Roxy rolls her eyes and drops her bag, then puts her hands on my face and makes me look at her, giving me hamster cheeks in the process.
“Eliza, look where we are,” she says. I open my mouth to complain, again, but she squeezes my cheeks tighter. “I said,lookwhere we are. We’re in our best place; our people are here. Remember last year, when Derek in the fishnet stockings tripped on his whip, slipped on his spilt pint and gave himself a nosebleed with the spikes on his bustier?”
“Yes,” I murmur.
“Everyone helped him up, got him another drink and carriedon like nothing had happened. Nobody laughed, nobody cared. I bet if he smelt like rotten milk, they wouldn’t have cared either.”
I shrug. Poor Derek. But Roxy’s right; nobody took the piss.
“Let’s just reset, and maybe you could tone the . . . down a bit,” she says, doing that awful banshee grimace again.
“Fine, but stop doing that face to describe my behaviour,” I say.
“Show me excited, convention Eliza then,” she says, throwing an arm around my neck, and I can’t help but soften. Her hugs are literal magic. “There’s my girl. Let’s go register, then we’ll get the rest of the stuff from the car.”
We walk through the hotel foyer, nodding at attendees we recognise from over the years, some of them already in full costume. I don’t know everyone, but Iknowthem. I love the kindred spirits that bump shoulders at our weekend honouring our shared enthusiasm. This convention is our sanctuary from the real world, our safe room from people that make fun of our passions and mock what we love. Roxy’s right. Nothing can touch us here, smelly bra or not.
There’s a bit of a queue snaking along the registration desk, so we pick up speed and stand behind a couple of Malcorr demons, leaving some space for their long tails.
“Hey, isn’t that . . . ?” Roxy says, her voice trailing off as I look where she’s pointing.
My eyebrows ping up.
“It’s Sadie. She looks so big,” I say, an eleven-year-old girl turning to look at me at the sound of her name. She waves enthusiastically and I wave back. “Who’s she’s here—”
My hand freezes mid-wave and my heart turns to cement. No. Absolutely, definitely,no. This is not happening. The revolving doors of the hotel are obviously some kind of portal into hell, because Sadie’s apparent chaperone is the only person on the planet whose presence could make my perfect weekend aninferno of misery and suffering.
My hands shake and my insides rage –rage, I tell you –and I turn to Roxy who has taken a few steps back from me, out of my fighting arc.
“What, in the seven hells of Penumbra,” I say, my voice a low growl, “is Charlie Chamberlain doing here?!”
CHAPTER FOUR
LILA MURPHY
This day could not get any worse.
BUD LEROY
Really? There’s an apocalypse prophesied for later, Lils.
LILA MURPHY
I stand by my statement.
Vampire Falls.Season three, episode twenty-two – “End Again, Again”
Charlie Chamberlain looks down at Sadie, frowns, then turns to look at Roxy and me. I’ve read about red mist, but never really understood what it meant until the specific moment his eyes lock with mine. He runs a smug hand through his smug hair and smiles a smuggy mother-smugging smile, and then he starts walking over.
Yes, I know. He’s walking over tomeatmyconvention surrounded bymypeople. I might be turning green and bursting out of my clothes, I just don’t know right now. All I can hear is my hot, angry breath whistling out of my nose.
“Eliza?” I can just about hear Roxy’s gentle tone and feel her hand on my arm, but I can’t move. “Eliza? Be cool, OK? He’s probably just dropping Sadie off or something.”
The red mist clears like a pair of curtains. Of course, that’s definitely, probably it. He’s dropping his little sister off at a convention for her favourite show. Why else would he be here? Eleven-year-olds go to conventions on their own all the time, don’t they? Don’t they?
DON’T THEY?
Charlie Chamberlain stops in front of us and puts his hands in his pockets. I get a waft of his deodorant, the spicy one that celebrity/footballer/model person he used to bang on about endorses. The smell is like petrol on the bonfire of my emotional state.
