Chapter 29
Tess and Joni looked at each other for a long moment, and then looked back at Flora.
“I’m sorry.” Joni spoke slowly. “What the fuck did you just say?”
Flora twisted her straw wrapper around one of her long black fingernails.
“Yeah, so, you know how it was my job to monitor what was happening on the Isle? With the vision portals?”
“Uh huh.” Tess felt like her whole brain was on the fritz.
“I mean, you’ve met those vampires. They were so interesting! And they’re always getting in fights, and having sex, and doing betrayal—I got hooked! I couldn’t stop watching the portals—they were like the best Real Housewives ever, and they were always on, ” Flora explained.
“That actually totally makes sense.” Joni nodded.
“Right? Except I had no one to talk to about them.” Flora sighed. “And I was always at the bar reading romance novels anyway, so I thought, what if I just write a little about the Isle?”
“That’s when you started writing on fanfic sites,” Tess said.
“Exactly! I never thought my fics would get so big—because they weren’t based on anything.”
“They were based on actual vampires,” Joni pointed out.
“Right, but not IP,” Flora clarified. “But then I got a huge audience, and then I got an agent, and then the novel went crazy…I never expected any of that.”
“Why would you make Felix the hero, though?” Tess asked. “He’s such an asshole!”
“Well, obviously I didn’t know he was working with Konstantin,” Flora huffed. “But that’s how it always goes in vampire stories—Edward and Jacob, Bill and Eric, Stefan and Damon, Angel and Spike—some self-serious sap is always the hero. It was way easier to make Felix the hero than Callum.”
“Even though Felix is actually the one who killed Isobel?” Tess said pointedly.
“Shut up.” Joni gasped. “He did ?”
“That happened way after I started publishing.” Flora shrugged. “At that point it was just about character consistency.”
“I can’t believe you’re August Lirio,” Tess marveled. “Wait, what does the name mean?”
“Lirio is the witch in The Craft. ” Flora bit her lip. “And August is my favorite Taylor Swift song?”
“I literally don’t know what to do with my body,” Joni said. “Too much is happening. I don’t know what to do.”
“So anyway, I have all of Lirio’s accounts on my phone.” Flora held up the phone, as if to illustrate what a phone was. “So I could post that I was going to be at The Georgia, and that Feudies should come in costume? As like, my first-ever posts on social media? Do you think that would get it done?”
“Um, yeah.” Tess laughed at the absurdity of this entire situation. “I think that might work.”
Text message transcript: Tess Rosenbloom and Taylor Litman
Tess [10:14 PM] : Hey Taylor!! Are you at work?
Taylor [10:15 PM] : Hey Taylor?? HEY TAYLOR? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I thought you were dead! Or that you quit without telling anyone except that REALLY didn’t seem like you so I’ve been covering your ass and working doubles for weeks you owe me SO MANY PAYCHECKS
Tess [10:16 PM] : Taylor I am SO SORRY, and thank you, and I promise I’ll explain everything
Tess [10:16 PM] : But first I need to warn you about a tweet that’s about to happen
Taylor [10:16 PM] : A tweet? I’m not even on twitter, why do I care about a tweet
Tess [10:17 PM] : Well
Tess [10:17 PM] : You’re going to care about this one
Tess [10:18 PM] : Calling you now, please pick up the phone
SIREN EMOJI: Blood Feud author August Lirio posts on social for the very first time!
by Sunny Burke, posted on vulture.com
Stop the presses, hold the phone, put down your midnight snack, because things are getting CRAZY on these here internets: NOTORIOUSLY RECLUSIVE BLOOD FEUD AUTHOR AUGUST LIRIO HAS TWEETED, INSTA’D, AND TUMBLR’D—ALL FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME!!!!!!
This would be big enough news on its own, but the content of the posts themselves was even crazier. All of the posts were text only, all with the same message:
Want to know the truth about Blood Feud? Meet me at The Georgia hotel in Williamsburg at 4:30am. Come in costume.
Okay. So like. WHAT????? Let’s break this down:
First of all, freaking what truth about Blood Feud ???? Obviously everyone hopes this means we’re FINALLY getting an announcement about book four, but it could be other things too. Something about the movies? Or could it have to do with the rabid online conspiracies that the vampires from the books actually exist IRL?!
Second, you’re telling me August Lirio, THEE August Lirio, literally one of the bestselling authors on planet Earth, is going to make their first ever public appearance at some random hotel in Brooklyn at 4:30 in the goddamn morning?!?! WHAT?!?! WHY?!?! (Side note about The Georgia Hotel—it’s owned by lesbians and super gay generally so we have to stan that about Lirio’s choice, as weird as the rest of this might be.)
Third, come in costume????? FOR WHAT REASON??????? Like truly what kind of chaos is Lirio trying to wreak right now?!
So, there you have it. Something is going down at 4:30 this morning in Williamsburg, and hundreds of lucky NYC-based Feudies have already announced that they’ll be there. And even if “there” turns out only to be a wild-ass bacchanal of predawn cosplaying fans getting clowned, this dedicated journalist and faithful Feudie will still be among them.
Text message transcript: Flora Castillo and Fern Castillo
Flora [11:04 PM] : Hey, I have a lead for you on Tess Rosenbloom
Fern [11:04 PM] : “A lead”? What are you, a detective on one of those dumb shows you’re always watching
Flora [11:05 PM] : Ok first of all you’re not besmirching Olivia Benson on my watch and second do you want the information or not
Fern [11:05 PM] : I’m perfectly capable of finding her myself, but sure, let’s see if you can save me some time
Flora [11:06 PM] : Can’t be nice even when someone is doing you a literal favor
Flora [11:06 PM] : Anyway, Tess works at The Georgia hotel in Brooklyn. Her shift starts at 4:30am
Fern [11:06 PM] : If I’m such an asshole, then why are you telling me this?
Flora [11:06 PM] : Because I don’t need to make an enemy of Konstantin Adamos
Fern [11:07 PM] : Smart. I’ll let him know
By 4:15 a.m. , The Georgia’s lobby was more packed than Tess had ever seen it by several orders of magnitude.
“Oh god, we’re so over legal capacity.” Tess’s manager friend Taylor wrung her hands. “Do you think the fire department will come?”
“Probably.” Mika the desk worker was filing her nails. “They hate fun.”
“It’s gonna be fine,” Tess reassured Taylor, though her own nerves were buzzing.
“What should I do with all this?” Willie the bellhop wheeled over a giant laundry cart full of linens.
“Take it down to laundry?!” Taylor sputtered. “Honestly, do I have to do everything?”
“I think we’re all doing things pretty well outside our job descriptions tonight??” Willie rocked nervously on the balls of his feet.
“Okay, okay, let’s go together. Come on.” Taylor sighed, and they rolled the cart off toward the service elevator.
Tess understood why everyone was so stressed—and they didn’t even know that several absolutely real vampires were on their way to The Georgia (along with the several hundred costumed ones currently present). Tess marveled at how great the crowd looked, especially on such short notice: There were romantic Felixes and gorgeous Isobels, sinister Konstantins of all shapes and sizes, and, of course, dozens and dozens of Callums and Octavias—which wasn’t that fun for Tess or Joni, considering they’d been abandoned by those exact vampires just hours beforehand.
“You look amazing,” Joni said to one Octavia, a fabulous drag queen decked out in an acid-green sequined minidress Octavia had worn to a party in book three.
“Omg, thank you!” The queen grinned and twirled. “I really connect with how mean she is, like as a character.”
“Me too.” Joni nodded, looking a little teary. Tess rubbed her arm.
“You okay?” Tess asked Joni as the queen made her way deeper into the crowd.
“Yeah. At least I have you back.” Joni looped an arm around Tess’s shoulders. “That matters way more than some extremely hot vampire, no matter how good she was in bed.”
“That’s the ticket.” Tess smiled, but her heart caught in her throat when she saw a man whose hair and silhouette looked strikingly like Callum’s—until he turned, and their faces were completely different. Her hand went automatically to the necklace Callum had given her before the ball, and she felt a wave of pain. She couldn’t believe how much she already missed him.
“If we pull this off…do you think they’ll come back?” Joni looked at Tess hopefully.
“Maybe,” Tess said quietly. She’d had the same thought—and she certainly hoped Callum would want to be with her in New York if Konstantin wasn’t an issue. He’d said as much, hadn’t he? More than once?
But that wasn’t why she was doing this. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life running from a killer. Her only choice was to step up and kill him first.
“I can’t believe we’re carrying around all these stakes,” Tess said. “I never thought I’d feel this much like Buffy.”
“We’re putting aside our emotions about being dumped by our vampire lovers to take on the big bad,” Joni reasoned. “It’s giving season two.”
“And season three!” Tess added.
Tess and Joni were both wearing long, hooded black capes, which worked great to conceal their messenger bags filled with sharp wooden stakes. (It turned out Flora’s portal magic came in extremely handy when you needed to rob a costume shop and a garden supply store in the middle of the night.) Tess felt pretty good about their plan—but she was incredibly worried that something would go wrong and someone in this crowd would get hurt.
“Oh my god, it took me forever to get to you,” Flora huffed as she pushed through the people around Tess and Joni. “Are you ready?”
“I think so.” Tess’s heart started pounding. She glanced at her phone—it was 4:27. “Where are they?”
“Just a couple of blocks away.” Flora held up her Find My Friends app, where a little dot labeled Fern was nearly upon them.
“And you’re sure they don’t know about…all this?” Joni gestured at the crowd, the costumes, the general rumpus.
“Doubt it,” Flora answered. “Fern thinks she’s too cool for social media, Felix and the other vamps probably don’t even have phones, and Konstantin is famously not online.”
“Even if they know, it doesn’t change the plan,” Tess said. “We keep our hoods up, move through the crowd, and stake them before they find us. Joni, are you good?”
Joni nodded, but she looked a bit green. Since she was by far the tallest of the three, it was her job to stake Konstantin.
“I’ll just get behind him,” she said, gripping a stake tightly. “He can’t kill me if he’s dead before he realizes I’m even there. And if it looks like he’s going to kill me, Flora can always send him through a portal to the Atlantic Ocean or something, right?”
“Not really.” Flora shook her head. “Since portals are about desire, it’s really hard to send someone through one involuntarily. If I can do it at all, I can probably only send them a couple of blocks away.”
“Oh! Cool, cool, that’s fine.” Joni was jittery—she couldn’t stop moving. “It’ll probably still be fine.”
“Joni, if you feel like you can’t kill Konstantin without getting killed yourself, then don’t fucking do it, okay?” Tess put her hands over Joni’s. “And remember, if things go sideways, just get to the pool deck.”
Joni and Flora nodded. They took out their phones and got on a three-way call so they could stay in communication—they each had one earbud in.
“I feel like I’m in a Mission: Impossible movie,” Joni joked.
“Yeah?” Tess laughed anxiously. “Which character are you?”
“Tom Cruise, obviously,” Joni said. “Because of my unparalleled derring-do and problematic opinions about women. You’re Ving Rhames because you’re a majestic loyal genius, Flora’s Simon Pegg because she’s lovable but ultimately useless.”
“You’d both be dead if it weren’t for me,” Flora said dryly.
“Okay, that’s your opinion,” Joni joked.
Flora rolled her eyes—but then her phone beeped, and her expression hardened. “They’re here.”
Tess and Joni looked up. There was Konstantin, tall enough that he was easily visible above the packed lobby.
“How many are with him?” Joni asked.
“Eight…maybe ten?” Flora exhaled. “Damn.”
Tess recognized Fern’s pixie cut—and then she saw a mop of curly hair beside Fern.
“Oh shit, Felix is here too,” she whispered to Joni.
“No way!” Joni exclaimed. “Felix Hawthorn?!”
“Yes?” A nearby Felix cosplayer turned around—a hot trans man with extremely debonair energy.
“Sorry, not you.” Tess smiled. “You look great though.”
“Hey, I’m Flora.” Flora made her way over to the hot Felix, and Tess rolled her eyes.
“Flora!”
“Sorry, sorry.” Flora smiled at not-Felix then turned back to Tess and Joni. “Let’s go.”
Tess, Joni, and Flora pulled up the hoods on their respective capes and made their way into the crowd, splitting up to stay inconspicuous. Not that it was hard in this group—for all Tess’s nerves, she couldn’t help feeling a surge of joy being surrounded by all these people who loved Blood Feud as much as she did.
“Tess, on your right,” Flora’s voice came through Tess’s earbud.
“Where?” Tess asked, turning slowly so as not to draw attention.
“Two o’clock. Spiky hair, dark turtleneck.”
Tess saw him—he was short with a muscled build and shifty eyes darting back and forth, scanning the crowd. He was leaning against the lobby bar, which had no one behind it since it had closed hours before. Tess moved cautiously through the crowd, careful not to jostle anyone too hard, keeping her head low beneath her hood. There was a back entrance to the bar, accessible only through a service hallway. Tess slid her employee ID into the lock, waited for the green light, and slipped inside.
It was empty and echo-y in the dimly lit hallway, which was a stark gray contrast to the decorated lobby. Tess rushed fifty feet down to another doorway, then swiped her ID again, crouching low as she crept into the bar. She opened the door as narrowly as she could, hoping the vampire wouldn’t notice the movement behind him.
“I’m behind the bar,” she whispered. “Is he still there?”
“Yes,” Flora’s voice came back. “Move quickly. Drive the stake right between his shoulder blades.”
Tess swallowed hard and gripped the stake so tightly she was afraid she might lose feeling in her fingers. They had practiced staking some sacks of soil at the gardening store, Flora telling them to throw their hips into the movement. After a dozen or so tries, Tess felt like she had the hang of it—but then, sacks of soil didn’t fight back.
Slowly, Tess rose to her feet and got into her “staking stance”—left foot forward, hips open with her body facing slightly to the right, right hand drawn back and ready to strike.
“Do it, Tess!” Flora hissed.
In the time Tess hesitated, the vamp turned around and saw her—oh damn it—
“What the fuck?” he growled.
Tess didn’t think, she just lunged—she drove the stake right into his heart. At first she wasn’t sure if she’d gotten it in far enough—he staggered, but with the crowd there was nowhere for him to go—and then she saw his eyes go glassy and the veins in his face turned black.
“I did it!” she whispered. “I think I staked him!”
“Holy shit, Tess!!!” Joni screeched as quietly as possible.
Tess leaned the dead vamp over the bar. “Where are the others?” she asked.
“Konstantin is moving toward the front desk,” Flora said. “Joni, can you get there?”
“I’m trying,” Joni responded. “There are too many people.”
“What about Felix?” Tess asked, her heart beating faster. She wasn’t eager to put herself in harm’s way, but when she thought of Felix’s sneering expression while his henchmen dragged Callum through the portal, she had to admit, she really fucking liked the idea of watching him die.
“I don’t see him,” Flora responded. “Joni, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Okay,” Tess said. “Then where should I go?”
“Elevator bank,” Flora said. “There’s a vamp trying to get upstairs.”
“Copy.” Tess rushed back into the service hallway and headed toward the elevators—but she only made it halfway there before everything suddenly fell into darkness—she heard cheers and applause rising from the lobby.
“What’s going on?” she called.
“The lights went out.” Joni sounded worried. “People think Lirio is here.”
“Can you get to Konstantin?” Flora asked.
“I don’t know.” Joni strained. “I can’t see anything.”
Tess burst through the doors by the elevators—the room was pitch black—with the noise and the crowd, it was absolute pandemonium. Someone started a chant: “LI-RI-O. LI-RI-O.”
Then Tess heard a scream—a real one, blood-curdling and terrified.
“What was that?! Are you okay?”
“A vamp is feeding,” Flora said. “I can get to him!”
Tess looked around in a panic—
“We can’t let anyone get hurt!” she cried. People were starting to shove and get restless—the lights weren’t coming back on—
“This isn’t working,” Tess said. “We have to get these people out of here.”
“How?!” Joni asked.
Tess backed against the door she’d just come through, then felt along the wall—
“I know it’s here somewhere,” she muttered.
“What’s here?” came a low voice, and Tess looked up and saw the outline of a man hulking over her.
“Look at your hood.” He flicked it. “Little red riding bitch.”
He smiled, and she caught a glimpse of his fangs in the dim red light from the exit sign behind her.
“Does that make you the wolf?” Tess hissed. “You know how that story ends, right?”
The vampire moved quickly, a hand around Tess’s neck—he was strong, and she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t panic—she grabbed a stake from her pouch and jabbed it forward. He was too tall to hit his heart from this angle, but the stake plunged into his stomach, and he staggered back—
“You shouldn’t have missed,” he snarled. He was about to come for her again, but Tess had enough time to reach for the wall beside the door, and this time she found what she was looking for.
She pulled down hard on the fire alarm, and sirens started blaring as water rained down from the ceiling.
The vampire was momentarily startled by the noise and the sprinklers, and that was all Tess needed—she grabbed another stake and lunged forward, driving it directly into his heart. He seized up and slumped to the ground—there was no bar to prop him against here, so Tess just left him and ran back into the service hallway.
“Tess!” Joni was yelling in Tess’s earbud. “Tess, are you okay?!”
“I’m good!” Tess heaved forward, breathing hard, bracing her hands against her thighs. “What’s happening out there?”
“People are pissed, but they’re leaving,” Joni answered.
“Can you get to the pool?” Tess asked.
“I don’t know,” Joni answered. “There are so many people—”
“Just get to the desk and wait for me,” Flora said. “I’ll make us a portal. Tess?”
“I’ll take the service elevator,” Tess said. “See you there.”
Tess took a second to collect her breath, but she knew she had to keep moving. She hurried to the service elevator and jammed the up button. Come to think of it, she didn’t know whether the elevators would even work once the fire alarm had been pulled—but she breathed an enormous sigh of relief when she heard the elevator cables whirring behind the closed door. Was Taylor okay? And Mika, and Willie, and everyone else? She couldn’t think about that now—they had to be.
The elevator door dinged, and Tess rushed in and pressed the button for the pool deck. She hit the door close button over and over, but it didn’t do shit. A few seconds later, the doors started closing in their own sweet time—
Except before they could close completely, a hand jammed between the doors and pushed them open with ease.
As the doors spread open, the blood drained from Tess’s face.
Because Felix Hawthorn was standing there, a wide, chilling smile on his face.