“Oh my god, don’t kill me for real,” Lana gasps.
She sits up behind Quincy, covered in fake blood with a prop knife sticking out of her chest, having barely missed being squished by his chair.
“Sorry,” Quincy says. “Sorry. Sorry.”
He straightens his chair.
Lana gives him a hard glare that I’ve been the recipient of more than several times. “Can I be dead again now?”
“You really should’ve fallen in the middle of the table. That would’ve been more dramatic.”
She was supposed to fall in the middle of the table.
Perhaps the lights came back on too quickly considering the costume change necessary. Or possibly she was afraid of the lightning showing her position too soon.
Or possibly she enjoys making me squirm when things don’t go as scripted, which is equally likely.
Lana glares at Quincy harder, and I feel a trickle of that glare bounce off his shirt buttons and deflect towards me as well.
“I really, really like her,” Bea murmurs to me.
“Yes, yes,” I say to Lana. “Do carry on being dead now.”
“Thank you.”
The mother of my children flops back onto the rug behind her chair, splaying herself dramatically in what I am quite positive is a mockery of the way that I tend to die while in various roles.
Legs askew, one arm over her head, hair splayed out, tongue hanging out, blank eyes staring at the ceiling.
People are gawking now.
“That’s creepy,” one of the parents of two boys hanging out with mine says.
“Is it just me, or is she laying exactly the same way that Simon died in that one episode of that cop show?”
Lana snickers. As much as she can while pretending to be dead.
Bea giggles.
“Woooooooooooooooooooo,” Daphne says. “Death has come again. And if you don’t find the killer, this will not be the last death of the evening.”
“Bea did it,” Hudson announces.
Bea straightens and gapes at him. “Excuseyou?”
“Jealous lover. It’s always the jealous lover.”
Ryker shoves him. “Your knife’s missing, bro, and she’s all the way across the table on the other end from the body.”
Wendell Thomas rises on Quincy’s other side. “I’m a detective! I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“You made Wendell the detective?” Bea whispers to me. “Quincy’s gonna hate that.”
I grin at her. “I thought it might add some tension to the evening.”
“Now it bothers me the way you smile when you’re diabolical.”
“Don’t touch the body!” a woman yells.
