The inside of the building where the Lazarus Club held their event was huge. Obviously. I gritted my teeth as we took yet another turn. “WHY are Ascendant buildings all so BIG? What does anyone need this much space for? Do we just do it because we can? This can’t be cheap to furnish.”
“It’s all about reputation,” Abel shrugged. “Making things bigger is a status symbol. And it shows off power. Spatial manipulation at this level isn’t cheap.”
Callie nodded. “This is actually technically spatial condensation. It’s the second level of spatial manipulation, and one that a lot of people never get to. It’s a nonstandard usage, mind, because instead of packing all the space from the building into a small area, they’re packing more space into the building itself. Infinity crystals make it a lot easier, but the work in here is seamless. This was done by a professional, it’s very stable.”
“Well spotted,” came a cheerful voice from around the corner. “We had one of the professors from the spatial department whip this up a few centuries ago. Or so I’m told, I wasn’t around for that.” A girl stepped around the corner, waving brightly. “Hello! I’m Clarissa. Sorry, I noticed you hadn’t arrived and assumed you might have gotten lost. The layout in here is a mess.”
I grimaced. “I thought we would be fine if we avoided the wisps. They said it was straight ahead.”
The girl was about our age, at least physically, maybe a bit younger. She had long, curly blonde hair and bright green eyes behind the same black and silver mask all of us were wearing. But the eyes in question were…off. They were bright and approachable, but also unfocused, like she was looking THROUGH us instead of at us, and her happy smile was just a little too wide. Something about it combined with the lighting to give her an eerie, sinister vibe that clashed with her friendly demeanor.
“It WAS straight ahead,” she said apologetically. “And you did not avoid the wisps. One of them was mimicking the hallway about halfway down. You stepped into a perception vortex and turned without noticing. You’ve been walking down a hallway that doesn’t exist for almost an hour.”
“Wait, what?” I blanched. “Don’t these things eat people?”
Bethy chimed in happily. “Oh they’ve been trying. The hallway has tried to digest us like four times. I keep scaring it off though. I assumed that was just a feature of the party venue. Is it not supposed to do that?”
“It is not,” Clarissa said slowly. “But fear not, I came to get you. Although I guess fear isn’t really on your list of reactions. I was expecting you to be a bit more shaken up. Not that I’m not glad you’re ok!” She looked a bit flustered, which was a normal reaction to Bethy’s weirdness. “Anyway, please, follow me to the actual party.”
Callie shot me an uncertain look. She was clearly getting the same weird vibe from this girl I was, but while I WAS unsettled my Danger Sense and Azazel were both pretty silent, so I didn’t think she was an immediate threat, like, say, the hallway that had apparently been trying to EAT us for the last hour. I made a mental note to remind Bethy to let us know any time something tried to consume us for sustenance.
It didn’t take long for us to arrive at the party proper. Sure enough, it was very on theme. A huge open graveyard full of tombstones and mausoleums. Everyone at the party was dressed in complicated black and white outfits with leather and lace trim. Honestly they were dressed a lot like Callie and Bethy, but where my wife and friend looked ethereal and otherworldly in the ball gowns, most of these people just looked pretentious, though admittedly I might have been biased.
“Welcome to the Lazarus Club!” Clarissa said cheerfully. “I hope you enjoy the party. Please feel free to mingle among the guests, we encourage all potential members to form lasting life long friendships with other initiates. Anonymously. Obviously you should tell no one your identities.”
“But didn’t you tell us your name immediately after meeting us?” I asked uncertainly.
She beamed at me. “Well spotted!” she said again. Then turned and walked away without another word.
“Wow,” said Bethy immediately after she left. “What a deeply weird person. And that’s coming from ME. Still, seems like she knows how to throw a great party. I’ve never been to one where the hallways tried to eat me.”
“Again, not a feature,” I reminded her. “And in the future, if you notice an incorporeal entity trying to digest us, please let someone know.” I trailed off as I looked around, noting the mist creeping around the tombstones. “Hey…does that mist feel familiar to anyone else?” I wasn’t sure what about it drew my attention, but something contained in the vapor was calling to me like a beacon, and not in a nice way.
Callie squinted at it. “Yes…” she said slowly. “But I don’t know how. Like I don’t think I’ve felt anything like it before. It reminds me of something though. I get a weird feeling from it.”
“Creepy,” I nodded. “Like…explicitly. Like someone bottled the uneasiness you feel when watching horror movies. It’s kind of a neat touch for a party like this, actually. I wonder where they got it.”
Shrugging, I decided to talk to some people. I wasn’t expecting to form any strong lifelong friendships with anonymous people, but I could be friendly. I tried to at least avoid any gods I noticed, since I knew Callie was worried about my informal manner of addressing them, so I found a random guy nearby who was sipping a drink from a silver chalice and approached him.
“Interesting drink,” I said with a wave. “Bright green and steaming. How’s it taste?”
He took a long sip, looking pensive. “Brisk,” he said eventually. “But with a lack of immediacy. The sense of ennui is palpable.” I blinked at him, not sure how to respond to that. He stared at me carelessly for a few more seconds before his face split into a grin. “I’m SCREWING with you, man. It tastes like raspberry. It’s fruit juice. The cup is enchanted to make it do weird shit.” He held out his non cup holding hand. “I’m Ian, nice to meet you.”
“Aren’t we not supposed to give away our identities?” I asked mildly.
“Yeah…no one is really sure why they say that,” he said with a shrug. “Because no one listens. I know the name of every person here. Except you. You seem new. Hence the teasing.”
I laughed at that, returning the shrug. “Fair enough. I’m Shane, nice to meet you too. What major are you in? Am I allowed to ask that? This is my first real cross major function outside of my immediate friend group.”
“Alchemy,” he said modestly. “And nah, it’s fine to ask. Some people get annoyed, but you can’t be responsible for everyone’s weird hangups. Honestly, you never know who is gonna come back anyway. Usually at least someone disappears after one of these.” He said that like it wasn’t even remotely unsettling, and I raised an eyebrow.
“That doesn’t…bother you?” I said slowly.
He shrugged again. “Not really. They always show back up eventually. There’s a lot of theories about what causes it. My personal favorite is the time slip that pops up randomly nearby. Though my best friend insists that they’re being replaced by evil clones, and my girlfriend thinks they’re being possessed. We have a betting pool on it, so whenever someone figures it out we’re sure to get some answers, if only so they can collect.”
I frowned at that, but I had to admit it wasn’t exactly unusual. Ascendants went through a lot of weird stuff, and we honestly tended to normalize a lot of the crazy because if we didn’t we’d never stop reacting. Something occurred to me. “So…Clarissa. Is she one of the ones who went missing?”
“What, the vacant stare and creepy smile?” he asked brightly. “No, she’s just weird as far as I know. I mean, maybe she was one of the missing, but if so it happened before I got here.” He paused. “Although…” he trailed off, looking around. “Well, everyone who comes here gets an invite. You usually don’t get to know who sent yours. But I know at least one or two of the missing were invited by Clarissa. Might just be a coincidence, given the numbers, but it bears thinking about.”
As someone who was probably invited by Clarissa, I definitely agreed with that last part. “What else have you heard?” I asked him quietly. “It might be important for me to know…in case I want to get in on the pool.”
He nodded knowingly. “Of course, remember, the timeslip theory is the most reasonable. After that, the most popular are possession, and for some reason, a lot of people have money riding on facestealing spiders. That one seems far fetched to me, but one of the enchanting wonks has this whole complicated thesis on why it’s the most likely option. He’s very convincing. Personally, I don’t believe he’s right, but I think he might be trying to breed a species of spider that he can pin it on to win the prize money. So…you know, probably watch out for that.”
“Right,” I said flatly. “Face stealing spiders. Fantastic. It’s fine, I didn’t need to sleep anytime soon. Or ever again.”
“Don’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “They can still get you while you’re awake. According to the specs in that guy’s thesis they have paralytic bites. Seriously, he laid out the specifications in EXCRUCIATING detail. It reads like a game plan. Though some of it is probably nonsense. There’s no legitimate reason a creature could only lay eggs in living human brains.”
I flinched at that, deeply appalled by the whole idea, but given his earlier joke, I couldn’t tell if he was messing with me again. I was ninety percent sure he had to be, and I was still formulating my response when something around us changed. Out of nowhere, the slight, ambient light around us, so dim I barely noticed it was there…went out.
“Shit,” Ian said in annoyance. “What fresh hell is this?”
The darkness persisted for only a few moments before the light came back (still emanating from somewhere too subtle to track). I glanced around worriedly, wondering what had happened. Which appeared to be nothing. Like I had expected a murder or an attack or even a kidnapping. But there wasn’t anyone missing or dead. In fact…
My blood went cold. A slight effort of will and Dan was running in the back of my head, doing a quick headcount. He was almost always able to mine information from my memories. Which was why he’d been able to clarify exactly what was wrong in this graveyard.
Namely, the issue was the number of people. Not a LACK of people, mind. A surplus. When the lights had gone out there were a hundred and thirty seven people at this party. And now there were exactly a hundred and fifty. Thirteen more people were in this room than before the lights went out, and because of the masks, I had no earthly idea which ones weren’t supposed to be here.
I sent a quick mental message to Callie, begging off my conversation with Ian as I headed to find my friends. I wasn’t sure why these people had shown up here, but I was mostly positive they wouldn’t have bothered with the theatrics if they’d been invited themselves. Something was wrong, and we needed to figure out what. I was halfway to Benny’s position when exactly WHAT was wrong decided to make itself clear in the worst way possible. A random masked partygoer turned, their head opening like some fanged flower, and bit the face off another attendee. That, of course, is when the screaming started.