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Next thing I knew, she was racing up and down the aisles like a fucking maniac, and I was her involuntary passenger. “Let me know if anything catches your eye.”

At this speed, all the costumes jumbled into a big blur of princesses, ghouls, and action heroes. Still, I pointed as a leather black harness caught my eye. “That one?”

Blade tossed five of the Lara Croft costumes into the cart, not bothering to sort through the sizes. “What else?”

We went on like that, ending up with seven sexy nurses, three slutty skeletons, and a dozen variations on “school teacher” in the first five minutes. But Blade wasn’t going to stop until we’d scoured every fucking inch of the store.

She cut tight around the corners, steering with one hand and grabbing fistfuls of fluffy skirts and tight spandex with the other.

My stomach lurched with each tight turn. On more than a few occasions, I was certain we were about to crash. But Blade wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.

As we zipped around the store, Nash would catch up with us every once in a while and dump her own selection of costumes into the cart: carefully curated pieces complete with make up and accessories. Even Cyrus tossed a few costumes in that made me raise my brows.

They’re going to clear out the whole store at this rate.

I adjusted my legs underneath the mountain of costumes, certain that I was only a few minutes from being totally avalanched in. But when I looked up, a masked priest was standing just inches in front of our cart, eyes locked on me. My heart nearly stopped in my chest.

“Blade!” I flinched, pointing.

“Fuck!” She careened, nearly crashing the cart into one of the display cases as she angled her body in front of mine.

But then a deep chuckle sounded from under the featureless mask. “God, you guys are so fucking easy…”

Cyrus had hardly pulled the mask off before I threw a devil horn headband at her chest. “That’s so not funny.”

“It’s pretty funny,” she smirked, tossing her blank mask into my lap. As she tugged off the leather priest jacket and hung it back up, my gaze lingered on her shoulders for just a moment. Then it fell to the mask.

She was right that it wasn’t exactly scary: just a cheap piece of plastic. None of the masks here held a candle to the Freaks’ blood-splattered masterpieces.

Nash shook her head at Cyrus as she came up behind us and dropped a handful of costumes into the cart. Noticing the way I was looking at the mask, Nash caught my eye. “Do you think you’d ever want one of your own? A real one?”

To my surprise, the question lit a spark in my chest. The idea of hunting again — of truly being one of them — was more exhilarating than I would have guessed.

“I think so,” I nodded, biting my lip.

Nash brushed a finger over my jaw, sending a shudder down my spine. “We could make that happen, Sweet Lamb…”

Once those words left her lips, they were all I could think about. The Freaks kept loading up the cart, tossing in toy handcuffs and fishnets and all sorts of leather accessories, but I didn’t care what else we bought. The idea of really joining them was priceless.

Before long, the cart was overflowing, and the store was practically cleared out. If I wore one of these costumes a day, it might take me a year to get through the whole slutty assortment. And that didn’t account for the half of the cart that wasn’t even my size.

But Cyrus didn’t even blink at the excess. As Blade and Nash started dumping costumes onto the checkout counter, she just slid her card to the cashier before walking outside to warm up the Aston Martin.

With each beep of the register, I counted down another Fright Night — another month that my captors hoped I would still be theirs. At a certain point, I lost track, but the exact number didn’t matter. It was clear that my Freaks thought I’d be here for the long haul.

And for the first time since I’d stumbled through my gates, I let myself believe it too.

68

NASH

Everything about her body language screamed it: the knit of her brow, the purse of her lips, the fact that she’d been so quiet all morning. Fright Night might only be hours away, but Tess was still thinking about Rubin’s compound.

As we walked through the dusty tunnels of the Haunted Manor, I shook my head and kept a bit of distance. We were all thinking about the compound: what was going on in there, how we could break in.

I had no plans on opening that can of worms with Tess, though. Not after her little elopement pitch.

Just the idea of it made my fists tighten. Normally, I could stay calm and cool under pressure. But Rubin was a miserable fucking weirdo, and the thought of him laying a single grubby finger on Tess made my blood boil.