CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JULIANA THE DEMON HUNTRESS
For Bydona’s sake, Viggo, look at yourself! You can barely stand.
VIGGO RASSMUSSEN
I have fought in worse conditions than this, Juliana. Don’t worry about me.
JULIANA THE DEMON HUNTRESS
I’m not worried about you. The smell of your singed hair is going to give away our location.
Vampire Falls. Season one, episode six – “Did You See?”
So, Dax St. James is so drunk he can’t read the questions properly. Also, one of my teammates, not mentioning any names (Dorothy), has fallen asleep.
“OK, hike up your underpants for question fourteen,” Dax says, waving his arms and sending some of the question cards flying to the floor. I rub my face in my hands and take a cleansing breath. “How many times has Julian died?”
“Juliana!” hiss a handful of voices from the audience.
He nods and takes a swig from the never-ending bottle.
“Juliana. Yes: Ju-li-aaaa-NA,” he says, his mouth so close to the mic we can hear every breath between each syllable.
I remove my hands from my face and look out at the audience, where mostly empty seats stare straight back at me. This thing is taking twice as long as it should and all the corrections mean the normal tension and excitement of a quiz has evaporated.
Vivian finishes conferring with her team, then leans into the little mic on her table.
“Twice,” she says, confidently.
“Twice is right, gorgeous,” he says, the third pet name he’s given her.
Vivian folds her arms, glaring as he looks her up and down. Felix goes to his side (again) and tries to pull the question cards from his hand (again) then whispers something when Dax doesn’t let go (again).
“Next question, for the frizz queen.” That’s me, if you hadn’t guessed. He stares at the card, closing one eye before he looks up again. “What is Lila’s address? Where does she live?”
I lean into the mic, looking right at Vivian.
“It’s 1406 Elmwood Drive.”
“Correct, Team Frizz,” he slurs.
Vivian looks back at me, gently clapping her hands and smiling but I turn away, resistant to her psychological manipulation.
“OK, Farm Boy next. How many humans does Viggo have to drain each week? Remember, it’s one male and two female.”
Rashawn groans and gently bangs his head against the table. I don’t blame him; this is painful. Felix is at Dax’s side again, and I can hear words like contract and embarrassment, but Dax just shoves Felix away and carries on.
“Sorry, my bad, dudes. Let’s try another. The actor what . . .who played Viggo’s father also appeared . . . played Eidolon.” He looks up and shakes his head. “I did not know that.”
Someone shouts finish the question, and he looks back at the card.
“So, what was the name of the episode. With Eidolon.”
One of Rashawn’s teammates leans over, pushing up her sleeve to reveal a House of Huntress tattoo. Told you. Rashawn nods and leans into the mic, frowning at Dax.
“The episode was ‘Lies and Fruit Flies’.”
“Correct-amundo,” Dax says, nodding.
Felix is at his side as fast as a newly sired vampire. The audience goes into overdrive, people standing and shaking their heads as, quite obviously, the answer is incorrect-amundo.
“I’m sorry but that is the wrong answer,” says Felix. “The correct answer is ‘Age of Killing’.”
Rashawn glares at Tattoo Girl who looks like she wants to climb up one of the curtains. That’s their third wrong answer. Sucks for Rashawn.
Felix and Dax are now in a sort of tussle over the cards. Felix looks up at the audience, trying to pretend Dax isn’t draping himself over his shoulders.
“That brings us to the end of the quiz, and we have a tie.” He looks at me and Vivian. I glance at her and she’s staring back at me, an eyebrow arched above a green cat-like eye. “Eliza, Vivian, would you mind joining us up here please.”
“You can do this, babe,” whispers Roxy, nodding at me. “Just keep calm. There isn’t a question you can’t answer,I swear.”
I give her a little smile and walk to the middle of the stage with Vivian. I crane my neck to look into her eyes, otherwise I’m just staring at her chest. I look down; she’s not even wearing heels.
“This is a quick-fire decider, so whoever correctly answers first wins, and will be awarded ten points towards the overall score. Rashawn has six points so whoever gets this wrong wins eight points. OK?”
“No,” says Dax, rocking back and forth. He drops the now empty bottle and wipes his forehead. “I am very much not OK, dudes.”
Understatement of the century, I think as I look at him. His skin looks grey, maybe even green, and he is incredibly sweaty.
“Go take a break then,” says Felix, his smile tight.
“No, I must fulfil my ob . . . my ob . . .”
He stumbles around, grabbing at Felix’s shoulder, Vivian watching him like he’s an earthworm squirming on a scorching hot day.
I turn and look over my shoulder at Roxy, whose expressions move through the following sequence: confusion, realisation, danger, horror, oh-my-god-Dax-St.-James-just-vomited-in-your-hair.
I freeze on the stage, the back of my neck prickling as I sense the mixture of bile and solids caught in my hair. I slowly turn around to find two horrified faces and one indifferent (pasty, sweaty) face staring back at me, just as the smell of Dax’s guts hits my nostrils.
“I think I’m gonna barf,” says Dax, wiping puke from his mouth.
He’s so hammered, he doesn’t realise he has just barfed.
A couple of stewards escort Dax off, leaving the three of us at the mic. Both Vivian and Felix now look at me like I’m a squirming earthworm on a scorching hot day, and, to be honest, it’s totally warranted because that’s how I feel right now.
“Do you want to go and . . .” Felix looks at my hair, his mouth pulling further downwards, “get cleaned up?”
I nod and turn away.
“So, I win then, right?”
I turn back to Vivian. What?
“What?”
“She forfeits the question, so I win the quiz,” she says to Felix.
“He hasn’t asked the question yet,” I say.
Vivian pulls a folded-up piece of paper from her back pocket like she’s the starter in a Fast and Furious movie. She waves it in front of my face: the competition rules.
“It says in here that if a contestant is incapable of continuing the competition, they forfeit.” She looks me up and down. “I can’t think of anyone more incapable looking right now.”
“I just need to rinse my hair and then I can carry on,” I say, looking at Felix.
He rubs the back of his neck. I swear he’s ageing each time I see him. The convention game is not conducive to youthful skin.
“I’m afraid we don’t have time.” He looks over his shoulder at a guy waving a clipboard around. “We started late and now everything is backed up. We’re on a really tight schedule trying to fit all these extra elements in. I don’t want anyone to miss out on autographs this year.”
“Really?” I say.
He shrugs. “I’m sorry.”
I know he’s right. One year, I didn’t get Josh Steele’s autograph because things got heated between him and Logan Landon during a fight demo, and nobody was brave enough to step in (do you blame them?
The size of those men, plus the rumour about Logan standing Josh’s sister up.
They obviously needed to process their issues, and on stage in front of a hall full of fans was the place to do it).
Nobody got his autograph that year because he broke his pinkie.
Nobody at this convention is not getting what they want. Apart from Vivian. I take a deep breath, wincing as the smell of stale bourbon stabs at my nostrils, although it kind of makes me feel like a cowboy. Or even better, a cowgirl.
“Ask the final question,” I say to Felix, my eyes on Vivian.
Yeehaw, bitch.
“What? No, she—”
“There’s nothing in those rules about answering a tiebreaker with barf in your hair,” I say, over Vivian. “Is there?”
She flips her hair over her shoulder and puts a hand on her hip.
“Fine,” she says.
I smile and turn to look at my team, who all look back at me hopefully. Apart from Dorothy, whose eyes are closed, her head lolling back on her chair as a demon-like noise comes from her wide-open mouth.
Felix nods and quickly rearranges us so Vivian and I are facing each other, then he steps in front of the mic.
“OK. Quiet please.” The tiny audience goes silent. “In season one, episode six, “Did You See?”, what does Bud Leroy decide he wants to be when he’s older?”
I blink at the floor, a thousand scenes clicking through my brain, my eyes darting back and forth as I take myself back to the maybe thirty-three times I’ve watched that episode, until there it is.
Bud Leroy, cross-legged on Lila’s bed, just after the opening credits, her head in his lap as they finish their Chinese food and talk about their future, and he tells her he wants to be a . . .
“Fortune-cookie writer!”
I scream the words out, just as Vivian shouts . . .
“Horticulture therapist.”
The audience gasps, and we both look round at Felix, who looks between us until his eyes settle on me, filled with sorrow.
“The correct answer is horticulture therapist.”
Vivian turns to her teammates and gives them a wink, which is somehow worse than if she was jumping around in my face. I feel like my knees are about to buckle as I stare at Felix, shaking my head.
“No . . . I . . .”
I gave the right answer, I know I did. But then I look at Roxy, who’s looking back at me with such a pained expression, I know I must be wrong. Which means that Vivian is right.
And then I realise; I didn’t think far enough into the episode. I answered too fast.
My brain fast-forwards through the rest of the episode, past the flesh-eating Cranzig Serpent and the Vampire Triplets, to the final scene where Bud reveals to Lila that he’d rather be a horticulture therapist, because after Dorian at the underground bookstore betrayed them, he trusted plants more than he trusted people, and then he says . . .
“That’s my official choice, Lila,” I murmur, my insides crumbling, “I’m done with the fortune cookie-writing game.”
I could argue it. I could say it’s a trick question because he says both things in the episode, so technically both answers are correct.
Maybe. Would it stand up in a court of law, because Bud makes his decision clear at the end of the episode (and then starts plumping the leaves of Lila’s spider plant)?
In my nerd heart, I know it wouldn’t. I can tell from Felix’s sorry, puppy-dog eyes that his team of researchers checked and double-checked the answer against the script, because he knows exactly who he’s dealing with.
Superfans. Or at least, I thought I was.
If I can’t get that right, then the who the hell am I?