“Correct. Make-up: check. But I’ve spoken to Team Awesome and—”
“Team Awesome? You mean Fake McKinley who’s a total newbie and Dorothy who falls asleep the moment she sits down. That’s Team Awesome?”
“Yes, Team Awesome – check your WhatsApp – and you’re underestimating them. We talked it through while you were having your disco nap, and we have a plan.” Sometimes I need to have a little afternoon nap, OK? Convention days are long, and I get overtired. Like a toddler. “All you need to do isbring it.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. “Can you do that, Eliza Gellar? Can youbring it?”
“Bring what?”
“That’s the fighting talk I want to hear, babe,” she says, checking my eyes are even. She lifts my chin and sucks in her cheeks, nodding at me to do the same, then applies bronzer. Alotof bronzer. “Just treat it like any other cosplay comp, and you’ll be fine.”
“But it’s not like any other cosplay comp, my—”
“Life depends on it. Yes, I know. Just trying to take the pressure off.” She snaps the bronzer lid shut and her eyes zigzag across my face. She nods. “Perfect. Spin for me.”
I stand up, my bare legs unsticking from the faux leather chair, take my dressing gown off and manage a clumsy spin round. I’m wearing Juliana’s first appearance look: black boots, knee and elbow guards, jagged thigh-length skirt embroidered with her family crest, and a pewter breastplate held in place with leather shoulder straps. They toned her outfit down when she became a series regular, but she’d just arrived from the Megna dimension, so she was in full warrior mode.
Roxy looks me up and down, then gives me a little side smile.
“Smoking, babe,” she says, and I almost believe her. “Let me put this on you.”
She pulls a red velvet cape from a hanger on the curtain rail, shaking it out then twirling it round me with a swish, in the way you have to when you handle a cape. It tickles the backs of my knees as Roxy secures the shoulder attachments.The skirt isshort,but the cape basically covers all the pale bits.
It also makes me feel like a total badass.
“There she is.” Roxy smiles down at me like a proud mum at a pageant. A pageant with swords. “Just need to do your tattoo and we’re good to go.”
Roxy’s dressed as Marta Crowe, a demon-killing mercenary who doesn’t play by the rules. She’s in a black vest and cargo trousers, hair in a high pony, and the blackest, smokiest eyes in the history of eyeshadow. There’s a realistic bloody gash across her cheek from the epic fight between Marta and Juliana in episode fourteen, season three, “Way Back Now”.
Her eyebrows pinch together as she claws through the box, a mess of eyeshadows and lipsticks tumbling over the sides.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t find the tattoo pen . . .” she says, tipping everythingonto the desk. “It’s fine, I’ll use liquid liner.”
“Won’t liquid liner smudge?”
“It’ll totally smudge,” she says, nodding. She frowns at her phone. “It’s fine. I’ll go knock on some doors. There has to be a tattoo pen in this building.”
“Do we have time?” I ask, watching her pull herVampire Fallsonesie over her costume.
“We have loads of time; it’s fine.”
“You keep sayingit’s fine.”
She flashes me a smile. “Because it is.”
I swallow, wringing my hands together.
“I don’t have to have the tattoo,” I lie. “Nobody will see it under the cape anyway.”
“That was almost convincing, babe, but I know you: the tattoo is part of the costume.” She grabs her key card then heads to the door, waving it in the air. “I’ll be back before the bloodletting.”
“And if you’re not, I’ll save you some O-negative,” I respond, grateful she knows quotingVampire Fallscalms me down.
She sticks her phone in her pocket and heads out the door, leaving me alone. I look in the mirror, turning left to right. The costume fits me perfectly – put together by me, Mum and Roxy. We spent ages trawling Vinted for the right fabrics in the right colours, making sure every little detail from the embroidery to the dark red of the cape was right. The knee-high boots actually belonged to my mum when she was in her twenties. I couldn’t believe it when she came down the loft ladder holding them in her hand, then Dad polished them until they were shiny enough.
A mutated, probably carnivorous, moth flaps its oversized wings inside my stomach. I check my phone. Roxy’s been gone for nearly ten minutes. I take a sip of water through a straw, careful not to smudge her expertly applied lipstick. I pick up the lipstick tube; it’s calledCherry Vivian. Ugh, I hope that’s not a sign. I throw it back in the box with the eyeliners, brushes,foundation, highlighter and all the other magic paint Roxy used to get me looking like this. I’ve tried it myself a few times when I’ve done reels on Insta, but I never do as good a job as Iris or Roxy.
Roxy. I check my watch again. Eighteen minutes she’s been gone now. I find an eyeliner and call her to say we’ll just use that for the tattoo, but there’s a busy signal. Maybe she’s trying to call me? I wait a few seconds and try again.
