CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE KINNUIX (DESTINY DEMON)
Come, my babies. Let us see what mischief we can spin after nightfall.
Vampire Falls. Season three, episode six – “This Is What We Become”
Ordinarily, cosplay competition night is my favourite night of the convention weekend.
The buzz around the hotel is infectious.
People race around with those brass hotel trolleys (which, fyi, are incredibly difficult to steer when you and your very drunk bestie try to ride one back to your room), wigs and weapons akimbo, and a chorus of doors slamming as people race from room to room getting their mates to zip them up or sew them in. I love it.
I usually love it. I don’t love it today, because today my life literally depends on the success of my costume.
I know I’m misusing the word literally there, but you get me.
There have been years where I’ve not bothered entering, kind of feeling like the whole competition element takes the fun out of it.
The fun is in the making of the costume, in thinking how the character thinks.
But my favourite part is the unmistakable way people approach you, their phone in hand, hoping you’ll pose for a selfie.
Disclaimer, folks: I love cosplaying as Juliana so much that I’m always happy to show off my costume in a photo.
That and getting asked for selfies kind of makes me feel like I’m Sarah Michelle Gellar or Lucy Lawless. Say it with me: LEGENDS.
Anyway, I digress. I am not feeling the love for it right now. Right now, I feel bile at the back of my throat, because we’re not just talking cosplay here. We’re not even talking cosplay competition.
“It’s cosplay with something extra, babe,” Roxy says, clarifying what we’re heading into. She’s standing at the desk, rifling through the enormous toolbox of make-up. “The competition guidelines say that your team is allowed to help you. Like, it’s encouraged.”
“Help me how?” I say, trying not to flinch every time Roxy homes in with the liquid liner. She’s not as gentle as Iris. “You’re doing my make-up; I don’t see how the others can help.”
I can’t hold it any longer and do a triple blink. She tidies a smudge with a cotton bud. She’s so patient with me. I could not be this patient with me.
“Correct. Make-up: check. But I’ve spoken to Team Awesome and—”
“Team Awesome? You mean Fake McKinley who’s a total newbie and Dorothy who falls asleep the moment she sits down. That’s Team Awesome?”
“Yes, Team Awesome – check your WhatsApp – and you’re underestimating them.
We talked it through while you were having your disco nap, and we have a plan.
” Sometimes I need to have a little afternoon nap, OK?
Convention days are long, and I get overtired.
Like a toddler. “All you need to do is bring it.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes.
“Can you do that, Eliza Gellar? Can you bring it?”
“Bring what?”
“That’s the fighting talk I want to hear, babe,” she says, checking my eyes are even. She lifts my chin and sucks in her cheeks, nodding at me to do the same, then applies bronzer. A lot of bronzer. “Just treat it like any other cosplay comp, and you’ll be fine.”
“But it’s not like any other cosplay comp, my—”
“Life depends on it. Yes, I know. Just trying to take the pressure off.” She snaps the bronzer lid shut and her eyes zigzag across my face. She nods. “Perfect. Spin for me.”
I stand up, my bare legs unsticking from the faux leather chair, take my dressing gown off and manage a clumsy spin round.
I’m wearing Juliana’s first appearance look: black boots, knee and elbow guards, jagged thigh-length skirt embroidered with her family crest, and a pewter breastplate held in place with leather shoulder straps.
They toned her outfit down when she became a series regular, but she’d just arrived from the Megna dimension, so she was in full warrior mode.
Roxy looks me up and down, then gives me a little side smile.
“Smoking, babe,” she says, and I almost believe her. “Let me put this on you.”
She pulls a red velvet cape from a hanger on the curtain rail, shaking it out then twirling it round me with a swish, in the way you have to when you handle a cape.
It tickles the backs of my knees as Roxy secures the shoulder attachments.The skirt is short, but the cape basically covers all the pale bits.
It also makes me feel like a total badass.
“There she is.” Roxy smiles down at me like a proud mum at a pageant. A pageant with swords. “Just need to do your tattoo and we’re good to go.”
Roxy’s dressed as Marta Crowe, a demon-killing mercenary who doesn’t play by the rules.
She’s in a black vest and cargo trousers, hair in a high pony, and the blackest, smokiest eyes in the history of eyeshadow.
There’s a realistic bloody gash across her cheek from the epic fight between Marta and Juliana in episode fourteen, season three, “Way Back Now”.
Her eyebrows pinch together as she claws through the box, a mess of eyeshadows and lipsticks tumbling over the sides.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t find the tattoo pen . . .” she says, tipping everything onto the desk. “It’s fine, I’ll use liquid liner.”
“Won’t liquid liner smudge?”
“It’ll totally smudge,” she says, nodding. She frowns at her phone. “It’s fine. I’ll go knock on some doors. There has to be a tattoo pen in this building.”
“Do we have time?” I ask, watching her pull her Vampire Falls onesie over her costume.
“We have loads of time; it’s fine.”
“You keep saying it’s fine.”
She flashes me a smile. “Because it is.”
I swallow, wringing my hands together.
“I don’t have to have the tattoo,” I lie. “Nobody will see it under the cape anyway.”
“That was almost convincing, babe, but I know you: the tattoo is part of the costume.” She grabs her key card then heads to the door, waving it in the air. “I’ll be back before the bloodletting.”
“And if you’re not, I’ll save you some O-negative,” I respond, grateful she knows quoting Vampire Falls calms me down.
She sticks her phone in her pocket and heads out the door, leaving me alone.
I look in the mirror, turning left to right.
The costume fits me perfectly – put together by me, Mum and Roxy.
We spent ages trawling Vinted for the right fabrics in the right colours, making sure every little detail from the embroidery to the dark red of the cape was right.
The knee-high boots actually belonged to my mum when she was in her twenties.
I couldn’t believe it when she came down the loft ladder holding them in her hand, then Dad polished them until they were shiny enough.
A mutated, probably carnivorous, moth flaps its oversized wings inside my stomach.
I check my phone. Roxy’s been gone for nearly ten minutes.
I take a sip of water through a straw, careful not to smudge her expertly applied lipstick.
I pick up the lipstick tube; it’s called Cherry Vivian.
Ugh, I hope that’s not a sign. I throw it back in the box with the eyeliners, brushes, foundation, highlighter and all the other magic paint Roxy used to get me looking like this.
I’ve tried it myself a few times when I’ve done reels on Insta, but I never do as good a job as Iris or Roxy.
Roxy. I check my watch again. Eighteen minutes she’s been gone now. I find an eyeliner and call her to say we’ll just use that for the tattoo, but there’s a busy signal. Maybe she’s trying to call me? I wait a few seconds and try again.
“Shit!”
What the Baron of Hell is she doing at a time like this? Who is she speaking to?
Heat creeps up my neck and cheeks but in the mirror, I look as cool as a cucumber, due to the layers and layers of make-up. I check the time again. Twenty-one minutes now. I try her phone again.
“Fuck!”
I do a very angry hang up on the busy signal and go to the door, pull it open and step into the hallway, the pre-party soundtracks coming from behind doors as I look up and down. No sign of Roxy.
A handle clicks and I turn back as a head peeps into the hallway. Very sadly for me, it’s not Roxy but is, of course, my arch-nemesis. Whatever. I don’t have time for this crap.
“Have you seen Roxy?” I call, holding my door open.
Charlie Chamberlain leans out a little further, his hand on the doorframe.
“What?”
“I said, have you seen Roxy?”
“No,” he says, stepping into the hallway. “Have you lost her?”
“Yes,” I say, thinking why would I ask where she is if I hadn’t lost her, doofus, but I remain reasonably polite in case he’s holding her hostage in his room. “Has Sadie seen her?”
He shrugs, the light shoulder movement of someone without a care, someone who has access to the most important person in the world at any time they want, not someone who’s about to enter a cosplay competition completely tattoo-less.
“She’s not here,” he replies.
“Where is she?” I ask, about to berate him for losing his little sister.
“Vivian’s room.”
That genetically modified moth feels like it’s getting ready for take-off. I shake my head and try Roxy again.
“Fuck’s sake,” I hiss into the phone, hanging up again.
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s not answering her phone and the cosplay’s starting soon,” I say, panic clawing at my chest.
“Can’t you just meet her there?”
“No, she has to help me get ready.”
Charlie Chamberlain looks me up and down, his eyes lingering on my boots. Boots, I said.
“You look ready already.” He clears his throat. “You’re already ready. I mean, you look like you’re done.”
“Well, I’m not.”
He frowns for a minute then nods a little.
“She hasn’t done your tattoo,” he says.
I shake my head, just as the lift doors at the end of the corridor open and Roxy steps out, deep in conversation on her phone. My heart swells with relief but instead of walking back to our room, she takes a left and hurries through the door to the internal staircase.
“Roxy!?” I shout, hurrying towards her without thinking.
Charlie Chamberlain looks down the hall where Roxy’s just disappeared, then turns back to me as there’s an ominous bang and my door slams shut, trapping my cape and me in the hallway.
“Was that your door?” he asks, crossing his arms and leaning against his (open) doorway.
“Yes,” I hiss, angry at the door, angry at Charlie Chamberlain, and angry at Roxy.
“Do you have your key card?”
I answer his question in the only appropriate way for this situation. With a scowl.