“I think so.”
“What? What are you thinking?”
“I’m just wondering, about my—” She gestured toward her head.
“Your prophecy?”
“Yeah.”
“What about it?”
She hesitated. “Do you … Do you know anything more about it? Why it’s there?”
Aidan smiled. “No. I just like it, that’s all. It makes you special. And don’t ask if it’s the only thing that makes you special. You know it’s not.”
“It’s just—you’ve always been so proud of it—”
“I haven’t been proud of it. I’ve been proud of you.”
She blinked. He’d cut her off so fast, almost like he was offended. “It’s just brought up a lot of questions. About everything.” Her teeth clenched. “And I don’t want you to be proud of it anymore. It’s a curse. That’s all it ever has been.” She stared at him, hard. She shouldn’t feel guilty for saying that. Even if his face looked like she’d just broken his favorite toy.
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just promise that this is the only secret you have. You’re not also a secret agent, or married, or actually my great-great-grandfather.”
He looked into her eyes. “I promise.”
* * *
Blood coated the entire chest and collar of her shirt. It came from a gaping wound that wrapped around her neck in a grotesque second mouth. Blood spilled out from it, running in thick drops over her white button-up and down the front of the maroon waist-apron that had been part of her uniform at the Java Joint coffee house that summer.
Cassandra stared into the mirror at her dead reflection. Her face was powdered pale to the point of being tinged blue. She touched her hair and her fingers stuck to it and came away streaked with red.
“I told you I didn’t want a head wound.”
“Don’t whine,” Andie said from behind her. “It’ll dry, and it’ll all wash out.” Andie fussed at the blood and squirted more of it into Cassandra’s hair, then down the front of herself. The two-ounce squeeze bottle of FX blood was almost empty. About time too. They were already late to Sam’s annual Halloween party.
“Do my guts look okay?”
Cassandra turned. Andie wore a dark blue corseted dress. A pile of intestines and other inner organs lay across her lower midsection. She’d squirted some of the fake blood over the top of it and smeared it around so it looked sickly real. She was dressed as Mary Kelly, the last prostitute dissected by Jack the Ripper.
“I think they still look like rubber.” Andie sighed and tugged at the edges of her dress, trying to make it seem like the intestines were coming from inside, rather than lying on top.
“They look good.” Cassandra wiped blood spatters from the sink with one of the dye-stained towels they used when they tried to put highlights in their hair. Mary Kelly was supposed to have been her costume, but she didn’t have the stomach for so much intestine. It was gross, even on Andie. And all the makeup had a sour, faintly medicinal smell. It was weaker than the smell inside of a rubber mask, but worse, because you couldn’t take it off to get away for a minute.
“I don’t know why we couldn’t have just gotten the Slutty Bo Peep and Slutty Cleopatra costumes like I wanted.”
“Because Halloween is for guts. It’s not a fricken Victoria’s Secret audition.”
“This from someone whose dress is pushing her cle**age up into her chin. You’re not historically accurate, you know. I’m pretty sure when they found Mary Kelly, Jack had sliced both of her boobs off.”
Andie looked horrified. “Sick.”
“Well, yeah. He was Jack the Ripper.”
Aidan was going to the party as Jack. He and Cassandra were supposed to be a matched set, but the costume fit Andie just as well. Cassandra glanced at her friend’s corset. Truthfully, Andie had a little bit more up front to fill it out. A knock on the door preceded Henry’s head, clad in a pirate hat.
“What’s taking so long? Aidan’s downstairs already, and if we don’t leave soon we’ll have to walk for blocks.”
“What are you supposed to be?” Andie asked. Henry gave her a look, and so did the stuffed parrot on his shoulder.
“I don’t know what’s going to scare people more,” he said lightly. “Those guts, or the sight of you in a dress.” He ducked out the door just in time to avoid a spray of blood. Cassandra wiped it from the wood.