Page 1 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Fire

Remi Storm

My phone bings a notification.Jonah, my gallery director, peers at my skin, mere inches from my face to strategize what my makeup look is going to be tonight. Without turning my head, I carefully swipe the screen. An exclusive invitation to a new art festival somewhere in the mountains pops up. “Hey, have you heard of Avalon Vale?”

Jonah sniffs at the screen I display for him. He raises an eyebrow. The one gesture alone shows he’s impressed with whatever he’s reading.

Jonah turns his attention back to arranging his beauty kit on the table next to us, prepping his tools one by one. “Baby girl, the entire world except you have heard of Avalon Vale. It’s not every day that a new monster-controlled city appears out of the mist. You work too hard. That’s a fact.”

He gingerly pinches a warm towel from a bowl and places it gently on my face. “I didn’t realize they were allowing human entry, yet.”

“Not now, but soon. In a couple of weeks, actually.” I favorite the email with a star to read it later. It will be something to look forward to after tonight’s event. Just thinking about it makes my stomach churn.

Jonah takes the hot towel away and pats my face dry. “Well, when you get the deets, you’re taking me. I’m pretty sure it’s in my contract, so it’s non-negotiable.”

I giggle as I put my phone away.

Jonah tsks. “Hold still, Remi! We’re not trying to look like an electrified cat!”

“A what?” While I try to decipher Jonah’s latest idiom, he plucks an unruly hair from my eyebrow.

I yelp. “Dammit, that smarts!”

“Well, if you don’t hold still, I’m about to make you a genius.”

Before I can defend myself, Jonah tweezes another three eyebrow hairs in rapid succession. The sadist blows the end of his tweezers as one would the barrel of a gun. “There, you big baby. All done. Now, I can finally work.” Jonah holds my cold can of fizzy water against the inflamed brow.

He’s lucky he’s the best damn director slash personal assistant slash life coach ever. “First of all, I just asked you to help with my makeup, not mow down my face. And second of all,” I say, speaking up over his tsking, which is always a prelude to more sassiness, “what if I was trying to grow out my brows?”

The incorrigible man merely tosses his long sheet of waist-length black hair over his shoulder. “My dear, you have two caterpillars inching their way across your forehead. I merely made them more symmetrical. Hold that pose.” Jonah mists my face with what he refers to as angel tears, then slathers my face with something called a Flash Facial.

I fight for breath. “I wasn’t posing. I was glaring,” I clarify.

“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.” Jonah’s voice goes from snappy to dreamy, which means he’s already getting lost in his own world as he works on my face. When my skin resembles a glazed donut, Jonah moves on to his small metal palette that he balances on his hand. He squirts a variety of foundations onto it in the medium to tan spectrum, and swatches my face until he finds a blend of colors he approves of.

In exactly fifty-nine minutes, I’m supposed to make an appearance at the Neue Grove, the upstart gallery that everyone in the community can’t wait to see. At least, that’s what Jonah wants me to do. I would rather spend the night curled up on my couch eating pizza and streaming the latest action thriller.

“Remind me why I’m going to this again?”

This time, Jonah does a full pause, all six feet of him staring me down with a hand on his hip. “You are going to this because you are better than Liesl and Addison, and you are showing them that their little gallery’s got nothing on you, thankyouverymuch. Now look up.” Jonah smears eyeliner under my lower lash line.

“But they do have something on me. My entire marketing list, not to mention my contacts, my artists, all the vendors I’ve contracted this past year?—”

“Nuh-uh. We’re not doing that,” Jonah says, cutting me off.

“Doing what? Speaking the truth?”

In the last month, the gallery has been bleeding cash. All part of the plan, of course. It takes money to make money.

What I didn’t plan on was Liesl Grove and Addison Hawke, my sales associate and marketing assistant, opening their own gallery a few blocks away. And now they have my book of business that I’ve been cultivating for over a year now, and here they are popping up out of nowhere, capitalizing on my name in order to get business for themselves.

If it weren’t happening to me, I’d be impressed by their audacity.

Jonah boops my nose with a fluffy blush brush. “How many times have I told you to stop selling yourself short? Your clients love you, not to mention the artists. I mean, for the love of the goddess, who in the hell would take a chance on that?” He gestures to the wall.

ThethatJonah refers to is an abstract piece that called to me from the first time I laid eyes on it. There is something to the movement of the brushstrokes and colors that makes me think of the chaotic energy of young love.

“Just because certain people can’t see the potential doesn’t mean it’s ugly or bad.” I state matter-of-factly. “And I’ll have you know that I actually just sold this piece to the Lyonne estate. They were the ones on the phone when you came in.”

He fluffs my hair, clucking around me like a proud mother hen. “See, this is exactly why your clients and artists love you.”

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