"You are an absolute genius! I'm the best Daphne ever!"
"And so humble, too. "
I walked back out to her. She was already at the computer with her game.
"Do you want to come with us?" I asked.
"I don't do Halloween. "
"Oh, come on, Halloween is your night!"
She looked up and gave me a dead stare. "Thanks, I'll pass. "
I hesitated, feeling guilty. I'd spent hardly any time at all with her lately. I even fell asleep thirty minutes into our all-night marathon the other week. I didn't want to admit it, but that stupid uber-vamp in Sweden had brought all my vampire loathing back to the surface, and I was having a hard time looking directly at Arianna. Plus, the past few weeks she seemed to be really withdrawn and antisocial.
Well, more withdrawn and antisocial, at least.
But she'd taken the time to do this awesome costume for me. The least I could do was make her get out. "Come on. It'll be fun! Besides, vampires are hot this year, so you're automatically cool! You don't really want to spend Halloween holed up in this stupid apartment, do you?"
Her eyes narrowed. "That's exactly what I want to do, thank you ever so much. Besides, I'd hate to force my company on you when you clearly don't enjoy it. I don't want your pity, Evie. "
"That's not it at all!"
She sighed, turning back to her game. "It's fine, whatever. I get it. I wouldn't want to hang out with me either. "
I was about to contradict her when a horn honked outside. I put my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off, not even looking at me. When Arianna got in one of her dark moods, there was no talking her out of it. I tried to shake off the guilt as I raced down the stairs and through the diner. Lend got out of the car as I walked out, a special trip home this Thursday just for me. I frowned. "You didn't dress up!"
He grinned, opening my door for me. "Sure I did. I dressed up as the non-invisible man!"
I smacked him in the chest. "Lazy. "
"Hey, I wear a costume every waking hour. You only dress up once a year, which I believe makes you the lazy one. However, you look really hot in pink tights, so I'll let it pass. "
"How noble of you. " He kissed me, lingering on my lips, and I was filled with warm happiness. We were going to be fine.
I watched out the windows as we drove to his dad's, thrilled to see the first groups of tiny trick-or-treaters. I vaguely remembered trick-or-treating when I was little. One of my foster families made a big deal out of it; we got to carve pumpkins and everything. The woman who ran my last foster home didn't think it was safe, so we had to stay inside and watch some Charlie Brown cartoon three times. I've never liked beagles to this day.
Raquel, of course, thought the holiday was a load of nonsense, with people running around pretending to be the things we protected them from. Plus, she always worried about offending our "coworkers" by making light of their existence. Judging by Arianna's mood, maybe Raquel had been right about that one.
I turned to Lend. "What's on the agenda for tonight?"
"First, pumpkin carving. I've drawn up some designs. We're gonna cream my dad. "
I smiled, excited to see what he had drawn. Most of his sketches lately were for his human anatomy class. I much preferred it when he did it for fun. "Awesome. Then what?"
"We make caramel apples and man the door. The only people who trek out to the house are the local werewolves with kids, so it's always fun to see them. "
"Oh. Great!" I said it like I meant it but was disappointed. This was my first normal, teenage Halloween. I had my heart set on something a little more exciting than passing out candy to werewolf pups. Carlee was having a party tonight-her annual Halloween bash-and even though I didn't hang out with anyone who would be there, I was kind of curious. The only real parties I'd ever seen were on TV. Or at the Center, but those were lame. It was always awkward mingling with paranormals that I had personally bagged and tagged. Plus, no one ever spiked the punch.
However, being with Lend trumped everything else, and he hated parties. He was a bit of a homebody, since he'd had to be secluded when he was little before he could control his shape-shifting. And even though when he got older he had the potential to be quite popular (read: hello, hottie), he felt like no one could ever know the real him.
Until me, that is. Which made me all sorts of happy.
Lend looked over at me and smiled. "You are so bad at faking excitement. That's not all we're doing. "
I perked up immediately. "Yeah?"
"Well, you're already dressed for it, so I thought we could go . . . disco bowling. "