Page 28 of Kept

Ever aware that I might run across one of the Demons, I took the time to make myself look nice that evening, curling my hair and touching mascara on my lashes. Mom hugged me before I ducked into the rain for my waiting taxi.

“You smell good enough to eat, honeybun,” she said.

I kissed her cheek, made sure she was stocked with enough novels to last through the Apocalypse, and caught the cab.

The forest opened on the metropolitan Mulholland, a glass-and-concrete blemish on the woodland vista. The only people who lived around here were people who had money coming out of their ears, and the scene reflected that. Everything was perfectly manicured, glossed within an inch of perfection.

The cab deposited me in front of the Tall & Dark Grind Haus. Even from the cab I saw the bright shock of Rachelle’s blue hair inside the windows.

She held up a silver see-through thong on one fingertip when I entered, waving it around like a flag.

“Victoria’s Slut-cret is under way!” she announced as I shed my dripping raincoat. Sean was sitting across from her, casting wary sidelong glances at me. I was going to have to sit between them, with no extra space at the tiny table.

I ordered a mocha and sat down, almost rubbing elbows with Sean. Just because he’d asked me out and I’d refused didn’t mean this had to be awkward. “I was thinking of writing a feature on Bourdillon’s artists, would you be my guinea pig?”

“Yes, I would!” Rachelle dropped the thong back in the pink bag beside her and folded her fingers under her chin, giving me an impish grin. “Fire away, Miss Fawkes. Let’s put that pen to work.”

I got out my pen and notebook. “All right, Miss Reid, let’s talk about your childhood and then the inspiration behind these unmentionables.”

Rachelle started talking a mile a minute, and my notebook was three pages full before she finally stopped for air. Sean just watched us and sulked the entire time, spinning his half-empty cup of coffee around on the table with the tips of his fingers.

I’d just flipped to a fresh page when Rachelle sucked in a sharp breath. Her attention was focused outside the window.

I followed her gaze and watched a beautiful woman cross the street. I wasn’t the kind of person who was stingy with my assessment of beauty, but she was breathtaking. Long red hair, the kind of red that caught the sun and sparkled with the hue of rich autumn, blew back in the breeze and framed porcelain skin.

She looked expensive, from the tips of her manicured fingers to the frames of her Celine sunglasses and the soles of her Louboutin heels.

For a moment I thought Rachelle might’ve just been inspired by the fact that Aphrodite had just crossed the street, but she tore her gaze away and leaned towards me over the table.

“Are you ready for some juicy gossip?” Her eyes sparkled with malice. “Guess whosheis?”

I glanced at the woman and felt a strange twist of foreboding in my guts. Beauty stepped onto the corner and headed for the Grind Haus’s doors. “I have no idea.”

“She would be the cold and conniving ex-Mrs. Thayer, Alyssa Pelletier.” Rachelle’s voice dropped to a whisper. “One-time wife to our illustrious Dean of Students.”

Alyssa’s heels clicked on the floor as she dropped out of line of sight, approaching the counter. A strange roaring filled my ears, my phone seeming to burn my skin through my pocket.

At that moment I realized what a joke I must be.

“They got divorced about a year ago,” Rachelle whispered, her eyes laser-focused over my shoulder. “I wonder why she’s back in Mulholland.”

I got another good look at Alyssa when she grabbed the Americano she’d ordered and strode past us. Even the smell left in the wake of her passage was heavenly, a breath of spring.

An emotion I’d thought I’d pushed aside years ago reared its ugly head and breached the surface: jealousy.

I’d always told myself there was no point in being jealous of what I didn’t have and couldn’t be; all you could really do was make the most of what you had and be happy with it.

But even the twisted side of me that reveled in the attention of being the Pet climbed back into her well and silently pulled the cover over it.

If Vincent had been married tothat, then the word ‘beautiful’ no longer held any real meaning. It was just a slush of consonants and syllables, judiciously applied to make the mouse under his heel more pliable.

I felt like an utter fool for thinking for one second that maybe, just maybe, someone had actually meant it.

I was only ever easy meat for them. Easy to control, easy to blackmail, easy to manipulate. I was the meat that they’d devour and leave empty inside while they went to their homes and parties filled with women who belonged at their level, who were polished and perfect and nothing like a broke scholarship student.

Sean said something to Rachelle, but I couldn’t hear it over the roaring in my ears. Disgust rose in me that I’d been breathless at all over Vincent’s call, that I’d thought it might be remotely enjoyable to him that I’dtried.

Suddenly the thought of Monday afternoon made me want to throw up.

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