Chapter 16

October 31^st, 2020 (Halloween)

The day of the party felt like it came much faster than it should’ve. While everyone had a few days to prepare, they all felt like they were struggling to get their costumes together. Most hysterically, all the girls had made some sort of tacit agreement not to tell Andy what they were dressing up as for the Halloween party.

They were all a little surprised he wasn’t dressing up as the Druid Gunslinger himself, but they seemed okay with it. He told them he’d do the gear again next year, but he’d literally worn the costume last year and despite all the changes they’d been through over the past several months he didn’t want to do it two years in a row. While none of the girls may have seen him in it, he knew that both Eric and Phil would’ve given him an endless amount of shit for it.

Andy loved vintage sci-fi costumes, so for this year he’d decided to be Logan from Logan’s Run, the 1976 film he’d adored growing up. It was a relatively simple costume: a black turtleneck with white trim and a large white stripe over the chest as well as a blinking red palm flower crystal. When he’d done the costume as a teenager, he’d had to use a bike light, which took over so much of his hand, but now he could achieve the same effect with a simple LED light attached to a battery. It was much more convenient.

A few hours before the party was set to start, Andy was banned from entering his own bedroom as the girls had set up a sort of base camp there, all working on their costumes away from his prying eyes. The staff had decided to dress up as Clue characters, so Nicolette was back in her Yvette costume, Jenny was dressed as the cook (from the movie, not the board game) and Katie was dressed as Mrs. White. They had been a little surprised that they were invited to the party once the food was laid out, but Andy had been adamant that he wanted them to feel like members of the family as much as staff. He was glad to see they accepted that without too much of a fuss, although Jenny was insistent that she and Nicolette would be tending to the food all night, even while they were mingling.

Surprising no one, none of the girls who weren’t staff were ready by the time the first guests showed up. Andy wasn’t shocked that it was Eric who arrived first, along with his whole group. Eric was dressed as Han Solo, with Lily as Princess Leia, his Jenny as Luke Skywalker, Sarah as Chewbacca, and two other girls who’d recently joined his family - Lara, a tall, statuesque blonde, and Nikki, a tiny little plump brunette - were dressed as C3-P0 and R2-D2 accordingly.

Phil and his family arrived next. They were all dressed up as characters from the video game Street Fighter, with Phil as Ryu, Audrey as Chun Li, Linda as Cammy, Tamika as Poison and a new girl named Yuko, who was dressed as Sakura.

Andy, much like both Phil and Eric, had never been big on large social gatherings, but this felt entirely different. Perhaps they’d been so starved for company, or perhaps they’d been trying to make sense of the new normal for so long, it was nice to have a touch of the old normal even if it was only a shadow of how it used to be.

Dressed all in costume, the boys sat down to play poker.

After Phil showed up, Andy’s girls descended the staircase and made a grand entry for themselves. Aisling had dressed up as Amy Adams’ portrayal of Lois Lane from the Superman movies, in a white open shirt with a black vest, her hair done up in a smart ponytail, a black lanyard hanging around her neck that said, “Daily Planet.” Lauren had dressed up as the Black Canary, from the Green Arrow comic books, in a leather jacket she’d stolen from his closet, a black leotard and ripped black fishnets that Andy couldn’t deny made her pop even more. The biggest surprise, however, was Niko. It took him a few seconds to realize what she was dressed as and as soon as he did his jaw nearly dropped to the floor. She was dressed in a white lab coat, with her hair up in a bun, held in place with chopsticks. Beneath it she wore a deep purple shirt. It all looked vaguely familiar, but then she turned her head and it all clicked as soon as he saw that coloration done to her hair. While most of her hair was still jet black, on the right side, there was a blue stripe, followed by a violet stripe, and his heart stopped a beat. She was dressed as Doctor Erika Shirow, the coroner who often worked with the Druid Gunslinger in his novels. Around her neck hung a pendant of a Celtic cross, exactly as he’d described it in the most recent novel.

Shirow had been a regular recurring character, but she was easily what fans would’ve called “a deep cut.” When he’d first introduced her in the second book, he suspected she was a character he would come back to but hadn’t planned for her to have much impact on the overarching storyline he had in mind. Now, some nine books into the series, she’d actually appeared in more of them than any other character other than Dale Sexton, the titular Druid Gunslinger. Most of the time, she only appeared in a chapter or two, but now, seeing Niko dressed as her, he wondered if he’d been subconsciously building a relationship between Dale and Erika over the course of the novels. He made a mental note to ask Niko about it later.

The girls wandered into the room and took their time showing off their costumes for everyone, but as soon as they did Niko moved over to slide down into Andy’s lap, slipping an arm around him. “You like?” she asked him, a mischievous smile on her lips.

“No, I absolutely hate it,” he laughed, sticking his tongue out at her. “You look stunning. You all look stunning.”

“Lauren worried she was too tall to pull off the Black Canary, but I told her that in those fishnets, you wouldn’t give a fuck.”

“You would absolutely be right.”

Niko gestured for him to tip up his hole cards so she could look at them, which he did briefly then tipped them back down. “Looks like you’re doing well.”

“Ah, we’re mostly playing for fun,” Eric said.

Niko winked over in his direction. “Sure. That’s why your chip stack is so utterly small.”

“Absolutely,” Lily said, moving to stand behind Eric. “And it certainly isn’t because my man has no poker face whatsoever.”

Audrey moved to stand behind Phil. “Phil’s usually pretty good at poker, though,” she said, kissing his cheek. “Although I heard Andy’s always been better.”