Two Can Keep a Secret(36)
I blink, confused. “What?”
She tsks. “Don’t play innocent with me. I’m the makeup artist. I know everybody, and you are trespassing.” I half open my mouth to protest, then close it as her stern look dissolves into a wide smile. “I’m just messing with you. Go upstairs, find your friends.” She crosses over to a minifridge next to the vanity and pulls out a couple bottles of water, pointing one toward me like a warning. “But this is a dry party, understand? Whole thing’ll get shut down if we gotta deal with a bunch of drunk teenagers. Especially after what happened last night.”
“Sure. Right,” I say, trying to sound like I know what she’s talking about. Ellery and Ezra didn’t say anything about a party. The tall girl sweeps aside the velvet curtain to let me through.
I climb a set of stairs into another hallway that opens into a dungeon-like room. I recognize the room immediately from my last visit inside, with Declan, but it looks a lot less sinister filled with party guests. A few people are still partly in costume, with masks off or pushed up on their foreheads. One guy’s holding a rubber head under his arm while he talks to a girl in a witch’s dress.
A hand tugs at my sleeve. I look down to see short, bright-red nails and follow them up to a face. It’s Viv and she’s talking, but I can’t hear what she’s saying over the music. I cup a hand to my ear, and she raises her voice. “I didn’t know you worked at Fright Farm.”
“I don’t,” I say back.
Viv frowns. She’s drenched in some kind of strawberry perfume that doesn’t smell bad, exactly, but reminds me of something a little kid would wear. “Then why did you come to the staff party?”
“I didn’t know there was a party,” I answer. “I’m just picking up Ellery and Ezra.”
“Well, good timing. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.” I eye her warily. I’ve seen Viv almost every week since I moved into the Nilssons’, but we’ve barely exchanged a dozen words the entire time. Our entire relationship, if you can call it that, is based on not wanting to talk to one another. “Can I interview you for my next article?” she asks.
I don’t know what she’s angling for, but it can’t be good. “Why?”
“I’m doing this ‘Where Are They Now?’ series on Lacey’s murder. I thought it would be interesting to get the perspective of someone who was on the sidelines when it happened, what with your brother being a person of interest and all. We could—”
“Are you out of your mind?” I cut her off. “No.”
Viv lifts her chin. “I’m going to write it anyway. Don’t you want to give your side? It might make people more sympathetic to Declan, to hear from his brother.”
I turn away without answering. Viv was front and center in the local news coverage of the pep rally stunt, getting interviewed like some kind of Echo Ridge crime expert. She’s been in Katrin’s shadow for so long, there’s no way she’s letting her moment in the spotlight go. But I don’t have to help extend her fifteen minutes of fame.
I shoulder through the crowd and finally spot Ellery. She’s hard to miss—her hair is teased into a black cloud around her head and her eyes are so heavily made up that they seem to take up half her face. She looks like some kind of goth anime character. I’m not sure what it says about me that I’m kind of into it.
She catches my eye and waves me over. She’s standing with a guy a few years older than us with a man-bun, a goatee, and a tight henley shirt with the buttons undone. The whole look screams college guy trolling for high school girls, and I hate him instantly. “Hey,” Ellery says when I reach them. “So apparently there’s a party tonight.”
“I noticed,” I say with a glare toward Man Bun.
He’s not fazed. “House of Horrors tradition,” he explains. “It’s always on the Saturday closest to the owner’s birthday. I can’t stay, though. Got a toddler at home that never sleeps. I have to give my wife a break.” He swipes at his face and turns to Ellery. “Is all the blood off?”
Ellery peers at him. “Yeah, you’re good.”
“Thanks. See ya later,” the guy says, and starts pushing his way through the crowd.
“So long,” I say, watching him leave with a lot less venom now that I know he wasn’t hitting on Ellery. “The blood he’s referring to is makeup, right?”
Ellery laughs. “Yeah. Darren spends all night in a bloody bathtub. Some people don’t bother washing their makeup off till they get home, but he tried that once and terrified his child. Poor kid might be scarred for life.”
I shudder. “I was scarred for life going through that room, and I was ten.”
Ellery’s giant anime eyes get even wider. “Who brought you here when you were ten?”
“My brother,” I say.
“Ah.” Ellery looks thoughtful. Like she can see into the secret corner of my brain that I try not to visit often, because it’s where my questions about what really happened between Declan and Lacey live. That corner makes me equal parts horrified and ashamed, because every once in a while, it imagines my brother losing control of his hair-trigger temper at exactly the wrong moment.
I swallow hard and push the thought aside. “I’m kind of surprised they’d have this after what happened last night.”