The woman-child jumped down, both feet landing on the seat with a small bounce. The multicolored ruffles of her dress floated in the darkness, shimmering from orbs of light that continued to vanish between them. Reaching down, Pan picked up her glass and lifted it into the air. As she did so, it filled with a deep crimson liquid.
Jo noticed the same liquid filling nearly to the brim of her own crystal goblet.
“Let’s begin, with a toast to us.” Pan held out her glass expectantly.
Trying to feel as though the action was an indication of war rather than defeat, Jo lifted her own glass, and drank the bitter, metallic liquid.
Chapter 29
Eat Up
“Isn’t this charcuterie just delightful?” Pan cooed, plucking a small, yellow berry up from her plate between middle finger and thumb and placing it to her lips with a long, drawn out, nearly pornographic moan. “They’ve really outdone themselves, haven’t they?”
Jo didn’t bother to ask who “they” were, too busy examining the odd array of finger foods laid out on a tray before each of them, what Pan had proclaimed to be their first course. Jo also didn’t bother to ask how many courses were planned; even one was too many.
Starting from the left corner of the tray and all around in a perfectly organized spiral, were slices of something purple and gooey, the yellow berries Pan was currently devouring, cubes of what looked like uncooked chicken meat, a single leaf-like object that kept twitching, and a literal puddle of something grey and rotten-smelling.
Jo poked at one of the cubes with her golden knife, wincing when the cube deflated with a hiss like a popped balloon, dribbles of black ooze spurting out of the hole like blood from a wound. Jo swallowed back the involuntary prickle of nausea and put her knife down. She could always just spend the meal sipping the weird, metallic liquid in her goblet, but the more she looked at it, the less she wanted to.
It was going to be alongdinner.
“Well?” Pan’s voice brought her back to the table. Jo’s eyes snapped up, not to find Pan sitting all the way across from her anymore, but in the chair just to the right of her original placement. Jo hadn’t heard her move seats, but she chalked it up to her mind being occupied by the unappetizing fare before her.
“Well what?” Jo asked, keeping her voice indifferent.
Pan frowned, popping one of the meat cubes into her mouth and biting down. To Jo’s disgust, a line of dark black fell from her bright blue lips to make a trail from mouth to chin, one she made no effort to wipe away. “You haven’t told me what you think of your food yet.”
Jo looked away, not dignifying that with a response. “You haven’t told me yet what I’mdoinghere,” she countered instead. “Why did you do all this?”
Instead of an answer, which Jo really never should have expected, Pan responded with a piercing squeal of delight. Out of reflex, Jo turned towards the sound, tensing when Pan was now seated halfway down the table on the left-hand side—though there was literally no way she could have made it there naturally.
The cause of Pan’s squeal was apparently the plate in front of her, no longer the odd platter of finger foods, but now what appeared to be a rather large, perfectly ordinary looking steak. She was cutting into it with a vigor that reminded Jo of a starved animal ruthlessly tearing its prey to shreds. It wasn’t until Pan paused to take a long swig from her own goblet that Jo realized she’d been near mesmerized by the sight.
“You should really try your filet!” she said, resting her elbow on the table and a hand against her cheek. Eyes glittering with mirth and messy lips pulled into a vicious grin.
Jo looked down at the plate before her, perfectly aware that despite no one having come to remove her tray, a new course now sat before her, identical to Pan’s. Regardless of how Pan’s eyes on her made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, Jo picked up her fork and knife, cutting into the meat.
There was no other way to describe the sound that filled the room other than a scream of bloody murder. It was loud and violent and terrifying, Jo’s utensils falling out of her hands in her shock. At first, Jo looked frantically around the room, wondering where the noise was coming from, the acoustics and the volume making it impossible to tell. But as the scream went from a deadly yell to a pleading cry, Jo felt her stomach drop and mouth fall slack.
The steak in front of her heaved with the sound of screaming and bursts of desperate cries from between every line of the muscle. Jo pushed the plate away from her, adrenaline coursing through her veins even as she remained frozen to her seat. Slowly, the screams tapered, the cries growing hoarse, and Jo was forced to watch, horrified, as the filet of meat eventually quivered, stilled, and grew silent.
“Whoopsies,” Pan hummed. “Looks like yours was still screaming a bit. My apologies. The chef doesn’t always get the temperatures right.”
Jo couldn’t tear her eyes away from the plate, the dish looking disturbingly normal now that it had stopped its very sentient-like cries. She swallowed thickly, considered reaching out and pushing the plate away, but she couldn’t move her hand, didn’t want to. What if she touched the plate and it, too, started screaming or crying? She knew it was all a game—that Pan was playing tricks with her, messing with her mind—but she couldn’t deny that it was working.
Right now at least, heart still thrumming in her ears, Jo was scared.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jo saw the silhouette of someone walking up to her chair. She startled, still on edge, and turned to see who might be approaching. For the second time in as many minutes, Jo felt her stomach drop.
Even after so long in the Society, even after all the changes she’d seen the world go through in its transition back into a new Age of Magic, she would never forget the sight of her friend’s face. Her first friend, and—in another life—her best friend.
“Yuusuke?” Jo choked out, voice thick with fear and confusion and still-pulsing adrenaline. He stood before her, dressed in a similarly outlandish butler’s uniform, this time in a bright green that reminded her of his once-ubiquitous, beat-up pair of headphones. His black hair was slicked back and his face hand been done up in makeup, but despite all that, he looked exactly the same as she remembered. Except for one thing: his stare might have fallen on her, but she saw no recognition there.
“Yuusuke, what . . .?” she started, nearly rising from her seat.What was he doing here?Had Pan remembered her first wish at the Society and brought him here for revenge, for bait? Was he a hostage, like Snow? He didn’t seem to know who she was, but was that Pan’s doing, or a consequence of their new world? She watched him move, as if on autopilot, to pick up her plate, and something in her heart broke. “Yuusuke, are you—?”
In a flash, Pan was suddenly directly to Jo’s right. And a knife was pierced directly through Yuusuke’s hand.
Yuusuke buckled, the first glimpse of true emotion flashing across his face before he cried out in pain. “Now, now,Yuu—”Pan purred Jo’s childhood nickname for her friend.“She’s obviously not done with that yet.”
