Haint Party
I stood in front of the living room mirror, making a final, pathetic attempt to coax the wrinkles out of my clothes. After confirming they were ruined beyond salvation, I gave up and attacked my hair. I was a mess, sleep-deprived, and marked with a fresh witch brand. I checked my phone: “We’ve got to go,” I announced, urging the invisible, slow-moving mass of people in my direction.
Erin padded out of the bedroom, a towel turban wrapped around her head. “I have to do my hair in here. Then I’m ready, but…” She lowered her voice and shut the door. “They might be a minute.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?” Spencer emerged from his room looking shockingly put-together in a blue-green suit, a vast improvement over his broken-doll posture from hours earlier.
Erin grinned, slightly manic. “Lizzie got a little weak from… well, the wound. So Zora offered to, uh… you know.”
Spencer’s mouth dropped open, and I felt my own jaw slacken.
“Wait, they’re…” My mind raced. We needed to leave right now. We did not have time for impromptu vampire feeding sessions.
Spencer, mirroring my frantic thoughts, whispered, “Why did they hide in the bedroom?”
Erin and I exchanged exasperated glances, but I clapped an arm around his shoulder. “Maybe, Spencer, they wanted a little privacy?”
He responded with genuine Victorian shock. “Well, I never.” We all three shared a strained laugh. “I doubt Zora wanted to experience that with us all watching,” Spencer added, putting a delicate hand on the bandage peeking out over his collar.
The quiet that followed felt thick with stress. I began to pace, the tension tightening my jaw. I headed to the kitchen for water. As I grabbed a cup, I noticed a sleek, silver thermos with Lizzie’s name faintly etched on the side sitting in the fridge. I closed my eyes and counted to five. Unbelievable night. Unbelievable survival. Unbelievable refreshments. I drank the water and put the cup in the sink.
The bedroom door finally opened. Zora walked out, glowing with good health, and Lizzie was close behind her, looking entirely refreshed. They caught our eyes, and I realized Lizzie had probably heard our entire mortified conversation.
“Everyone as ready as possible?” I asked, forcing a smile.
Lizzie looked vibrant, and Zora was beaming. Whatever had happened in that room was definitely doing wonders for them both. I made a mental note to ask Zora later about the “more to this biting thing” Lizzie had mentioned.
Erin started to giggle and pointed at Lizzie’s neck, but Lizzie silenced her with a sharp look.
“I think it’s cute,” Zora said, reaching up to straighten the collar of Lizzie’s shirt. Lizzie grinned. I looked at Zora’s neck, searching for the requisite fang marks, but there were none. Strange.
Erin noticed, too. “Wait! I thought you were going to feed on Zora?”
Zora blushed furiously, but Lizzie interjected, a smug smile playing on her lips. “I did.”
Erin frowned, scanning Zora’s flawless neck. “I don’t see any marks.”
Lizzie took a deep, satisfied breath. “You won’t see any. Leave it at that.”
Spencer jumped in, thrilled. “Wait, this could have been more interesting?” He grabbed Zora’s arm. “Baby girl, you’re sitting with me. I need to know everything.”
Zora’s blush deepened just as every light in the house blinked on simultaneously. We cheered, blinded by the sudden brightness. Spencer and Zora started blowing out the rest of the candles while I resumed my pacing.
“I can dry my hair now!” Erin declared, darting into the bathroom.
“Hurry!” I yelled after her.
She either ignored me or couldn’t hear me over the hair dryer’s whine. About a minute into the process, the power flickered violently. We heard a small, sharp squeal, and we all ran to check on her. We found Erin bent over, her back to us, holding a smoking, sparking hair dryer.
“Are you okay?” Lizzie asked, concerned.
Erin slowly stood up. Her hair was a massive halo of singed, frizzy curls that still crackled faintly with static electricity.
“Yes, but I… I thought I’d try my new powers,” she confessed, putting down the smoldering device.
“What did you do, Erin?” I demanded.
She frowned. “I just tried to turn up the temperature on my old dryer so it would dry my hair quicker. I guess it couldn’t take the increased energy flow. It shorted out.” She wrung her hands. “What am I going to do?”
I sighed, looking at the electricity still flowing through her charred hair. I explained that we had to leave now. Surprisingly, she burst into laughter. “Well, I guess we’ll all match!”
We laughed, but it quickly devolved into exhausted groans as we surveyed the damage. We looked like a disaster squad. My clothes were irrevocably wrinkled, and my eyes were rimmed with exhaustion. Erin had a scorched, spiky halo. Lizzie wore a nearly neon-pink Hawaiian shirt (a truly inexplicable choice) over her vampiric form. Zora was in a simple green dress but sported multiple bandages across her arms and legs from the shattered glass. Spencer wore a jaunty hat with his suit and a rather large bandage on his neck.
“Okay, let’s go,” I said, turning for the door. We had twenty minutes to get to the other side of the island. It was an impossible, but necessary, dash. We piled into Spencer’s oversized SUV and were gone.
The wedding was being held on a secluded stretch of beach. The rental house was almost double the size of Spencer’s place, spanning three stories.
When we arrived, the place was bustling. Bex’s car was there, and many guests were milling around. Parking was a nightmare. We sprinted from our spot toward the house, pausing only to catch our breath and frantically attempt a last-minute adjustment of our messy hair and wrinkled clothes. It was time to face the music… and the family.
The moment we walked through the door, we were immediately put to work and commanded to stay outside. Bex’s mother, in charge of everything from logistics to judgment, zeroed in on me. “What happened to your face? Good Lord, help us. Did you sleep in your outfit?”
“It is a long story,” I said, trying one last futile brush of my jacket.
“I’ll just bet it is.” She looked past me to a very quiet Spencer. “You’re probably to blame.”
Spencer, inexplicably, tried to defend himself by blaming his parents. “I can safely say it wasn’t my fault. Not exactly… by proxy, maybe, my parents…” He stammered until he noticed the death glare and the hand on the hip.
“Get down to the beach and stay out of trouble. You’re workin’ my last nerve,” Bex’s mother said, pointing the way out.
We graciously nodded and beat a hasty retreat, quickly finding our assigned places on the beach. I walked to the front, politely nodding at Bex’s cousins and male relatives who had also been relegated to seat-reserving duty.
I stepped into my spot, which was delicately outlined in seashells near the breaking waves. The tide, thankfully, seemed to be going out. Bex truly had thought of everything.
I looked back at my friends, sitting quietly, afraid to twitch. I smiled, and they smiled back… a small, tired, but united group. That’s when I saw the rest of the wedding party coming down the walkover.
I took a deep, steadying breath, waiting for the ceremony to begin. And then I saw her. Bex… Rebecca… in the champagne dress. She fell in love with it the moment she tried it on, and seeing her now, moving with such unmatched beauty, her hair swirling in the ocean wind, she looked like she had stepped directly out of the romance novel of my dreams.
She was everything. My heart and soul were hers, and I knew I would give anything to keep her safe from ghosts, spells, and wrinkled suits. Always and Forever…
Rebecca stepped into place in front of me. I stood in total awe, gazing into her eyes, where the love shining back made me smile for the first time that morning. She smiled, too, and touched my face.
Before I could say anything, Kathy handed me a ring.
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