dances, where everyone was in harmony and there was no pairing off. You danced with the elements and with everybody else, all one big interconnected whole.
Eric volunteered to get more punch.
"How's it going with him?" Dani asked in a low voice when he was gone. Her velvety dark eyes searched Thea's curiously.
"Everything's okay so far," Thea said evasively. Then she looked out toward the dance floor. "I see Viv and Selene are here."
"Yeah. I think Vivienne already got her blood. She stabbed Tyrone with her corsage pin."
"How clever," Thea said. Vivienne was wearing a black dress that made her hair look like flame, and Selene was in deep violet that showed off her blondness. They both seemed to be having a wonderful time.
Dani yawned. "I think I'll probably go home early-" she began, and then she broke off.
Some kind of a disturbance had begun on the other side of the room, in front of the main entrance. People were scuffling. At first, Thea thought it was just another minor fracas over Blaise-but then a figure came staggering out under the lights of the dance floor.
"I want to know," the voice said in dissonant tones that rose over the music. "I want to knoooow."
The band stopped. People turned. Something about the voice made them do that. It was so obviously abnormal, the cadence wrong even for somebody who was drunk. This was someone who was disturbed.
Thea stood up.
"I want to knoooow," the figure said again, sounding lost and petulant. Then it turned and Thea felt ice down her spine.
The person was wearing a Halloween mask.
A kid's plastic mask of a football player, the kind held on with an elastic string. Perfectly appropriate for a Halloween dance. But at Homecoming, it was grotesque.
Oh, Eileithyia, Thea thought.
"Can you tell me?" the figure asked a short girl in black ruffles. She backed away, reaching for her dance partner.
Mr. Adkins, Thea's physics teacher, came jogging up, his tie fluttering. None of the other chaperones seemed to be around-probably because they were out somewhere trying to control fights over Blaise, Thea thought.
"Okay, let's settle; settle," Mr. Adkins said, making motions as if the figure were an unruly class. "Let's just take it easy...."
The guy in the Halloween mask pulled something out of his jacket. It glinted like a rainbow under the colored dance floor lights, reflective as a mirror.
"A straight razor," Dani said in a hushed voice. "Queen Ms, where'd he get that?"
Something about the weapon-maybe the fact that it was so weird, so old-fashioned-made it scarier than a knife. Thea pictured the way even a safety razor could slice flesh.
Mr. Adkins was backing away, arms held out as if to protect the students behind him. His eyes were frightened.
I have to stop this, Thea thought. The problem was that she had no idea how. If it had been an animal, she could have stepped out and tried mind control. But she couldn't control a person.
She started walking anyway, slowly, so as not to attract attention. She skirted the edge of the crowd around the dance floor until she drew parallel with the masked guy.
Who by now had switched to a new question. "Have you seen her?" he said. He kept asking it as he walked, and people kept backing away. Vivienne and Selene drew to either side with their dates. The razor glittered.
Thea looked toward the opposite end of the dance floor, where Blaise was standing with Kevin Imamura.
With no Buck, no Duane to protect her. But Blaise didn't look frightened. That was one thing about Blaise-she had magnificent physical courage. She was standing with one hand on her hip and Thea could tell that she knew exactly who was coming her way.
In between moving couples, Thea glimpsed something else. Eric was on the other side of the dance floor, holding two cups of punch in one hand and one in the other. He was keeping pace with the masked guy, just as she was.
She tried to catch his eye, but the crowd was too thick.
"Have you seen her?" the masked guy asked a couple right in front of Blaise. "I want to knoooow...."
The couple split like bowling pins. Blaise stood exposed, tall and elegant in her black suit, lights shimmering off her midnight hair.
"Here I am, Randy," she said. "What is it you want to know?"
Randy Marik stopped, panting. His breath made a muffled noise against the plastic. The rest of the huge room was eerily silent.
Thea moved closer, walking silently. Eric was pulling in from the other side, and he saw her for the first time. He shook his head at her and mouthed, "Stay away."
Yeah. And you're going to tackle him armed with three party cups of punch. She gave him a look and mouthed, "You stay away."
Randy's hand was trembling, making the razor flash. His chest was heaving.
"What is it, Randy?" Blaise said. The toe of one high heeled shoe tapped the floor impatiently.
"I feel bad," Randy said. It was almost a moan. Suddenly his head didn't seem well connected to his neck. "I miss you."
His voice made Thea's flesh creep. He sounded like a person with the body of an eighteen-year-old and the mind of a four-year-old.
"I cry all the time," he said.
With his left hand, he pulled off the Halloween mask. Kevin recoiled. Thea herself felt a wave of horror.
He was crying blood. Bloody streams ran down from each of his eyes, mingling with regular tears.
A spell? Thea wondered. Then she thought, no; he's cut himself.
That was it. He'd made two crescent-shaped incisions under his eyes and the blood was coming from them.
The rest of his face was ghastly, too. He was white as a corpse and there was fuzzy stubble on his chin. His eyes stared wildly. And his hair, which had always been strawberry blond and silky, stood up all over his head like bleached hay.