"She's pouting again," Phoebe and Sophie said in unison, informing each other as much as they were thinking out loud.
A pout was the weapon of choice for the Frost sisters, knowing how good it made them look, even when they made anything look good. But Esme's pout wasn't so much a declaration of war at this point as it was a failed state.
First, she'd fallen for Lorna Dane, the madwoman of the Underground, who was only supposed to be the Frosts' puppet as they ruled the Hellfire Club through her. Esme had only been meant to seduce Lorna to her side, but either she'd taken that idea way too literally or Lorna had turned the tables on her, because Phoebe and Sophie had felt their sister not only develop feelings for their pawn, but let those feelings out. Slick and sickly sweet on their cunts as they felt what Esme felt when Lorna's tongue was in her pussy. But at least that was soft, loving, treating Esme like the princess she was (and, by extension, they all were). What Lorna wanted to do, if her pregnancy wasn't so far along, was disgusting, degrading. And Esme broke rank with her sisters by thinking of how she'd enjoy it.
Thankfully, Lorna's pregnancy had entered its last leg, confining her to bed with near-constant false starts and check-ups that had made a physical relationship with Esme all but impossible. Then there was the birth itself, and even if Lorna was no longer joined with her bouncing baby boy, she spent every waking moment nursing and changing diapers and cooing over the little rat. Esme ranked second in her heart, at best.
That was the perfect opportunity to get back to routine, but Esme was inconsolable, her thoughts a maddening vortex of memories of Lorna and imaginings of Lorna and fears about Lorna. The Frosts were self-obsessed, true, but they deserved to be obsessed over. To Phoebe and Sophie, it was hard to see anything special about Lorna besides the fact that her father had been Magneto. And, obviously, since they didn't care about some old guy, they were hardly going to care about his daughter.
"Maybe we should play with her a bit," Phoebe suggested, conjuring up a thought of Lorna in Sophie's mind by way of demonstration. The hallucinatory Lorna wore something more fitting for a servant—red lipstick, a micro-mini, and thigh-high patent leather boots over mesh stockings. "Just like when we used to play Angelina Jolie with each other."
Sophie frowned. "That'll just make her pout worse. She's in
love."
"Gross."
"So gross."
"You'd think she'd be grateful she got fired from being the royal bitch before she actually took it up the ass."
"Lorna
is
crazy; no wonder she thought about that all the—"
A psychic bolt of frustration and raw anger shot into their brains, giving them both splitting headaches. "Don't call her crazy," Esme insisted, standing now. She'd been trying to ignore them—easy, when she had something as intoxicating, for good or ill, as Lorna on her mind—but hearing them go beyond gossiping about her girlfriend to actually slandering her...
"Can't believe you'd give us a shrieker—"
"Mother would be so cross—"
Esme went back to ignoring them, staring at the refrigerator where Lorna had left one last message for her in alphabetical refrigerator magnets:
Miss you.
What once had been reassuring and romantic now struck a chord of fear in her heart. Did Lorna miss her? Or was she so absorbed in the new baby that she was getting sucked back into her relationship with Marcos as well? With the self-awareness of any psychic, Esme well knew that Lorna had only started up with her to get her mind off her damn sperm donor. What if she'd decided the experiment was over and her little bundle of joy deserved a father?
Esme's thoughts prepared to plummet into an abyss when she noticed the refrigerator magnets moving, rearranging themselves from random clutter into a new sentence:
Party at 8. You going to be there?
Esme reached out to drag three of the letters up into a new word.
Y E H
The letters swirled into a new configuration.
See you there.
Then another arrangement.
Wear something...
Lorna left the rest to Esme's wicked imagination, which was enough to make Esme herself blush. Her two sisters swore as they picked up Esme's thoughts as well.
***
It was a cool evening when Esme arrived at the party, not that diamonds cared about ice. She wore a dress that started in a choker wrapped around her neck, then hung on two spaghetti straps to cover her breasts on either side of a plunging neckline. The material draped in a faint black shroud down her body, stopping at her thighs. Slit at the hips, it hung in a sort of loincloth over groin and buttocks. While the folds of her neckline were substantial enough to hide her bare nipples, the dangling gossamer showed off the gap between her thighs and most especially the thong panties that caressed her voluptuous ass, as if framing her buttocks for Lorna's perusal.
Lorna hadn't bothered to dress up so fancily. To her mind, one of the perks of being the Queen was that there was no dress code. So, while she was too beautiful to ever be exactly butch, she wore a chrome-studded leather jacket with tight latex pants, a studded belt cinching it, big metal buckles on her boots, thick rings on her fingers, choker and headdress showcasing her pale face and green hair. With her mutant biology, the baby weight had melted off of her like snow in spring, leaving her as slender as a stiletto once again.
Like a shark with a whiff of blood, she got one look at Esme and pulled her aside, as if reserving the sight of her for Lorna Dane and Lorna Dane alone. She could barely keep her hands off Esme—her magnetism flittered at the metallic fibers in her sheer dress, the earrings she wore, and her nipple piercings. They all felt alive with energy that followed Lorna's eyes as she drank Esme in.
"I can't believe I stayed away from you for so long," Lorna breathed.
"I can't believe it either," Esme replied, putting up a strong front. She could feel Sophie and Phoebe's twinned bitterness reinforcing her own.
"I couldn't let anything happen to the baby. He's all I have left of..."
"You have me!" Esme insisted angrily.
"I... I know."
"Do you?" Esme asked. "Or do you think I'm just being a Frost—using my body—manipulating you?"
Lorna shook her head, but didn't say anything. Esme wondered. With her telepathy, she'd paradoxically never gotten very good at reading people's faces. A problem, when she didn't want to peek into Lorna's mind without permission. Lorna was too special for that.