Unleashed (35 page)

What will I do if Trick tries something?
Her face tingled; her palms were damp. Chills tickled the small of her back. Her imagination conjured up all kinds of images as she waited in the exam room. Luckily she didn’t have to wait long. As soon as she got the shot, she tried to talk to the nurse about possible side effects, but as before, it went nowhere. When the nurse said the doctor needed to check her sutures, Katelyn lied. She told her that he’d already taken them out. The woman believed her. Problem solved.

Katelyn and her grandfather waited awhile to see how she was feeling, then got some coffee from the doughnut shop next door. This time Katelyn drank it down with no problems. It didn’t smell bad. Her grandfather’s voice wasn’t too loud. She had no headache.

She could barely breathe she was so hopeful. Was it possible that after all that worrying, she was okay?

“I can drive to school,” Katelyn said. “And everything else.”

“So off you go,” Ed said. “Have a great time, Katie. And … be careful.”

She climbed behind the wheel of the Subaru, and when she turned to say goodbye, she noticed that her grandfather’s face was drawn, as if he hadn’t slept. Fretting over her?

If only he knew the half of it
, she thought. What would have happened to him if she had told him about the actual attack? Were there people in Wolf Springs who knew the Fenners’ secret and helped them keep it? She shivered. She really didn’t want to find out.

After school, Katelyn drove over to Cordelia’s. Cordelia had sworn to her that her father wouldn’t be home. Justin and Jesse were also nowhere to be seen, and Katelyn was relieved, but a little disappointed.

The girls busied themselves getting ready immediately. Cordelia had ultimately decided to be a sexy vampire, but when they got to her house, they discovered that Jesse had smeared chocolate all over her costume.

“Now what?” Cordelia wailed.

Katelyn flipped through her friend’s rather large closet and pulled out a long black sleeveless silk dress. It reminded her of what she herself had been wearing in her dream the night of the earthquake.

“How about we pull your hair into a severe bun and pin it with a flower?” Katelyn offered. “Dark eyes and red lips—you could be a Spanish senorita.”

“I like it,” Cordelia said, calming perceptibly.

Half an hour later they emerged from the bedroom and Katelyn had to admit that she was quite pleased with herself. Cordelia looked amazing. A dusting of shimmer on her cheeks and eyelids added to the mystique they had created with her hair and her dress. Katelyn also marveled at how the other girl carried herself, regally, like a queen.

I guess in a weird sort of way she
is
a princess
.

Katelyn’s outfit ended up contrasting nicely with Cordelia’s. She had decided to wear a simple white toga with gold bands crisscrossed over her chest and a golden cord around her waist. The toga was actually a sheet she’d gotten from her grandfather, and he’d found the gold cord and some gold leaves in a box in his garage that had belonged to her grandmother. She put a coronet of the golden leaves on her head. She was bare-legged and wearing a pair of jeweled sandals she’d brought from home.

“You look too innocent,” Cordelia decreed. “At least put these on.” She handed Katelyn a pair of very high gold heels. “I think we’re the same size.”

Katelyn smiled faintly and bent down to put them on. As she did so, the slit in the side of her toga wafted open, and Cordelia nodded approvingly.

“Okay, maybe not so innocent,” she said.

The heels fit perfectly, and they did look good with the rest of her costume. Katelyn found her mood lifting a little. “Maybe I should get a little sexier,” she said, and ripped the other side of the toga up to above her knee.

“Love it,” Cordelia said.

They put their sleeping bags and overnight duffels in the hatch of Katelyn’s Forester. No one would wear pajamas at Trick’s; when they changed out of their costumes, it would be into jeans and sweaters. Cordelia behaved as if sleeping over at a boy’s house was perfectly normal. But it was a huge deal to Katelyn. She couldn’t stop thinking about Trick. Where would
he
sleep? Where would she?

Cordelia navigated as Katelyn drove. They traveled down into a valley bisected by a stream. Branches bent over it, dropping their persimmon-hued leaves into the water. Headlight beams bounced back off oak and ash trees. As they got closer, they joined a parade of vehicles all headed in the same direction, and music echoed off the hills.

An ersatz parking lot had been created in a meadow beside a white wood fence and a matching double gate that hung wide open. A wrought iron plaque that bore signs of rust and age read
SOKOLOV DAIRIES
.

“His family owns a dairy?” Katelyn asked in surprise.

Cordelia snickered. “That shut down ages ago. But the Sokolovs are probably the richest family around. His dad is some kind of design guy. He flies all over the country and Trick’s mom usually goes with him. Trick has his own
building
on their property.”

Katelyn blinked, stunned. She would never have pegged Trick as having money. What else did she not know about him?

“I thought
you
were the richest family,” Katelyn said somewhat shyly. “I mean … because of your house and … who you are.”

“Not really. My grandparents built our house,” Cordelia said. “We have status, but we don’t have all that much money.”

Katelyn gathered her coat and her little shoulder-strap purse and the two climbed out of the Subaru. The sun was nearly down and it was cold. Katelyn was glad of her coat.

“Got my cell,” Cordelia said, half to herself. “If I forgot it, I’d be in such huge trouble.” She pulled it out and looked at it. “No coverage. My dad won’t be able to call me every five minutes.”

Suddenly huge plumes of fog wafted over the ground. They gathered around Katelyn’s and Cordelia’s shins, then rapidly billowed into rolling clouds that obscured the two girls first from the waist down, and then to the shoulders. Other partiers started laughing and cheering as zombies appeared on either side of the path, their faces gray and white, arms dangling, hair dirty. They lurched along, shepherding everyone toward a huge dilapidated barn alive with bursts of strobe lights.

“It’s a zombie walk!” Cordelia cried, applauding.

Then Cordelia grabbed Katelyn’s hand and they ran toward the barn. Both of them paused to yank off their heels, and Katelyn wished she’d brought her sandals. She’d had no idea she’d be dashing through a corn maze on the bottom floor of the barn, then climbing a wooden ladder to the top of the barn, large portions of which were stacked with fresh bales of hay. Trick and his friends had created a ghoulish chamber of horrors, complete with hanging “bodies”; a witch brewing up a potion; a guy pretending to be electrocuted; and a fake surgery scene, in which the patient, strapped to the operating table, screamed while the doctor operated. Fake blood sprayed everywhere. When Katelyn and Cordelia stopped to watch, the electrocution victim jumped out of his chair and started chasing them.

They both shrieked as the guy flew after them, herding them to a long aluminum slide and Cordelia shouted, “Hay chute!”

She grabbed a burlap sack from a pile beside the chute, flung it onto the steeply angled slide, and plopped onto it, then zoomed away. Laughing, Katelyn did the same. She screamed as she careered toward the wall of hay bales draped in orange and black lights at the end of the chute. From her vantage point, she saw strings of black lights draping trees and bushes. Strobe lights flashed.

The angle of the slide straightened so that she wasn’t going very fast by the time her bare feet tapped the hay bales. Then Cordelia helped her up. Katelyn staggered with laughter, clutching her borrowed shoes, and she nearly slammed into Trick, who was dressed as he had been the first time she’d met him—black long-sleeved T-shirt pushed up to his elbows, jeans, and cowboy boots. He was wearing a black cowboy hat with a black feather tucked into the hatband, and he was chewing on a piece of straw. The backs of his hands looked strong; they reminded her of Alec, the boy who’d been her trapeze catcher at her gymnastics studio. He was holding two plastic cups containing something tinted red, with flashing plastic ice cubes bobbing in the liquid. She felt her pulse spike and she couldn’t stop the big smile that spread across her face. He looked her up and down and let out a slow, appreciative whistle.

“Evening, ladies,” he said, holding out the two drinks. “Have a little blood-lite.”

“Thank you, Vlad,” Katelyn said in her best Bela Lugosi voice.

“You have been varned about speaking the accursed name,” he replied, also in thick Hungarian-vampirese.

As if on cue, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus began to play. A live band was covering the song, and the lead singer had a smoky, seductive voice.

“Well, since the buzzkill has arrived, I think I’ll go find somewhere else to be,” Cordelia said hostilely, ignoring Trick’s offer of the second cup.

The
“
buzzkill
”
is your host
, Katelyn wanted to remind her. But before she could say anything, Cordelia kissed her on the cheek.

“I’ll find you later,” she told Katelyn, then wandered away without another word.

Katelyn turned back to Trick and her heart skipped a beat. He was staring at her. He reached out and took her free hand, and before she could say anything to break the tension, a couple of people Katelyn recognized from Trick’s lunch table had walked over. The guy wore a devil costume, complete with a red face, horns, a cape, and a tail, and there were two girls. One, in a black ruffled Victorian dress, had her hair in a bun and her face coated wearing glow-in-the-dark makeup; the other was dressed as a Victorian man wearing a goatee and a bloody suit.

“Eric’s edited another scene. Come with us to check it out,” the girl in the suit said to Trick. She took the drink he’d offered Cordelia and sipped it, then handed it to the girl in the Victorian dress. The girl finished it and set the cup on a picnic table.

“Oh, God.” Trick rolled his eyes. “
Please
not now.”

“A scene from what?” Katelyn asked, intrigued.

“C’mon, Trick.” The two girls tugged on his arms as they giggled. Katelyn felt a sudden swift pang of jealousy.

The guy—Eric?—came up to Katelyn. “We’re doing
Dark of the Moon
in Russian. I’ve got the new footage ready to roll in Trick’s house.”

“Count Trickula!” the girl in the glow-in-the-dark makeup squealed. Then she let go of Trick and turned to Katelyn. “Hi, Kat! Guess who we are.”

The girl in the suit fluttered her lashes. “The Curies. Marie and Pierre. We both died horribly.”

“It’s a Halloween natural,” the girl in the dress—Marie Curie—concurred.

Then the two broke away and ran ahead, past the barn to a small white building with a sloping green roof. They pushed open the door and disappeared. Eric followed them, leaving Trick and Katelyn alone again.

“It’s our own nouveau theater thing. It’s kind of obnoxious,” Trick said, glancing down at her. She was trying to take it all in—Trick, rich and arty, and his quirky friends. She liked him. So much.

“I’d love to see it. Plus I’m freezing,” she added so she didn’t sound
too
eager.

He raised his brows; then he put his arm around her and pulled her against him. Chills and tingles skittered all through her, and suddenly she felt very, very warm. She didn’t want him to stop—not ever.

They walked to the building together. It was Trick’s very own house. That was amazing.

Trick stood back and let her go in first. She walked into a living room furnished with two worn couches and an overstuffed chair abutting a black theater curtain and facing a coffee table piled with books and a laptop. Across the room, a TV screen indicated that the laptop was ready to play. The wall flush with the door and the one opposite were covered with bookshelves crammed with books, cans of brushes, and tubes of oil paint.

“Wow. This is all yours?”

“Casa Trick,” he confirmed. “Velcome. I invite you in, my Grecian goddess.”

Eric and the girls had dogpiled on the sofas with three other kids in costume.

“Okay, roll it,” Eric called out.

“Do you know the story of
Dark of the Moon
?” Trick asked Katelyn. “And I don’t mean the third Transformers movie. I’m talking about the play. John is a witch boy and he’s in love with a mortal girl.”

“A Transformers movie in Russian would have so much more depth,” Katelyn quipped, and he grinned at her.

“Oh, I
like
you, Kat McBride,” he murmured in her ear. “I like you beyond liking.”

She felt his breath on her ear and joy rushed through her. Then he moved away, holding her hand, leading her toward the laptop.

“We’re the two witches who want him for their own, of course,” Marie Curie told her. “And Eric is the Conjur Man.”

Katelyn grinned. It reminded her of some of the things that kids at her old high school had done. Maybe she should be hanging with the drama kids.