The Crows Are Watching

The velvet of Bartholomew’s invitation felt impossibly thick between my fingers, a testament to the sheer, unadulterated decadence he promised. “A little soirée,” he’d called it, as if he were inviting me to a potluck and not, as the embossed script on the card suggested, a gathering of the glittering elite. My apartment, which I’d always considered perfectly cozy, suddenly felt like a shoebox compared to the palatial estate Bartholomew had described, a place where chandeliers dripped diamonds and the champagne flowed like a river of pure joy.

And I, Traydon, with my perpetually slightly-too-short trousers and my knack for knocking over small furniture, was invited. Invited! To rub elbows with people who probably had names that sounded like they were plucked from a particularly fancy cheese board. Bartholomew, with his impossibly bright eyes and a laugh that could charm the spots off a leopard, had swept into my life like a benevolent tornado, leaving a trail of compliments and promises of exciting new experiences. He made me feel… seen. Important. Like maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t destined to spend my evenings alphabetizing my spice rack.

The night of the party, I’d spent an embarrassing amount of time wrestling with my one decent blazer, convinced I’d somehow put it on inside out. The taxi ride, a splurge I justified with the sheer magnitude of the occasion, deposited me at gates that looked like they’d been forged by mythical blacksmiths. The grounds were manicured to within an inch of their lives, and the house itself glowed like a captured sun.