Chapter 2

Clark realized, with a bright spike of terror, that he was still holding his own half-full cup of red punch. Nothing said confidence like clutching a Solo cup like it was a live grenade.

Desperate to give his hands something, anything, to do, he tipped the cup back and swallowed the rest in one awful gulp. The punch slid down hot and spicy, burning all the way to his stomach. He coughed once, hard enough to make his cheap foam abs shift toward his rib cage. Then he reached for a clean cup and ladled another generous serving from his mother’s crystal bowl.

His mother’s crystal bowl, which was currently hosting Everclear, fruit chunks, and possibly a cursed finger.

Normal party stuff.

He held the cup across the sticky counter. Tina was actually standing on the other side of it.

Tina.

The woman looking at him with the same dark eyes he’d spent three years in high school watching from three rows back in Spanish class, back when he’d been invisible enough to qualify as school furniture.

“You, uh ... want some punch?” he repeated.

His voice cracked on “punch.”

That would’ve been fantastic if his goal had been to sound like a thirteen-year-old asking permission to use the bathroom. In that case, he nailed it.

“Sure. Thanks.”

She set her little white nurse’s bag on the counter and reached for the cup. Her fingers brushed his gloved hand, barely a graze through the cheap fabric, but Clark felt it everywhere. His pulse kicked hard, and heat shot up his arm and lodged behind his ribs, sudden, stupid, and impossible to explain.

It was a half-second.

His body treated it like an event.

Tina leaned her hip against the counter and lifted the cup to her lips. A tiny nurse’s cap sat crooked in her dark hair, threatening to slide free every time she moved. Clark watched her drink because apparently, he’d lost whatever tiny amount of dignity he’d ever had.

Tina, undisputed queen of Lakeview High, who he hadn’t seen since graduation, was now a smoking hot college woman. In high school, she was the girl who’d once caused a hallway traffic jam by standing at her locker and applying lip gloss, and now she was drinking punch he’d just served her.

His fourteen-year-old self would’ve died, just dropped dead in cargo shorts and braces.

She took a long swallow, nearly half the cup, then lowered it with a tiny shiver.

“Whoa,” she said, blinking under the harsh kitchen light, “that’s warm.”

“Yeah,” Clark said brilliantly.

“No, I mean really warm.” She swirled the red liquid, studying it. “And weird, like herbs. Anise? Cloves?”

“Probably the extra alcohol Marcus dumped in it.”

The second the words left his mouth, Clark wanted to reach across the counter, grab them, and stuff them back into his face.

Tina’s brow creased, but she didn’t put the cup down. She looked into it for another second, shrugged, then drained the rest in one determined swallow.

She gasped softly when she finished.

“No, it’s not that. It’s something underneath.” Her gaze went a little unfocused. “Sweet and hot, like mulled wine.”

“I didn’t add anything. Marcus made it.”

“Marcus,” she echoed.

Across the kitchen, Marcus was shouting at three freshmen about something called “the gauntlet of valor,” wearing a horned helmet and an expression that suggested he’d never once questioned a decision in his life.

Tina let out a breathy laugh.

“I can see that.”

Something crashed into the refrigerator.

Clark jerked toward the sound. Chad, in a plastic gladiator breastplate, had pinned a girl in a maid costume against the fridge. They were kissing with the kind of intensity usually reserved for airport reunions and people about to miss an asteroid impact. His plastic costume squeaked with every move, and her fingers were tangled in his hair. His hands had found the frilly edges of her costume as though he were searching for buried treasure.

A takeout menu slid from beneath its magnet and fluttered to the floor.

Clark stared.

This couldn’t be happening in his kitchen.

“Get a room!” someone yelled from the living room.

Nobody sounded offended, and a few people even cheered. Several phones came up, glowing blue-white in the dimness.

Clark dragged his attention away and took in the rest of the room.

Something had changed.

Ten minutes earlier, the party had been awkward in the traditional sense, with too-loud laughter and people pretending not to check whether others were checking them out. Couples stood at a safe distance and talked about midterms as if they hadn’t both dressed like horny mythological creatures.

Now the air felt heavy with a decided sexual undertone.

The punch’s scent had spread everywhere: sweet fruit, sharp liquor, something spicy and dark underneath. It clung to the back of Clark’s throat. The kitchen felt hotter, the walls closer, the music thicker. On the sofa, two people who’d spent the entire night sitting a polite foot apart were now tangled together in the cushions. Near the pantry, a vampire in a plastic cape had one hand braced against the wall beside a girl’s head, leaning in so close his fake fangs clicked against her teeth.

Clark gripped the counter. His foam muscles had migrated again, bunching somewhere under his left arm. Captain Justice had apparently suffered a catastrophic costume failure in the field.

“Marcus,” Clark said tightly. “Marcus, something’s wrong with the punch.”

Marcus appeared beside him, flushed and sweaty beneath his helmet. One of the marker tattoos on his biceps had smeared into a sad gray cloud. He threw an arm around Clark’s neck and dragged him close enough that Clark got a direct blast of beer, onion dip, and masculine overconfidence.

“Wrong?” Marcus said. “Bro, this punch is legendary. People are bonding. Look at the vibes.”

He swept one arm toward the living room.

The vibes were currently sucking face against multiple vertical surfaces.

“This is a gold-standard Halloween bash,” Marcus announced. “You should be thanking me.”

“Earlier tonight, a guy in a scarecrow mask dropped what looked like a dried finger on this counter,” Clark hissed. “A real one. Then you put it in the punch.”