There Is No Devil (Sinners, #2)

by Sophie Lark

“You can ask one question,” he says. “Not about Shaw.” The devil always counters. “Fine,” I say, so quickly that he narrows his eyes at me. The silence stretches between us as I consider what he might answer fully and truthfully. And what I most want to know. Finally, I ask: “Who was the first person you killed?”

“You threaten everything I thought I knew, and everything I believed.”

“At first it was against my will,” I tell her. “But now I’m all in. I have to have you. Even if it blows up my life.”

She’s out of her fucking mind, and so am I. Our madness aligns in all the right ways.

The day I met Cole, I was dying. Maybe I did die. Through Cole, I was reborn. Now I’m Mara the artist. Mara the star. Mara the unbreakable.

“Cole …” I groan. “I … I … I …” “I know,” he says. He can’t hold back his grin. He knows exactly what kind of effect he’s having on me. I gaze up at him. “I love you,” I say. If I’d thought first, I would have been too afraid to say it. Cole looks down at me, his eyes black and flickering, full of reflected flame. “What does it feel like?” “It feels like I’ll do anything for you. Jump off a bridge for you, turn myself inside out for you. It feels like madness, and I never want it to end.” Cole considers this, his dark eyes roaming over my face. “Then I must be in love,” he says. “Because that’s what I feel, too.”

before she can interrupt. “She hoped I wasn’t like them. She hoped I was kind, like her. But I was already cold and arrogant, and too young to know better than to tell the truth. I told her how little worth I saw in the people who scrubbed our toilets, cleaned our house. I told her how our gardener disgusted me because he was stupid and could barely read, while I was already finishing entire novels. I could see that I was smarter than other people, richer, better looking. At four years old, I was already a little monster.” “You were a child,” Mara says.

“One morning, we went down to the hutch and the rabbit’s neck was broken. It was laying there, dead and twisted, flies already settling on its eyes. My mother could see it had been killed. She didn’t chastise me … there was no point anymore. Looking in my eyes, she saw nothing but darkness. She hung herself that afternoon. Years later, I read the last entry in her journal: I can’t change him. He’s just like them.” Now I do look at Mara, already knowing what I’ll see on her face, because I’ve seen it before, in the only other person I ever loved. It’s the look of a woman gazing upon a monster. Tears fall silently down Mara’s cheeks, dropping down on the soft green moss. “You didn’t kill the rabbit,” she says. “But I wanted to. That’s what you have to understand. I wanted to kill that fucking rabbit every time I held it in my hands. I only didn’t because of her.”

“But you didn’t do it,” Mara says, her jaw set, eyes locked firmly on mine. “You were a child—you could have been anything. She gave up on you.”

“I love you!” she cries. “I fucking love you. Your life starts here, today, now that I’ve told you.”

“Give me a little credit,” he scoffs. “Whatever else I may be, I was never a man who had to tear a woman down to shine bright beside her. If you’re not as good as me, then you’re no good at all. And when I saw you, Mara … I thought, this girl is really fucking good. I don’t want to hold you down, chop you down, diminish you in any way. I already know I found something special. Now it’s time for everyone else to see it.”

I contacted Mara’s mother Tori Eldritch to get her comment on the autobiographical show that references themes of neglect and abuse. Tori said: “It’s all lies. Mara had a perfect childhood, anything she could ever want. She was pampered. Spoiled, even. She’ll do anything for attention, she’s always been that way. I took her to so many psychiatrists, but they could never fix her. I don’t call that art. Fantasy, more like. A filthy, deceptive fantasy to slander the people who took care of her. My lawyer says I should sue her for defamation.” That puts a different spin on the collection of ostensibly personal images. In speaking to Mara Eldritch, she told me, “Childhood shapes all of us—the events we remember, and even those we don’t.” Perhaps Mara is leaning hard on those events we “don’t remember.”

Tori.. one word.. BITCH

“What did you think when you looked over at me?” “I thought … even if I fuck this up, you won’t be embarrassed by me. You’ll still hold my hand on the way home.” “I knew you weren’t going to fuck it up. You always find a way through.”

I finally realize what happiness feels like. There’s no malice in it. No greed. It’s not something you seek for yourself. It flows between two people, around and around, back and forth, given and received in the same breath. Her happiness makes me happy. And even if it didn’t, I want it for her anyway. That’s what loving her means—I want her safe, protected, flourishing, whether it benefits me or not.

It hits me so hard that I let out a groan. Mara touches my face, tilting it so I look right in her eyes. “I love you,” I tell her. “I know,” she says.

Right as I’m thinking that, some drunken oaf stumbles into my path, dumping his spritz down the front of my trousers, drenching my brand-new Italian leather loafers. “Scansarsi!” He shouts. “Brutto figlio di puttano bastardo Americano!” Since I speak Italian flawlessly, I catch every word of that insult. I turn to Mara, that old anger already blazing in my eyes. The drunk stumbles alone toward a dark alleyway. I could easily follow after him. In the chaos, no one would remember another Rugantino in a black mask. Mara follows my gaze, her eyes flicking ahead the alleyway, vibrant and alive beneath the smooth white porcelain of her mask. Before I can move, she dashes ahead of me, seizing the drunk by the shoulder. She plucks the plume from her hat and draws it across his throat in one sharp motion, the scarlet feathers liquid bright against his neck. The drunk—insensible to manners, but fully alive to horseplay—pretends to stiffen up and fall over dead in the gutter, clutching his throat dramatically and making dramatic gurgling sounds. “There,” Mara says, rejoining me, her feather tucked back into her pirate hat. “I got him for you.” “Thank you,” I say. “Saves me the trouble.”

Well ok then...