It didn't matter. Thea was so edgy that the words just seemed to burst out. "Do something like what? Smash his car? Turn him into a toad?"
Dani looked shocked, her velvet-dark eyes wide.
Thea turned and walked quickly away.
Stupid, stupid, she told herself. That was so dumb of you. You may not have to pretend to be playing with Eric in front of Blaise anymore-but in front of the other witches you've got to keep acting.
She headed almost blindly for Eric's locker, ignoring the people she passed.
I've only been here a week. How can everything in my life have become so awful? I'm at war with Blaise; I've worked a forbidden spell; I don't dare talk to Gran-and I've broken Night World law.
"Thea! I was looking for you."
It was Eric's voice. Warm, eager-everything that
Thea wasn't. She turned to see green eyes flecked with dancing gray and an astonishing smile. A smile that drew her in, changing the world.
Maybe everything was going to be all right, after all.
"I called you yesterday, but I just kept getting the machine."
Thea hadn't even looked at the answering machine. "I'm sorry-there was a lot going on." Eric looked so kind that she groped for something that had been going on that she could tell him about. "My grandmother's been sick." He sobered at once. "That's terrible." "Yes." Thea fished in her backpack for the small herb pillow she'd put there this morning. Then she hesitated. "Eric... is there somewhere we could go to talk alone? Just for a few minutes? I want to give you something."
He blinked, then waggled his eyebrows. "Nothing I'd like better. And I know just the place. Come on." He led her across campus to a large building that stood apart from the rest of the complex. It had a shabby look and the paint on the double doors was blistered. A banner announced in orange and black letters: don't miss the .ultimate Halloween party. "What is this?"
Eric, who was opening the door, put a finger to his lips. He glanced inside, then beckoned to her.
"It's the old gym. They're supposed to be renovating it as a student center, but there isn't enough money." He snorted. "Probably because they're
spending too much on renovating downtown. Now- what was it you wanted to give me?"
"It..." Thea stopped dead as she took in her surroundings. All thoughts of the herb pillow vanished. "Eric-..." She stared around her, feeling a slow wave of sickness roil through her stomach. "Is this... for the Halloween party?".
"Yeah. They do a couple fund-raisers a semester here. This is kind of a weird one-but they did it last year and it brought in a lot."
Not weird, Thea thought numbly. Weird doesn't begin to describe it.
Half the room was empty, just scuffed hardwood floor, a broken basketball backboard, and exposed pipes in the ceiling. But the other half looked like a cross between a medieval dungeon and a casino. She walked slowly toward it, her footsteps echoing.
Wooden booths of various sizes were decorated with orange and black crepe paper and fake spider webs. Thea read one banner after another.
"Fortune telling... Drench a Wench... Bobbing for Shrunken Heads?"
"It's bobbing for apples really," Eric said, seeming embarrassed. "And the gambling isn't real. You do it all with goblin money and exchange it for prizes."
Thea couldn't stop looking at the booths. Wheel of Torture: a money wheel with a dummy dressed like a witch spreadeagled in the middle. Bloody Blackjack. Devil's Darts... a dart game with a cork witch as a target.
And there were witch figures everywhere. Cloth witches on nooses hanging from the overhead pipes.
Cardboard witches leering from the tops of booths. Paper witches dancing on the wall. They were fat, skinny, white-haired, gray-haired, cross-eyed, squint-eyed, warty, funny, scary... and ugly. That was the one thing they all had in common.
That's what they think of us. Humans. All humans...
"Thea? Are you okay?"
Thea whirled. "No, I am not okay." She gestured around the room. "Will you look at this stuff? Do you really think it's funny? Something to party about?" Hardly aware of what she was doing, she spun him around to face The Iron Maiden-a wooden replica with rubber spikes.
"What are people going to do? Pay to step into that? Don't they realize that it used to be real? That real people were put in it, and that when the door closed, those spikes went into them, into their arms and their stomachs and their eyes..." She couldn't go on.
Eric looked as stricken as Dani had earlier. He'd never seen her like this. "Thea-look, I'm sorry... I never thought..."
"Or that." Thea gestured toward the Wheel of Torture, the words tumbling out. "Do you know how they really put a witch on the wheel? They broke every bone in her body so they could just thread her arms and legs through the spokes like spaghetti. Then they put the wheel on a pole and left her up there to die...."
Eric's face contracted with horror. "God, Thea..."
"And these pictures--the witches who got tortured didn't have green skin and evil eyes. They weren't monsters, and they didn't have anything to do with devils. They were people."
Eric reached out for her, but she spun away, staring at a particularly ugly hag on the wall. "Do you think this place is all right for a party? That this is good fun? That witches look like that?" She flung out an arm, close to being hysterical. "Well, do you?"
In her mind's eye she could see the world: Dani and Blaise and all other witches on the left; Eric and the students here and all other humans on the right, both races hating and despising each other-and herself somewhere in the middle.
Eric caught her shoulders. "No, I don't think it's all right. Thea, will you just listen to me for a second?"
He was almost shaking her-but she could see that there were tears forming at the corners of his eyes.
"I feel awful," he said. "I never thought about taking this stuff seriously-and that's my own stupid fault, and I know it's not an excuse. But now that you say it, I do see how terrible it is, and I'm sorry. And I never should have brought you here, of all people..."
Thea, who had been starting to relax, stiffened again. "Why me 'of all people'?" she demanded.