Tales from TERAT - It was a Bash!

Red-and-white sorority memorabilia watches over Savannah's kingdom, as she raises the sash of the old-fashioned window to let in the October air. Just three hours remain until the start of the annual AAA / TERAT Halloween Bash. Plus: At least hosted here, it won't reek of insecurity and Axe like it does at the rats' nest Alpha Alpha Alpha calls a house. Con: Here, planning it is her problem.

So instead of relaxing, she thumbs through a messy stack of messages on her phone, sitting on her right hand because she's got her phone in her left and she has to stop chewing her damn nails.

Like walking into a strand of spider silk.

There are twenty-three new messages from the AAA president alone. He's tolerable but the only AAA anyone has much affection for is Adam. He's a freshie, so most of the affection is of the 'aww, lil' fella' sort.

A freshie who turned even Vee's head--interesting enough for a one-off at the start of the Great Singleness Curse they're all suffering from. But a freshman in a frat has no power, even if he's cute and smart enough for a senior badass to throw a leg over.

Meticulously organized lists of assignments for decorations and drinks occupy the surface of her desk, each carefully annotated with due dates and notes. The colorful pens she'd used on them, in more optimistic moments, are strewn around the room. Strings of orange and black lights loop across the walls, and glittery pumpkins wink at her from the shelves. Everything about the slightly-off-kilter decorations above her bed and desk makes her twitch. Neat and straight wouldn't be Halloween-y, now would it? A glance at her reflection in her phone's blanked screen shows the bobby is about to make a run for it.

She bites her lip, counts to five, and checks her phone again. One of the Triple-As, with another stupid question.

"I don't care about the keg size," she mutters. "Just show up with your pants on." As she replies to the latest batch of messages, her hand trembles. She sends a barrage of responses, confident exclamation points trailing in their wake, before tossing the phone back on the desk.

Tradition is the lifeblood of the Greek system, and by tradition, the guests bring the booze to this one. Which means she's subjecting her sisters to the mixology and possible underhanded additives of a bunch of gorillas. Why just sorority and fraternity, girls and boys? Why can't there be enough nonbinary students for a third wing? She hasn't met many folk like that, but she's never met one who can't dress themselves or shower. So huge props.

Sorority, Fraternity and... Biniority? No, that what the non is about! Nonority? Vee would know a good word.

A strand of her hair slips loose, and she catches herself twirling it and giving a sharp, self-scolding tug before tucking it behind her ear.

Savannah takes a deep breath, pulls herself up to her full height, and spins toward the mirror. The confident smile she has been practicing for the past week settles onto her face, only to drop as soon as she turns her back to it.

She grabs the binder labeled "AAA!!! It's a TERAT Halloween Bash," and steps to the door before her index cards can call her back.

"Fine. Okay, that's fine," she murmurs as she adjusts the binder. "Everything is going exactly according to plan."

She closes the window and adds a prayer as an attachment and forwards it upstairs.

Savannah descends the wide stairs, her pulse sounding in her ears -- louder than the chatter of the sisters below. Maybe that's just because she's taught her gals well--soft spoken and ladylike, long as the situation allows it.

Someone's draped a black lace tablecloth across the banister, and she reaches for it to steady herself, brushing fake cobwebs off her fingers before she can touch them. Someone else stuffed a skull in the over-watered aloe that Vee's been trying to save from Kenna, who thinks she knows about desert plants. Only Savannah and Missy know anything of Vee's past--and they don't know much. Just that Vee's a West Texas girl from somewhere as dry and flat and sad and west as west gets. She knows how to keep a succulent going. Practiced in her yard with one eye on New Mexico next door, just in case.

Those folks seem a bit too calm, for Savannah's taste. Always have.

Gaggles of sisters scamper beneath her, weaving together ribbons, party lights, and frayed strands of leftover silver tinsel passably repurposed into 'garrote wire' with a liberal smearing of blood-red paint. The scent of a forgotten popcorn ball lingers in the air, sweet, mingling with honest womanly sweat, because they're working hard. The air conditioner has limits but global warming doesn't. A low, anticipatory hum spreads through the common room, building to a steady thrum of nerves.

Savannah looks over each girl, gauging who needs a push-up bra and who needs a push. She walks fast, because if she hurries, the girls think she's dictating a plan, not reacting.

When she hollers for them to meet her in the common room, they actually do. Small miracles.

"Y'all better have this place looking haunted before the first cowboy shows up. Should've been done yesterday."

Missy plunks herself on a corner of the couch and reaches into a box of supplies. "I say we add more fog machines! Way more. Ten of them!" A high from what Savannah hopes were edibles prickle at her bloodshot eyes. She takes it as a sign of grace that the local girls from the damp, fragrant, smoky Pacific Northwest didn't decide to outvote their two-thirds Texan leadership and bring out the bong collection. A collection that absolutely has not been on the patio until just hours ago and won't be back there first thing tomorrow.

Someone says that they might set off the smoke alarms again, and Missy makes a face.

Savannah fights a smile and starts calling sisters' names, pulling together her whiny little choir of all the girls too pretty to waste as nuns. Her voice is steady, but her stomach feels heavy--a balloon animal twisted by a murder clown.

"Briefing time," she says. "Let's make this quick."

From where she stands in the middle of the common room, Savannah sees the upcoming party in flashes. Visions of doom. Flickers of terrible spills, wardrobe malfunctions, and ape-on-ape violence when some frat boy thinks his buddy is saying 'yes homo'.

Was this how it felt, she wonders, in Pompeii?

A Rumble in the bones and a scent on the air? General sense of being fucked, without knowing why?

The sound of helium balloons being popped somewhere in the house adds to the approaching apocalypse. She's holding a lengthy agenda that she might as well set on fire if everyone else's total lack of focus is any indication.

Vee's arm shoots up like she's in a classroom. "I have a thought," she says, gesturing toward the stack of notes in front of her.

"I have one too!" Missy shouts over the din of excited conversations. Her arm shoots up, too, and she waves an assortment of props to go along with it.

"Y'all are giving me a headache," Savannah calls back. "And you know how much I love you, but if I have to repeat myself, I might give you one back."

Vee tosses her braid over her shoulder and eyes the overenthusiastic crowd, many of whom are still swapping costumes or finalizing hair and makeup. "You heard her!" She shouts. "Hustle, people!"

"Tell them they're off the team," Jill adds. She's representing 'The Blondes' this meeting, but that doesn't stop her from doubling down and suggesting plays that are straight out of her playbook. Vee can put a lid on the blondes when she needs to because while she's co-president of the sorority, she's captain of the UW Seattle Huskies. That kind of badassery and raw confidence lets her be eleven gazillion feet tall and built like Wonder Woman but still make a sleeveless dress work--somehow.

But she also needs her teammates to like her in the gym and on the court, so Savannah takes hits where she can.

Vee finishes her note. "And get it together, already."

In record time, they assemble around Savannah, taking seats on the floor or hovering near the couches. Some barely bother to hide their reluctance to let Savannah reign them in; others cast glances full of anticipation. It's hard for her to tell which is which, this close to the event, so she gathers herself with a breath and dives in. "All right, ladies. Our final headcount from RSVP is 65, and limit's 70. So be ready for anything."

Vee, sitting beside Missy, gives a knowing smile. "So, Miss Impatience, what's this great idea you had?"

"First, we really need more food. And more jungle juice. And way more helium balloons!"

Vee makes a face. "If we blow up even one more balloon, there won't be any room to dance. This place looks like Dr. Wilcox's lecture on particle physics."

Missy pulls another prop out from behind her--a scrimshaw witch's doll that's a bit too realistic for Savannah's fraying nerves.

"Good thing I also suggested more floor space! We can use the yard!"

"Keep thinking," Savannah says, "but not so much that it interferes with my sanity, okay? Y'all saw my note about guests needing a chaperone to get upstairs, right?"

"What kind of party is this if no one ends up in the wrong bed?" Missy sighs, her voice muffled behind the layers of pink tulle she's suddenly producing from nowhere.

"A clean one," Savannah says, "with room for Jesus and not one drop of alcohol. Officially."

"Unofficially?"

She sighs. "No one gets hurt, no one does anything they don't want to do and none of these lunkheads punch each other through a table." She pinches the bridge of her nose. "This time."

"Try huge emergency," Tess says. "Fire Department shows up to Mount St. Helens-looking nonsense coming out of the chimney and the moors from Macbeth on the porch."

She nudges Savannah in solidarity. "Don't let them wear you down," she whispers.

The banter is good-natured and loud. Her fatigue seeps through as her own plans sound stale and cautious next to her sisters' wilder dreams. She doesn't have the energy to tame them.

"So then, no to the keg stand?" Jill says. "Fine. But we need a hell of a lot more fake blood, you guys."

"Only if we don't end up using it for the EMTs again," Savannah says, though she'd kill for Jill's anything-goes attitude.

Vee cuts in. "We're good on decorations, right? We're keeping it tasteful?"

"Seriously, Vee?" Jill gives a dramatic sigh. "Did I miss the part where this turned into a debutante ball?"

Savannah hesitates. The minutes tick by like months, and she starts to fold.

"Both," she says. "It's both. See what you can do. The class of 1937 wore corsets to this, on sorority president orders. A power still granted to me in the charter. So watch it." She runs through a mental list of potential disasters. "Everyone's got a costume for the after right? We don't need more panic and stealing each other's hair dye like last year. Right?"

Vee looks from Missy to Jill to the rest of the assembled sisters. They hold their agendas like half-hearted excuses. "Depends," she says. "Some of our costumes might be too provocative for our own good."

"It's a little late to add modesty to the mix," Savannah says. "Unless y'all suddenly lost your spunk."

"Unlikely," Jill says.

Savannah bites her lip as the implications and her lack of control over them sink in. "Fine," she says. "Have it your way, then. It'll be a mix of keg stands and--"

"--debutante balls," Missy says. "Can't wait."

Her humor is contagious, and Savannah feels a glimmer of confidence return as she wrangles them in with sheer determination. "Jill," she says. "Get us more fake blood and deal with the fraternity."

"That's it?" Jill raises an eyebrow.

"Officially, I have no idea what y'all will get up to."

"That's more like it," Jill says. "See you at the party."

Vee pulls a notebook out of her bag. "I'll take care of decorations," she says. "I had a feeling you'd want the non-provocative plan after all."

Savannah flashes a smile. "Thanks. It'll be the best non-provocative plan ever, too. Right?"

Jill grins. Vee lets the question dangle. "Let's find out," she says as she heads toward the door, already on her phone.

The energy in the room begins to build. The nervous chatter crescendos as sisters disperse to tie up loose ends, some heading toward the porch and others moving upstairs. Savannah watches them and lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Missy hangs behind, bouncing on the couch as Vee packs up her notes.

"Don't sweat it," Missy says, watching Savannah. "Everything's gonna be a--"

"--massive catastrophe," Savannah says, cutting her off.

"Fine, maybe." Missy sticks her tongue out. "But that would be epic."

Missy and Vee laugh. Savannah watches them go, reaches for her binder.

"Two years ago TERAT blew it out of the water," she mutters. Missy knows what she really means: The last party her predecessor threw before handing over to Savannah. "I'm toast." Her heart rate kicks up. She's been telling herself she earned this--the presidency, the trust--but if tonight falls apart, she'll know she was just filling a seat.

A telltale bobby pin juts from between the pages of her so-called planner, a glinting accusation about her exactly how unprepared she is. She sinks into a corner and opens the book, scanning lines of half-finished poems and wishful musings she's passed off as organizational genius.

She rolls her shoulders. Her pencil hesitates before scrawling the new verses that have been gnawing at her: Masks. Pretending. The impossibility of living up to--

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"Savannah!" A voice echoes from somewhere upstairs. "We need you!"

Her face flushes red, and she fumbles to close the journal. She's exposed, and not in the sexy wear-it-only-on-Halloween kind of way.

"Be right there!" she shouts.

Savannah gathers herself and hides the journal in her bag.

She stands, patting her bun to be sure that damn bobby pin's still in place. Her worries will just have to wait.

It's a mad scientist's lab in here, complete with wild experiments and terrible mutations. Some genius is carving jack-o'-lanterns with a power drill, another fashioning a tarantula out of used beer pong cups and hot glue.

It's been forty-two minutes since AAA rolled up and a few were let in to get ready. The Monster Garage on the sun porch is the only thing that's amusing and scary, not depressing and scary or disgusting and scary. They're the frat's hardcore nerds--a few such critters exist, apparently--less oozy and handsy, although the drawback is even less scintillating conversation.

Four fraternity brothers in muscle shirts blast up the stairs from the game room and rush by, all shouting and grinning.

Her shoes stick to the booze-goop on the hallway's hardwood. In her favorite blazer--goldenrod yellow, pin-striped--she probably looks like a rubber duck lost at a Spinal Tap concert. There are so many brothers, and so few shirts.

Sara comes out of the stairwell closet holding a shoebox by the corners like it might bite. "Uh, whose gun is this?"

Missy leans back, doffing an imaginary cowboy hat. "I'll be damned. I ain't seen a Colt.45 Bluntline that handsome in a long time."

"I'm sorry, gun?" Raelle's voice goes up an octave.

"It's a prop," Missy says, flipping the lid open. "Blanks only. TV trivia prize."

"Savannah won it for a Wynonna Earp contest," Brittni says, and the reverence in her voice makes it clear which of the show's weapons she's talking about. "Peacemaker. Totally jealous she has it."

Sara sets the shoebox back in the drawer, but Savannah catches her glancing at it on her way past--like she's making sure she knows where it is.

At least her best can handle their worst--and they wasted no time. Vee has an arm around a freshie's waist, putting herself between her and trouble. On the other side, a wall of glamorous, all-American beef: The Blondes. Between them, a svelte Asian girl--Sara! Sara Kim. Savannah spaces on her name for a second, but she shouldn't. A brother offers Sara a red Solo cup, already poured. She hesitates, eyeing it. Before she can take it, one of The Blondes--Meghan, by the ponytail--swoops in, presses a sealed can into Sara's hand, and steers her toward a seat. The brother's smile flickers, just for a second, before he finds some other brothers to bother. The Blondes watch him go with the patience of women who know a threat when they see one.

Her counterpart from Alpha Alpha Alpha looks as sick as she feels, head in hands on the couch.

Greg's fine, but he can't wrangle his steers, and he knows something's wrong. His eyes keep flicking to the same brother who'd been circling the freshie Vee's guarding. She was picked by the alumna because she can herd her cats better than anyone else.

With the bravest and most I-fucking-dare-you sisters all in the sitting room, it's where the underclassmen gals need her help the least. So Savannah hurries on.

She tries to press into the dining room, where the real throng is. These guys all picked this room to hang out and do nothing. Why? There's a huge table in the middle! They're swarming, not quite aware that she's there.

"Hold your horses, y'all." Savannah speaks in her presidential voice, louder than a bullhorn and steadier than she feels.

If these boys don't start listening, she's going to start hollering so loud Triple-As graduated twenty years ago will hear.

A brother next to her dangles precariously from the second-floor balcony as he tries to hang a huge, crooked sign from there to the staircase across it with two guys holding his ankles. Savannah's mental checklist expands and contracts as she moves through the chaos.

Drink station: One table not set up, one slathered in spills and sodden napkins.

Cobwebs: More like chaos webs.

DJ: Missing in action, probably without a costume.

Pumpkins: In the process of being murdered.

Balloon art: Impressive and lewd. Wait. Was there supposed to be balloon art?

"Oh no," Savannah says. Her voice climbs three octaves as she reaches the last item on the list.

There is definitely not supposed to be a fog machine in the library. This was discussed and vetoed earlier this afternoon.

"Do y'all even know we're having a dinner party tonight?"

Somewhere behind the French doors, a response comes from a brother making irregular twhap-thwap sounds with far too much skin in them. He's either jacking off without having a clue how to do it, or losing a fight with rolled-up extension cord while wearing shorts. "No shit! A party?" He doesn't sound as sarcastic as she'd like. After a muttered fuck, a long extension cord closer to a rubber band ball than anything sails across the hall and out the door. At least that slap-slap was prongs digging into pasty thighs. Probably. Right? Maybe?

No time to figure it out.

Her fingers tighten around her binder as she makes her way to the brothers still in earshot. Amber has made her clipboard useful rather than symbolic by wafting some of the smoke from who-knows-what on the stove out an open window. The tall, skinny girl with a zillion sweaters, shiny-framed square glasses and cute freckles who transferred last week from the SUNY Buffalo chapter is doing a spectacular job of covering two smoke detectors at once with a pair of gizmos made of brooms, ample duct-tape, and plastic popcorn bowls.

The rail-thin frat-nerd beside her with even chunkier square-framed glasses must have thrown them together for her. They're both grinning way too hard about this.

The way those two are smiling at each other makes her suspect there's a litter of nerdlings in Theta Epsilon's future. Do newborn nerdlings have to be dipped for fleas? She's a country girl. Sheep. Cows. Ducks. Chickens. Goats. Cows. Give her one, and she can raise it. But nerdlings are a breed of barnyard critter she doesn't know.

She never heard an alarm, so it was quick work. Planned, enacted, successful before the smoke hit the sensor. That girl's leadership material if she toughens up.

A half dozen grown men with zero impulse control and mid-sixties IQ--far as they demonstrate, at least--sprint toward her, shoes squeaking across the floor. They stop just shy of colliding into one another, some not quite recognizing her in their haste.

She's had enough. Time to make a grisly example for the peasants to whisper fearfully about.

Savannah stands there, hair perfect and lips in a tight, bloodless smile. Her arms are crossed in front of her, her jacket pressed with all the crispness the boys are missing.

"We met earlier, when you came. I'm not sure you remember me," she says, scanning their faces. "But I'm about to make sure you do."

"Chick on the balcony," one whispers to another.

"I didn't recognize you up close," admits one of the less forgetful ones.

Savannah remains calm, though it's clearly not contagious. The brothers are as loose as they are underdressed, but the one in back seems to catch on and starts looking to bolt. "Is that the way y'all operate?" she says. "You come into someone else's house, make a mess and get the sorority to do all the hard work?"

"Kinda," one grunts. "That's the plan," another jokes. One of them ducks out, laughing, before Savannah sees who.

They joke and jostle with each other, much more comfortable than Savannah is.

The one circling Kenna hasn't moved. He's watching her the way Savannah's barn cats watched mice--patient, waiting for the right moment.

The smell of beer and sweat mingles with the fake cobwebs and carved pumpkins, adding to the house's impromptu, abandoned lab vibe. They've dropped their gear and forgotten to pick it up, left strange machines running on their own, let chaos spread faster than a virus. Savannah is the one who caught it.

"Listen up," she says. Her voice goes higher this time, nearly cracking. "Our leadership and yours is stopping by at 6:00 sharp for the toast, and they're not going to like this. If y'all think--"

"Old dudes better get used to the fog machines," someone says.

"--I'm covering for you," Savannah says, louder. "You've got another thing coming."

"You mean we can have more things?"

They love this part of the plan. They're practically falling over each other, already getting ideas about adding more beer, more kegs, more chaos. The whole party could spiral like this if she lets it.

Savannah sets her shoulders and her mouth in a firm line. "I mean we're going to make this place decent, and we're going to make it happen fast."

The closest of them don't seem to mind her orders, but she's not sure how long that will last. "That all?" one says. "No problem."

"Try this," she says. "You," she points at him, "get more supplies from Jill."

He looks surprised. "Thought you just said not to get more."

She eyes the massive cluster of balloons in the corner. "Yeah, I didn't mean a pool float's worth of balloons."

"So a bed's worth?" he says, but he's already moving away. "What kind of supplies we talking?"

"Jill knows. Ask her." She motions to the others, eager to delegate and to get through this with her sanity intact. "Y'all aren't off the hook yet," she says. "Stay on it, or I'll send my big girls over."

The place begins to hum with life, the energy growing. She loosens her grip on her binder and her anxiety as she sees the house taking shape.

Then she sees Jill making her way through the entry in a sports bra and cut-offs. Granted, it's more practical for hanging decorations but she has the same fifty-odd minutes to get presentable as these wandering baboons, and way more presentable to get.

Savannah's relief is fleeting as she watches Jill survey the room, point out a few things to the brothers, grinning.

"So you finally showed up," Savannah says.

"I come in peace." Jill holds up her hands. "You're welcome," she adds. "Looks like you've got things covered."

"That's one way to put it."

A half-dressed brother eyes Jill, then Savannah, then Jill again. He grins as wide as a gator. "We got it, Savvy. Right?"

He doesn't know whether to stay or go, not until Jill winks.

Savannah has to dig for it, but confidence just crackles off like sparks.

Jill nudges the closest of the brothers with her elbow. Nods at the streamer of paper skeletons he's--respectably--flattening to usability between a cutting board and the back of some coffee-table book or another. "Not bad," she says.

"I know," he says. "How long you gonna stick around?"

"Not long," she says. "Savannah'll get real mad if I keep standing here." She's oblivious to the red haze creeping into Savannah's cheeks. Or worse, enjoying it. "I'm supposed to help with decorations, but I figure this works out either way."

"It'll work out, all right," says another. "At least someone gets us."

Savannah thinks of Jill's parting comment at the last meeting: See you at the party. She didn't think it would start so soon.

"Stay if you can," Jill says to Savannah. "These guys putting up decorations will be the least official thing you ever saw. Does a body good, some unofficial."

"Y'all, I need this done right. Not more half-assing." Her voice shakes, even to her own ears.

Jill laughs as she leaves. "See? Real mad."

The clatter and the chatter begin to reach unbearable levels. Before she loses total control, Savannah feels a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey there, Prez." It's Filip the AAA co-president, grinning wide and dazzling. He's a surfer bum but from New Jersey, not Hawaii. So he adds dark-haired smolder, that sense of pressure-cooker emotional intensity unique to the devout Catholics she's met, and Southern European good looks without losing the general vibe of anything-goes. Rather than a half half-trained Golden Retriever, he's a show-winning Irish Setter that can do anything but mostly does what he feels like.

That ain't her God.

But those big stone altars look cozier than Pentecostal chapels, and any church-raised girl worth her salt has daydreamed once or twice about being bent over the altar till she doesn't care it's a sin. She bets her boobs would look amazing in sunlight through stained glass.

Must be hard work for tall and dark Catholic boys, piling up things to confess...

"Made better time than I was expecting up I-10," he jokes, snapping her out of her fantasy and her blasphemy. "Was worried I'd miss everything but the after-party."

Savannah stands taller. Tucks her hair behind her ear. Grips her clipboard. "Y'all started going out of control three minutes after you showed up! Greg can tell you all about it."

He lets go of her shoulder and walks around to her side, laughing as he loops his elbow in hers. He's good at this part--being a gentleman. He's just shit at making his brothers charming.

"I figured I'd ask the lady of the castle herself, first. It's always chaos, right? So let it be chaos."

"That's not the plan," Savannah hisses.

"Well, the plan needs fine-tuning," he says, scanning the mess his brothers are making of the place and her sisters are too shell-shocked to do anything about.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Savannah says. "Not when we talked about this already."

"What's a few more changes?"

"We're going with mine," she says.

He cocks an eyebrow. "And which one is that?"

"Last time I checked," Savannah says, "we only had one."

He sounds so sure that she can't. He smiles as if he thinks the back and forth is fun for her too. This time it isn't, even if it usually is.

"Do you not remember when we shook on it?" She doesn't let him answer.

He breaks his smooth stride at that. Thank the Lord and pass the ammunition. He noticed she wasn't playing this time.

"We don't need more trouble this time, okay? I mean it, Filip."

He considers for a moment, not used to being argued down like this. She's got him.

"Okay," he says. "You win. You always do."

"I'd sure like to," Savannah says. She knows that letting her drawl do the heavy lifting won't get her all the way to the end of the night.

He smirks, and Savannah braces herself. "Jill guessed right," he says. "You're even prettier angry. Somehow." He presses a kiss to her hand--she didn't remember feeling him take it--and vanishes into the musky throng. Hopefully, to actually fix something, for Christ's sake.

The din of conversation and activity swells again, and her smile tightens.

"Glad we cleared that up," she says to an undifferentiated mass of faceless men.

Filips departure means Savannah's alone for the first time since she staggered off the porch amid the great pumpkin butchery. She ducks out the side door to the driveway for air. The closed door muffles the brothers' shouting, and she draws in a shaky breath, enjoying the silence and the humid, sweltering air for as long as she can. Seattleites hate it. But to a Nacogdoches girl, hot air so thick you can walk on it just means God hasn't forgotten about you.

She knows it won't be long.

She knows her only choice is to put on the most confident smile she can muster, to keep them thinking she's got a handle on this. She doesn't.

She spent four years watching her mama do the same thing at church potlucks. Smile through burnt casserole, smile through the gossip, smile through the collection plate coming up short. It always worked. But her mama had the Lord on her side. Savannah just has a binder full of half-finished poems and a bobby pin holding everything together.

Her fingers fidget with her cross necklace. Her shoulders slump.

Then, when she's sure no one's looking, she squares her shoulders and tucks the stray hair behind her ear.

And she walks back in.

Somehow, some-fucking-how, they did it.

Filip decided today was an odd day of the week, so he'd take things seriously.

Him luring the ne'er-do-wells to him let Greg sort out the quieter half of Triple-A before the national officials arrived.

Jill's on-the-spot cover stories for why this and that wasn't perfect--nearly all damaged decorations had been hustled into the Rush-week-only steamer trunks in the library by then--softened the TERAT delegation up so much they were smiling through Savannah's follow-ups.

Took them as signs that the kids are all right, which must've been Jill's plan, since it was too late to fake being sane folks or grownups.

The co-chair of the Alumna Arts Group made them promise to actually put on the non-existent play that Jill, two nerd-bros who were word nerds, and Tess concocted on the fly to explain the exuberance that had cost them their decorations.

Greg and Filip trail her and Jill as they lead the national president and her wife--no one warned her about any of that--back to their cars. Jill isn't an officer; she invited herself.

The famously-single long-time national TERAT prez having a wife was another thing no one warned Savannah about! Ruins three of the Rush Week guessing games.

Congratulations, prez. Seriously. Amelia is way out of even Dr. Connie Dieter's league. She is what Beatris will be in twenty-five years: A physical manifestation of high culture and Old World beauty transplanted into the self-conscious, try-hard, fuzzy photocopy of Europe that is America. She got rich looking classy as hell while playing the cello, rather than while squeezing millions out of bankers.

At the curb next to a silently-idling electric BMW, Savannah has one last chance to not look like a total fuckup next to Jill, the heroine of the hour.

Short and simple, she decides, so she can't mess it up.

"Thank you, Madam President."

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She steps back in to find not the assembled brothers and sisters changed into their costumes and ready to relax, but the worst chaos of the night: Vee pressing the grooved brass shaft of a trophy for best flowerbeds across the windpipe of a brother in a half-buttoned satin shirt--the one who'd been hounding poor little Kenna earlier--cleverly using the four or five inches she has on him to bend him backwards over the mantle of the fireplace. Makes him choose between breathing and bending his spine even further or letting her choke him with the trophy. From the way he's twisting his pelvis away from her and the tears on his cheeks, that's his puke on the floor.

It wasn't his face that learned how the volleyball feels when Vee's fist connects.

The other two Blondes hold another Triple-A at taser point against the wall by the hallway. Jill breaks off to back up her teammates. Gym rat or not, he looks like he's about to shit himself with more than half of the starting She-Huskies in the room, and not two but all three of their highest-scoring hitters right up in his face. Vee's a setter. Best as Savannah can tell, that means 'can see China from up here' and 'can jump up to high five the Space Station'. Vee could probably bitch-slap the guy Jill's holding without moving away from the one she's about to send to a chiropractor.

She should probably take more of an interest in something that means so much to her co-president and one of her best friends. But why can't Vee like Texas shit, like Savannah and Missy? No research that way!

Neither man is trying to explain himself, nor wasting much breath protesting his innocence. Although Vee isn't letting her victim have much to begin with.

On the couch, Aggie cuddles her ashen-faced girlfriend and crushes her car keys in a fist so tight that blood smears the Subaru logo.

Fucking terrific!

Savannah can't believe that the first goddamned party their chapter's only out and proud member could talk her hilarious but painfully shy girlfriend into attending, this shit happens. They're going to be the talk of the Literature Department's next grad student luncheon and the shitty story at Agni's wedding. (Sam's ship name, so they agreed it counts.)

The empty, half-crumpled can of activated charcoal lemonade bouncing off Brittni's fidgety knee tells Savannah a lot.

In fact, it tells her everything.

Brittni's worried she got roofied. Because she's at a party with frat guys, and another girl threw up.

Any one of the Blondes is a match for any frat boy's bullshit, and strong enough to haul any sister out of trouble by her scruff and make it look easy, but something's riled up the whole dog team. Whatever set them off is bad.

Sara looks like she was slipped something. Nothing else makes sense to Savannah, because the gentlest person she's ever met is curled in a ball by the door to the library, sniffling, wearing only the snazzy pencil skirt she bought for this and a black bralette. Blouse MIA probably for the same reason Missy is shushing her and Casey's mopping up something with paper towels and kitty litter. Her extremely useful and spooky-quiet fiancé Jake floats behind Casey like a chivalrous ghost. Face shiny and breathing hard, more towels in one hand, held out so Casey can rip them off, a bottle of water and some breath mints in the other. The bag's from the corner store. He ran there.

She encouraged her gals not to answer questions popped before graduation, but Casey and Jake work. So they could break the rules.

This class of TERATs can't listen for shit or plan a party without Savannah begging and a whole choir of angels to sing backup for her.

All but four of 'em are godless northerners.

Indoor kitties to boot: City girls and coastal hippies or some mix thereof.

Tonight, when it matters, they're as brassy and mean and spitting mad as any bunch of dolled-up cowgirls taking a cheating man apart outside that skeevy roadhouse back home.

She is so damn proud of them standing up for each other.

Stefan comes in holding two more of his brothers in brutal back-of-the-neck grips--one man clamped by each big hand around the back of the neck, bent forward as he herds them. Beatris wafts in behind him, a smirking puff of smoke with crimson heels dangling off her finger. She seems somewhere between impressed by the strength--a bit flushed around the neckline, Savannah notes--and embarrassed.

Around the coffee table are Amber, Tess, Adam and the nerd-bro who helped tall sweater girl with the smoke detectors. Fine, Jill is right. She needs to learn more names and faces!

One item at a time, they unpack a gym bag. Set aside each unique thing from multi-tool to lint to condom wrapper to sealed condom; each gets its own little numbered circle on a piece of paper. Whenever they run out of circles, Tess draws a few more on a new sheet and hands it over. For each sheet they fill up, Amber photographs with her cell phone from a bunch of angles and with and without flash.

"What the hell?" Filip wonders.

Sara doesn't drink, she remembers. I cooked the damn roast! Grandma's secret recipe didn't make her sick!

"Sara doesn't drink," Greg says out loud.

Savannah really hopes he can't read minds now. Can accountants do that?

"We're usually designated drivers together," he adds.

"HAH!" Amber shouts, holding aloft an orange pill bottle with the label hastily scraped off in one hand and in the other a mostly empty blister pack of who knows what.

"What," Filip demands, slowly rolling his sleeve up, revealing ever more muscle feathered with dark hair. He clenches his swarthy fist and stomps towards the one Stefan holds.

"What the FUCK did you morons do?"

"Us?" sputters the one The Blondes have cornered. "They went crazy!"

Meghan pops a bubble with a bang that makes several of the guys flinch, the blast way more intimidating than store-brand spearmint has any right to be.

Missy puts her hand to Sara's forehead, then turns to Casey and Jake and mouths 'ambulance'.

That's when everything explodes, with denials and accusations flying from all but the most senior members. Rapist, slut, liar and cocktease are suddenly the words of the year.

This calls for drastic measures and thank God for that. Savannah's been feeling drastic all day. Missy looks at her. Nods once, hard, and looks at the chest of drawers just past the stairs going down to the game room.

Savannah darts over, yanks open the big drawer at the bottom and hauls out a shoebox with "Savannah's TV Trivia prize" on it.

Winner got a prop from the show.

If she'd won with Andor, she had money riding on Sam somehow making a working lightsaber. But she won for the show Aggni, Raelle and later Vee went nuts for: Wynonna Earp. Whenever she feels like taking out a hangover on the bottles or cowgirl bonding with Missy, she drives out to God's country and buys a dozen real bullets on the way.

She slides six rounds in and makes sure each has the flat, green-painted tips of a blank. Then Savannah stomps back into the doorway between parlor and hallway, aims high and fires off two.

She waits for everyone's ears to stop ringing before she goes on.

"EVERYONE SHUT UP!" she bellows.

"If any sister but Casey or Amber moves from where she is right now, she's done. If it's got a dick, I want it out in the front yard till the cops get here."

Raelle stands up but Devon and Petra haul her back onto the couch with a chuckle.

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Chapter 2

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The sun went down barely two hours ago, and it's gone from steamy to biting cold. She pulls her borrowed jacket tighter against it.

She can't believe it's only been an hour and a half since she helped Greg, Filip and Amber hustle the usual suspects to the sidewalk where the campus police took them and asked the sorority and fraternity officers to come with in their own cars and take statements. Wicked, brilliant woman she is, Vee loudly commented to the EMTs that she remembers Sara coming home messed up from her wisdom teeth, and finding out she was allergic to fentanyl and Rohypnol. She asked her to help get a MedicAlert bracelet, which Vee discovered was still there after chasing the creep out of the room.

That sent one of the officers up to her room to photograph everything there and come back with a sheet of paper from UW Dental College with giant red print warning of allergies. As they followed the cruiser in Greg's car, both he and Filip promised to testify against Dave--turns out the fucker has a name--and on behalf of Sara's character. Greg told her that if they're lucky, that silk-shirted asshole's prints are on the note from the dentist, meaning he should've known that the punch could've killed Sara. Thank the Good Lord for Sara's dislike of alcohol. She got whatever sliver of the diluted dose from the whole punch-bowl was in a baby-bird sized glass and it made her puke. EMTs turned her loose after jabbing her cute butt with two epi-pens and looking her over.

That's reckless endangerment of life, if her *Law and Order* binges serve. Attempted homicide. Savannah hopes this hard-ass new female city attorney takes a crack at it. So does Greg, by the scowl on his face as he walked out.

He's booted from the house before morning, they promised and Triple-A's charter will be altered double-time so the party calendar it commits Theta Epsilon to isn't a problem ever again.

The sheriff back home would've tried a thousand ways to suggest it was all a misunderstanding. The desk guy here nodded, frowned, and came back with three female officers and a gigantic, bald-headed man who must've put all his volume into his biceps, because he spoke so softly even Sara didn't startle. Much as she likes to tease Seattleites, being somewhere so liberal that even the cops--at least the university ones--are godless hippies has its advantages.

Shitty night, but at least she has a phone full of messages from her "gals" thanking her for being such a strong president, and for fighting for them. And a text to the group chat that must be ten pages long saying how proud she is of them, just waiting for her to hit send.

As she steps over the weird seam in the sidewalk between the performing arts building and the science library, she taps send.

The concrete paths ahead are long and empty, and shouldn't be on fucking Halloween. She should be dodging dozens of stumbling zombies. Some costumed and some just booze-blasted.

She's mid-campus, far past the smaller Greek row on the East side of the quad. It's a ghost town. Not even a light on in an upstairs window where she could watch a big sister fluff up her little and laugh together about when she was a shiny-skinned teenager who wanted to be hot and live with the cool girls and thought Greek life was a shortcut.

Not even that.

The student union that serves this half of campus looms ahead, a great rust-red half-cylinder with its dark courtyard and still-lit first-floor hall where she can't make out anyone manning the fast-food places.

"OK," she mutters. "This isn't funny."

Near the Army/Navy building stands a half-circle of Douglas Maples planted by the Grand Army of the Republic just six years after the state became a state back in 1862. Giants now, and all but one still here and going strong. Even at night, seeds corkscrew down.

There should be couples snuggling--maybe more--under blankets watching horror flicks on laptops.

Aggie should be here, probably cradling that vintage Stratocaster while Brittni grades essays with one hand in her back pocket. Instead, Brittni's crying into her chest at home.

At least Savannah's has company on this too-quiet trek. Greg and Filip had two bottles of Jungle Juice left. Not a suspect stew in a milk jug that was hopefully washed first. Tropical Terror Jungle Juice™ by Blast Radius Beverages. Solid concept on Greg's part. He found a company that makes a sealed, commercial version of the stuff in a factory, so it's not so sketchy-seeming to timid freshman ladies or unpredictable in alcohol content.

They just didn't think about the fact that the alcohol had to be in the punchbowl eventually and could be tampered with then.

Good shit. She's not crazy about the KAPOW! of ginger right away but it vanishes long before she swallows. She'll let papaya, passionfruit, pineapple and pomegranate throw a sloppy party on her tongue any day of the week.

The two bottles they had in his trunk are heavy when she's this tired. The Jungle Juice is the first blow struck for justice tonight: Madam President deserved a stiff drink and now she has one. She's started to feel the way she's supposed to--sugary and sloppy and goofy.

Home in sight at long last. The wrought iron archway from the Seattle Ladies' Auxiliary announces Sorority Row in cool, coiling letters inside circles, blessing them and their good works. But not mentioning God once. Reminds her how far she is from home. Where you couldn't chuckle without someone telling you to thank the Lord. Even back then, she didn't belong to the outskirts of Nacogdoches. It made her feel so... so small. She would sneak into the attic with a journal, writing poems full of doubt, hope, and confusion. Poems about more than just boys and saving herself like momma said and not mentioning the Blood of the Lamb near often enough. Poems that when she tripped over them cleaning up this spring, she couldn't bring herself to burn like she'd meant to do before college.

She can claim she's a proud Texas girlie and she does. Makes a point of doing so. But she never belonged to a backwater full of Blessings to God and Bless Your Heart half as much as Vee did to the ever-shifting chameleon of counterculture that is Austin.

Savannah savors another mouthful and tells herself the cold is what's making her go this hard. Pretends she's planning to call a lawyer on Monday about subletting the old carriage house like they'd talked about. Pretends the press release she'll have to bang out tomorrow is one thanking the Prez and her wife for visiting, not a screed about date rape. She'd hoped to tack on the Seattle Times fluff piece about Raelle and Aggie. TERAT gave them a shot, and they rock-starred it. Their membership helped to break the always-straight, always-cis, always-femme, always-Christian, mostly-white, future trophy wife image of a sorority girl. Just because it's not that unfair--it's the Tri-Delts in a nutshell--doesn't mean it's nice.

When she returns to the house, there is no movement. No light but porch lights down the street. With everything so damn quiet, the gleaming white columns and dawn-gold trim of the sorority house don't look like home--they look like they should come with screechy violin music or fade away after the ghost moves on. The first noise she's heard since she turned onto their street is the AC out back kicking in. That new whine, clunk-clunk, nasty gurgle sequence of noises that started Tuesday makes it sound like a seagull being strangled.

Inside the front door, more nothing. Just the foyer's inner door to the hallway open a crack, a yellowed, feeble sliver of light peeking through.

"Take them home, lock them in like it's Easter at Church, and cheer 'em up," she told Vee. She tried to protest she didn't know what that meant, but one fallen away girl from rural Texas knows another. The difference between them is Vee's not crying herself sore every Sunday about how God and Christianity doesn't help any more. Only Savannah is.

Vee's not afraid of what people think of her. She doesn't care about anything besides getting good grades, kicking UCLA's ass in the semifinals, and then slaying the biggest, baddest, reddest dragon in college volleyball to knock the Huskers out the national champion's slot a second time before she graduates, and being herself.

The superpower of not caring026 Has to beat the fuck out of laser eyes or freeze breath.

It should be loud. And bright. And happy. She told them that the after-party would be TERAT, and only Jake could stay. They'd have a blast and forget about the first party for now. They'd still be hot as fuck and wear amazing costumes and dance like lunatics until 2am. Unless she misinterprets the new patterns in the pre-dawn scampering and bathroom sharing, Aggie isn't the only TERAT who doesn't have to sleep alone or rely on her fingers just because of a lack of boys.

She almost laughs. Prank. Has to be. They've pranked her before. Ducking into rooms and going dead silent, only to jump-scare her or jump-scare plus bear hug.

The inner door swings open on whiny hinges.

"Hide and seek is kid's stuff, gals! Time to grow up." She calls out. The whoosh of the AC is all she gets. She's mid-campus again, surrounded by empty paths, dark buildings, and a chill between her ribs that had less and less to do with the wind as time went on. She considers leaving. The sensible part of her--the part that got her elected--says turn around, call Vee, let the police handle whatever this is. But the Juice has the wheel now, and the Juice wants answers. She takes two big swigs, feels the warmth stiffen her backbone, and makes herself a promise: she's not leaving this house until she's found every last one of them.

With the dim glow from the back porch, a jungle casts its shadows over her. The aloe plant Kenna nearly killed and Vee was resurrecting was hand-sized this afternoon. Now it stands taller that she does, and fat leaves spill out in a half circle that spans from the coat rack by the foyer to the edge of the parlor's door. Savannah reaches for it, awestruck, wondering how it grew three years' worth in two hours. Wondering if it feels even silkier, now that it has. She pulls her hand back. None of this is possible. Aloe doesn't grow that fast. Trees don't sprout through carpet. But if rationality worked, the party would've gone to plan.

Something breathes behind her, and she stumbles back. Slams the back of her head into a tree trunk. The pot that held the plastic roses with the plastic witch peeking out is nothing but flecks and shards on the carpet. A full-grown, hairy as hell coconut tree replaced it, complete with fallen fruits and a massive but hopefully not dangerous crab climbing. The roots pierce carpet, floorboards and even the concrete pad above the basement with ease.

Amber's phone sits charging on the table where everyone hangs their keys--the blue glow drawing a pair of fluorescent pink butterflies and a white wasp as long and as big around as a Sharpie. It pokes at the screen with its stinger like it's ordering caterpillars on DoorDash.

They gals are holding out, waiting for you to crack, she tells herself. Still a prank.

The Juice has you good, girl. Alternate explanation.

Only... it can't be a prank. It's way too accurate. She knows that's the right tree-climbing crab because she saw a special about them on Animal Planet while miserable and high off her tits on cold medicine. Talking versions of that monster lived in her nightmares for six months after. No one but Vee and Sam have the nerd chops to find plausible jungle plants, let alone the subspecies of crab that probably matches that exact subspecies of coconut tree.

Where do you even get one? Amazon's got everything but half of it's fake-out junk that doesn't match the description. That crab is not counterfeit.

The last hope of a prank dies when Savannah spots a pair of traffic cone orange frogs ribbiting and chilling in the doorway to the dining room. No way those are just ordinary frogs that dressed for deer hunting. With all the jungle-y vibes, those things are probably toxic as a podcast bro, but less likely to kill her if she touches them. At least they're busy humping each other, not trying to climb into her open-toed heels. Vee and Sam are too smart to let something actually dangerous inside. The crab stretches it but the frogs are deadly. They're too smart to bring that crab in, or those frogs, OR THE FUCKING CROCODILE!

Just a small one. Maybe three feet. Stylish fellow, actually, in Savannah's opinion. Green and gold scales in cloudy patterns and a long, narrow snout.

But still.

Crocodile! Indoors! Where she lives! Where there are teensy little gals like Sam and Kenna that it could take a chunk out of! Not okay!

A nervous laugh almost escapes her lips. She stifles it.

Jungle Juice. That's what Savannah Jameson blames. The same Savannah Jameson who's has the mother of all lame-ass fucking Fridays. The Savannah Jameson and is not going to bed tonight without partying the fuck out, dancing herself sore with her besties before heading upstairs to her witch's lair and practicing the ol' black magic until the wand melts between her legs.

The Savannah Jameson who never thinks of herself in the third person. Because only egotistical jackasses do that.

Jungle Juice is probably even better cold, so she heads into the kitchen, pausing to be sure the crocodile won't charge her. It doesn't react to her and barely reacts to the frogs hopping up on its nose. Scales must protect it from the poison. All three just let her pass by. Some of these animals are dangerous but they're all using company manners. Way nicer than the Triple-As.

A white python as long as a limousine glides past her ankles and curls around the compost machine. Six neon pink frogs lounge in the pitcher of filtered water by the sink. She dumps it out before some freshie can stagger downstairs hungover tomorrow and get hydration with a splash of neurotoxin. Above the sink, two fuzzy brown bats the size of cats have teamed up to rip an orange apart nibble by nibble. The pregnant one stops to swallow--hard to do upside down with that belly--while her girlfriend leans over and licks at her ears.

Baby bats with two mommies. Vegan bats, of course. Next up, gay penguins in the freezer!

That settles it. Aggie and Brittni had a hand in this.

When she goes to the fridge to stash the Juice, she finds an all-white jaguar curled up inside. He's got that steroid-addict muscle around his shoulders and neck where leopards are lean, and frosting from a leftover birthday cake sticks to his whiskers. Despite all laws of physics, he fits. And where he fits, he sits.

She tucks the full bottle inside the door and closes it slowly so he won't wake up but keeps the other bottle since she doesn't have a giant bottle of antipsychotic drugs.

A woman screams, and for some crazy reason, Savannah thinks she can help. So runs towards the sound.

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"What the fuck?"

It was Kenna screaming.

But not because she was being flayed by Freddie Kruger as the volume, length, and glass-cracking pitch implied.

She's screaming because a gigantic half-man, half-wolf creature has her ass up, face in the grass, legs apart... and is hammering her doggy-style.

Werewolf style, Savannah's brain unhelpfully supplies.

She's blaming the fact she laughed at her own joke on the Juice.

That has to hurt.

He looks to be about twelve feet tall with the muscles of all the Triple-A meatheads put together. One hand is enough to wrap halfway around the waistline of a pint-size gal like Kenna. Fuzzy balls swing from his tail to her belly with a hard smack on each thrust. They're bigger than Kenna's boobs--and she's not a top-heavy girl. But still! They look so swollen and hard they could drive nails. Even with just the very last quarter-inch peeking out, Savannah can tell he has the dick to match. Cherry red, veiny as fuck, so thick he can barely move it inside her even with Kenna so turned on she's watering the plants on every other stroke. Must be turning her insides to confetti. Except it can't be. She's crying but also she's smiling.

It's a tongue out, glassy-eyed, recent lobotomy patient sort of smile.

Still a smile.

This can't be round one. The white fur he's shedding falls around the pair and sticks to her cum-covered back wherever it lands. He's had time to smear glue all over the art project so he can stick hair to it.

He turns to face Savannah with teeth bared and a growl rumbling in his chest. Never missing a beat. Speeds up whenever Kenna hiccups or babbles. She's feebly grabbing at the dirt but not to get away. To push herself back. A particularly brutal thrust slides her across the turf and mushes her face into the flowerbed, but she just moans around a mouthful of tulips.

The wolf-man's silver eyes never leave Savannah.

He isn't letting his toy get taken away until he gets every last squeak out.

"Big doggy... nice doggy... good boy," she whispers.

Clearly, taking a break is the last thing on Kenna's mind--assuming his cock isn't in her skull by this point. She's so consumed that she didn't even notice the noise of the back door slamming or see Savannah.

A hot, wet wind blasts out of the shadow by the garden shed, blowing Kenna's hair across her face and whipping Savannah's around. Kenna's hair is soaked filthy--more sticky white than dirty blonde. In the absolute shadow by the shed, something growls.

Then it stands up to its full height and leans forward into the light.

A wolf. Not another wolf-man, but a wolf. It's massive. Feathery, golden-brown fur, plush, thick, and twenty-four-carat glossy. Slender-chested and long-legged with a narrow muzzle, a glistening nose, jet black and eyes that sizzle red with the light they catch. Or maybe they glow; Savannah can't tell. Its tail, stiff behind it, clears the roof of the garage on the alley. A plastic table flattens under paws the size of armchairs with smooth, clean claws.

The wolf doesn't growl at her. Doesn't need to. Just stands up, makes threatening and prehistoric eye contact, then lays back down to watch Fido fuck Freshman. Kenna's iPad, propped on a stand sits between the monsters' paws but somehow not crushed or even tipped over by them.

Fuck.

Camera light's on, Savannah realizes. She scrambles for her phone and starts checking social media.

Yep. Kenna is live-streaming herself, buck naked and dipped in monster jizz, being fucked to goo by a werewolf. Going by the livestream's time code of 2h:32m, this tomfoolery started no later than fifteen minutes after Savannah left for the police station.

Like all the girls, her accounts are woven into Theta Epsilon's page, adding authentic content without Vee posting official stuff non-stop.

Spectacular.

YouTube is going to be pissed.

Getting folded and power-fucked by a werewolf sex is so much spicier and non-euphemistic than what TikTok allows that they're probably going to perma-ban everyone who's ever typed Theta on the internet, faster than they banned everyone who Googled Tiananmen Square.

Kenna will be a millionaire if this is going out on her Twitch channel, though.

Scared as she is of Kenna having the big death along with the little deaths she's apparently getting by the dozen, Savannah's jealous of the look on her face and the abandon with which she enjoys it.

Savannah can't separate the lovebirds without being turned into meat favored dental floss by ultra-wolf or him thinking she's buying the next ticket on that ride. Worse. Maybe better. Definitely worse. She's sticking with worse, Your Honor.

So all she can do is go shut off the router and pray Kenna's cell carrier doesn't get good signal here.

She backs up rather than breaking eye contact with Pornhub's answer to Call of the Wild, doing her best to avoid falling into the pool. Satisfied he's top dog, he rolls both himself and Kenna over, while never letting her pull even half an inch off. Maybe he can't. Maybe she's so stuffed she can't get free until he goes soft. Kenna shakes off the fuzz long enough to squeeze his hand where it rests on her hip, and groan 'please, baby'. The golden wolf stands up, avoiding the iPad again--so it's smart, not an animal--before padding around to lick great, slow swaths up from his thighs to Kenna's face. She giggles each time a tongue wide as her waist slobbers past.

He howls. Kenna wails. Savannah hears a strange gurgle. It's only when Kenna's flat tummy rounds that she realizes that faint gurgling she hears is his come pumping into Kenna. Because he's that OP there, too.

She turns to bolt only to nearly fall into the pool, narrowly saved by getting caught up in the cover they put over it this time of year. The shiny tarp in Theta Epsilon burgundy that they just replaced while upgrading to a motorized spool, is sliced in a dozen places--some enough to fall in. Through the tears, she can see the pool bubbling like a pot of pasta water someone forgot about, hear splashing and see spooky blue glow that dims and brightens in pulses.

Bright and dark. Bright and dark. In and out. In and out. Exhale. Inhale.

She feels much better. She was so worried. Can't remember why now.

"Hey prez!" Amber calls out, muffled. "That you?"

After pouring as much Jungle Juice into her mouth as she can hold and swallowing it, Savannah drags herself off the tarp and flops onto the tile. After a few gulping, sobbing breaths, she finds the strength to crawl over to the controls and hit 'retract'. Pushing herself up using the (thankfully plastic) bottle, she watches as the tarp rolls back to reveal Amber clutched between purple-scaled, heavily muscled mermen with powerful, finned tails. Tails so long and thick that they each had to curl them up to fit in half of a sixty-foot pool.

Amber's holes are the zero-yard line, tonight.

Each man--fuckfish? merhumper?--holds her ribcage in one knife-clawed hand and holds her up from under an arm with the other. They keep her afloat even as their tails beat against the water so hard that it sloshes side to side like the Seattle Harbor on a rough day. The man-fish dividing line seems to be--because of fucking course, this is a nightmare--just below their cocks. They saw in and out of Amber with gigantic, prehensile, clasper-tipped harpoons that glow with the same blue light as the spines that fan out to spread their many fins. The one with the paler scales and no stripes on his tail pulls out and lets out a clicking groan, the gills along his ribs flexing. Jet after jet of gelatinous black nope spurt from his tip and sink to join all the others on the bottom slowly dissolving into inky clouds.

Were they both in her pussy? Savannah thinks that's less likely and more fatal than what Kenna's got going on with Rover. But if that's Amber's happy place? Get it, girl!

Done coming, the merman jams his cock back into her ass with a fanged grin. Amber goes stiff and whimpers. But she must love it because she strains to turn around, lick his mouth and bite at his scaly chin while the other slides his huge, spaded-tipped, all-black tongue out to drag across the back of her neck.

"Come on in, Prez!" Amber hollers. "Water's fine!"

Savannah takes another huge swig. "Rain check." She stands up, trying to remember why she was headed into the house in the first place.

Kenna and Amber are obviously having a blast, even if they're going to need the ICU after this.

She's busy trying to remember what she was going inside to do when the garage explodes, showering her with tiny chunks of concrete.

A pair of minotaurs step out, a man and a woman. Bull and cow would be rude, she supposes. Those hooves could turn me to paste.

The she-minotaur has Casey's legs hooked over her horns, the long white poodle skirt covering her massive face. Eats her out with great gusto, noisy slurps, thundering snorts and rumbling chuckles every time Casey groans and her legs clamp around their horned throne. A feast so messy that drool and slick gather into a creamy foam like spilled champagne before drizzling down Casey's thighs. Her plus one has Jake buck naked and draped over a cock as thick as Jake's whole thigh. Authentic to a bull. Ten of ten on dick accuracy, Savannah has no notes. No East Texas girl would. The minotaur slides a grown man and down his cock like a pair of stolen panties. All the while, Jake moans and does his best to wrap his arms around whenever he has the brain cells to move them. Heavy, crude rope binds Jake's ankles together, keeping his legs hooked around the shaft for some extra friction. The whole nightmare is greased up by the loads he's already showered all over Jake and the inside of the wall they just fucked through. Gooey ropes stretch between the larger chunks of concrete that toppled over rather than shattering.

By some miracle, Casey's clean as a whistle--skirt and blouse intact, not even stretched. The only dishevelment she's suffered besides the slobber from Ancient Athens' nightmare feasting on her lady bits with zero table manners, and the only consequence is her hair's a mess. A pair of lacy pink boy-shorts dangles precariously off her patent leather heel but if they don't fall off, they're fine. Casey could pop in the shower, strut back out fresh as a daisy while Jake gets the high-density feedlot frottage special.

She'd always thought Jake was homophobic. "Huh," Savannah mutters. "You learn something new every day." THIS IS A CHANGE TO REMOVE

She turns back toward the house. She has sisters to take care of. She made a promise.

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Chapter 3

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Savannah descends the stairs, seeking the source of the growls and the sobs. She hesitates halfway, listening to the strange sounds that rise from the shadows, rhythmic and strangely familiar. It's hot down here, much hotter than she expected, and dry--too dry for a house where every girl has at least one bedside humidifier running--searing air flooded with the scents of sweat, a woman's arousal, incense and fur.

She reaches the last step and turns a corner, breath trapped by what she sees: Three massive lionesses playing with Jill, Kenzie, and Meghan.

Toys.

The big cats roll the women over with strong paws, slap at tits and butts and bellies, scrape the pads of their paws down naked skin. When their victims get too relaxed, they tease the points of their vicious claws and scratch, feather light--not enough to cut, just to mark--down breastbones and around nipples, drawing angry pink stripes but not drawing blood. They lick up necks, lap up sweat. The one crouched atop Kenzie moves up her body after a detailed, tongue-first investigation of the beaded anklet she wears. Her golden-furred form is ever-changing. Cords of steely muscle rise when they tense and then melt away as the beast prowls up Kenzie's frame as low as she would to stalk a zebra. She shoves her muzzle against Kenzie's mound and takes a loud sniff before looking over her shoulder at Savannah, mouth open and panting to savor the scent.

Savannah swallows hard, wanting to flee and wanting to grab a burning branch and wanting to hoot a warning to the other monkeys before she dies.

Five lionesses and a lion. His ladies work The Blondes over while the lion watches from the corner by the flatscreen, lush mane glowing bright as dawn, adding to the amber light from torches of hewn wood and oil-soaked rags that float in midair near the walls. He sprawls on his side with one front leg outstretched to pin Jill between the shoulder-blades. Two more lionesses laze at his feet: The smallest two. Still larger than Savannah thinks they should be. One with her tail tucked aside and white cream trickling from her swollen and furry slit and the other grooming his spine-crowned cock with the utmost care--her tongue is just as scary.

Against the wall with the disc collection, books and board games stands a short-backed throne of pink granite padded with pile upon pile of peacock feathers from which a fearsome figure oversees the revels: A towering woman with the head of a lion. She wears a thick ring of polished marble atop her head like a crown and a smirk upon her face that flashes a peek of one wicked fang. Her dark fur devours light, shadows wafting off like steam. She has the sun imprisoned between round ears festooned with studs of lapis lazuli and bells that jingle merrily when she flicks or flattens an ear.

A perfect sphere of flame so bright it hurts the eyes spins slowly above her head, as if to return the light her fur stole.

Her head is that of a lion, not a lioness. A flowing "mane" of manifest darkness any male would be envious of decorates her neck and down her back. Her face isn't human, but it's feminine. Perhaps the length, silvery color, and far greater number of her whiskers make them seem more like a thicket of wild grass, or neat rows of polished needles. A deliberate statement of *fashion*, or so it seems, rather than something natural. The lions' whiskers hold no such mystery--a mundane sensory organ. Perhaps the plumpness and satin-smooth skin of her lips, how it softens the animal shape of her mouth enough for Savannah's tongue to twitch behind her teeth with the urge to kiss her. Perhaps the sharp slope of her forehead means her pronounced brow-ridge seems more primal and honest and earthy than it does simian or brutish or Neanderthal-like.

The only reason Savannah can make out her face--shadowed as it is by the crown of marble and clad in fur that consumes all light--is the gory glow from the floating masses of crimson fire the woman has trapped behind eyelids decorated with gold powder. Hungry dots of pure black that suck wisps of fire into themselves act like pupils, making it very clear to that the stranger is looking right at her. They brighten and swell when she smiles, rings of purple and pink and white fire flaring to life around the middle like a supernova. They collapse to nothing when she blinks. They sputter and smoke when she's angry. One lioness just drew blood from Meghan's back. The cat-woman's long tail whips out from behind the throne to strike the offender on the top of her head. The same cottony fluff at the tip as theirs, but she's so powerful the flick was hard enough to daze the lioness.

One word in a voice so loud it squeezes Savannah's chest. Her ears are ringing--she felt it more than heard it. She doesn't need to speak the language or even know what language that is to understand 'No!'.

A goddess whose form and temper and teeth and claws harken back to darker, more brutal ages of the Earth.

Enthroned in front of a wall of DVDs and Blurays and party games and two shelves of neat, alphabetized books--Sara's graphic novels.

She must be a goddess, Savannah decides. There's too much to her to be anything less. A monster would fit in this room. A monster would fit on planet Earth but she does not. She's too much to belong among volleyball players and ordinary animals and the bric-à-brac of recreation.

Enslaved stars for eyes and a fur coat from a black hole she skinned and a laugh that hits like a Mack truck to the tits. But simply being here makes Savannah tear up, elated. Looking at her turns Savannah's insides to water. Freezes every nerve. So afraid of making a move that she can't let herself breathe deeply, lest that be the 'sudden motion' that the predator pounces on.

This isn't something she, Savannah, the human being learned. This comes from little rodents who learned how to not get stepped on by T-Rexes. Every mammal that ever lived would be just as afraid as she is right now.

Still so beautiful! Tears roll down Savannah's cheeks. She needs to serve her! Blood rushes to her clit. Her body responds before her mind catches up, slick and instant. Straining from its hiding place to celebrate, the pulse in her clit beats out a rhythm for the zealots to kill to and the revelers to dance to.

The goddess wears rings, dozens. Two and sometimes three to a finger. Smooth gold rings on her left hand and ragged, sharp-looking cast iron on her right. Sharp enough to cut even her, and make a single droplet of pure light drip from each wound before it closes. Gathered into a fist, they'd clean a body of skin with one swipe. A heavy chain of burnished copper rests around her neck, a ruby as large as and as red as and shaped exactly like a human heart hanging from it. The ruby sits tucked between her breasts: Firm and heavy and rounded and smoothly-shaped as river stones. With a low chuckle and an approving nod to the renewed festivities, she slouches back, and her breasts settle differently--they're amazing, but real. Natural. The stuff of a female body, not silicone or black magic. Because when she lies back to hold out her cup for more wine, her breasts slide closer to her armpits and the bead-decorated dreadlocks there. Plump nipples crown each breast, paler and pinker than her fur. On her hard, deeply-cut abs are two more pairs of nipples. But no breasts behind them.

Thank God the ruby heart doesn't beat. But it does glisten with a liquid Savannah would rather not think about, that leaves wetness on the fur below. Not just razor-sharp iron rings and organs on chains. She wears non-terrifying jewelry too: Dozens of delicate chains hang around her waist, dozens more helping to cinch her thigh-length skirt. Thick linen dyed dark purple, embroidered. Rivers of silver thread and sunbursts of gold. Beads of polished amber decorate the hem.

A man hovers near the throne, shaved head to toe and naked but for crude sandals and a white cloth tied around his waist. His powerful body gleams with sweat and oil. He refills her huge sandstone chalice each time she takes a sip or sloshes the syrupy, cherry-dark wine onto the carpet.

She speaks again. Again, just one word. One is enough.

One word shakes the house. Walls bend then snap back, twanging, moving faster and faster also narrower and narrower until they turn from blurs to solid objects. She'd never noticed before--or hadn't been allowed to--but Savannah realizes now that each Blonde is painted with gooey black ink from head to toe: Pictograms and lines and constellations, blurred with sweat or bisected where a claw or a scrape or a play-bite went too deep.

What had been dry heat before becomes humid far beyond anything East Texas in August could ever manage. Wind from nowhere carries earthy, briny scents upon it--the panting of a dragon from some primordial swamp so hot even it swelters there--so much moisture it soaks her clothes. But when it trickles down, it follows not gravity but lust. Pools around Savanna's nipples. Beads at the joining of neck and collarbone. Streams join into rivers and gather into a churning sea hanging from her mound and whirling around her labia. The water flows no further. Careless of gravity, it churns. Strokes and tickles on her skin before it surges inside her, stretching her out. Filling her cunt with the original life-bringing seed. With a sharp, momentary pain that fast fades into dazed bliss, cool liquid pushes even deeper into her, fountains up into her womb. Reminding her body of the oceans that inspired it: Tropical seas murky with plankton and rippling with bright fish, tidal pools where life toyed with the idea of going beyond the tide's line for eons before anything crawled into the air.

A warning. The musk and earth and brine on the wind reminds her that Savannah is not so pristine and civilized and human as she thinks. Not so far removed from that swamp. She is an animal. Animals breed. She is made of water, with a salty little ocean in her belly to make more of herself. Things grow in water. Life blooms eternal in oceans.

Savannah licks her lips, hoping to soothe the cracked and thirsty skin, and edges closer to the strange orgy. The need trickling down her legs means more than the cold sweat on her back when she sees the spines on a tongue or the raw power in a single furry leg. The lion rouses from his doze--the lioness's tongue is no longer cleaning but stroking his plump, spiked length that has regained every bit of hardness. Enormous jaws spread in what could only be a smile. Come closer, kitten. Lift your haunches and turn your tail away, make your cunt vulnerable. Let me bite your shoulder to keep my prize. Show me your throat so I know you yield. Let me have you. Let me fill you. Let me put a litter in you.

Jill's voice rises above the chorus of growls and moans and the scrapes of soaked tongue on skin. "Savannah!" she gasps, her expression twisting with a mixture of alarm and ecstasy. "Get out!" The rebellion displeases the lioness atop Jill's long frame. She grinds Jill's face into the carpet with one paw and with her back legs, drags her claws down her calves to make her spread.

"Hips up, little one," the cat-woman purrs. "Such tantrums must be punished. My pets adore a bit of fight but you've forfeited a sweet consummation with that treachery. Present yourself. Your betters demand it. Live or die, just know that you are honored to even have this chance to enter my service."

With a whine more needy than afraid, Jill lifts her ass into the air. The lioness mounts her, paws pinning her hands while she ruts into Jill's ass, making up for the lack of a cock and mismatch of their bodies with the speed and force of her thrusts. She'll make Jill feel so much, so fast, so endlessly that she'll come if she knows what's good for her. She takes Jill's skull between her jaws and growls. Faster and faster she fucks, tufted tail swishing merrily behind her until her haunches become a blur. Endless ripples spread across Jill's body along with the reddened tint of skin inflamed by blow after blow.

One last downward lunge, so hard it slams Jill's pelvis back down into the carpet. One last blow, and the lioness throws her head back and roars, joined in the deafening celebration by her pride.

Jill moans and writhes and curls her toes.

Then the cat bursts into flames--the same crimson shade as her goddess' eyes. The smoke rising from the conflagration smells far too much like burning flesh for Savannah's taste. The goddess tosses the contents of her cup at them and, with a last spitting flare, the fire dies. Where the lioness had been lies a tawny-skinned woman with gold manacles on her hands and nothing but a burlap tunic on her body. She rolls off Jill and laughs madly up at the ceiling. A necklace of rough twine around her neck carries a small wooden charm with something whittled into it. She throws her arms to the ceiling and shouts something. Meghan perks up and looks over, replying in the same language.

The goddess snorts a laugh. "It would seem the slaves that slipped the pharaohs' grip have done quite well for themselves."

The charm on her necklace is a Star of David. From Egypt. If she remembers her Wednesday Night Bible Club, that means... Good for her. But Jill is not. No longer human, but neither is she the purely-animal form. Not the lioness that fucked her until she burst into flames. She is more like the goddess, furry and sinewy. Her eyes are the same hazel, but larger and with slitted pupils, not round. Whiskers, a deeper, squarer jaw, and a catlike nose give it away. She even got the tits upgrade--still has the top two only, no backups--and the tuft-tipped tail.

"Holy fuck," she groans, before she too breaks into the same lunatic giggling as the freed slave stuck as a lion for four thousand years, who apparently earned her freedom by fucking Jill into submission. "Totally. Worth. It."

"Nope!" Savannah exclaims. "I'm not dying on an episode of Ancient Aliens."

She turns to go. Rather, she wants to. Her feet don't care that her brain wants to leave.

The goddess cracks her neck and stands with sharp, terrifying grace. She moves like a knife's slash: Fast and perfect, each stretch of her back and bend of shoulder or knee so honed and efficient that not even the tiniest wobble or twitch or imperfection can be seen. She told the universe she was standing up, so make it look sexy and slinky as could be and scary as fuck.

A snap of the fingers commands the lionesses atop Kenzie and Meghan to get back to work. They mount the last two Blondes--the survivors? or are they the two still missing out?--just like their apparent leader mounted Jill. They move slower and have the kindness to bring their fluffy tails around under their victim's bellies to flick against their clits. A pair of lionesses and a pair of human women move in perfect tempo, Meghan and Kenzie throwing their asses back to chase their retreating partner at exactly the same time, exactly as far back, and for exactly as long. Some quirk of physics ties them together into a single mass split four ways.

Except their faces. Meghan and Kenzie's faces twist back and forth between the eyes-rolled-back, lip-biting bliss of an orgasm that won't let go and frozen terror. Lightbulbs flickering between two extremes faster and faster in the last seconds before popping.

"Couldn't wait," Kenzie pants.

"Had... to..." Meghan adds.

"Start the party."

"Sorry, prez."

A nameless goddess walks towards her. *Why* didn't she pay attention in Comparative Mythology?. Or rather, she flows, moving entirely in curves. Every motion rounded and womanly. Her tempo alternates between so slow that it's like time stopped and then she's just somewhere else long before the light could move six feet to reach Savannah's eyeballs.

A massive, furry palm cradles Savannah's jaw and lifts her eyes to stare into enslaved stars the color of boiling blood. Needle-sharp claws extend slowly, bringing the points to her skin but not enough to pierce. Merely enough to make sure she doesn't fidget.

"Well, well, well. What fresh plaything do I have here?"

"What fool god keeps such poor track of his worshipers that this one walks willingly into my domain, ready to be slashed and suckled and bitten and rutted and flayed and fucked? You will learn all the wonderful things that agony can be, little animal. I'll teach you the sweeter things of tongue and finger and cocks, whether skin and gristle, greased with his spend or carved ivory greased with oil. My mad sister will teach you how a woman's slick mixes with the red of her blood to paint masterpieces. Sekky is so sorry she wasn't able to join us. Some fool decided he was the most terrifying thing in Cairo tonight. Claimed this 'Allah' god-come-lately that he follows would protect him."

She throws her head back and laughs. "As if he has power there! On the banks of our river! The resting place of my sacred cats! My eyes! My spies! My armies! Deathless guardians beyond counting! A beast in my service for every grain of sand! He thinks his god holds sway amid the wonders my faithful built! Wonders I protected!"

"He thinks his god can shield him? As if anyone026"

She leans close, a growl rumbling between her ribs. "As if anyone could hope to protect themselves from Sekhmet, Terrible One, Gleaming One, Devouring One. In a single rampage, she soaked the sands red and sticky with the blood of nations. Needed nothing but tooth and claw to kill every begging man, screaming woman and sniveling child that lived between the mouth of the Nile and the Rock of Gibraltar."

"That fool will die," she breathes in Savannah's ear, her breath silky-hot-wet on the skin. She gestures at a few scraps of fabric in the corner, and three snapped sets of cat-ear headbands. "These took my image of their free will." The Blondes were all going as lionesses and gave them a pass on the no-doubling up rule. "You promised another, but had the gall to come into my queendom nonetheless."

Bastet grows and grows until she cracks the ceiling, grows until she rips the house, grows until her shoulders spread apart the clouds over Seattle.

With the Milky Way nothing but a twinkling scarf around her neck, she points a clawed finger at the stairs.

"BEGONE!"

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Chapter 4

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Savannah braces herself at the top of the stairs, two fingers on her hammering pulse, trying to catch her breath. With her other hand she swipes through LibreBot's summary of various articles for 'Bastet', 'Sekhmet', 'Egyptian Gods' and 'myths about massacres'. Nice simple iPhone app. No ads on the page after you donate. LB can take the sexy or scary questions that make ChatGPT run away sputtering about how lewd ankles are. Huge props to Sam and Sara for keeping big tech's filthy tendrils out of the house. If her gals are going to use chatbots to crib exams, she told them they're using the non-profit one that runs on open source in a green data center. Savannah is not going to be responsible for breaking the chapter's carbon-negative streak or giving Zuckyboy any more patents.

TLDR--Bastet invented sex, Sekhmet invented sex that hurts.

She doesn't doubt Bastet can get her claws in her, which means so can Sekhmet. Dying while serving as an X-rated scratching post looks like her only endgame. Really should bother her, she thinks. But this far into this weird night, it really doesn't. Sekhmet having a mid-fuck mood swing and snarfing Savannah down like Fancy Feast? Beats cancer. Beats the hell out of Alzheimer's.

She would like the surprises to end, though. She's seriously considering sending out a group text along the lines of "everyone get your ass down here now". The Blondes and Kenna might be too fuck-drunk to respond, but Amber never fails to. If she's still sleeping with the fishes, they can just go out in the backyard once Savannah has all her cats leashed and ready to herd.

I can't keep nickel and diming this. I've got to find the rest of them.

It's quiet. Somehow. A goddess who can roar the house apart downstairs and half a dozen lions caterwauling about how The Blondes give good monkey sex under her feet. A werewolf and Scary the Enormous Golden Wolf out back with Kenna yipping like a trapped chihuahua. She almost forgot: Twelve tons of beef on the hoof out having a chill date night by the garage complete with couple's activities like using Casey's pussy as juice-box and using Jake as a pocket stroker.

Right here in the hall between parlor, kitchen, and library is dead center of the first floor. So why isn't it noisy? If she closed her eyes and clicked her heels three times, she would almost believe it was all a dream.

Is the house messing with her mind or something?

And why is she blaming the house?

Savannah sighs. "Y'all are going to make me come to you, huh? Bitches."

Room by room, she reminds herself. She glances into the kitchen, just in case someone came in behind her. The python's getting to work on digesting--hard to tell exactly what when it's just an outline in the scales--but going by the open window and muddy prints, it's that damn racoon that had figured out how to shove the window over the sink open. Good fucking riddance. Jaguar got out of the fridge, but only to murder the jumbo pack of canned chicken in the pantry. He has an accomplice she hadn't spotted before: A fluffy, red-faced monkey who's exchanging the use of his fingers working the automatic can opener for every tenth can.

Time to roll with the crazy. She salutes the band of tropical miscreants. "Carry on, lads. For queen and country!" The monkey hoots. The jaguar's chicken-flecked muzzle twitches with mirth. The pregnant bat tips one wing-claw in reply but doesn't bother unwrapping herself from where she's hung herself on the ceiling fan's rim. The frogs croak rhythmically, the big one with splotching in with the pink keeping time with his or her far deeper voice.

She has a feeling she'd find a tune that matched if she looked it up. The way her night's going, that's probably God Save the Queen or the theme to James Bond.

With a huff, she puts her hands on her hips and looks between kitchen and parlor. "Which to check, which to check?" She mumbles. The super-sized white wasp buzzes up and circles her head. Way closer than she'd like for a bug with a stinger as long as a mascara applicator to get to her face.

Snowy the murder wasp floats over to the door to the living room and jabs her stinger at the handle.

"Works for me. Don't lay any eggs in my Thetas, got it? Deal?"

Snowy clacks her nasty little pincer-jaws once. Savannah wonders how the hell to tell if something with compound eyes is paying attention and making eye contact or if it's rolling forty thousand eyes and lying to her. But Snowy just buzzes off to take up residence in the coconut tree.

It's one snap for yes, two snaps for no. Right?

Pushing the door to the living room open, she's greeted by a cloud of bright feathers wafting around: Lemon yellow, sunset orange, silver gray. The longest, straightest ones are glittery teal that shimmers to jade when the light cast by the lamp on the end table hits it right.

A lamp that's dancing and rattling around from the impacts of Missy getting brute-fucked by a bird woman with a crest of feathers atop her head like a parrot. She chirps, her feathers rising in curiosity. Missy nods, reaching up to palm down-decorated boobs. Parrot decorations and color scheme but a bird of prey, from her razor-sharp beak to stiff, knife-straight feathers on her orange tail. Wings narrower and more angled than a parrot or songbird--more like a falcon. They beat continually to keep her and Missy from rolling off the couch despite all the motion. Mostly folded but they still brush against both walls with every flap. Her feathered hands and their dark claws grip the armrest for leverage and her taloned feet pierce through upholstery, stuffing, springs and into the wood to anchor herself.

Yellow eyes with immense pupils drill into to Savannah. The bird-woman snorts--mockingly, it feels like--through her beaked mouth.

On the floor by the couch are five strap-ons that look like they're carved from red-striped brown wood, polished to a mirror shine. They range from 'feeling needy tonight' to 'stallion' to 'a bull elephant is having a terrible day somewhere' and each rests primly on its own velvet cloth. A sixth cloth is bunched up just past the enormous ridged shaft that's already so thick it's on the level of 'take two strokes from this and call Saint Peter in the morning'. Smallest to largest, but the last is empty.

Because somehow, some_way_, that tree trunk is second largest. The largest pistons in and out of Missy, dark wood glazed with her cream. The cushions below her ass have taken all they can. Each time the last ridge slide out and she squirts, it rolls off onto the rug.

Atop the coffee table lies a nest of woven of splinters of wood--*fucking terrific, that's the other end table!*--shredded doilies and duvets, and the stuffing from all but two of the throw pillows that sprout in here like mushrooms. Two survive. Hard as she's fucking her, Flashy the White-Crested Neon-Winged Dykefinch apparently doesn't want to hurt Missy even when she's slamming what amounts to a bougie fencepost into her fast enough to make Missy's tits slap her chin.

The largest dildo is being used on her best friend.

The nest is empty. Ready.

Please wait while Missy's brain reboots and the egg loads. Expect delivery in 1-3 business days.

Savannah shakes her, blinks. Begs for it not to be real.

"Hi, Missy. Uh, how we feeling?"

"It hurts," she hisses, teeth clenched. "But that good way, y'know? Full. Hot and achy. Sleep in tomorrow, remember the good times." She smooths a palm down the bird-woman's flank. "Monday, baby. Give me till Monday, m'kay?"

Birdie answers with an affirmative trill. Her thrusts slow to languid, root to tip strokes. Each thrust pushes the air out of Missy's lungs with a long hiss when she advances and pull it back in along with sniffles and pleas not to leave her until just the last, largest ring of wood stays in and Missy gulps a snotty, happy-crying lungful.

She spots the smallest strap-on on the floor--the 'feeling needy tonight' one--and grabs it. Holds it up. The bird-woman's yellow eyes track the motion.

"Here," Savannah says. "Switch to this one. She's not a piñata."

Missy's laugh is a wet, happy sound. "Bossy. Love you."

Birdie chirps--amused, Savannah realizes--and slows her thrusts. Savannah takes the hint and steps back.

"Pancake party tomorrow morning," Savannah reminds her. What the fuck is wrong with me?

"Aw, hun!" Missy chortles. "You know you couldn't keep me away with a cattle prod!"

Libraries are nice, quiet places. Nothing weird ever happens in them.

Sex, sure. But sex in libraries is limited to hand-over-the-mouth quickies in corners and thanks-for-the-assist blowjobs for the hot nerd who works the Reference Desk on weekends. Fingers that have flicked that many pages acquire other skills.

So just hookups and one-offs in libraries.

Nothing freaky.

Nothing like a snake woman with huge coils that loop and loop over themselves until the pile brushes the chandelier. Emerald scales, broken up by golden bands that glitter in the moonlight. Dozens of waving, swaying cobras sprout from her skull and a big hood lined with coal-black scales stretches from the back of her head down the top swell of her oh-so-human hips.

She's got Tess clamped in her four arms, all eight hands clenched tight around throat, belly, biceps and thighs.

Tess' eyes are open wide. Unblinking.

Not screaming like Kenna. Not clawing and biting back like Amber. Not shaking apart with her ankles locked around a giantess' horns. Not turning the tables and using her hard-earned claws like Jill must be by now. Not tickling tweetybird's tits and setting a timeframe for when she'll be ready for another round.

She doesn't move. Not a twitch.

Not even the rise and fall of breath.

Total motionlessness.

Because one cobra isn't joining the dance-off: It's got its fangs deep in Tess's right tit, the hood flexing as it pumps more and more venom into her and shiny red droplets roll down from the wounds.

"Whoops!" The gorgon lisps. "Didn't see you come in. Great view from back here!" One of her left arms comes down hard on Tess' ass. "Got distracted."

She surges forward. Savannah scrambles back, catching a heel on the edge of the rug. It snaps off and sends her ass-first onto the floor and skull-first into the credenza. The globe on top is laser-etched crystal, which tips over and slams into the top of her head.

Why the fuck not, at this point?

A finger jabs into her shoulder. "Poke."

"G'way," Savannah moans.

Again. "Poke."

"Fugoff!"

"Ugh. Fine. Swishy? Flicky? Wake her up."

The forked tips of cold, slick tongues dance across her lips, the tip of her nose, and her eyelids. Savannah swats at the snakes, flailing fingers slamming against rock-hard scale. Rather than getting a bite, she just gets a hiss entirely too much like a scoff as they pull back.

She opens her eyes to see the gorgon staring right into her eyes, head titled curiously, slitted pupils looking her over from ruined heels to lion-goddess shredded shirt, to the long-since-slaughtered updo glued to her temples with a cocktail of fear sweat, giant wolf spittle, swimming pool water, concrete dust and swamp stank from an Egyptian temple's gardens.

"Thank goodnesssss!" the gorgon exclaims. "You're alright. Tess would've killed me if you weren't."

"Tess?" Savannah sobs. "Is sh-"

The gorgon jerks back, barrel-thick coils piling on top of each other and hair-cobras wilting in disgust. "No!" She slithers over to where she'd propped a still-paralyzed Tess against the writing desk, with an oxygen mask from a CPAP machine on her face. The hell did she get that? Tess' lovely dark skin is splotchy.

"Never leave home without one!" The gorgon chortles. "I'm Maddy. Go by it, anyway. My real name is too," She flails her hand looking for a word. "Grouchy. Too dark ages. Too damp caves and ruined temples, if you know what I mean. It's giving hero-bait doomed by the narrative and the patriarchy. All right, sexy. Let's get you hooked back up so I can show you a good time."

The same cobra that had bit Tess before chomps down again, right where the old fang-marks were. And as soon as it does, its neck flexes and pumps. The proper Nutella-tasty shade and lotion-commercial glow that is Tess's skin gradually returns to her friend. It's pumping blood in.

"She's all right?" Savannah asks, pushing herself up with much aching of knees and grabbing of bookcases to steady herself. "Tess?"

"Totes! This is just stoneplay," Maddy explains. "Partially turned to stone. Brain, spine, eyes? All fine. Skin stiff but not transmuted, so she can still feel. Heart gets sluggish because it's a muscle, it wants to move. Lungs too, because they need to move and flex the skin to work right. Ergo..." Maddy rolls the CPAP tubing up around her palm then dangles the coil and a strip of velcro between her fingertips for two of her snakes. They snag it from her fingers and velcro the tubing into a neat round bundle before tossing it on the carpet. Maddy slaps the off switch with the coffin-sized rattle on the end of her tail.

"Huh." Savannah mumbles. "Ergo old people home appliances for kink safety." She blinks, trying to parse the casual way Maddy discusses turning a person to stone for sex. "That's... a lot."

"How long will she--"

"Exactly! Tess can't get away. She can't do anything but feel. And she won't feel everything until I lift the curse." She drags a clawed finger down Tess' neck. "You're trapped, baby. Shh-shh-shh! I got you."

Savannah's head spins, but Maddy keeps going. "Weirdly common human kink. She feels it. But when she comes, she still can't move, can't do all that squirming and hip rolling and deep breathing. Can't do the relief and relaxation after part of orgasms. So it never... clears up, I guess? The victim never stops coming, I'm told. Not entirely."

Maddy pouts. "Shitty thing about stoneplay is I can't experience it. Kind of have to be immune to your own deadly gaze, right? World is filled with reflective land mines: Mirrors, puddles, lakes, car windows. There's tons of look-and-die curses, spells, psychic paradoxes, unsee-able aberrations in the fabric of the universe. You name it. Beasties born with them need to be at least immune to their own."

Maddy huffs. "Never get my hair right if I wasn't immune!"

Most of the hair cobras wilt miserably or slide around Maddy's hood to hide behind it. They've all heard this joke before.

"Once you've had a gorgon for stoneplay, you'll never go back," she brags. She slides a hand along Tess's belly to tickle the fluffy, soaking wet hair of her bush. But even the hair won't bend, each strand hard as obsidian.

Maddy looks at her shiny fingers, then lifts them up. One by one, her hair snakes flute their tongues into the juices, pause, and then nod. "They're me, and I'm them. At bedtime, I like to tuck my partner in, from here to here," she explains, patting her hip and the underside of her chin. "She'll be nice and safe, all my coils and my scales protecting her from the big scary world of arrows and hoplites and trireme prows and German weirdos with red armbands and scalpels and yappy purse dogs that bite anything taller than them."

"Hard life, being me! She'll be right where I need her if I wake up horny..."

"You warm-bloods give great cuddles! I can't wait. But my pretties get thirsty in the night. Really more scent-guided than sight-guided, so I want to make sure they know what the good stuff smells like so they can slither down there to help themselves. But I've never had a girl complain! Even the ticklish ones."

She yawns, wide and fanged and flicking-tongued, then wiggles her flattened nose. Adorably. "I've probably only got two more rounds in me." She rolls her shoulder and shakes an ache out of one of her hands. "The guards at the medical supply warehouse had zero chill. Which reminds me. Is there any lube handy?" She scoops up four bone-dry bottles of K-Y with anti-theft tags vainly warbling as batteries run out.

"Vee's great. She keeps a crate near the door. Just hit her up, I mean, if the stairs are-"

"Bestie, I can scale cliffs with these thighs! Get it? Scale?"

"I get it."

"Tough crowd. Vee's the one with the owl pendant, in the group photo?"

"Yeah."

Maddy sucks a breath between her teeth. "Ouch. That's a no-can-do, prez. That might be a costume, might not. But either way, you don't barge in on your former boss and current eternal nemesis with your tits and slit out. Guess it's another run to CVSSSSS!"

She scoops Tess up, cups a hand over her mound and cups another around her breast. Then lunges out the door and slithers away, uncoiling and uncoiling and uncoiling. The huge rattle on the tip of her tail clears the doorway a good half-minute after the front door banged open and the poor floorboards creaked.

"Hellenic cautionary tale turned dominatrix on a shoplifting spree," Savannah groans. Shit, those racist idiots will probably profile Tess just because she's on the security footage!"

Savannah slumps down onto the rug that smells of peat, sand, and woodchips--eau de gorgon scales, apparently. "We're going to be on KSAT's 11 o'clock crime segment tomorrow, aren't we?"

The fading hiss of the CPAP's compressor doesn't re-assure Savannah.

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Chapter 5

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She leans against the library wall, holding herself around the middle.

Jill, Meghan and Kenzie. Casey. Kenna. Missy. Amber. Tess. Eight sisters, fucked brainless. Literal goddamn magic, spilling from every girl she's seen so far. She's not sure she wants to think about the other girls--the ones she hasn't found yet. A laugh catches in her throat, then the sob swallows it.

Is there something in Jungle Juice besides booze and fruit juice? Maybe they're going to find her shaking in the corner, hallucinating her own ass off.

Her eyes sting, like the time she saw a waitress at Rattlesnakes back in Nacogdoches kissing the DJ against the wall by the dumpster and started to wonder and worry. Worry that maybe she wasn't as straight as her preacher had hoped.

What about Vee? Has Vee got her own after-dark fantasy going? Is she the one she's going to find actually hurt? How hasn't she? Most of her sisters--all, but Casey and Tess and maybe Kenna have been taking it harder and taking more dick than they should be able to.

She better find out, because without her vice president, she's not going to be able to put the ladies of TERAT back together for Monday's classes.

Staggering out of the library, she peers around. A gash in the floorboards and along the molding--a ruined canyon of splinters and ripped plaster bordering wood stripped of varnish and sanded smooth. It must mark where the ridged scales on Maddy's side dug into the floor and wall for traction where her body was widest before her flatter belly scales sanded half of it glassy-smooth as her narrow tail passed.

"Where the fuck is Vee?" She pushes her way past the jumble of tossed jackets and shoes in the hall closet. Knocks one boot out of the way and finds a harness hanging out of a backpack, a purple and indigo dildo spangled in galaxies and comets slotted in. It's dry, and she doesn't recognize the backpack. One of the new pledges, or one of the ones she doesn't share classes with who replaced hers.

"Please, Lord," she prays. "Let this all be an elaborate mindfuck. Let Vee be chilling on her bed, typing up a plan. Let her have a taser. Let her have a shotgun. Let her have a voodoo doll, magic potion, cure-all. Fuck if I care." God's brave, right? I can swear?

Vee has an excellent record of coughing up brilliant plans while Savannah spirals. Fingers crossed.

There it is. Vee's door. Cracked a quarter of the way, black-blue smoke that smells like peonies swirling through the gap.

"Just candles. Relax," Savannah whispers. "She got sick of making fun of me for liking scented candles, and wanted to try one. It's a goth candle, that's all. They make them. Etsy, maybe. Or the head shop by the train station. Chill."

Deep breath.

She pushes the door open and peers inside. The room is a universe of flame. But not red or orange or white--coal black and navy blue.

Bed on fire. Sheets a mix of charred linen and reeking, melted lycra.

Vee sprawled in the center of it, face slack, jaw dropped open, golden light pouring from her mouth. Tears glow so bright Savannah winces as they roll down her cheeks. Her head lolls to the side on a pillow of smoke. She's looking right at Savannah but she's not seeing her.

And why would she?

A red-haired woman feasts between Vee's legs--not a woman, a goddess--skin soft as the petals of a white rose, soft and full-figured. Little flickers of silvery light sparkle on her butt when she moves--powdered sugar atop the whipped-cream dollops of her asscheeks. Tears glow so bright Savannah winces as they roll down Vee's face whenever her tormentor shifts to adjust her angle or to suck rather than lick or whatever, and it makes her so jealous it aches. Blunt red nails dig into Vee's rib and hip and thigh--glinting like jewels when the flickering glow from the flame catches them just so.

She's nude, clad only in endless auburn waves of hair that trail down to the small of her back before spilling off her thigh and falling past the bedspread on the far side.

The endless, fluffy, milky curves of the woman feasting on her pussy hold Vee down, and a cradle of violet smoke holds her up--lifting her head off the blackened, smouldering sheets.

"We have an audience, little star, so shine brighter. Make her weep," a rough-voiced woman commands. The smoke blows away to reveal a woman with slate-gray skin--just as smooth--wild sheets of hair, dark and thick as cast iron, draped across her breasts. Atop her head, a woven band of leather holds a crown of silver with three moons. Her face is a blur. A long dress of white linen drapes her frame, and she wears a hard-used apron of deerskin that she's rolled up to support Vee's head.

Her hands rest on Vee's shoulders, pointed nails digging into her flesh. Drawing blood. Or drawing something--it looks more like molten gold, or honey. She lifts her head, and the blur stills--three faces, all white eyes, undecorated lips stained black with... with... Savannah maybe doesn't want to know. By her face, she's middle-aged: Crows feet decorate her eyes as she stares her down and her narrow hands wear tall, proud veins.

If she was human, she'd be about the age of her mother.

"She yours?" The face in the middle glances down to Vee but the one staring right the fuck at her doesn't so much as blink. Maybe this strange, milky-eyed woman never has blinked. Maybe the sun will burn out before she ever does.

"She is mine now," the goddess between Vee's legs chortles, muffled by something wet.

"You think everyone you get your tongue into belongs to you, Aphrodite! I was asking you, little creature. Is this one yours?"

Savannah swallows hard. Nods.

"Lover?"

Shakes her head.

"Friend?"

Another nod.

"Fear not. Once we're done with her, she'll recover. Walk away from this, but not as she is. The ambrosia in her belly protects her soul. My fire and my curses strip away her weakness. Aphrodite's peerless tongue does the rest. Her heart's stopped twice, already. Once more," she explains. "A thrice-spoken curse from a three-formed goddess, sealed with three deaths. It's a miracle we found this one, named in honor of her power, vestments in hand. Sudden retirement."

Aphrodite looks up Vee's insensate form at the other goddess. "Can you blame my niece? When was the last time you saw a mortal use their reason?"

Robbed of her mouth, Vee stirs, slack hand twitching awake. Little by little, her fingers recover. She gathers up a fistful of Aphrodite's hair and drags her up, sharply. Grabs the back of the goddess' skull and shoves her back between her legs.

"Athena Promachos indeed," the goddess purrs. "Always my favorite epithet."

"Vestments?" Savannah croaks out.

The old woman points at the closet--untouched by the flames that have consumed bedspread, posters, desk, walls and potted plants--where a long white gown, a wreath of ivy, a round shield and a spear rest. She helped her spray-paint the plastic leaves gold. That shouldn't have any special powers. But it does.

Staggering back on bare feet, she flings the door shut and sinks down the wall, sniffling. Vee. Even Vee. Every TERAT here is having the best sex anyone ever had.

It's watching one best friend get tag teamed by two Greek goddesses while a bird woman blows another's back out and another becomes a high priestess of a cat-headed goddess with a hunger for pussy.

Vee moans. The wall shakes off a snowstorm of wallpaper that flutters down around Savannah. A torn-off sheet of pink stationery comes to rest by her right hand.

She recognizes it immediately--it's the reason sister after sister scampered up the stairs, phone in one hand and gel pen in the other, swiping through costume store's websites or rattling Spirit Halloween's flier.

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Chapter 6

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REMINDER: No trademarked shit! We need to be able to sell the photos from the contest, and Disney sues.

Kenna: Werewolf (sexy)

Amber: Mermaid (sexy, but the kind that drowns douchebags)

Casey & Jake: Cowboy and Bull (PS - we haven't decided which is which yet)

Jill, Meghan, Kenzie: Cowardly lions (VEE'S NOTE - Double-up approved, Huskies for life!)

Missy: Tweety Bird (Vee says girl cardinals are brown, the NERD)

Tess: Snake-handling preacher (can imitate my dad)

Vee: Avatar of Athena Promachos (What else? Gotta make some use out of my actual name... and the Romans can eat me)

Toni: Space Marine (generic kind not... the kind *those* guys like)

Aggie & Brittni: Paladin and Necromancer

Rayleigh: Skeleton (might get a leash and hand it to Brittni)

Sam: Cyborg

Raelle: Shapeshifter (Obvi! Sam, let's talk cosplay)

Lana: Superspy

Cate: Horror final girl (franchise TBD, fucking midterms, y'all!)

Petra: Swamp Witch Russian Sniper (wouldn't have come if I'd known there were ACTUAL NAZIS in America!)

Savannah: Half angel, half demon (she refused to tell me, had to text Missy for this -- apparently she's been sewing for weeks. WEEKS. I didn't even know she owned a sewing machine. -- V)

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Chapter 7

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"Holy fuck!"

Every goddamned one, she realizes. They either became their costume, or became something their costume would like to fuck, if it existed.

Apparently, spiked Jungle Juice punch can just make up monsters and goddesses and set them loose on horny sorority girls. She hoists the mostly empty bottle -- her anchor all night -- and drains the rest of it.

"Shit needs a warning label."

She's pretty sure they all drank the punch, which means that they all have something after them. Cate's getting it from Leatherface or Jason right now, Petra's riding some GI Joe in the trenches outside Berlin, Toni's riding the face of some alien warrior princess, Lana's pegging James Bond and calling him a naughty little spy.

She can barely remember what she was going to go as--tonight's been too rough. Thank goodness Vee made everyone keep track.

She looks down the hallway at her bedroom. Black smoke pours from the keyhole, interrupted by belches of oily flame. Blood-red light tangles with snow-white, spilling onto the carpet in writhing, tangling, dueling curls.

"I'm not going to be the only unfucked Theta tonight," she says, pushing herself up with the help of the bottle. "God as my witness."

She pushes the door open.

The room is not her room anymore. It hasn't been for hours, but she hasn't seen it like this. Black smoke slithers along the floorboards, ankle-high and patient. White light streams from somewhere above the ceiling fixture -- not from the bulb, which is dark and cold, but from above it, pouring down in a steady column. A blood-red gleam pulses in the space between, rhythmic and deep.

And in the middle of it all, they wait.

The angel -- brightness given form, pale skin that seems to glow from within, white wings that brush both walls when they move, hair that catches the light and throws it back in a bright corona. She's beautiful in a way that makes Savannah's chest ache -- the real kind, the kind that makes you believe in something larger than yourself.

The demon -- everything the angel isn't and everything Savannah fears she might want. Dark skin that drinks the light, curved horns that spiral back from her temples, eyes that glow -- embers banked in a hearth. Solid where the angel is ethereal. Heavy where the angel is light. Her body is all curves and muscle, a predator's stillness that says I could take you apart and you'd thank me for it.

They're not fighting over her. They're beside each other, watching her, and there's no jealousy in their eyes. No competition. Just hunger. Just want.

"You're--" Savannah starts.

"We're yours," the demon says. Her voice is low, rough, a gravel road at midnight. "And you're ours."

The angel steps forward first. Her hands are cool when they cup Savannah's face, thumbs tracing her cheekbones, memorizing the shape of her. "You've been carrying so much tonight, little abomination." She says it like a term of endearment. "Let us carry it now."

Little abomination. Because that's what she is, isn't it? A preacher's kid who doesn't believe anymore. A good girl who wants bad things. A president who's been faking it all night. Half angel, half demon in more ways than one.

The demon steps up behind her, and Savannah feels the heat before she feels the hands. Warm palms settle on her hips, fingers curling into the waistband of her ruined skirt. "Been watching all night, haven't you, sweetheart?" The demon's breath is hot on her neck. "Watching everyone else get what you wanted. Thinking you didn't deserve it."

"I--"

"You do." The angel's lips brush hers. "You deserve this."

Savannah's eyes flutter closed. She's not sure whose mouth is on hers -- the angel's cool and soft, the demon's warm and insistent -- and then she doesn't care. They trade her back and forth, kissing her from both sides, and she's never been kissed like this. Never been held like this. Never been wanted like this.

The angel's hands find the buttons of her blazer. The one she's been wearing all night -- goldenrod yellow, pin-striped, the uniform of a president who didn't know what she was doing. Button by button, it opens. The demon's hands slide inside, palms flat against her ribs, warm and claiming.

"Lift your arms, pretty thing."

She does. She doesn't think about it. She just does what she's told, and the blazer slides off her shoulders, falls to the floor. The angel catches it before it hits the smoke, folds it once, sets it on the dresser. Like she's taking care of it. Like she's taking care of her.

"You don't have to be good anymore," the demon whispers. "Not tonight."

The angel's fingers find the hem of her shirt, lift it over her head. Savannah's arms go up again -- each piece of clothing coming off like a gift they're unwrapping together. The demon's hands find her breasts, cupping them from behind, thumbs circling her nipples until she gasps.

"There she is," the demon murmurs. "There's the girl who's been hiding all night."

The angel kneels. Her fingers -- cool, smooth, soothing -- trace the seam on the side of Savannah's skirt, tickling up the wool to find the tab. She glances up at Savannah with eyes that blaze like supernovas, every motion torture and infinity. She turns the tab up. Tugs it. A shiver rises from Savannah's core. She pulls it down, slow -- so slow Savannah feels each tooth separate. For an eternity, the skirt slides slowly off her hips.

And she is. She's being loved. By both of them.

"You're trembling," the angel observes.

"I'm scared," Savannah admits. It's the first time she's said it out loud all night.

"Good," the demon says. "Fear means you know this matters."

The angel rises, takes her face in both hands again. "We have you. From here to here." She traces a line from Savannah's hip to her chin. "Nothing reaches you that doesn't come through us first."

She should have a joke for this. A quip. Something to break the tension, to show she's still in control. But she's not in control. She hasn't been in control all night. And maybe that's okay.

"Kiss me again," she says. "Both of you."

The angel takes her mouth. The demon takes her neck. And Savannah lets go.

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It's heat and light and the space between them. It's the angel's tongue in her mouth and the demon's teeth on her shoulder. Cool hands on her ribs and warm hands between her thighs. She's being taken apart and put back together at the same time.

The angel guides her backward until her knees hit the bed. Lowers her onto the mattress. The demon follows her down, settles between her legs. Savannah knows what's coming. Has seen it happen to everyone else tonight. Has wanted it.

But the demon doesn't go down. Not yet. Instead she looks at the angel, and something passes between them -- a silent agreement.

The angel's fingers trace down Savannah's belly. Slow. Deliberate. Savannah holds her breath. The angel's hand finds her wet -- so wet, she realizes, she didn't know she could be this wet -- and circles once before sliding inside.

Savannah's back arches. Her mouth opens. No sound comes out.

"That's it," the angel breathes, fingers moving, curling, finding the spot that makes Savannah's vision go white at the edges. "That's it, little abomination. Let us have you."

The demon's hands are on her breasts, thumbs working her nipples in counterpoint to the angel's rhythm. Savannah is caught between them, and when she comes it's on the angel's fingers, her whole body seizing, a cry torn out of her that she doesn't recognize.

"Oh, that's -- fuck --"

"That's one," the demon says, grinning. "We're not done."

The angel lifts her fingers to her lips, tasting Savannah on them. But instead of leaning in, she speaks -- words in a language Savannah doesn't know, liquid and luminous -- and between her hands, light condenses. Takes shape. A silver dildo forms in midair, glowing faintly, perfect and smooth.

"Fuck," Savannah whispers.

"Later," the demon says. "Right now, it's our turn."

Something soft wraps around Savannah's head from behind -- a strip of black silk, cool against her eyes. The demon's hands, gentle and sure, tying a blindfold.

"Can you see?"

"No."

"Good." A kiss, warm, on her shoulder. "Now you feel."

And she does. Without sight, every sensation is amplified. The angel's cool fingers sliding into her again. The demon's warm tongue on her clit. The weight of them pressing in from both sides. She's floating, falling, held.

She doesn't know who enters her first. Someone's wet, someone's hot, someone's filling her, and she doesn't care whose turn it is -- she just needs it. She moans, and the one who took her moves, and then they're switching, trading places, sliding in and out of her while she loses count.

Each time she comes, they switch. The angel's rhythm, then the demon's. The cool fullness, then the hot stretch. Kisses rain down on her face from both sides -- her mouth, her cheek, her forehead, the corner of her eye -- and she never knows which mouth is which until it's on her. All she knows is she's wanted. All she knows is she's theirs.

She comes again. And again. And again. She loses count. She loses language. She loses the thread of who she was before this moment.

And then she can't anymore. The pleasure crests and crests and she can't take another wave. She feels herself slipping -- consciousness fragmenting like light through a prism -- and she lets go completely.

She passes out in their arms.

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She doesn't remember falling asleep.

She remembers the angel's wing over her, the demon's arm around her waist, the strange peace of being held by two beings who should have destroyed her. Then nothing.

Now she's alone.

The black smoke is gone. The white light is gone. The room is just her room again -- cluttered, familiar, hers. October grey filters through the curtains, pale and weak. She sits up slowly. Her body aches in the good way -- muscles she didn't know she had, tender spots that feel more claimed than sore. There's a mark on her collarbone, a bruise shaped like a thumbprint. Another on her hip.

Maybe it was a dream. The Jungle Juice, the animals, the goddesses, the--

She looks at her hands. They're still hers. But they're still more.

OK. Bad trip. The worst trip. The best trip. Let's go see if the house is still standing.

She pulls on yesterday's jeans -- they're on the floor where they fell, she remembers that -- and a hoodie from the back of her desk chair. No bra. Can't find one and doesn't have the energy to search. Her feet are bare. She opens her bedroom door and walks into whatever's left.

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She hits the kitchen first. She's hungry -- obviously, she hasn't eaten since before the party -- and it's the most normal thing she can think to do.

Tess is on the floor by the kitchen table, stretching with the intensity of someone who's been paralyzed for hours. Her joints pop audibly. She's working through a series of stretches that look like a yoga class designed by a sadist, and she's crying while she does it -- but she's smiling too.

Missy is at the table, staring into space with a large bowl of bran flakes and bran nuts in front of her. Dry. She's eating them by the handful, crunching methodically. The carton of milk sits right next to the bowl, unopened. She coughs, and a small blue feather drifts out of her mouth and lands among the flakes. She stares at it. Picks it up. Stares at it some more. Eats it. Continues crunching.

The nerd sister who defeated the fire extinguisher last night is languishing on the other side of the table. Her hair is disheveled. A can of tomato juice and a bottle of aspirin sit in front of her. She has glasses on her head -- two pairs, one hers, one not. The frat brother she hit it off with last night must have left them behind.

Through the window over the sink, Savannah can see Vee and Maddy arguing in the backyard. Vee's voice rises and falls in a language that isn't English. Maddy's hair-snakes are festooned with taser prongs.

Not yet, Savannah decides. Coffee first.

She heads for the fridge.

She opens it.

The jaguar roars.

She slams it shut.

"He's still in there," she says to no one in particular.

Missy looks up from her bowl. "Yeah. We've been working around him."

"Clearly."

Someone has left a banana on the counter. Savannah snags it and peels it while she walks. Breakfast of champions.

She heads toward the living room, banana in hand, when the doorbell rings.

It's a DoorDash driver. He's standing on the porch with a wheelbarrow -- a bright red one, price tag still stapled to the wooden handles -- and his Prius is sagging on its rear axle. He loads pound after pound of beef into the wheelbarrow, stacking it high. Kenzie appears from nowhere and helps him wheel it inside.

Savannah watches the meat avalanche down into the wheelbarrow. "Are we having a cookout?"

Kenzie scoffs. She wheels the load to the top of the basement stairs and lets it go -- wheelbarrow, beef, and all. It crashes down the stairwell, banging off walls, wood splintering, metal shrieking. Savannah's already calculating the repair bill. The roars that follow are worse -- deep, hungry, wrong in a way that has nothing to do with deposits. And then there's a woman's low, pleased chuckling from somewhere deep underground.

Right. Bastet and the lions live here now.

Savannah takes a bite of her banana and walks into the living room.

The Blondes are there, all three of them. Jill has scratches down her arm. Meghan has a bruise blooming across her ribs. Kenzie is back from the basement door, picking iridescent scales out of Amber's hair while Amber leans back against her, humming.

Sara occupies the armchair -- sharp, ankle-length pencil skirt, a long-sleeved jacket, a single silver leather glove on the hand holding the teacup. Her posture has always been good, but today it's different. Today she looks like she's made of steel beams. When she turns her head to greet Savannah, the motion is precise -- too precise.

"Morning," Sara says. "You look like shit."

Savannah notices the surge strip behind the couch. A dozen laptop power chargers are plugged into it, all running into the same cable that disappears under Sara's jacket.

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all night."

Sara sips her tea. Her eyes track Savannah with the focus of a predator.

The back door is still open. Through it, Vee's voice rises and falls in that liquid, ancient language. Maddy hisses back.

Savannah steps onto the back porch.

Vee stands in her transformed costume. Savannah always thought it was elaborate, but this is something else entirely. The chiton hangs in perfect folds, each pleat a testament to hours of work. The owl clasp at her shoulder glints -- not painted bronze, but real. A short sword rides her hip. A tall round shield rests across her back. She leans on a long spear, the shaft worn smooth by a grip that knows its weight.

A glossy-furred barn owl roosts under the destroyed picnic umbrella, watching everything with unblinking golden eyes.

Maddy is cornered against the garden shed -- Tess's hoodie tied over her eyes as a blindfold. Tasers prongs festoon her hair-snakes -- party streamers for the morning after. Her coils shift restlessly. She's hissing.

Vee argues with her in a language that isn't English. It rises and falls, sharp and foreign.

Instead, she leans against the doorframe and takes another bite of her banana.

These are her girls. Shit got weird, but they're making do.

She watches Vee argue with a gorgon. Watches the owl preen. Watches the chaos of a house that's no longer just a sorority house. It's a sanctuary. It's a zoo. It's home.

This is real, she thinks. And we're going to figure it out.

Happy Halloween.