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“I want land.”
“You live in an apartment.”
“Then I want someone else’s land.”
The woman wishes me luck and disappears into the crowd.
I take another drink.
A gold ribbon. Interesting. Not creepy. Just interesting.
I look down at mine again. The knot is still ridiculously tight. I tried pulling it loose when we left the maze but it wouldn’t budge. I can probably cut it off later. For now, I kind of like it. It looks good against my skin.
“Dance.” Mariah demands.
“Drink.” I laugh.
“Both.”
“That’s why we’re friends.”
We push deeper into the crowd.
For a while, I forget everything else. The weird guy from the maze. The scarecrow. The drums. The fact that two masked men apparently had an employee disagreement over my wrist.
All of it.
Because this?
This is exactly why we came.
Music pounds through the ground beneath my feet while firelight flickers across the bodies moving around us. Everyone is laughing, sweaty and drunk, completely lost in the night.
There’s something about dancing outside that feels different. Freer. Maybe it’s the cold air against my overheated skin or the alcohol warming my blood. Maybe it’s being surrounded by hundreds of strangers I’ll probably never see again, knowing none of this has to matter once the sun comes up.
Whatever it is, I stop thinking long enough to let myself disappear into it.
Mariah spins under my arm. Ali actually dances despite insisting she wasn’t going to.
A man in a demon mask hands Mariah a shot. She drinks it without asking what’s in it.
“That’s how you die!” Ali shouts.
Mariah slams the empty cup onto a table. “Then I died festive!”
I laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
Someone bumps into me and I turn.
A woman wearing nothing but a black bodysuit, boots and enormous raven wings mouths sorry.
“No problem.”
She looks at my wrist and her eyes widen. “Bride.”
“That’s me.”
She reaches toward the ribbon but stops before touching it. Something strange passes over her face. Then someone calls her name and she disappears.
