn you.

  Is that what Auden is doing, learning kink from Rebecca? Is he trying to earn me? Because I remember something else I told him.

  I don’t kneel for selfish men.

  Slowly, I say, “I think we do have something. I’m just not sure what it is, or if it’s a good idea, or what anything looks like after last night.” I don’t say: I want to kneel to him, selfish man that he is, but I’m scared to. I’m scared that his selfishness might excite me.

  I also don’t say: And last night, I also happened to have sex with a man he hates. . .

  There’s so much to think about that my head aches with it all. I don’t know the rules of sex, I don’t know what I owe Saint after last night, and I don’t know what I owe Auden, and I don’t know what they owe each other. I don’t even know why I feel like owe has to be part of it, just that whatever is strung between the three of us is complicated enough that debt is involved.

  What do you know, Proserpina?

  I know that last night I told Saint that he has me, and that means something.

  I know, despite what I said, I do want to kneel for Auden. More than anything.

  I know that after this morning, nothing matters anymore. What use are self-righteous declarations and vague promises after I’ve seen my mother in the mud?

  “What did you have in mind?” I ask. “I want Auden there, but last night Saint and I . . . ”

  “I know about you and Saint,” Rebecca says with a look. I’m not sure what the look is supposed to mean—probably that she’s Auden’s best friend and still doesn’t approve of Saint because of whatever mysterious thing happened in their past. “I am going to hurt you and Auden is going to help,” she continues. “I don’t know what else, because I can’t know until we’re all there in the moment. It’s a possibility that you might need something more than pain.”

  “I never have before,” I say. And it’s true. I was a virgin until last night, despite being an experienced kinkster. The veteran virgin, the literal Madonna-whore. I would do a scene for the pain and shame and submission alone, and save the pleasure for later, when I was by myself.

  “That was before last night,” Rebecca points out. “You might feel differently now.”

  I let out a long breath. I’m so tired, and so, so close to turning into a ghost again, which means I can’t be anything other than honest. “Yes. I might.” I woke up last night needing to be fucked, and this morning, I couldn’t wait until we had another ritual. Far from slaking my thirst, last night only seemed to intensify it.

  She nods. “I’ll text Saint then, and tell him to join us when he can.”

  With a tug on my wrist, she leads me all the way up the stairs and to one of the empty bedrooms. The whole wing smells like paint and fresh wood and new house, although the random stacks of tile and light fixtures in the hallway speak to the amount of work still needing done before we move here from the other wing.

  When Rebecca pushes open the door, I see Auden’s already in there, leaning against the wall and looking out the window. Out toward the woods hiding the thorn chapel.

  He turns when he hears us coming in, and I notice he’s changed from a sweater to a thin long-sleeved shirt, like he’s anticipating working up a sweat. He pads in bare feet over to where we stand in the doorway, and my eyes are dragged down. Down to those perfect feet naked on the honey-colored wood of the new floor, down to their distinct arches and strong, squared-off toes.

  They’re feet made for kissing, for worshipping, and the itch to get to my hands and knees is overwhelming. Down there, the world would make sense. Down there, everything would be right and natural and soothing.

  “Proserpina,” he says softly. “Look at me.”

  I look. There’s a small lamp on the floor and the fading rain-light coming in from the window, but it’s dim enough that shadows drip from his eyelashes and run down the strong column of his throat. His hair is wavier than normal, tousled as it gets when he gets frustrated or anxious and pulls on it, and he’s got his clear-framed glasses tucked into the front of his shirt. I’ve only seen him wear the glasses in his office when he’s drafting, or very early in the morning, when I’ve caught him reading graphic novels at the kitchen table while he drinks his first cup of tea for the day. He always blushes when I catch him, clearing his throat and closing the book, as if I just caught him looking at his own unpublished poetry or something equally embarrassing, and not something millions of other people love. The idea that he’s brought the glasses here is kind of endearing, as if he wants to study, as if he’s approaching this like he approaches his work, and he’ll need to focus and concentrate and see.

  When I finally meet his eyes, they’re dark and deep and kind. The eyes of someone who knows the grass growing over his mother’s grave, just as I now do.

  “If I could rearrange the world for you, I would,” he says. “I’d rearrange everything.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, an automatic response. I’ve given it to everyone today, several times—I’ve been giving it for twelve years—and Auden recognizes it for what it is. A defense mechanism,
a dismissal. I don’t like grief, I don’t like sadness or any pain that doesn’t come from the palm of a sadist, and I especially, especially don’t like pity or compassion or help. I’m built to be happy, I’m built to be independent, and grief crashes through both those things like a stone through glass.

  “It’s not okay,” he says. “I want to help you feel better, but before we start, I just want you to know that. It’s not okay, and if I could take every bit of pain away from you, I would, I’d take it and carry it for you.”

  “But you can’t,” I whisper.

  “I know,” he says, frustration lacing his tone. “But I can give you something else in its place, something you’ve chosen. And maybe I can’t carry your pain for you, but I can tuck you into my arms and keep you safe from everything else while you feel it.”

  I blink up at him. His words should be too much, they should be too intense, it’s not even been a month since I’ve come back to Thornchapel—but they’re not too much at all, they’re exactly what I needed to hear.

  He leans down so he can speak gently into my ear. I catch that Thornchapel scent of his—trees and flowers, pepper and citrus. “So may I?” he asks. “May I give you something else?”

  I let my chin drop to my chest and my eyes close. Fuck, I’m tired, and my chest aches, and all I want is for Auden to do what he’s promising and carry me away. “You may as long as you don’t say May I to me again tonight.”

  It’s as if I slapped him, and I have no idea why. Auden jerks back, his lips parted in shock. He levels a wary, almost wounded, gaze down at me, and I don’t have time to ask him why he’s looking at me like that because Rebecca steps next to me with her phone in her hand.

  “No may I’s. So it’s going to be one of those kinds of nights,” Rebecca observes. “Then let’s get the boring stuff out of the way so we can get to the tears. I’ve texted Saint, and he’s almost finished with the interview. Delphine is on the phone with her parents and Becket is on his way from the church. Poe, would you like them to watch or would it be better if I told them to stay away?”