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“Also, no normal seven-year-old is going to stick their hands in an oven, take an entire pie out, and place it on the counter without jerking away, screaming, and crying. Unless, of course, they heal up in two seconds and are used to the sensation of pain because they’ve played with it and their ability to heal before. You sat with her the rest of the night. Did you see an injury?”
I clench my fists at my sides. “Her father grabbed her and shook her in front of me.”
“A perfectly normal thing for a father to…” Zahra blinks. “Wait, no. I sense I’ve made a mistake of some kind.” She sighs. “Have you been around drug dealers before, Kass? The successful ones with nice houses and butlers don’t just mention their basement lab in front of random visitors. They build entire fake businesses to front their rackets. And then addicted fathers send their little girls into said businesses with wads of cash…” Zahra’s eyes darken, and she drops her visor. “Point is: they don’t offer their little girls tastes of the very expensive drugs unless that’s how they’re keeping them addicted and under their thumb. Meda isn’t on drugs. Come on. You need a night to chill.”
Sighing, I oblige to follow her outside to my car, all the while thinking what I really need is a giant hammer…
?
If I’m being perfectly honest, I do not know how to party. Or chill. But especially I do not know how to chill at a party. The music is loud. The food is…kind of gross, honestly. Intentionally so, of course, but that doesn’t stop the something in my brain that rejects the idea of eating a cupcake made to look like a brain.
Zahra’s extrovert energy baffles me. We’re barely two seconds beyond the threshold, and she’s already chatting it up with strangers, asking how badly spiked the punch is, locating the house owner, and getting her own snacks from the pantry.
I’m bumbling near her, like a lost bee who forgot the steps to the dance. Because, as we all know, bees dance to communicate flower locations.
There’s a twelve-foot skeleton on the front lawn. Not a flower in sight.
Zahra hands me a chip from the bag she plundered out of the pantry. “An offering, for the queen. Devoid of animal carcass, as her majesty prefers.”
Taking it, I nibble the morsel, too exhausted to bother with my usual fake pleasantries until I remember that even if I’m not forcing smiles and elementary teacher glee for Zahra, she still deserves basic human decency.“Thank you.”
Zahra tsks. “Don’t disappoint Meda. What if I’m fae? Teacher souls are the yummiest. I bet they do taste like chicken.”
I pin my dear friend with a look that I hope conveys my utter exhaustion. “Please stop talking so much about how humans taste.”
“I forgot. It’s against your religion.”
“Vegetarianism isn’t a religion.”
“You’re right. You’re right. It’s the no-murder cult.” She offers me another chip. “Sort of. Since there’s still murder involved in—”
“Zahra.”
Her lip juts.
I hold my hand out for a third chip, and she obliges, so I forgive her.
At least up until the moment she sees a shiny person she knows all the way on the other side of the crowded room and abandons me like she’s not my emotional-support extrovert and the single lifeline I have in this mass of bubbling socialization. I’m left with half a chip ration in a large room full of people dressed like monsters all by myself.
I begin calculating my chances of survival when a guy wearing fake fangs approaches the wall I’ve backed up against in an effort at self-preservation. Logically, I assumed no one could approach me from behind if my back was to a wall. My logic did not factor in Dracula using said wall as a means to cage me.
“Hi,” he says, or slurs, as he pins one palm against the cream paint beside my head. The rancid scent of his breath lets me know he’s had enough spiked blood punch to drown a goat.
Despite my best efforts, my attempt at a smile turns out as more of a twisted grimace.
“People are dancing in the other room.” His brows wiggle with all the suggestive power of an earthworm.
I refrain from asking if his entire outfit—the plastic fangs—cost as much as his dignity. “No, thank you.”
He gets obnoxiously closer, and I choke slightly on the stench of his breath. “You sure, sweetie? I’m a great dancer.”
“No means no.”
His expression twists. “Don’t tell me you’re a feminist.”
Oh, excellent. He’s one of those men. “Well, I do have my own bank account…so…you may make your own conjectures.”
He grabs my wrist.
