Was she crazy? She was blurting out spell ingredients, for Earth's sake. He was too easy to talk to, that was the problem. Every so often she'd forget he wasn't a witch.
"You okay?" he said as her silence stretched on. His voice was concerned.
No, I am not okay. I've got Blaise on one side and the laws of the Night World on the other, and they're both out to get me. And I don't even know if you're worth it....
"Can I ask you something?" she said abruptly. "Why did you knock me out of the way of that snake?"
"Huh? It was in a striking coil. You could have got bit."
"But so could you." So did you.
He frowned as if stricken by one of those unsolvable mysteries of life. "Yeah... but that didn't seem so bad somehow. I suppose that sounds stupid."
Thea didn't know how to answer. And she was suddenly in terrible conflict about what to do. Her body seemed to want her to lean her head against Eric's shoulder, but her mind was yelling in alarm at the very thought.
At that moment she heard loud voices at the edge of the dance floor.
"Get out of the way," a guy in a blue jacket was saying. "She smiled at me, and I'm going over there."
"It was me she was smiling at, you jerk," a guy in a gray jacket snapped back. "So just back off and let me go."
Expletives. "It was me, and you'd better get out of the way." More expletives. "It was me, and you'd better let go."
A fistfight started. Chaperones came running.
Guess who's here? Thea asked herself. She had no trouble at all locating Blaise. The red-trimmed tuxedo was surrounded by a ring of guys, which was surrounded by a ring of abandoned and angry girls.
"Maybe we should go over and say hi," Thea said. She wanted to warn Blaise about starting a riot.
"Okay. She sure is popular, isn't she?"
They managed to worm their way through the encircling crowd. Blaise was in her element, glorying in the adulation and confusion.
"I waited for an hour and a half, but you never showed up," a very pale Kevin was saying to her. He was wearing an immaculate white silk shirt and exquisitely tailored black pants. His eyes were hollow.
"Maybe you gave me the wrong address," Blaise said thoughtfully. "I couldn't find your house." She had her hand tucked into the arm of a very tall guy with shoulder-length blond hair, who looked as if he worked out four or five hours a day. "Anyway, you want to dance?"
Kevin looked at the blond guy, who looked back impassively, his cleft chin rock hard.
"Don't mind Sergio," Blaise said. "He was just keeping me company. Do you not want to dance?"
Kevin's eyes fell. "Well, yeah, of course I want to...."
As Blaise detached herself from Sergio, Thea leaned forward. "You'd better not do anything too public," she hissed in her cousin's ear. "There's already been one fight."
Blaise just gave her an amused glance and took Kevin's arm. Most of the boys followed her, and with the crowd gone, Thea saw Dani at a small table. She was wearing a sparkling gold dress and she was alone.
"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.