"Let's go sit," Eric said, before Thea could even get a word out. She threw him a grateful look.
"Where's John?" Thea asked as they pulled chairs to the table.
Dani nodded toward the pack following Blaise.
"I don't mind, though," she said, sipping a cup of punch philosophically. "He was kind of boring. I don't know about all this dance stuff."
Thea knew she meant it was different from Circle
dances
, where everyone was in harmony and there was no pairing off. You danced with the elements and with everybody else, all one big interconnected whole.
Eric volunteered to get more punch.
"How's it going with him?" Dani asked in a low voice when he was gone. Her velvety dark eyes searched Thea's curiously.
"Everything's okay so far," Thea said evasively. Then she looked out toward the dance floor. "I see Viv and Selene are here."
"Yeah.
I think Vivienne already got her blood. She stabbed Tyrone with her corsage pin."
"How clever," Thea said. Vivienne was wearing a black dress that made her hair look like flame, and Selene was in deep violet that showed off her blondness. They both seemed to be having a wonderful time.
Dani yawned. "I think I'll probably go home early-" she began, and then she broke off.
Some kind of a disturbance had begun on the other side of the room, in front of the main entrance. People were scuffling. At first, Thea thought it was just another minor fracas over Blaise-but then a figure came staggering out under the lights of the dance floor.
"I want to know," the voice said in dissonant tones that rose over the music. "I want to knoooow."
The band stopped. People turned. Something about the voice made them do that. It was so obviously abnormal, the cadence wrong even for somebody who was drunk. This was someone who was disturbed.
Thea stood up.
"I want to knoooow," the figure said again, sounding lost and petulant. Then it turned and Thea felt ice down her spine.
The person was wearing a Halloween mask.
A kid's plastic mask of a football player, the kind held on with an elastic string.
Perfectly appropriate for a Halloween dance.
But at Homecoming, it was grotesque.
Oh, Eileithyia, Thea thought.
"Can you tell me?" the figure asked a short girl in black ruffles. She backed away, reaching for her dance partner.
Mr. Adkins, Thea's physics teacher, came jogging up, his tie fluttering. None of the other chaperones seemed to be around-probably because they were out somewhere trying to control fights over Blaise, Thea thought.
"Okay, let's settle; settle," Mr. Adkins said, making motions as if the figure were an unruly class. "Let's just take it easy. . . ."
The guy in the Halloween mask pulled something out of his jacket. It glinted like a rainbow under the colored dance floor lights, reflective as a mirror.
"A straight razor," Dani said in a hushed voice. "Queen Ms, where'd he get that?"
Something about the weapon-maybe the fact that it was so weird, so old-fashioned-made it scarier than a knife. Thea pictured the way even a safety razor could slice flesh.
Mr. Adkins was backing away, arms held out as if to protect the students behind him. His eyes were frightened.
I have to stop this, Thea thought. The problem was that she had no idea how. If it had been an animal, she could have stepped out and tried mind control. But she couldn't control a person.
She started walking anyway, slowly, so as not to attract attention. She skirted the edge of the crowd around the dance floor until she drew parallel with the masked guy.
Who by now had switched to a new
question.
"Have you seen her?" he said. He kept asking it as he walked, and people kept backing away. Vivienne and Selene drew to either side with their dates. The razor glittered.
Thea looked toward the opposite end of the dance floor, where Blaise was standing with Kevin Imamura.
With no Buck, no Duane to protect her.
But Blaise didn't look frightened. That was one thing about Blaise-she had magnificent physical courage. She was standing with one hand on her hip and Thea could tell that she knew exactly who was coming her way.
In between moving couples, Thea glimpsed something else. Eric was on the other side of the dance floor, holding two cups of punch in one hand and one in the other. He was keeping pace with the masked guy, just as she was.
She tried to catch his eye, but the crowd was too thick.
"Have you seen her?" the masked guy asked a couple right in front of Blaise. "I want to knoooow. ..."
The couple split like bowling pins. Blaise stood exposed, tall and elegant in her black suit, lights shimmering off her midnight hair.
"Here I am, Randy," she said. "What is it you want to know?"
Randy Marik stopped, panting. His breath made a muffled noise against the plastic. The rest of the huge room was eerily silent.
Thea moved closer, walking silently. Eric was pulling in from the other side, and he saw her for the first time. He shook his head at her and mouthed, "Stay away."
Yeah. And you're going to tackle him armed with three party cups of punch. She gave him a look and mouthed, "You stay away."
Randy's hand was trembling, making the razor flash. His chest was heaving.
"What /$ it, Randy?" Blaise said. The toe of one high heeled shoe tapped the floor impatiently.
"I feel bad," Randy said. It was almost a moan. Suddenly his head didn't seem well connected to his neck. "I miss you."
His voice made Thea's flesh creep. He sounded like a person with the body of an eighteen-year-old and the mind of a four-year-old.
"I cry all the time," he said.
With his left hand, he pulled off the Halloween mask. Kevin recoiled. Thea herself felt a wave of horror.
He was crying blood. Bloody streams ran down from each of his eyes, mingling with regular tears.
A spell?
Thea wondered. Then she thought, no; he's cut himself.
That was it. He'd made two crescent-shaped incisions under his eyes and the blood was coming from them.
The rest of his face was ghastly, too. He was white as a corpse and there was fuzzy stubble on his chin. His eyes stared wildly. And his hair, which had always been strawberry blond and silky, stood up all over his head like bleached hay.
"You came all the way from
Randy let out a sobbing breath.
This seemed to make Kevin braver. "Look, man, I don't know who you are-but you'd better keep away from her," he said. "Why don't you go home and sober up?"
It was a mistake. The wild eyes above the bloodstained cheeks focused on him.
"Who are you?" Randy said thickly, advancing a step. "Who . . . are . . . you?"
"Kevin, move!" Thea said urgently.
It was too late. The hand with the razor flashed out, lightning
quick
. Blood spurted from Kevin's face.
Kevin howled, clapping a hand to his cheek. "He cut me! This guy cut me!" Blood ran between his fingers.
Randy lifted the razor again.
Thea reached out with her mind. Not reached. She leaped. It was completely instinctive; she was scared to death, and all she could think of was that he was going to kill Kevin, and maybe Blaise, too.
She caught-something.
Pain and grief and fury that seemed to be bouncing around like a baboon in a cage. She could hold it for only an instant, but in that instant Eric threw two cups of punch in Randy's face. Randy yelled and turned away from Kevin, toward Eric.
Thea felt a surge of pure terror. Randy slashed with the razor, but Eric was fast; he jumped back out of the way, circling to get behind Randy. Randy wheeled and
slashed
again. They were doing a macabre dance, going round and round.
Thea felt as if the fear was winding tighter inside her with each turn. But Eric kept out of the way of the flashing razor until a rush of movement on the dance floor caught her eye. It was Mr. Adkins and two other teachers. They converged on Randy and there was a lot of confusion. When it was over, Randy was on the ground.
Sirens wailed outside, coming closer. Eric stepped away from the pile on the floor.
Breathing hard, he looked at Thea. She nodded that she was all right,
then
shut her eyes.
She felt limp and wrung out and awful. They were going to take Randy away now, and she didn't think there was much help for him. He definitely seemed too far gone.
At that moment she was ashamed of being a witch.
"All right, people," Mr. Adkins was saying. "Let's move out of here. Let's get this place cleared." He looked at Blaise, who was bending over a seated Kevin, holding a napkin to his cheek. "You two can stay." Then he put a hand on Blaise's shoulder. "Are you okay here?"
Blaise looked up with wide, tragic gray eyes. "I think so," she said bravely.
Mr. Adkins swallowed. His hand on Blaise's shoulder squeezed. Thea heard him mutter something like, "Poor kid."
Oh, give me a break, Thea thought. But a small, selfish part of her was relieved. Blaise wasn't going to get in trouble over this one; neither of them was going to get expelled. Grandma wasn't going to be disgraced in front of the
And Blaise did seem worried about Kevin. She was bending over him again solicitously. As if she really cared.
Thea slipped past a teacher's outstretched arm. "Are you okay?" she whispered to Blaise.
Blaise looked up enigmatically. That was when Thea saw that she had a tiny vial concealed in the napkin. It was full of blood.
"You . . ." Thea couldn't find the words.
Blaise made a slight grimace that meant: I know. But it was just too good a chance to miss.
Thea backed up and ran into Eric. He put a steadying arm around her.
"Is she all right?"
"She's fine. I have to get out of here."
Eric looked into her face. He was rumpled: his hair mussed, his eyes dark. All he said was, "Let's go."
They passed Vivienne and Selene on the way out. Thea had to give them credit; they both looked shocked and unhappy. The question was
,
would it last?
Dani was in the parking lot with John Finkelstein. "I'm going home," she said significantly to Thea, and tossed something into a clump of bitterbrush.
It was an empty vial.
Thea felt a tiny uncoiling of relief. She touched Dani's arm lightly. "Thanks."
Dani looked back at the cafeteria. "I wonder what it was he wanted to know?" she murmured.
And just then a howl came from the lighted doorway, as if answering her question. It didn't sound like a person; it sounded like an animal in anguish.