Iris narrowed her eyes. “Eva and Ash live downstairs.”
“So?”
“So, you’re practically roomies with them, and I’m a ten-minute walk away. Why invite me?”
“Because you’re my sister, and it’s our birthday? What other reason do I need?”
Fair point. But Iris was no more in the mood for socializing now than she’d been last night. Especially not with demons. And especially not with Meph.
But, damn it, maybe she ought to go because of him.Notbecause she wanted to see him, but to determine how he would act after their little altercation. It was purely for Lily’s sake, of course—Iris had promised her twin she’d make an effort to get along.
Her lip curled. She’d rather eat rocks than deal with this crap first thing in the morning.
Grimalkin chose that moment to start making a cat nest on her thighs with his claws. “Ow, Grim!” she hissed as he punctured her in ten different places. He leapt off and stalked haughtily away.
“So are you coming?” Lily asked.
“Fine, whatever. I’ll come.”
“Yay!”
“Yay,” Iris repeated blandly.
“Damn, that looks pretty cool.” Meph stared at the resin cast he was carefully extracting from the mold.
He had created the mold by covering the original clay model with silicone and then surrounding it with solid plaster. When the materials hardened, he’d removed the plaster, carefully peeled the silicone open, and set the clay aside. To make the cast, he had painted resin onto the inside of the silicone and added fiberglass for strength. When the resin hardened, the process was complete.
The full sculpture was done in pieces and then attached at the end, and today Meph was extracting the head and neck—the final and most important part of the piece. He was kind of stoked.
Okay, he was super stoked. This shit got his blood pumping like nothing else. He’d never felt anything like it, and honestly, it scared him a little.
“It really does,” Jacqui agreed from beside him, wiping her hands on a paint-stained apron. Her thin dreadlocks were twisted into a bun on top of her head, and an almost-reverent smile adorned her face—kind of funny considering what they were looking at. But then, Jacqui was an artist. She got off on weird stuff.
The sculpture was fucked up. Meph had discovered he was twisted (not a big surprise, considering his background) because every time he tried to make art, freaky shit came out of him.
He’d been a little disturbed by his first sculpture—a guy beating himself with his own severed arm—but Jacqui had been thrilled, telling him over and over it was a masterpiece, he was gifted, blah, blah, blah. He’d brushed her off, but inwardly, he’d eaten up her praise like an elixir for his hungry, black soul.
This particular piece was no exception to his depravity. He was calling itFlayed Alivebecause it was a life-size sculpture of a man on his knees with his arms bound behind him, spine arching and contorted, head thrown back as he screamed in agony.
Oh, and he had no skin.
That had been Meph’s big achievement with the original clay figure. He had painstakingly shaped every tendon and muscle as if it were one of those models doctors used to study the human body.
Only this guy wasn’t skinless because he was some deceased fucker who’d donated his body to science. This guy was skinless because somebody had peeled it off him, piece by piece. Hence the agonized screaming—’cause that shit hurt.
Together, Meph and Jacqui carefully maneuvered the final piece of the sculpture and peeled the remaining silicone off, revealing the man’s face, his suffering carved into every hollow of his sunken features. Meph got the creeps just looking at it.
“It’s gorgeous,” Jacqui breathed as if she was looking at the gates of Heaven themselves. “Absolutely incredible.”
“Yeah, it’s all right,” he said lamely, but the truth was, he was feeling kind of emotional.
Weird, he knew, to get choked up at the sight of this freaky, demented thing. But it washisfreaky, demented thing. It was his own “unique, personal expression,” as Jacqui would say.
Whenever he made some critical comment about how his art was too dark, she would scold him, telling him to never be ashamed and to never censor his creativity. She would say that art was meant to be imperfect. Art was meant to show a little pain and darkness because everyone had it inside them and it was just a part of being alive.
Jacqui was a wise human.
They stood together for a while, examining the piece in companionable silence. Then Jacqui wandered back to keep working on her own sculpture—a slender human hand of dark brown clay the same shade as her skin, reaching for something out of its grasp.
