Party Ghoul

by Sarina Dorie

  The wards weren’t difficult if one followed the steps. From Amy’s tangled knots of magic, Vega could see not everyone was as adept at following instructions. Most likely this was the reason Ms. Chamapiwa had suggested practice.

  The sun had slipped below the horizon of trees, the sky painted with bright orange and pink when another guest arrived by broom. She was a couple minutes early, which Vega appreciated.

  Amy bounced over to the young woman and linked arms with her. “This is Ermenjarta Pedreira. She’s my best friend from high school.”

  Ermenjarta was even more petite than Amy, with vivid orange hair that she’d braided into a thick rope that hung over her shoulder. The color was a striking contrast against her dark skin. It was difficult to tell if her hair was natural or dyed.

  The newcomer shook hands with Vega. “Nice to meet you.”

  Her magic smelled like sunlight and humid jungle air. She was beautiful in an unconventional sort of way. Vega’s attention was so fixed on her dark eyes and easy smile that she missed that Ermenjarta’s feet were turned backward until Castor accidentally stepped on one.

  “Sorry about that. I’m all left feet today.” He stared at her feet a beat too long before affecting an air of mock shame. “I mean—oh wow. Did I just put my foot in my mouth or what?”

  Vega stifled a laugh. She couldn’t tell whether he was teasing or being daft.

  Ermenjarta flicked her long braid over her shoulder, whacking Castor in the face with it.

  He flinched back. “That was rude.”

  She lifted her chin. “Shut your mouth, Castor.”

  Vega arched an eyebrow upward. “I take it you know each other?”

  Ermenjarta rolled her eyes. “He was friends with my brother in high school. He’s an idiot.” She went back to talking to Amy.

  Vega shook her head at Castor. He was cute, but not so cute she wouldn’t kick him if he acted like a moron and stepped on her foot. This was a new side to him she hadn’t seen before. She hoped she wasn’t going to have to keep Castor and Ermenjarta separated like she did in class with immature students.

  Vega suspected Ermenjarta was a curupira, descended from forest protectors in Brazil. She seemed like a pragmatic choice for someone creating wards for protecting a school.

  A few minutes later, the next guests showed up. Vega knew Amy had gone to Hannah Walsh’s Hedge Witch High. She had even spoken about knowing Jody and Amber. Vega hadn’t expected Amy would invite them.

  Vega’s heart quickened. All the memories of the times she had spent with them while Vincent had been alive flashed before her eyes. She had been rude to both of them.

  Worse than that, she’d creeped them out and tried to steal their boyfriends. They hated her. Why were they here?

  Jody’s smile faltered as she gazed at Vega. Amber gave a little wave. Her acne had cleared up since she’d been in high school—or she’d learned a glamour for concealing it.

  Jody cleared her throat. “You’re definitely the last person I expected to see.”

  Amber leaned closer to Jody and whispered something. Probably they were discussing the best way they could leave without being rude. Vega couldn’t blame them. She’d never really been their friend. She’d been Kenji’s girlfriend, an outsider brought into their circle of friends. After he had died, she’d been more like a seventh wheel.

  Even with Vincent insisting she’d been part of their group, she had known she wasn’t. All it would have taken was them finding out what she was. A ghoul. A corpse eater. They weren’t accepting like Kenji.

  No one would ever be Kenji.

  The crushing weight of despair at losing him made it difficult to breathe. She forced herself to smile, to pretend their presence didn’t resurrect every sad memory and shameful mistake she’d made in her past. Vega couldn’t look at them and not feel guilt about Vincent.

  Amy bounced over, full of energy and optimism. “You know Jody and Amber, right, Vega?”

  Vega attempted to exude the grace and poise she’d been taught by tutors at the Bloodmire estate. “I suspect Amy didn’t tell you I was hosting this party. I won’t be offended if you decide to leave.”

  Amy looked from her friends to Vega uncertainly.

  “Why would we leave?” Jody asked.

  Amber attacked Vega with a hug. “It’s so nice to see you. It’s been forever.”

  “I—uh—” Vega was completely thrown off by their lack of animosity.

  “I love your haircut!” Amber said.

  “How are you?” Jody hugged her next. “Are you dating anyone? You totally deserve to date someone nice.”

  Vega swallowed the lump in her throat. “I thought you hated me.”

  “That was high school! People make mistakes.” Jody rolled her eyes and said under her breath, “I swear Mitch was my biggest mistake.”

  Vega took it they weren’t together anymore.

  “You were going through a tough time. People had just died. That can make anyone a little . . . unstable.” Amber tried to smile, but tears filled her eyes. “Duran died during his first year of college. I sort of went through a tough time too, for a while.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Vega placed a hand on Amber’s shoulder.

  Jody and Amber hugged her again. Vega felt as if she were being smothered with kindness. She hated all these sentimental feelings swelling in her.

  Yet at the same time, it was strangely cathartic.

  Amy and Paris greeted his friends who showed up from his air pelota team. As a professional player, Paris was well-known in the Witchkin community. From Orsolya’s enthusiasm, Vega could see she was a fan of all the players on the team.

  Orsolya shoved Vega good-naturedly. “You should have told me you’d invited hot, hunky guys. I would have worn something nice.”

  Vega looked Orsolya’s giant frame up and down, her lips quirking upward. “I didn’t know they made nice clothes in troll size.”

  “There is no such thing as troll size! It’s called the ‘big and tall’ section.” Orsolya laughed. She shoved her again, this time into Castor.

  He caught Vega, grinning. “I see you can’t help falling into my arms.”

  Vega reasoned she should learn to keep her mouth shut around someone taller than she was who could easily twist her into a pretzel. And push her into heartthrobs.

  Castor’s gaze flickered to Vega’s lips as he steadied her on her feet. His hand lingered on her waist.

  Her heart skipped a beat. She had kissed him in the club, danced pressed up against him, and made flirty eyes at him plenty of times, but something about him was different tonight.

  She wished she had time to bask in the pleasure of his arms, but unfortunately that would have to wait. She had work to do.

  A few minutes later, thirteen Witchkin were assembled, and it was time for the magic to begin.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Let’s Get This Party Started

  Vega did what she did best: boss people around. The first hole in the wards they repaired was near the school building. She instructed her recruits to stand in a circle around it, or as close to a circle as they could considering the rosebushes were partly in the way. She paired each of her recruits up with a Witchkin who had already performed the preliminary exercises, also trying to distribute them so that each person worked with someone of a different affinity from themselves. It ensured the threads of magic they braided were stronger.

  Unfortunately, that meant Castor was paired with Ermenjarta.

  “Is this going to be a problem?” Vega arched her eyebrow upward.

  “I’ll behave,” Castor promised.

  Ermenjarta frowned. Her expression was skeptical.

  In Vega’s experience, Castor could be a tease, but he had always seemed like a decent enough person. He was here because she needed him. She knew less about Ermenjarta and whether she would sabotage Vega’s wards in order to spite him.

  �
��They’ll be fine,” Amy said.

  Weaving the wards required pairs of Witchkin to plait strands together before handing it off to Vega. She then accepted a ward from someone across from them, fused the magic together in the center, and handed it back to the original partners who braided it again.

  Vega could see why it was useful having a coven. Creating wards on a large-scale level was like performing a Maypole dance. It was far easier with thirteen rather than one. There were over a hundred holes in the school wards. Instead of spending twenty minutes on each one, their group only spent about sixty seconds on each, once they got a system down.

  Vega noticed Orsolya flirting with her partner, one of the air pelota players from Paris’s team. Castor and Ermenjarta put their differences aside for the betterment of magic. As Vega’s temporary coven focused on constructing the wards, she tasted the flavor of their magics, the celestial affinities of Celestors mixing with the plants and animals of the Amni Plandai, and the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water from the Elementia affinities mingling throughout.

  Without cigarette smoke, the fumes of alcohol, or sweaty dancers masking people’s natural scents and magic like at a club, Vega could sense Castor’s magic more easily. He smelled of wind rushing through woodlands combined with the music of water washing over fennel and cardamom. She had never particularly felt an attraction to anyone based on a particular affinity, but there was something reassuring and comforting about his Elementia magic. He was most closely attuned with wind and water, but fire wasn’t his weakness. There were sparks of fire in his magic.

  When his eyes met hers and he smiled, she suspected there were sparks between them too.

  It took almost two hours to complete all the repairs. During that time, they caught another two gnomes.

  “You know what gnomes really don’t like? Polecats,” Josef, the air pelota player said. “They’re afraid of predators that hunt small creatures, but especially polecats because they cripple prey and store them alive in their dens so they stay fresh for later.”

  “That is so creepy!” Amy said. “I’m going to have nightmares about skunks for the rest of my life.”

  “It’s a pragmatic solution for a predator that doesn’t want to eat carrion,” Vega said. Not that she had the problem of wanting to keep animal meat fresh.

  Orsolya’s lips quirked upward. “It would be a shame if polecats got loose on the school grounds.”

  Vega stored away that juicy tidbit for later. After all, she didn’t want to go through all the work of repairing wards if gnomes were going to continue to make holes.

  When the coven finished with repairs, they stepped back and admired the tapestry of their handiwork. Together they had created an artistic masterpiece, rainbows of light woven over the grounds.

  “What do you think?” Castor flashed a flirtatious smile at Vega. “Do we deserve a reward for all our hard work?”

  “I know I deserve a reward.” Orsolya flung an arm around the hottie air pelota player she’d partnered up with for creating wards and winked at him.

  He whispered something in her ear, and her smile turned sly.

  “Yay! It’s time for pizza!” Amy said with the excitement of someone half her age.

  Their group went to the groundskeepers’ cottage for their rewards. Vega played swing music from her wind-up record player, and Amy dished out food. From there, the partying commenced. The pizza and cake were a hit, though the coven turned partiers seemed just as happy about the refreshments.

  Vega was disappointed when she tested her supposedly vegan cake and found it contained eggs and dairy. She satiated the longing in her soul with dancing instead. Not wanting to give Castor the wrong idea, she limited the number of dances with him. She divided her attentions between the air pelota players, even though they were all horrible at dancing.

  Ermenjarta danced with Castor once, though he did seem to have trouble with her backward feet, and he stepped on them several times. Vega tried to ignore the flare of jealousy that flashed over her when he danced with Amber and Jody.

  There was no reason for her to feel jealous. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He was just a friend who was hot whom she liked to dance with.

  Yet she still kept count of how many times he danced with each of her rivals. Every moment at the party, she was aware of where he was, just like a chocoholic vigilant of where the chocolate was in the room.

  She knew she must have thought he was yummy if she was comparing him to dessert.

  When she noticed Orsolya heading toward Castor for a third dance, Vega made a beeline for him and cut her off. That was what happened when she didn’t get cake. She needed to make up for it with other delights.

  Like Castor.

  By the time Orsolya changed the music to one that was more modern, a rock and roll record she must have owned, Vega had imbibed enough not to hate someone else’s music. She danced the night away, lost in the beat of the drumming, blocking out the world and people around her. For a little bit of time, she felt free and unburdened by her problems.

  * * *

  In the morning—and by morning for Vega after a night of partying, that was eleven a.m.—she ate a slice of cold “vegan” pizza and went to Orsolya’s cottage to tidy up and hide all evidence of a party. She collected bottles of beer and cans of soda and disposed of the garbage. There was plenty of leftover alcohol and pizza to give to the school brùnaidhs as gifts.

  Out of all the parties Vega had attended, it was one of the least raucous. She hadn’t known parties could be so tame and still enjoyable. It didn’t look like anyone had blown anything up with magic or done anything dangerous. The wards they’d made the night before were still intact, at least in part because they had done a decent job and in part because there were few gnomes left on the grounds to do damage.

  When she ventured into the groundskeepers’ cottage, she found Orsolya waking in a broken bed.

  “Did the party get out of hand?” Vega asked, scanning the table and chairs and other items in the cottage. “Did people break anything else?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Orsolya waved her off. “That bed wasn’t made for three people.”

  Vega’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.

  A satisfied smile tugged at Orsolya’s lips. “But it was totally worth it.”

  Vega laughed. The burly groundskeeper was the last person she would have suspected of such adventurous trysts. Good for her.

  She thought about her own night with Castor. As always, he’d been a gentleman—try as she might to convince him to behave otherwise. She’d gone to her room alone.

  She still felt disappointed he had declined to join her. But she also knew what he wanted from her.

  A date. A relationship. Emotional availability.

  Previously she had told him she wasn’t ready for any of those investments, but now . . . she was considering how much her aloofness had cost her.

  She was going to lose him if she didn’t learn to connect with him.

  Years before, Baba had warned Vega that if she wasn’t careful, she might become like her mother. Like Nashira Bloodmire, Vega pushed people away with cruel words instead of apologizing and making things right between them. She put a wall between herself and other people and didn’t let them in. Vincent had once remarked on how her mother had pushed his mother away after Callisto had died. Vega could see she was doing the same thing to people.

  She didn’t want to be that cool, cruel woman. She didn’t want to be an island surrounded by burnt bridges.

  When she thought of the wards she had made with a team of people, helped by both friends and acquaintances she had barely known, some of her aloofness had chipped away. Now as she thought of her empty bed and her empty social calendar, she wondered if it was possible to change that.

  Ever since that argument with Vincent on the night of his death, he had said he recognized her partying phase had simply been a way of processing grief. Perhaps he’d
been right. She could now see it was that and so much more. Getting drunk and high had been a way to avoid connecting with people. The way she pushed Vincent away—and others—had been her way of coping with the pain of losing someone she’d grown close to.

  She regretted the way she had hurt him. She didn’t want to do that to someone else. Castor didn’t deserve cool aloofness from her any more than Vincent had.

  Vega was ready to let go of her past. It was time to stop mourning Kenji, Vincent, and others from her past. She was ready for a relationship with Castor.

  She just didn’t know if she’d come to the realization too late.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When the Cat Is Away, the Gnomes Will Play

  Vega intended to solve the school’s pestilence of gnomes before the principal discovered what she’d done to make the problem worse. That meant getting rid of them before Mrs. Gordmayer returned from vacation.

  Hunger gnawed at her belly as she considered her ample supply of dead gnomes in the school cemetery. She could exhume their graves and eat a tender morsel of decaying flesh in order to activate her ghoul powers and transform into one. If she turned into a gnome, she could infiltrate their burrows and kill them in their sleep—or lure them into the purse.

  The excitement at the idea of delicious decaying flesh settled into a lump of dread in her belly a moment later as she remembered herself. Using ghoul powers should always be the last resort. Besides being dangerous if she were caught, she didn’t want to be someone quick to solve a problem by eating someone. She didn’t want to be a monster.

  Transforming into a gnome wasn’t even practical. Because their brains weren’t much more advanced than a squirrel’s, Vega would be overcome by the urges of her body, craving dirt and rocks. It would be difficult to retain human intelligence, though not impossible if she practiced several nights in a row. What she truly worried about was that if she ate something poisonous like arsenic, her body wouldn’t be able to tolerate it when she transformed back into herself by morning. She probably wasn’t going to have urges to hunt other gnomes while in the body of a gnome either.