The Halloween Dance had been renamed the “Harvest Ball,” but that just didn’t have the same sexy ring. When ticket sales for the “Harvest Ball” had totaled less than a hundred dollars, the school had simply cancelled the event. No one was really disappointed.
By the time Alissa took over Tyler’s party, no one even remembered the Harvest Ball.
***
Alissa sent the invitations just before the end of last period. The school had a strict “no cell” policy, enforced under the threat of phone confiscation, so Alissa knew the first thing everyone would do after they escaped from the last class of the day was turn their phones on and then the halls would be filled with buzzing and ringing and lame song clips announcing the arrival of texts. It was always fun for her to watch the faces of the people who didn’t get the texts as they realized their significant others had been chosen. The party was not a “plus one” affair. You were either invited or you weren’t. And if the person you were dating wasn’t invited? Then as far as Alissa was concerned, maybe it was time to consider a new hook-up.
Chapter Three
I have drunk, and seen the spider.—William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, II.i.45
Most of the work of cleaning up the old church in the woods had already been done by Halloween morning, but Alissa arrived early to supervise the last of the preparations. Sarah-Jane Jenson came with her to put together the goodie bags. Alissa had been grooming the girl to take over Katie’s role in her life, and she’d discovered the Sarah-Jane had a knack for combining the expected—Blu-rays of Halloween movies—items the guests could give their parents who still watched movies on DVD—chocolate-covered ants, lollipops with real scorpions embedded in them—with original presents like sample sizes of Goth-inspired perfume from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Sarah-Jane had bought every drop of “Blood Pearl” the company had in stock. There would also be plenty of “edibles” one of Tyler’s buddies had brought back from a college scouting trip in Seattle.
“How many people have RSVP’d?” Sarah-Jane asked as she pulled bags of stuff out of the back of her car and set up an assembly line on a folding table the caterers had brought.
Alissa gave her a cold look. “Everyone who’s invited will shows up,” she said.
Sarah-Jane’s face mirrored her confusion.
“But what if they don’t?” she persisted. “I can’t return some of this stuff.”
Alissa wondered if she’d misjudged Sarah-Jane.
“Then they won’t get invited back,” Alissa said with a shrug. “Don’t worry about the returns. You can give them to charity or keep them yourself.”
Sarah-Jane got the hint and subsided. She didn’t want to drop off the guest list or get replaced in Alissa’s inner circle the way Katie was.
There were so many ways you could find yourself off the list.
Beth Teegan had been banned after giving Sam Metvak a blow job during one of the musical interludes at the House of Night party. She later protested she was just acting out a pivotal scene from the first book, but that wasn’t good enough to placate Alissa’s outrage.
It wasn’t that Alissa objected to someone giving—or getting—a hummer, but Tyler had paid more than a hundred grand to the band performing and she thought it was disrespectful that the two had sneaked off during their six-song set.
Anyone who came dressed as a character from a popular movie or television show was crossed off the list unless they looked super-hot in their chosen costume. Wearing such outfits, in Alissa’s view, suggested a severe lack of imagination. “They might as well have draped a white sheet over their heads and come as a ghost,” she’d complained to Sarah-Jane. Still, Alissa did make some exceptions. Devin Anspaugh had come as Marvel’s Loki the year before, and his feral intensity and semi-crazy smile had been even more engaging than Tom Hiddleston. Plus, his hair really was long and dark. Alissa had a weakness for guys with long hair.
Devin was a stoner that Alissa had added at the last minute, thinking there might be something behind his light blue eyes, and he had not disappointed her. Alissa was still contemplating the memory of Devin Anspaugh when she was interrupted by the arrival of Ruta Voras, the DJ Tyler had hired.
“Are you Lissa?” the woman asked.
“Alissa,” Alissa had corrected sharply, because she didn’t like the look of the DJ, didn’t like her look at all.
Ruta was maybe 25, tall and slim with a mane of fox-red hair that cascaded over shapely shoulders and arms sleeved in tattoos as intricate and delicate as spider webs. Ruta was balancing a milk crate full of vinyl records on her bony hip and smiling at Alissa.
“I’m Ruta,” she said. “I’ll be spinning for you tonight. You think I can get some help unloading my gear?”
“I’m free,” Jay-Jay said, way too fast for Alissa’s comfort, especially since he hadn’t consulted with her first to see if she needed him. Ruta had smiled at Jay-Jay like he was the hottest guy on the planet.
“My hero,” she’d said, and thrust the crate into his arms. He staggered a little bit as he took the weight; the crate was heavier than it looked.
The DJ turned back to Alissa; her face arranged in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “And where would you like me to set up?” she asked, her dark eyes meeting Alissa’s and holding them.
Alissa saw herself reflected in Ruta’s glittering, compound eyes, and she didn’t like what she saw there. She knew the woman then for what she was—a priestess of the same goddess that she served—and she knew Ruta was there to examine her and test her and judge her.
“You’ll be in the loft,” Alissa finally said, proud that she’d managed to keep the tremor out of her voice.
“I’ll show you,” Sarah-Jane said, again, much too eagerly for Alissa’s liking. As the two turned away, Alissa heard a small sound that was like a spider’s silent scuttling, and it raised goosebumps on her flesh.
“You should get a tattoo,” Tyler said, startling Alissa. She hadn’t heard him walk up beside her. That was unusual. She was normally so attuned to his presence that she could feel the air vibrating as he moved.
“I think disfiguring skin is disgusting,” Alissa said, and was surprised when he frowned.
Tyler never frowned at her. Never.
“Cara Delevingne has more than 20 tattoos,” he said, as if that ended the argument because he knew Alissa thought Cara was hot.
“I’m not getting a tattoo, Tyler,” Alissa said in a tone that indicated she was done with the topic.
He opened his mouth to say something else when they were interrupted by a yell.
“Fuck!” one of the caterers swore, flailing his arms and stamping his foot on the floor.
“What?” the other caterer said.
“Spider,” the guy said, and pointed to the floorboards.
“Damn,” his friend said, bending over for a closer look. “I think that’s a brown recluse.”
Alissa felt her guts clench.
This was a bad omen, a very bad omen indeed. The goddess would not be happy that Alissa had allowed one of her creatures to be murdered without intervention.
I’m sorry, Alissa mumbled in quiet supplication. He didn’t know better.
Alissa heard Tyler laugh at something and looked over just in time to see him take a burning cigarette from the DJ’s hand and take a drag before handing it back to her. Her first thought was annoyance that Ruta was polluting the air she was breathing with her foul smoke. Her second was: Is he sharing a cigarette? Swapping spit with that skank?
She was so angry her jealousy almost made her sick. And that was a bad sign also, because since she’d learned the teachings written down in the Codex of the Red Spider, she’d had no need of jealousy.
But suddenly, all the old insecurities came rushing back.
She stormed into the church so she wouldn’t have to look at them, only to get shouldered aside as Jay-Jay moved past her with another couple of Ruta’s milk crates.
She looked at Jay-Jay humping Ruta’s records up
to the choir loft and remembered how he’d used to call her “brace face” when they were in elementary school. After the braces were removed, she’d had the whitest, straightest teeth of anyone in school who wasn’t part Native American, and nobody called her that anymore.
Well, not after the unfortunate incident with Blair.
Blair was one of the mean girls who orbited around Callie, reflecting her light. She hadn’t taken her cue from Callie, who’d been gracious when the new, improved Alissa had arrived, and had instead persisted in mocking her at every opportunity. Alissa blamed it on Blair’s low self-esteem and cut her some slack until one day, not long before prom, Blair had made some sort of snide remark about Alissa’s new haircut, and that had been it.
Two hours later, Blair had broken a tooth biting down on an almond—“a freak nut accident,” Katie had reported happily to Alissa, who had not been present. Despite a number of frenzied phone calls, Blair’s parents had been unable to find a dentist in time to repair the damage before the event. Blair had skipped the dance, pissing off her date, who’d dropped almost a grand renting a limo and a hotel room and a tux and buying flowers for her.
Her mother hadn’t been too happy either. Blair’s prom dress had been ordered from New York and had cost the equivalent of a semester in college. And because it had been custom-fitted to Blair’s petite frame, it couldn’t be returned.
Blair hadn’t had a date the whole rest of her high school career. The dress hung in her closet for a year before her mother finally sold it on Poshmark for a fraction of what it had cost.
It takes so little to turn the pack against the wounded gazelle.
Blair didn’t know how Alissa had sabotaged her, but she had no doubt she had, and from then on, she’d tried every possible way to make it up to Alissa. Unfortunately for her, Alissa didn’t believe in second chances, and there really wasn’t anything the other girl could do for her.
She’d toyed with Blair a little bit, asking her for little things—the pretty sapphire ring she wore that had belonged to her grandmother, a pair of tickets to a concert that Alissa didn’t even bother to attend. It had been fun tormenting her for a while, but eventually, it really just got boring.
Alissa was easily bored.
Last time Alissa had seen Blair, she was working in the ice cream store at the mall and had gained twenty pounds.
Which only reinforced Alissa’s notion that high school was Social Darwinism in its purest form.
And bullying? It’s just another way of culling the herd, of keeping the gene pool healthy.
***
The screech of feedback brought Alissa out of her reverie. Ruta had come into the church and was starting her sound check. Jay-Jay was busy hooking things up and plugging things in and generally doing her bidding.
Suddenly, he pulled his hand back like it had been scalded.
“Did you get a shock?” Ruta asked, her voice a velvet purr.
“Fucking spider bit me,” he said, and held his wounded hand out to her as if he expected her to kiss his boo boo and make it better.
What a pussy, Alissa thought.
“There’s spiders all over this place,” Sarah-Jane said as she dumped a completed load of goodie bags on a pew. “Y’all should have fumigated the place.”
Ordinarily, Alissa would have replied to this bit of unsolicited advice with a cutting remark, but she was transfixed by what was going on in the choir loft.
Ruta had grabbed Jay-Jay’s hand like she owned it and brought it to her lips for a kiss.
“It’s good luck to receive a spider’s kiss,” she said. Jay-Jay looked at her like she’d just said, “Let there be light” and thereby brought the cosmos into being.
“Lucky Jay-Jay,” Tyler commented as he brought in a first load of booze for the bar.
“Good job on the goodie bags,” he said to Sarah-Jane.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Alissa said, and then realized she’d said it out loud when everyone turned to look at her.
Including Ruta, whose eight eyes were implacable.
You of all people should know the goddess does not jest, Ruta said to Alissa in her mind. She is very disappointed in you. Look around you and behold the signs.
No one but Alissa heard this exchange, but they did notice the oddly fixed glare that Alissa sent the DJ’s way.
For the first time in a long time, Tyler wondered how he and Alissa had come to hook up.
For the first time ever, Jay-Jay wondered if Alissa was as weird as Callie had always said she was.
Sarah-Jane was wondering if she had enough stuff to give Ruta a goodie bag and decided if she ran short, she’d just give the DJ her own. Because Ruta was awesome and deserved a goodie bag.
As the party preparations wore on, Alissa had to fight to stay focused. By the time the first guests started to arrive, she’d convinced herself that her reaction to Ruta was simply the result of pre-party jitters brought on by too much caffeine. The caterers had brought an espresso machine and Sarah-Jane had made sure Alissa’s cup was never empty.
By six, when the sun was starting to set, Alissa was back to her old self as she stood with Tyler in the vestibule of the church, welcoming everyone and making mental notes she would transcribe later. She kept a log of each party, jotting down bits of “intel” she could use later if she needed to manipulate someone into doing something or if she wanted to destroy them on social media.
Twins Mick and Pat Quinn got a thumbs up for coming as both young Steve Jobs and sick Steve Jobs in jeans and black turtlenecks. But when Brittany Peck and her boyfriend Levon showed up dressed like an ISIS jihadist in a suicide vest and an ICE agent dangling a brown baby doll from one hand, Alissa mentally crossed them both off her list. There was clever. And there was out there. And then there was over the line. And as far as Alissa was concerned, people needed to know the difference, especially if they were American. Alissa had never voted, but she already knew she wasn’t going to vote Republican like her parents when she turned 18.
It was too bad about Brittany, she thought. Brittany was hot, and not just in an Oklahoma City way. She had what it took to be a catalogue model, or a reality television star. She was cheating on Levon and he knew it, but he was just so grateful that she was with him even part time that he pretended not to know.
Alissa predicted they wouldn’t even be a couple by Christmas, although Brittany might hold on long enough to score a Christmas gift.
Leo and Celia had come together, as Alissa knew they would. He was dressed in a designer suit; she wore an elegant gown with a silk necktie knotted around one wrist. And just in case nobody got the literary reference, she also carried a paperback copy of 50 Shades of Grey. Everybody knew Leo was gay, including Celia, but she was happy enough to be his beard because she was in love with him. Alissa thought it was kind of sad that he couldn’t just say, “Fuck it, I’m gay,” but his parents had met at Oral Roberts University and they’d freak and probably hand him over to someone for deprogramming if he ever tried to get them to listen to him. So they just pretended he was “artistic” and bragged about him to their Sunday school classes while Leo cruised gay bars and hoped they never found out.
***
As each guest came in, Tyler directed them to the pews where a huge arsenal of paintball guns awaited. The unspoken theme of the party was The Walking Dead, and Tyler had run a CraigsList ad to hire people willing to play zombie attackers for a hundred bucks and gas money. He’d arranged to have them “attack” the church in several waves and drag guests off into the woods. If the other guests could stop the attacks, then the “victims” got to stay and party. But if the “zombies” got them all the way into the woods, then that was it for their evening. They’d have to take their goodie bags and go.
That had been Alissa’s idea. She didn’t like being around people she thought of as “losers.”
***
By nine, Ruta had a headache. Some chemical the smoke machine was pumping out was playing h
ell with her spider eye contacts and she’d finally taken them out, leaving the crowd a blur. She had her act down to such a routine that she could operate on auto-pilot and muscle memory if she had to. And the big dumb kid who’d helped her set up was practically sitting at her feet, just in case she needed him to do something.
She sighed.
Lately they all seemed to be big dumb kids who thought they were hip because they weren’t still listening to 8-Track tapes and AM radio. Ruta knew she was a big fish in a small pond and that sooner or later, when her tits starts to sag and her tats started to fade, she was going to have to find another way to pay her rent. Her mom had a medical billing business she was willing to turn over to Ruta so she could move to Costa Rica and find a second husband without ever having to worry about snow again. Most of the time that option sounded like a slow death by suffocation. After all, Ruta had spent five years in L.A., playing all the clubs, and had even made it to Coachella once. But making it as a celebrity DJ was like anything else—it helped to have connections. And about the third time she lost a booking to a celebutante or an actor’s son, she’d packed up her gear and headed back home, feeling as burned out as a fizzled firework.
Sometimes medical billing seemed like a good, steady paycheck. She was seriously getting too old for this shit.
The kid who’d hired her had told her that if she did a good job, there might be other work for her, which should have sounded good, but somehow sounded skeezy. And it freaked Ruta out the way Tyler’s girlfriend kept looking at her like she was trying to read her mind.
Alissa saw Ruta looking at her and shuddered. She was too far away to see the glittering light in her compound eyes, but just Ruta’s body language unsettled her.
I don’t know what you want, she said to the goddess in her mind, and then she caught a glimpse of Tyler, grinding on a girl dressed like Nicki Minaj. Suddenly it was very clear to her what she had to do.
The goddess wanted her to prove her devotion with a sacrifice.
A Cursed All Hallows' Eve Page 4