Page 6 of The Party

Oh. Brimstone fairly vibrated with excitement beside Mae. My witch! I—I’m afraid I must go!

He bolted after the chicken.

“What’s he doing?” Caspian asked curiously.

“Answering the call of the wild.” Mae sighed. “You know, fox, undead chicken.”

“Oh.”

Nikolai muttered something under his breath. Alastair took flight and disappeared after Brimstone.

“Not you too!” the sorcerer protested.

The crow ignored him.

Hellreaver tutted disapprovingly.

“I take it that was Gertrude?” Mae asked Mila and Caspian warily.

“Yeah,” Mila said. “Astarte is convinced she got possessed by the spirit of a vengeful demon general after she died.”

A shudder shook Caspian. “That chicken is a menace.”

They carried the grocery bags up the steps to a porch with slender turned posts and eldritch, cast-iron lanterns. A veritable cacophony blasted their ears when Mila opened the front door.

Mae and Nikolai stopped inside the threshold with the Immortals and stared.

The foyer was full of kids.

Two girls sparred noisily with wooden swords to the right. A couple of boys were play-fighting on the marble floor. A little girl with blonde ringlets and an angelic expression was braiding the fur of a sleeping dog under a table, pink tongue sticking out cutely as she focused. A boy sat cross-legged beside her, a book on his lap and seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him. A teenage girl with pink-streaked hair and ripped jeans leaned against a wall next to them, her eyes and fingers glued to her cellphone.

Two men stood on the staircase. One of them was trying to remove the kid clinging to his leg like a leech. The other guy was failing badly in his attempt to cajole a little girl down from a banister.

“This place is a zoo,” Nikolai stated leadenly.

“You get used to it,” Mila grunted.

“Is that a kid on the chandelier?” Mae asked cautiously.

They followed her gaze to the glittering crystal contraption suspended from the high ceiling. A boy in nothing but his underpants and a red cape was standing proudly on it, one hand on his hip.

“You mean Commander Underpants?” Mila said with a roll of her eyes. “Yeah, just ignore him.”

“He might break a bone if he falls from there,” Nikolai muttered.

“He won’t,” Caspian said blithely. “His father is the Sphinx. The kid can levitate.”

“Apparently, divine beast genetics can be passed on,” Mila explained at Mae and Nikolai’s surprised stares.

Mae’s eyes glazed over a little at that. Nikolai paled.

They’d heard plenty about the divine beasts who lived in Artemus Steele’s mansion.

Mila sighed at their expressions. “Yeah, that’s how I felt when I first found out.”

“Still, Artemus is going to skin the kid alive if he sees him on his precious antique,” Caspian added with a hint of macabre anticipation.

A plastic arrow whizzed past Mae’s head.

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