Tempted by Darkness Read online

  He grabbed my bun and playfully shook it. “You sure know how to make everything weird. I love that.”

  I was weird. Weirder than any of them really knew. I made a point of choosing a college far enough away from where I grew up that nobody here knew my history.

  Foster kid who couldn’t remember most of her early years.

  Former mental patient with fixed delusions that no medication ever touched.

  Girl who honestly believed some of that shit from fairy tales had to be true because most of it felt more real than anything people told her was true.

  These days, I’d learned to keep most of that to myself. I took my meds because they were the only thing that allowed me to sleep and kept at least a dull edge on my sanity. But there was something in the way I carried myself or how I talked that let people know I was more than a little off. It used to make me feel broken, but over the years I’d glued most of my pieces back together and only spent time with people who appreciated that I would never be completely whole—if I ever had been.

  Adonis turned to me with an expression that was suddenly serious. “You should really consider playing the role yourself. I can’t think of anyone better. You say those lines, and it’s like you’re living them.”

  A dark sense of foreboding washed over me. I forced myself to smile and shake my head. “I want to produce, not star. There isn’t a single bone in my body that was meant to act.”

  “There goes that false modesty again. It’s only cute until it’s not.”

  I swatted at him, and he caught my wrist in his hand, not letting go until I yanked my arm away. “It isn’t false modesty, so stop trying to blow my head up as big as yours is. Besides, acting track students have to perform in the showcase to get credit, so I would just be taking a spot from someone who needs it. I applied for this program to be behind the scenes, and I plan to stay there. Thank you very much.”

  “Fine.” He flipped open his script and turned to the first page. “We still have a few more minutes until our time is up. Walk me through this character a little bit. Who is Hades? What does he want?”

  “His queen.”

  Adonis waggled his eyebrows. “I’ll just bet he does.”

  “Oh, shut up.” I refused to make any apologies for the blatant sexuality in the play. This was an art program. If we weren’t pushing boundaries then what was the point?

  “How are we going to style him? I’m picturing some king of darkness with pebbled skin and a humpback.”

  I shook my head. For reasons I didn’t understand, it was suddenly very important to me that he got this right. “Hades is a god, one of the most beautiful of his kind. He uses that beauty as a weapon to entice young women away from the human realm and trap them in the underworld. Eventually, they wither away as he feeds off their life to sustain his power. Once one is gone, he goes in search of the next.”

  Adonis nodded as if enthralled. It wasn’t just the story, he was the type to take his work seriously. If he accepted a role, then he needed to understand everything about the character. “Then what’s all this stuff about asking her to submit? Why not just take her?”

  “It has to be fair. The realms of the gods are bound by rules, strict ones. The girl has to agree to give herself to Hades, or else he can’t have her. Gods can deceive, but they can’t outright lie, and they can’t take what doesn’t belong to them without permission. Everyone knows that.”

  “Everyone, huh?” He laughed when I glared at him. “Calm down, this is great stuff. No one else at the showcase will have anything like it. Although, I have to say that you have an amazing imagination.”

  Writing this play felt pretty close to cheating. I didn’t really believe that it was my amazing imagination. Instead, the scenes I’d written down felt like a forgotten dream that I’d spun out from memory as if I’d watched it happen to someone else.

  My rational mind knew it was fantasy, but the delusional part barely held in check of copious amounts of neuroleptic medication refused to believe it.

  Shaking off the nonsense thoughts, I frowned at Adonis. “I’m going to ignore everything but the compliment. You have to think of Hades like a dark fantasy come to life. He is too cruel and too beautiful to exist in this world.”

  Adonis gave me a wide smile. “The perfect role for me, then.”

  “There’s that all important modesty we were talking about.”

  Most of the time, I managed not to notice how gorgeous Adonis was. He was the type who became an actor because everyone had been telling him his entire life that he could make it in Hollywood. And it would be a shame for anyone to miss out on seeing that face in high-definition. And just to prove that life was never fair, he also happened to be one of the most talented actors in our program. Incredible looks with talent to match was a potent combination.

  He was doing me a favor by starring in my showcase when he literally had his choice of any of them. And I couldn’t think of anyone more fitting for the role, ego included.

  Adonis tapped his pencil against his full lips, expression pensive. “I’m still trying to figure out the whole death angle. Hades is the god of death. There is literally nothing attractive about that.”

  I took a deep breath at a strange pang I felt in the chest. “You can always find some beauty in the darkness.”

  “So you’re humanizing your villain a bit, huh? I like it.”

  “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  “But the girl in your story refuses him,” Adonis mused, studying the words in front of him. My words. “And then his world begins to fall apart.”

  A shiver worked its way down my spine even though I had no idea why I suddenly felt so anxious. “Something like that.”

  “The girl is going to be your most important casting decision. She’s going to be hard to get right, vulnerable and resolute at the same time.”

  The doors at the back of the theater banged open, making me jump. Another group of students entered the space, laughing and talking together like they didn’t have a care in the world. And they probably didn’t, I was the one who always had one foot in the real world and the other in a nightmare.

  Sometimes, I wished they could just cut out the part of my brain where all the crazy came from.

  “I guess our time is up.” Adonis stood and gestured for me to follow him. “Come backstage with me. I want to show you something.”

  My heart beating a little too hard in my chest, I followed him out of the theater and behind the stage. The gazes of the students behind us burned into my back. I knew what they thought when they saw us together, wondering what a golden boy like Adonis was doing with a girl as strange as I was.

  The hallway behind the stage was dark because no one else had been back here all day. I had to use the wall as a guide, so I didn’t trip over my own feet. Adonis put a steadying hand on my arm, and I tried to ignore the tingling sensation that moved along my skin.

  We bypassed the empty dressing rooms and entered the deserted costume department. I’d always loved it back here. Olympus College was small, but our theater department had become its flagship program, with all the funding a group of generous donors thought we needed to put on the most beautiful productions in the valley. This room was full to bursting with period pieces from every era imaginable, along with enough accessories to outfit a battalion.

  It was one of my favorite places, and not just because my favorite places were out of the spotlight. To me, backstage was the place where the magic really happened. Without the set designers, costumers, and makeup artists, the actors would never get to the stage in the first place. The actual performance was the culmination of work from dozens of other people.

  Adonis flipped on the lights, entering the room as if he had every right to be there. “I was helping Madame Aurora catalog everything last week. I’m so glad she’s taken over the costume department. Whoever was here last let this place become a total wreck. There’s some really cool stuff hidden back here that hasn’t
been used in ages.”

  The costume mistress, Madame Aurora, was territorial as hell. It had taken me six months of sucking up to her just to make it past the doorway. We were lucky she wasn’t here to chase us away with a pair of fabric shears.

  “What did you want to show me?”

  Adonis strode to the nearest rack with the confidence of someone who knew they could get away with anything. He rifled through the hangers on the rack, biting his lip as he flipped past one garment after another. “It was right here the other day.”

  I glanced at my watch, resisting the urge to tap my foot on the floor. It was getting late, and I hated being out after dark. Once the sun set, I needed to be ensconced in my apartment, preferably in bed and under the covers. “We can come back tomorrow.”

  “No need. Here it is.” He gently pulled a bundle of frothy fabric out from the rack and laid it over his arm, presenting it to me. “Perfect, isn’t it?”

  The dress was perfect. Hand-woven white lace over flesh-colored silk with a bodice that was meant to hug the curves. The bust was modest, cut in a straight line just below the collarbone, leaving the shoulders bare. It was exactly what I imagined the girl in my play wearing.

  I’d seen one just like it in my dreams.

  Shaking off that irrational thought, I smiled weakly. “It’s amazing.”

  His expression didn’t change. “Try it on.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Over your clothes, obviously. Don’t be a coward, just do it.”

  I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but the moment that my hands touched the delicate fabric, a shiver of awareness washed over me. This dress was meant for me, I understood it in the same way I knew I had to keep breathing in order to live.

  He let the dress fall heavily into my arms, so I was forced to take it or let it fall to the ground. I wanted to tell him no, that it didn’t matter if the dress fit because I would never wear it on stage. But it felt like mine, like something I was meant to wear.

  I stripped off my Black Flag T-shirt and then stepped into the dress, pulling it up over my skinny jeans, while Adonis respectfully looked away. The dress was clearly in sharp contrast to my normal wardrobe, I preferred clothes that were mildly grunge because they kept people from noticing me. If I had no makeup and messy hair, then I could pretend people ignored me because of that and not for other reasons.

  There was a breathless moment as I pulled the dress over my hips, and the fragile fabric had to stretch slightly. I definitely wondered if it would tear for a heart-wrenching second. But it glided over my waist, and I gently pushed my arms into the sleeves as the full skirt bloomed around me.

  “Ta-da.”

  Adonis turned back, and his eyes widened. “Wow.”

  I turned in the direction of the tall mirror standing upright in the corner. Even in its dusty surface, I could see that the dress fit me like a glove. When I breathed, the fabric pressed against my rib cage and made me feel like I was trapped in a gilded cage of lace and silk.

  “It’s nice,” I offered.

  “It’s perfect.” He waved his copy of the script in my face. “This was so close to what you described in the notes that it could have been made for your play. I hope whoever you pick to be your leading lady has the same proportions that you do. Hold on, though. We have to try one more thing.” He shifted behind me, and his hands were already in my hair when I realized what he was doing. Before I could stop him, a dark cascade of messy waves and loose curls fell around my shoulders.

  “Damnit, Adonis. It took me forever to get my hair to stay up. I haven’t even brushed it today.”

  “Sorry,” he murmured, sounding anything but.

  I stared at my own reflection, caught in a vision of innocence and latent sexuality. The cream fabric underneath the lace gave the illusion of bare skin, making the dress seem more revealing than it was. There was a cutout just below my ribcage, revealing a flat expanse of my tummy before the stiff lace flared into a full skirt.

  “This would look great with it, too.” Going to the rack of accessories on the wall, he picked up a delicate lariat necklace, so brightly gold that it shone in the light. It had no clasp and was made of one long chain that hooked through a crescent moon to form a circle, leaving a trail of stones meant to drape down the chest when it was worn.

  “No!” Fear streaked through me for no discernible reason. All I knew was that I didn’t want to put that necklace on, no matter how beautiful it was.

  He backed up a step, obviously surprised by my outburst. “Never mind. All you have to say is it doesn’t work.”

  “It’s just getting late.” Still feeling uneasy, I turned away from the mirror. “Help me get this dress off.”

  Adonis helped me out of the frothy concoction of the dress, moving quickly but with enough care to ensure it didn’t rip.

  He seemed a little unnerved when he caught the look on my face. “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s just not right,” I lied, pushing the dress into his arms so he would hang it back up. “We’ll keep looking.”

  “This is the closest thing to what you describe in the scene notes. If not this, then what did you have in mind?”

  An itch had started under my skin, and all I wanted to do was get out of there. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? You’re the one who wrote it. What were you thinking when you created the character?”

  “I have to go.” I didn’t wait for him to answer as I turned toward the door. “We can work on this some more next time.”

  Running made me a coward. But confronting my feelings meant trying to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and I didn’t have the strength for that right now. Adonis thought of me as quirky and eccentric, but still in the general range of normal. I wanted to keep it that way.

  “Seph, wait—”

  But I was already shoving open the doors.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I ran away, even though it was impossible to escape what only existed in your own mind.

  Chapter Two

  Someone once told me that creativity was the only natural outlet for madness.

  But that was just the sort of shit people said in mental hospitals.

  The idea that our individual psychoses somehow entitled us to special gifts of creativity helped keep the darkness of reality at bay. It was one of the few things that made the oppressive gray walls and forced medication regimens manageable. We all liked to pretend that without the constraints of society’s labels, we would be gods among men.

  Also known as delusions of grandeur, one of the things that shows up on many of the pages that I steal a look at when my chart is laid out on the table.

  Maybe it was because the people in charge treated art as therapy. Crayons and paints were cheap, and our time was meaningless. Stick us all in a room with some paper and art supplies, then call it a therapeutic intervention. Sounds a lot better than warehousing.

  Perhaps it was because I considered myself an artist even when my mind wasn’t going sideways, but the whole thing just kind of pissed me off.

  The girl down the hall who wrote her magnum opus on strips of toilet paper while not sleeping for three days straight wasn’t a creative genius. Just manic and off her meds.

  I used to believe, with every part of my soul, that I was the dark queen of the underworld. And that Hades had been my king.

  My logical mind knew it couldn’t be true, but I saw his face like the clearest memory. He haunted all of my dreams.

  At least, until the medication took the dreams away.

  They made me paint as a condition of my release from those early stays at the hospital. Something about how it was the only way I would be able to confront my delusions and finally recognize they were false. The walls of my sad little room at the hospital eventually became covered in drawings and paintings of whatever fantastical thing I could think of: three-headed dogs with knives for teeth, creatures
crawling over a mountain of bones, blood dripping from the red in the rainbow.

  I let them think I was working through my “issues” when really, I made up whatever shit I thought would make them happy.

  No one needed to see what I had seen.

  Even if it all existed entirely in my head, and I had a team of therapists and doctors insisting precisely that, it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. I could never fight the idea that something terrible was coming for me. The doctors didn’t understand that I yearned for them to prove it to me, make me believe that all of it was a figment of my imagination.

  I wanted to be as crazy as they said I was because that was less scary than the alternative.

  Every so often, they tried a different technique or altered the cocktail of chemicals I forced down my throat several times a day. But let’s be honest, the only difference between jail and the psych ward was that everyone in jail knew what they had done to get there. The locks on the doors were just as thick and the rules just as inexplicably repressive. They watched us shave our legs and stuck fingers in our mouths after we took our pills, all in the interest of safety.

  Being committed just made it easier to believe that all the rules I imagined kept society in line no longer applied. It strengthened the delusion instead of convincing me that my memory was flawed.

  It took months of therapy before I would even consider the idea that the underworld and its monarch had been a figment of my overactive imagination. The specialist that my guardian flew in from Switzerland insisted that the traumas of my childhood had manifested themselves in this fantasy world where I could act out all the suffering that I couldn’t remember.

  He was an idiot. But at some point, I had to confront the idea that the world would never let me be unless I convinced them I didn’t believe in things that couldn’t be real. And the longer I pretended it was true and went along with them, the easier it was to actually accept the reality around me.