“Yep. It’s nice to be the only child of the town cardiologist.”
“I see that.” They walked hand-in-hand up the walk and through the front door. Since it was a small town and a big house, the party wasn’t too crowded, but it was full enough. And where people didn’t fill the corners, music did. Laurel already felt a dull ache in her ears.
“Over there,” she said, raising her voice over the music and pointing toward Ryan and Chelsea. Ryan looked fairly normal in a bright red T-shirt and Hollister jeans, but Chelsea had outdone herself. She had pulled her curls up in a high ponytail and was wearing long, swinging gold earrings. Dark blue jeans with cute black sandals and a black tank top with shiny beading set off the tan she’d gotten that summer.
Probably on the deck of Ryan’s pool.
“Look at you!” Laurel said as they approached. She pulled Chelsea into a hug. “You look awesome!”
“You too,” Chelsea said.
But Laurel was already wishing she hadn’t had to wear the long, empire-waist, tie-back blouse with a rather large bow that covered up the bump from her blossom. It was warm, and she was already starting to feel confined.
“Don’t you just adore this house?” Chelsea exclaimed, pulling Laurel a little off to the side.
“It’s gorgeous.”
“I love to come here. With three brothers under twelve, we can’t have very many breakable things at my house,” Chelsea said. “But here? They put statues on the coffee table. At dinner the glasses are made of — would you believe it—glass.”
They both laughed.
Chelsea turned her head to watch David and Ryan talking and laughing together. As if feeling themselves being observed, they both turned to look over at the girls. Ryan winked.
“Sometimes when I see the two of them together like this I wonder how Ryan could have been there for so many years and I never saw him.” She turned to Laurel. “What was I thinking?”
Laurel laughed and put her arm around Chelsea. “That David was hotter?”
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Chelsea said, rolling her eyes. “Come on,” she said, pulling Laurel toward the back of the house. “You have got to see this view.”
BY ELEVEN LAUREL WAS THOROUGHLY EXHAUSTED from dancing and the rather distinct lack of sunlight. She smiled in relief when David elbowed his way through the crowd and brought her a plastic cup with some kind of red punch in it.
“Thank you,” Laurel said, taking it from him. “Seriously, I am parched and exhausted.”
“Your knight in shining armor comes through again,” David said.
She brought the cup up to her mouth, then made a face. “Yuck. Someone totally spiked this.”
“Really? What is this, a fifties sitcom?”
“No kidding.” Laurel couldn’t even sit at the same table with her parents when they had wine without growing nauseated. The smell of any kind of alcohol made her queasy.
“Well, I guess I’ll do my date-ly duty and drink them both,” David said, taking Laurel’s cup from her.
“David!”
“What?” he said after taking a long swallow.
Laurel rolled her eyes. “I’m driving home.”
“Fine with me,” David said, after taking another drink. “Means I can go back for seconds.”
“You’re going to get totally sloshed.”
“Oh, please. My mom serves wine with dinner at least once a week.”
“Does she really?”
David grinned.
“Give me that,” Laurel said, taking her cup back.
“Why? You can’t drink it.”
“I most certainly can,” she said, reaching into her purse for a small bottle she had taken from her Fall faerie kit.
“What is that?” David asked, scooting close to her.
“Water purifier,” Laurel said, squeezing one clear drop into her cup and swirling the contents gently.
“Did you make that?”
“I wish,” Laurel said darkly. “They gave it to me at the Academy.”
Laurel looked down into her cup. The red punch had turned clear. “Huh,” she said. “I guess the dye is considered an impurity as well.”
David tilted the cup in his direction and sniffed. “You know, most people pay to add alcohol to their beverage, not the other way around.”
“I march to my own beat.”
“So what have you got left? Sugar water?”
Laurel shrugged and took a sip. “Yeah, basically.”
“Appetizing as that sounds, I think I’m going to grab my refill at the punch bowl, thank you.”
“Lush,” Laurel called teasingly after him.
She wandered into an empty hallway with her cup of sugar water. It was nice to get away from the stifling crowds. If she were being completely honest with herself, she was ready to go home and go to bed. There was at least another hour — probably two to three — of the party left and she knew David would want to stay for the whole thing.
Still, she could tough it out for one more hour. Probably.
She wandered over to a long, tall window between two matching paintings of ballerinas and leaned her forehead against the cool surface as she looked out at the night sky. A flicker of movement outside the window caught Laurel’s eye. A dark shape, barely illuminated by the glow from inside the house, moved again. She focused on it, trying to make out what it was. Could it be an animal? A dog, maybe? It seemed too big for that. It was standing halfway in the shadow of a large tree that kept her from discerning more than an outline. Then it lifted its head, and the dim beam illuminated a pale, deformed face with grotesque clarity. Laurel threw herself back from the pane, her chest tight and her breathing rapid. After slowly counting to ten she peeked around the sill again.
It was gone.
Its absence was almost as formidable as its presence, as if a hole in the light itself sat empty where the monster had been.
Did I imagine it? Her hands were still shaking as she pictured the mismatched face — one eye more than an inch lower than the other, a twisted snarl of a mouth, an impossibly crooked nose. No, she’d seen it.
Fear clutched at her chest. She had to find David.
Forcing herself to remain composed, Laurel moved from room to room, looking. Panic welled up inside her as she seemed to find everyone but him. Finally, she spotted him in the corner of the kitchen with a snack in one hand and a cup in the other, talking with a bunch of guys. She walked up to him, feigning calmness. “Can I talk to you?” she asked with a tight smile, leading him a few feet away from the crowd. She leaned in close to his ear. “There’s a troll outside,” she said, her voice shaky.
David’s smile disappeared. “Are you sure? I mean, we’ve both been pretty jumpy. But we haven’t seen an actual troll in months.”
Laurel shook her head almost convulsively. “No, I saw it. It’s not a mistake. It’s here for me. Ah!” She groaned softly. “How could I be so stupid?”
“Wait, wait,” David said, his hands on her shoulders. “You don’t know that it’s here for you. Why would they attack you now, all of a sudden? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does. Jamison told me this would happen. And it has!” Her hands shook, and words kept spilling out of her mouth as her fear grew. “I’ve been so careful, and the one night I let my guard down, they’re there. Just like Jamison said. They must have been watching — waiting for me to forget my kit. I’m the fly, David. I’m the stupid, stupid fly!”