Besphinxed

by Alethea Kontis

  “At least she’s enthusiastic,” said Tinker. “Working with Oleander is like working with a slug. In a coma.”

  “If Duko calls me a dog one more time…” said Finn.

  Kai laughed. “He’s one to bark!”

  “I know y’all think I have the patience of a saint, but Zev Gunnolf is gonna make me lose my religion,” said Bellamy.

  Owen wondered offhandedly exactly what the fairy religion was…and what it might take to make a fairy lose it. Especially one as upbeat as Bellamy.

  “I’d be more than happy to stab him for you,” Maya said cheerfully. “Just say the word.”

  “Me first,” said Tinker.

  Bellamy kissed the back of Tinker’s hand and batted her eyelashes. “My hero.”

  Owen laughed at the exchange. There was enough of a ruckus that his lack of comment regarding the partnership with Heather went unnoticed.

  “What food were y’all assigned?” Bellamy asked Kai.

  “Ladyfingers,” said Kai. “Ones that look like actual fingers. Delaney Delectables’s sells something very similar—we’d have this in the bag if Poppy would shut up long enough for me to get a word in edgewise. You?”

  “Cake pop eyeballs,” said Bellamy. “But if Zev touches my wings without permission one more time I’m gonna pop out his eyeballs.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Maya. “After Tinker stabs him.”

  “Deal,” said Tinker.

  “My, y’all seem extra stabby today,” said Bellamy. “More than usual.”

  Maya batted her eyelashes at the fairy. “It’s just that we love you so much. The bloodshed is merely a bonus.”

  “Duko and I have to make mummy-dogs,” Finn growled. “How’s that for irony?”

  There was silence for a moment, before everyone burst out laughing. It was a fitting assignment for the two most notorious werewolves in their grade. Owen rather thought the canines deserved each other.

  Still smiling, Kai asked Owen, “What food did you and Horrible Heather get?”

  “Chocolate chip cookies,” he said with a chuckle…and then realized he was the only one laughing.

  “That’s it?” Finn asked.

  Owen nodded. “Like chocolate biscuits, yeah?”

  “Not where I’m from,” said Bellamy. “The South Carolina biscuit is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.”

  “Oh, hush, Bell.” Kai waved the fairy away. “You know they call cookies ‘biscuits’ across the pond.” She turned back to Owen. “You sure that’s all the card said? That doesn’t sound zombie-themed at all.”

  Owen shrugged. “That’s all we got. If we don’t have to worry about making them zombified, we’re a bit of all right, aren’t we? Anyone can make a proper biscuit. Can’t they?”

  Kai bit her lip. “Chocolate chip cookies can be deceptive,” she said. “So much depends on the ingredients, and the temperature of the ingredients, and the order in which you mix them, and the way you place them on the sheet…”

  “This is sounding less and less fun by the minute,” said Owen.

  Kai patted him on the back. “Don’t worry. I’ll help you out. I’d never let Horrible Heather hold you back.”

  Owen bent his head to her shoulder. “Thanks, love.”

  Immediately, annoyingly, Finn stepped between them. “We all need to help each other out, if we’re going to get through this project with our sanity intact.”

  No matter where Finn placed his stinky wolf-bum, he was never going to stop Kai and Owen from being friends…a fact about which Owen loved to remind the wolf-shifter as often as possible. “Explain to me what’s going on here again?” Owen asked over Finn’s head. “This flash flood thing?”

  “Flash mob,” Kai corrected.

  “It’s so cool,” said Bellamy. “At first, it just looks like a bunch of random people walkin’ around. But then a song starts over a loudspeaker somewhere, and surprise! You’re smack dab in the middle of a musical number!” Her long pony tail bobbed up and down and her wings trembled with excitement. Bits of fairy dust slid down her flared skirt and scattered along the path as she walked.

  Owen did not think that sounded cool at all. In fact, he thought it sounded rather horrific. Judging by the expression on Finn’s face, the werewolf agreed.

  “It’s actually kind of fun,” Tinker assured them. “When you’re in the audience, there’s this moment when you think everyone around you has suddenly gone insane. Then you realize what’s going on, and you can’t wait to see what happens next.”

  “On the other side, when you’re part of the mob itself, it’s fun to watch the audience,” said Kai.

  “The most fun is when everyone gets to watch it later, online,” said Sam, the were-sloth. He and his sister Natalie were recent transfer students from up north, but they weren’t quite as out of touch with the modern world as Finn and Owen. Finn had spent most of his life in the woods of Tennessee, discouraged from making contact with civilization. Owen had spent most of his life in trash cans and dumpsters.

  “It’ll be a blast,” Hubble said with enthusiasm. As the president of the drama club, the kobold said everything with enthusiasm. “I convinced Ausrinne to go through the rag bin and see what she could salvage for our zombie costumes.” Owen thought the bright red pants and jacket the kobold was wearing looked rather like a costume already, but he refrained from saying so.

  “Hubble!” Natalie, also part of the drama club, was the one person who had no qualms about taking her director to task. “You really need to stop using Ausrinne as your personal tailor.”

  “Please. She loves it! The woman lives and breathes fabric! Besides”—Hubble cleared his throat and lowered his voice—“I promised to take her out to dinner after tonight’s dance rehearsal.”

  There were encouraging hoots and hollers from the group in reaction to Hubble’s statement. Tinker, Finn, and Sam took turns patting Hubble on the back. Kai and Maya smiled at each other. Bellamy clapped her hands. Natalie seemed to be reserving judgment. During her time at Harmswood, Natalie had become known as quite the warrior. It was in her nature to be overprotective of her friends. Especially the ones with whom she had traveled to the goblin kingdom last winter.

  “I’m just looking forward to dancing again,” said Maya. “I don’t care what the reason is.” Like Heather, Maya Cordova was a witch. Unlike Heather, Maya’s family lived in Nocturne Falls, and therefore had more in common with the other locals.

  Or, as Owen liked to call them, the “popular unpopular” crowd.

  The snooty rich kids might be under the impression that they ran the school, but Kai and her friends were more approachable. As locals, they were literally the kids next door. If any of them needed anything, the student body of Harmswood would rally. And had, at least once that Owen knew about.

  Truth be told, Owen was currently more concerned about the dancing than he was about the Arachne discovering his whereabouts. From what he could gather, it sounded like the goal of this flash mob was some sort of intricately choreographed chorus line. Owen didn’t have the first clue about twenty-first century dancing. At the Midwinter Masquerade, he’d feigned a bit of bopping about before leading Heather in a waltz—a classic dance he’d managed to learn back when he walked on two legs during the last turn of the century. Old Owen knew how to foxtrot. New Owen recognized that no modern teenager listened to ragtime.

  It wasn’t often that Kai or her friends made Owen feel out of place, but Owen knew in his bones that he was about to embarrass himself.

  The bleachers in the gymnasium had been dematerialized—the same had been done for the masquerade, and various other functions. But there were no decorations this time, only a large white screen that had somehow manifested on one of the walls. Owen was confused for a moment. Were they here to dance, or watch a moving picture?

  There seemed to be twice as many students on the floor as there had been during the masquerade. Owen’s heart fluttered. Either every single person at Harmswood was about
to witness his failure, or no one would notice him at all. He sincerely hoped it was the latter.

  “I’m gonna tell the rest of the squad that we’re here,” said Bellamy.

  “Knock ‘em dead, babe,” said Tinker. The fairy stood on tiptoe to kiss the tall goblin on the cheek and then bounced away into the crowd.

  Shortly after Bellamy left, the lights dimmed. What had once been a lull of conversation turned into ghostlike moaning, shrieks, laughter, and cheers. A few of the weres howled.

  Sam rubbed his hands together. “Ooh, this is going to be good!”

  Hubble popped the collar of his red jacket. “You have no idea,” he said, his dazzling blue eyes full of mischief.

  A moving picture flashed up on the screen, with the word THRILLER in giant red letters. A car drove onto the screen. The girl in the car wore an outfit much like Bellamy’s. When her boyfriend transformed into some kind of were-being, all the weres in the gymnasium cheered.

  Owen cheered along with them.

  When the scene changed to modern day, Hubble began to hop and spin around the other students on the gym floor. Owen understood the red jacket now—the singer on the screen was wearing something very similar. Some of the students poked fun at Hubble. Some pretended to dance with him. Hubble danced with a few and ignored the rest, making his way up to the front of the gym.

  When zombies appeared on the moving picture screen, zombies also appeared in the gym.

  There were more shrieks and jeers. Owen strained to see what was going on when one of the zombies came up from behind and bumped right into him.

  It was Heather.

  “Nnnnnnn,” she moaned unintelligibly. Her black clothes were in tatters. Her hair was a stringy mess. Her skin looked pale and bloodless, and much of it was covered in gaping wounds. The only unmarred things about her person were the sun-and-moon choker and her button-up boots.

  “Are you all right?” Owen whispered.

  Heather moaned again before shuffling on. Had she winked at him?

  And then the zombies began to dance, both on screen and off.

  The crowd went crazy.

  Owen watched the dancing, mesmerized. To his astonishment, a few of the steps seemed very familiar to him. That one looked like the cakewalk. That one was definitely a modified grizzly bear. The dance went on, and on. And on. There were spins and gyrations and more grizzly bear, with a bit of spastic fit thrown in.

  Hubble looked to be having the time of his life. Bellamy was up there too, with Heather and the rest of the cheer squad all dressed like zombies. Suddenly, Natalie and Sam also broke into dance steps and joined the dancing throng at the front of the gym. Owen laughed out loud. He shouldn’t have been surprised at their participation, but for a moment, he was.

  “This is a flash mob,” Kai said to him.

  “Fascinating!” Owen called back over the music. “And a little terrifying!”

  Kai patted his hand. “You’ll be fine. I promise.”

  The song was long, and the dance did seem rather complicated, but if anyone in the group was a hair out of step, no one noticed. The whole production was sheer delight. No matter where you stood in that room, you were part of the show.

  At the end of the song, the dancers turned their backs to the audience. The lights stayed dim. The film continued to play out. And when the singer turned around to look out from the screen, the dancers turned as one to look back over their shoulders. The singer’s eyes glowed yellow. The Harmswood dancers’ eyes all glowed yellow too—with the exception of Hubble, whose eyes burned with that eerie blue light. The soundtrack’s ominous laughter reverberated throughout the room, its echoes finally dwindling to silence.

  Every student in the gymnasium burst into thunderous applause.

  The cheering went on for a good long while. Even Owen was the smallest bit excited at the prospect of being a part of something so fantastic. Slowly, the gym lights flickered and came back to life. Heather stepped to the front of the company of dancers and put a finger to her throat.

  “Thank you, everyone!” Heather’s booming voice silenced the rowdy assembly. Yet another example of the casual magic of Harmswood—using a spell to amplify one’s speech instead of a microphone. “Now just imagine all of us doing that down Black Cat Boulevard the night before Zombie Prom!” More applause answered her.

  “Horrible Heather sure can put on a show,” Kai whispered to Owen. “Too bad it’s all fake.”

  Owen’s brow furrowed. Was it fake? He absolutely believed the stories of abuse that Kai had suffered under Heather’s reign, but he saw no artifice in Heather’s current demeanor. Her face was flushed from the dancing, and her clear tone conveyed nothing but excitement.

  He remembered a nursery tale from his childhood about a boy who cried wolf. The prankster frightened the shepherd by yelling “Wolf!” so many times, that his warning was not heeded when a real wolf came to call. Heather had been disingenuous so many times, there was no telling who the real Heather was any more.

  Only…Owen had seen the truth of her once. That scared girl who had sought safety in a dance—she had been real.

  There was a mumble of words from someone in the crowd.

  Thankfully, Heather repeated the question. “Will we break any records? Well, the largest Thriller dance on record was held in Mexico, and there were more than ten thousand people there.” A few gasps rippled through the audience. “But Dragon Con did one in Atlanta a few years ago—we’d love to break the Georgia record!”

  Cheers again. Smart girl, thought Owen. Everyone loves a challenge.

  “Now I realize there is a lot of choreography, but I don’t want you to be discouraged. When we break it down into smaller parts, you’ll realize just how manageable it is. But first, we’re going to do a bit of warm up. Get your bodies moving. DJ Oleander, can you give us something with a beat?”

  “But what if we don’t know how to dance?” Owen asked under his breath. The gym went silent. Instead of sotto voce, his question had been amplified and projected to the entire room, as if he’d had a microphone spell on himself. Which he most certainly did not.

  How did you do that? mouthed Kai.

  Owen shrugged, completely perplexed. So much for surviving this event unnoticed.

  “I can help!”

  At first, Owen thought it was Bellamy who piped up and offered herself as tutor. When the sea of students parted to reveal the frosted pink pigtails of a perky Poppy Flanders, he was more than a bit surprised.

  “You know how to skip, don’t you?” Poppy asked him.

  Owen had visions of a thousand teen zombies popping up and down like hop-scotchers on sugar. “I…maybe?”

  “Come on. It’s easy!” Poppy began hopping on one foot, then the other, in a circle all around him. Owen watched her in fascination, unsure what any of her gymnastics had to do with dancing.

  “Poppy, sweets, you’re losing a lot in translation.”

  Poppy stopped skipping as soon as Heather walked into view. The students around them instinctively stepped back to watch what was about to happen. Owen felt Kai step forward, ready to come to his rescue, but he caught her eye and shook his head slightly. He could deal with this on his own.

  In point of fact, he would rather deal with Heather on his own.

  They stared at each other for a moment, with what felt like leagues of space between them. Was this the spot on the floor where they’d danced all those months ago? Had they been standing in these exact positions when the snow globe had exploded? Without the decorations, it was hard to say.

  He wondered if Heather was thinking the same thing. Briefly, he wished he could communicate telepathically with her, like he sometimes did with Kai. If he knew how this scene was about to play out, his heart wouldn’t be beating quite so rapidly.

  Heather raised a finger and tapped twice on the opposite side of her throat. “Oleander, give me a beat.” Her words were not broadcast to the room—Owen assumed this version of the spell sent her instr
uctions directly to the person whose name she spoke. Fascinating.

  A thumping bass line filled the room like a heartbeat. Owen tried to slow his own to match it.

  “Listen to the beat,” Heather said. “Count it out. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.”

  Owen did so, silently in his head, so as not to accidentally amplify anything else. One, two, three, four.

  “Now clench your fists. Grit your teeth. Make your entire body tense, every muscle. Got it?”

  Owen nodded.

  “Now relax. Relax every muscle until you’re ready to melt into the floor.”

  Behind Heather, a sea of faces relaxed simultaneously. Her instructions had merely been spoken to Owen, but the rest of the student body unconsciously followed her lead.

  “Count the beats again. Count to four. Then tense up and relax again.”

  One, two, three, four. Tense. One, two, three, four. Relax. They did this three times. By the third time, Owen could feel the bass pulse through his chest. One, two, three, four.

  “Now I want you to tap out the beats with your heel. No, not your toe.”

  Owen realized what he was doing and shifted his weight accordingly. It felt awkward at first, but the longer he did it, the more comfortable it became. Like an afterthought.

  “Your shoulders are already moving with the beat. Can you feel that? Go with it. But stay relaxed.”

  “What if my head wants to move too?” Owen risked asking. Happily, his voice did not seem louder than that beat. One, two, three, four.

  “Go with it,” Heather said again. “Any part of you that wants to move, let it. Don’t move to the music. Let the music move you.”

  Owen realized he was moving. And there was music. At some point, Oleander had added a bit of melody to the bass line, and he hadn’t even noticed. The students around them were undulating too, in their own ways, but all to the beat of that bass line. One, two, three, four. Heel stomp. One, two, three, four. Shift to the other heel. One, two, three, four. Owen closed his eyes and tried to shut out the other students, tried to stop himself from thinking about whatever they might be thinking about, or whether or not he looked silly doing whatever he was doing. If he couldn’t see what he was doing, he couldn’t be embarrassed by it. He concentrated on the beat and on the music, letting them both move him.