There were bodies everywhere. Furniture—expensive and uncomfortable-looking—had been pushed aside to make room to dance on the hardwood floors, though nobody bothered. Instead they stood around, stuffing their faces and shouting at one another to be heard over the boppy pop music that pulsed out of Missy Middleton’s speakers. The whole place reeked of queso and body spray. Bryan wasn’t a huge fan of either. He felt completely out of place.
He pushed his way into the crowd and was immediately jostled aside, nearly falling into a potted cactus that stood guard by the front door. He scanned the room, but it was impossible to pick out a single face from the herd, even a face as unforgettable as Jessica Alcorn’s. She had to be here somewhere. He felt a tap on his shoulder.
“How did you get in here?”
It was the host of the party. The keeper of the castle. Wearing too much makeup and not enough fabric to cover half of her body, hair held chemically in place. Apparently, she had not approved the opening of the gate. She scowled at Bryan through her glittery lip gloss. Not that he cared. Maybe this morning it would have mattered what Missy Middleton thought of him, but not so much anymore.
“Where’s Jess?” he asked.
“Excuse me?” Missy said.
“I said, where . . . is . . . Jess?” Bryan repeated, shouting to be heard over the din. “I need to talk to her.”
Missy didn’t say a word, but her eyes flashed to the long, winding staircase at the back of the room. Bryan turned to go but felt Missy’s claw digging into his arm.
“Don’t you dare go up there!” she screeched, grabbing hold with her other talon, but at that same moment someone stuffed his head in the front door and yelled something about a lunatic running around on the lawn with a stun gun, claiming to be the reincarnation of Thor.
Oz. The god of thunder. Coming to the rescue again.
The sudden outflow of bodies wanting to go and see was more than enough distraction for Bryan to pull away from Missy and make his way toward the stairs, except now he was working against the tide, a horde of kids threatening to trample him, spilling the contents of their cups on his shoes, driving him backward. He leaped onto a couch to get clear of the crowd, nearly slamming his head against a low-hanging chandelier. He jumped to a leather recliner and then to a coffee table covered with magazines—Boating World and Food & Wine—feet sliding on their slick covers, nearly losing his balance and falling into the pack. He didn’t see any way to get across the sea of bodies. He was about to just dive into the crowd when a girl he didn’t recognize yelled that she had dropped her phone, and three people bent over to try and find it, falling to their hands and knees, creating a path of arched backs leading straight to the staircase. He only needed to hop across without falling.
Easier than crossing the street after school, at least, Bryan thought, and leaped from the coffee table onto the back of the first girl, then one-footed it from back to back, ignoring the shouts of the people he stepped on, and used the cushion of an ottoman as a trampoline to leap up and grab hold of the banister. One hand slipped, too sweaty, but he held on with the other. With a grunt he hauled himself over and onto the staircase, thanking Mr. Gladspell for making him do pull-ups in gym class. He’d made it across. He climbed to a group of kids milling on the landing at the top.
“Jess Alcorn?”
A boy pointed to the door at the end of the hall. “Balcony, I think.”
Balcony.
Where else?
Bryan pushed past another gaggle of Mount Comfort students waddling down the hall to see what the commotion was about, and squeezed through the door and into an empty room that looked like an office, with a rolltop desk and dusty shelves. On the far side was a sliding glass door leading out to the balcony that wrapped halfway around Missy Middleton’s second story, overlooking her backyard and the guesthouse, where, supposedly, her parents were bunkered, hopefully oblivious to what was going on outside. He worried for Oz, but there was nothing he could do about that now except not waste the moment he’d been given.
Bryan hesitated at the door, though, legs locked, hands shaking. He could see the full moon through the glass, as well as his own reflection in it. The bump on his forehead was clearly visible now. There was a crack in his bottom lip. Mud on his pants. Dark rings around his eyes. He was a wreck. He couldn’t go out and talk to her looking like this, could he?
Then, suddenly, inexplicably, Bryan became gorgeous. Staring at his shimmering image in the glass door, he transformed into someone tall and handsome, with snow-white teeth and perfect hair, a silk complexion and beaming, bright eyes. Bryan blinked once, mesmerized, thinking of fairy godmothers and magic wands, before he realized what he was looking at.
The door slid open and Landon Prince stood there, chin to nose with Bryan.
He didn’t look too happy.
“Biggins,” he said, sounding not at all surprised. Bryan took a step back.
“Prince,” he murmured.
Downstairs the music suddenly shifted, the party pop fading out, replaced with the singular heartbeat of a bass line that Bryan could feel pulsing through the floorboards. Landon Prince stood in the door, blocking the way, his letter jacket draped over his shoulder. One final obstacle. Bryan tensed, eyes narrowing. His heartbeat slammed against his chest. He waited for the walls to shake and the floor to split beneath them. He waited for the overhead lamp to explode in a shower of sparks. He waited for the tumbleweed to come bouncing along the carpet. He could see it all so clearly in his head. He knew what had to happen now.
Prince drew his sword and pointed it at Bryan’s chest. “En garde,” he said.
Or maybe . . .
Prince’s right hand dropped to the revolver at his side. “This balcony’s not big enough for the both of us,” he said.
Or possibly . . .
Prince’s muscles bulged, tearing through his shirt, buttons pinging off the walls, as his body grew to twice its normal size and turned a sickly green, the color of pureed peas. “Grawrarrr,” he said.
Prince’s face melted, revealing the red leather skin and curved black horns of the Demon King beneath. “Wattly,” he said.
Bryan shook his head, clearing the images that had piled up there. “Huh?”
Landon Prince pointed at Bryan’s face. “Wattly,” he repeated. “Did he do that?” He was pointing to the scrapes and bruises and bumps.
Honestly, Bryan couldn’t remember. He self-consciously sucked on his split lower lip. “Mostly,” he said. He was still waiting for Landon’s face to melt. It wasn’t melting. It was just as handsome as ever. Landon Prince shook his head.
“I heard you laid him out pretty good, though. He was asking for it. The guy’s kind of a jerk.” Landon paused, glanced behind him. “I suppose you’re looking for Jess.”
Bryan nodded.
Landon nodded.
They both just stood there in the awkward silence, nodding at each other. Maybe there wasn’t going to be a sword fight, but wasn’t Landon going to push him, at least? Tell him to bug off? Call him names? Grab him by his shirt and throw him off the balcony? Bryan had been prepared for any of these—save maybe the being thrown off the balcony part. He wasn’t prepared for this, though. He wasn’t ready for nothing to happen. He wasn’t ready for Landon just to let him go.
Maybe Oz was right. Everybody thinks everybody is out to get them, but that’s not true. Sometimes a Prince is just a Prince.
Landon ran a fork of fingers through his hair, which fell right back into place, unmussed, then stepped past Bryan without a shoulder shove or a hip check or even a word. No headlocks. No body slams. No challenge. Bryan turned and watched him head for the hallway, waiting for the sneak attack, but Landon simply paused in the doorframe and looked back at Bryan standing by the sliding glass with the dark sky beyond.
“She talks about you sometimes, you know,” he said; then he vanished down the hall.
Bryan stared at the empty space he’d left for a while. She talks about me? he thought.
He turned back to the balcony. With one hand in his pocket he stepped through.