Paint Me as Villain ✔

Six

✦ ✧ ✦

Now

"And that was the scariest story in your life?" Laverna wrinkles her nose as she lounges on opposite Ady's end of the couch and twists a lock of her long dark hair around her finger, mulling. Her usual hoop earrings, swaying, catch the lights and glitter in the dim room. "Your love story? Without even a heartbreak, hah!"

Adélard doesn't reply. He phlegmatically keeps playing at the straw in his drink, which he doesn't even drink. He doesn't really know why he ordered it at the bar downstairs. So as not to fit in their company?

Nilam's room at the club is still stuffy, all the things in disarray, although it's been a few months since Ady has been here for the first time. Everything is the same, including dirty coffee mugs on the bookshelf in the same order, as though that shelf is made for them. Or, Ady thinks, it's some kind of magic, which he has no clue of--which stops the time and makes every night identical to the previous one, like that déjà vu that he's experienced before. Or maybe that's the beauty of nightclubs and bars? Maybe this sort of stable carelessness reigns over such places every night, and that's why fears of the real world don't exist here. Well, then Ady was grateful for that. He didn't feel like thinking tonight.

"Says the girl whose story included a bottle of vodka, a broken bank window, and a night in jail?" laughs Nilam from where he sits on the floor, his back against the bookcase. As usual, he looks sleepy and serious at once as he lazily stares at the can of beer in his hands.

"We didn't break it, we were invited!" Laverna hisses. "And we didn't know it was a bank. Lishan tell him!"

By Lishan, she didn't mean Ady. She glances at his sister. Tonight, they are all here: Ady and his sister, Nilam, Laverna, Kadri and Mir. Perhaps Adélard would feel much more comfortable in this strange company if Gyoku was also with them, but Ady is not going to introduce him to his new friends. Why? Does your Gyoku only exist in your wet dreams? Laverna once asked, having had too much tequila. Because he is not for you, Adélard cut her off. You're all losers, I don't want you to infect him, too.

Seated cross-legged on the floor and waving Laverna's question away, Ady's sister doesn't answer, either. His sister doesn't look like Adélard—and not because, unlike him, she doesn't care what people think, not because she's wearing a perky pink wig and silver stars that she borrowed from Gyoku are shimmering on the bridge of her nose tonight, but because she's always in motion. Even now, while everyone is sullen and gloomy, she, as if unable to be idle, has a huge jigsaw puzzle with an image of an old church on the floor in front of her. It stops my thoughts from spinning nonstop, she always says.

Yes, no one definitely wants to think tonight. Not about what they're all here for.

"Sure, invited," Nilam continues. "Through a broken window. You do realize that people use doors, right, hon?"

"Ady's story ain't about love." Kadri suddenly says from the chair in the corner where she sits with her knees pulled to her chin and a blanket around her shoulders. Moody, she looks at the jigsaw and says, "His story is about the control no one should be allowed to have over the lives of the others."

"Oh, you all are so virtuous, I'm gonna puke," turning to Kadri, Laverna gives her a sly smile. "And what is your own story, priest's daughter, hm? I doubt Ady told you about magic just to show off. What kind of shit have you gotten yourself into?"

Kadri's face turns to stone. "I won't tell you."

Laverne opens her mouth to insist, but this time Praejis cuts in.