Everything was going well till Natasha Boynton pushed Cecile Presley down the grand staircase and Gemma spectacularly sprayed her bellini over Henry's corduroys.

In her defense, Natasha was done with the disrespect being paraded in her own house, and on her own birthday. In her stunning printed mini dress and matching opera-style elbow-length gloves, the curvy bombshell was not messing around; and Cece should've known better than to flood the place with copper and silver-colored abusive balloons - 'Happy fucking whatever', 'Another year to closer to the sweet release of death', and the crowd favorite, 'Begone, Satan!'.

Though the fall did little to break Cecile's proud little neck, it did wipe the smirk off her apricot lips. She threw a vase at Natasha's feet and it rained porcelain in the foyer. "Don't be such a bore, darlin'. We still have to cut your damn goat cake!"

Natasha burst the nearest offenders with her nails. POP!

No longer a jewel of this world of high school bitters, smokes, and mirrors, Amy had known what she was getting into. But tonight, the old persona had come out for the ultimate encore. She hardly recognized the hazel-eyed temptress in the baroque mirror of the formal living room.

Just for a short while. For Caleb.

Flipping her hair back so it fell in rivulets of auburn, Amy grinned at Gemma. "New drinking game, every time someone bursts one of those inflatables, we take a shot."

Gemma, who had arrived with Henry an hour ago, stared at her, slack-jawed. "Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?"

"Bitch, you know who I am."

"Motherfucking Slaymy."

Amy clinked her shot with her. "I'm motherfucking Slaymy."

It would take way more than a few ounces of Harridan to fetter her senses.

"I'm not sure I'm loving this color on you, Lamey," a droll voice fell in her ears over the beats of unfamiliar trap music. Amy leaned over the tight-backed sofa and a harsh, inverted face came into view.

Only a miraculous revelation could explain how Caleb's nose still looked so damn fine from her less-than-ideal vantage point.

Kristine smacked Amy's elbow and whined, "You owe me a nerd, Amy." She mooned at the space between Robin's legs.

He swiftly crossed them.

The triumphant football team had occupied Heavenfell's living space. Dulcet fuchsia mood lights melted into fiery yellow tones throwing a sundown aesthetic across the rustic double-storied windows. Stefan Calder, Jason Darko, Ashton Malarkey, and the rest of the gorillas, were in attendance. And because Ashton was kind and sweet, Robin had latched onto the group.

Ashton had cold-shouldered Amy when she had first caught sight of the sandy-haired boy. But if she wanted everybody to have their guard down, Amy needed him to be okay with her. She knew the chinks in his armor by heart, and tonight he wouldn't survive without touching her.

"C'mon let's dance," she said to Kristine.

Gemma had rallied after a soaked Henry but he had vanished into thin air. Or so she claimed. Forever the lightweight, it was more likely that Gemma had gotten lost in the closet, fighting coats.

She continued to shake her head and marvel at her misfortune. "It's like he noticed Amy, paled like he saw a ghost, then I accidentally sprayed him, and poof! Gone."

"Now you know what to do when he annoys you," Kristine said.

"He'll turn up with a fresh shirt, c'mon now," Amy reasoned, fingers intertwined with the many silver rings that Gemma had on her hand. The three girls swayed sensually as the guys watched.

Soon other people joined and the song morphed into something charged with impetuous abandon. Amy was seized by an urge to drop low as the beat swung lower.

Cheers threatened to blow the roof off as she sprang back up again, mouth open in a sly grin, and eyes bright as though she was born for this.

Amy caught Ashton staring at her. Busted.

She shamelessly squeezed next to him on the sofa, bouncing a little so she would end up with her leg strewn across his lap. "Hey, there."

Ashton pushed her leg off. "You stood me up and ignored me. You don't get a hey."

Jason laughed and took a swig of his root beer, being the designated driver. "Cut her some slack dude. Your girlfriend was running around saving drugged-up kids and being framed for it later."

Amy couldn't have summarized her day better if she tried.

Trying and failing not to get swept up in his seductive, citrus cologne, Amy played with the zipper of his varsity jacket. Her heart still longed for Ashton in moments such as these but the ache had dulled somehow. His thoughtless words had formed a salt barrier around Amy's heart.

"Ashton, I'm sorry," Amy whispered in his shell-shaped ear. "I just need some time to process everything. I texted you that I was coming here, didn't I?" Then she delivered the final blow. "I came here for you."

Amy had seen beets less red than him.

She felt a pang for the familiarity she seemed to have lost, being torn apart in the riptide of her paranormal quest.

"Stef, yoohoo! Yes - oh my god, here," Kris trilled, trying to get the running back's attention. "Look what mommy got."

A matte black vape pen twirled between her fingers like a baton. "It's mango. Your favorite."

Jason snatched it from Kristine's hands during one of her snazzy flourishes. "Sweet! You sure the cops won't come to bust the party?"

"You're new so let me do the honors," sighed Stefan. He started ticking off points on his fingers. "The house sits in the middle of about a hundred acres of land which they lease out as golf courses, so there are no noise complaints. Her guards stop most of the non-invitees sooner or later. And oh, Natasha's father usually pays off the brass before her big party."

"I wish my father was cool enough to bribe the police," Kris said.

Amy laughed. "Mine would pay them to arrest me right now."

Then she explained how she, Gemma, and Robin were technically grounded.

Ashton looked contrite. "You'd really risk your gun-toting father for me?"

"A billion times over."

Stefan stood up to take a bow. "Like my friend Caleb says" - he imitated Caleb's husky voice - "this is the safest night for business and pleasure. Mostly pleasure."

When the opening presented itself, Amy barreled straight through without delay. "What does he know though right? Fart-face is missing."

Caleb flicked her ears. The burn pricked soft flesh. "I heard that."

"Yeah, but he'll be back," Stefan said, helping himself to some chips. "It's been what - a week? He'll be kicking all the knockoff dealers upstairs to the curb by next Friday."

"How can you be so sure?" Robin asked, nursing his negroni.

"The new sheriff has been on his tail for months now. Caleb knew he needed to lay low until the heat was off him."

"But his mother has reported him missing, right?" said Ashton. "That couldn't have been part of the plan."

Stefan replied, "That may have been a hiccup but how was he to know the woman would get all hysterical now?"

Caleb was quiet for a second. "... I usually tell my family when I need to disappear. And except Jude - who I haven't seen since the carnival - the rest of the dealers are in the clear. No foul play."

"Trust me, he'll show up and everything will go back to the way it was," Stefan concluded. Amy thought the whole thing was innocent enough. Maybe Caleb was right. The jocks could be written off. Was what she heard on game night just a careless phrase?

"I'm going to get a drink," Amy told Ashton.

Caleb was on her in an instant. "I told you the boys couldn't have done this."

"I agree."

Natasha Boynton had no siblings. Her parents' exorbitant neglect was just enough to occupy each chamber of the mansion but not their daughter's heart. The house chock-full of people come to celebrate her 'birthday' had never looked emptier.

Later on, Amy and Caleb decided to cast a wider net in the library, sauna, and movie room, before moving upstairs to the supposed nest of the drug lord wannabes. Amy was a little rusty but quickly managed to turn each chat around to the spectre's whereabouts, trying to catch any slips in her quarry's answers.

"Sure, he was a big jerk but we used to take turns making out with him on Fridays." The theatre girls confessed to Amy as they crushed her in Pictionary.

The science geeks in the projection room flossed over her dead avatar in Fortnite. "We're saving up a lot of cash now because he always beat us. Gotta keep some aside for when he comes back."

"He fucked up so many homophobes in this school," Sarah from the LGBTQ+ club said as she struggled to bend across a spread-eagle Amy in Twister. "But he never attended any meetings even though I told him straight people were welcome too! He just glared at me."

As it turned out, Amy wasn't the only one who was graced with Caleb Dawson's mixed signals. Had she made him out to be the monster that he never actually was? Was dealing drugs so vile that he didn't deserve her friendship? A second chance?

"Who'd thought you were such a big softie?" Amy said, nudging him from a foot away when no one was around them.

"They are a bunch of losers," Caleb said in a gruff voice.

Amy roamed from one location to the next, struggling to move against ridiculously sexist songs, strobe lights, shrill people, and mad attention she no longer craved. With every tired step, Amy thought of how she yearned to be in bed, with the boy beside her, so close yet so far.

But which boy?

Collapsing against the kitchen island Amy concocted her poison: a screwdriver. Gemma had broken one of her heels and was fishing for love in her fourth bellini.

"Cecile's brother Jude runs in the second most dangerous circle in this town. We need to find him in one of the nine thousand bedrooms upstairs. Chop-chop!" Caleb slapped his hands on the granite top, soundlessly of course.

Amy pouted and stood up, taking one last sip of the orange-flavored spirit. "Gemma let's hunt down Jude Presley."

The blonde girl toyed with the dark lace of her front halter corset. "No, thank you. I have other daintier prey to stalk. Maybe Henry hasn't left the party, eh?"

Beneath her feet, the floors of Heavenfell went from polished marble, to teak, and to tile before finally, Amy found Jude's lackey in what could only be the nursery. The little dining table dominating the center had quite the little pharmacy amidst the plastic teacups and fruitcakes. Several people lounged around the dim room in a dense cloud of sweet, terraceous musk.

Caleb pointed to a group in the back. "There."

Pete Ford was struggling to stay on one of the tiny chairs at the end of the table. Weak-willed, sniveling, and lanky, anyone who laid eyes on him questioned his closeness with Cecile Presley. People believed Pete was just the henchman. A pawn to do Cece's dirty work.

His beady eyes swiped around.

Fighting the urge to cough, Amy said, "Yo, what does a girl gotta do to get some service around here?"

A little girl, no older than Leigh, held court at the head seat next to Pete. She looked like a cross between an old spinster shopkeeper and a rabbit, with her hair tied up in a knot and her suit-tie ensemble. Maybe the vodka did go straight to my neural receptors.

But completing the strangest threesome Amy had ever seen was Caleb's sister, Emma. Her face was sunken and sickly with worry, the skin below her eyes thin enough to break at the slightest touch.

"What the fuck is she doing here?" Caleb strode angrily toward Emma, past half-a-dozen people dotting the room. The fact that he was sort of nonexistent completely left his mind. "Emma, you need to leave right -"

"You don't see fresh faces around here often," the girl said in a lilting voice. "I'm Harriett, subbing for my brother Duke. What do you need - MDMA, PCP, crystal, psilocybin -"

"Anaxan," Amy said. She avoided Emma's bone-chilling gaze.

Harriett stopped pointing to her multi-colored substances, and peered at her closely. "Only the top dawg used to sell that shit. Now he's a puff of smoke."

"You told me that if I come here, you will tell me where my brother is," Emma cried.

"Honey, like I said, I don't know where he is," Harriet spoke. "I only know that my brother saw him go up the trail to the ruined church the night of the carnival and Pete here -"

He knows something.

Pete crushed a squeaky toy and shouted, "I don't know nothing, alright!? Like I told Duke, I don't know what I heard out there -"

"What did you hear that night?" Amy said, gooseflesh rippling across her skin. They were so close to the answer, she could taste it.

The three of them slowly turned to look at her.

Caleb wrung his hands. "This is wrong. Duke is one of the shiftiest characters I know and has clearly stooped to a new low. You need to get Emma out of here before she does something stupid."

Amy ignored him.

Swallowing her acrid pity for Emma and little Harriett - who should've been asleep at home and not dealing illegal drugs to irresponsible teens - Amy leaned over closer trying to salvage her outburst. "Between you and me, how long before he shows up again, huh?"

"The Lord knows," Harriett muttered under her breath. "But without CD, the whole ecosystem has collapsed. New blood leads to decentralization."

Pete looked uncomfortable. "Look I've told you all I know. Now about my payment -"

Harriet laughed. "You say you heard him scream and then you say you don't know what you heard?" Her face was caked with foundation and deep lines had furrowed into it. "You're so full of shit. Maybe lemonade right here will be kind enough to sponsor you," Harriet added sharply. "She obviously cares too much about Caleb."

Emma knocked over a kettle. "Yeah, why do you care Amy? And don't tell me it's about those pathetic notes -"

"She don't even take drugs, Harriett," Pete said. "I bet she's working for the Sheriff now that he's arrested her."

The little girl sounded hesitant. "Would she be here if she was arrested, you idiot?"

"All I'm saying is that she's trouble, kid. Would sell you out like she did Wes."

Before her eyes, the conversation had crashed and burned and Amy couldn't even fathom why.

Caleb opened his mouth to say something but Amy interrupted him.

"Long time no see, Pete. Have you seen Jude around?" she asked, looming over the trio; barely restraining the hatred boiling in her stomach. The tension in the air was now thicker than the grey nicotine vapors.

Pete craned his neck. "Amy fucking Irvine. Is your little sister so messed up cause of you, you need to give her a little XP to sleep at night?"

Explosive anger reddened Amy's vision as she grabbed his hoodie, and roughly yanked him back. "Careful there, sweetheart. You don't wanna lose that tongue."

Pete's eyes bulged. "Caleb can't help you and Jude won't help you -"

"What do you mean Caleb can't help me? Do you know what happened to him?"

"What are you crazy? Let me go!"

"Tell me what you know or I'm going to snap your neck like a twig -"

Harriet raised her voice. "Take it outside the two of you."

Two freshmen girls opened the door and broke off mid-conversation when they felt the atmosphere in the 'candy shop'. The room had become quiet. Amy realized that most of the people there had already left.

"Go on get! Stop scaring away my customers."

"Fuck you, midget," Pete told Harriet, slapping Amy's arm away. "And fuck off, Irvine. I dare you to come near me again."

"Oh, suck my dick!" Amy cried, grabbing his hand. She accidentally brushed against the four-point scar on the inside of his wrist. It was warm and slick. She recoiled in disgust.

"Amy, let him go," Caleb said. "He won't tell you anything now. There's no point."

But what if he knows more? What if he's lying? Amy's silent screams turned to ash on her tongue as she helplessly watched Pete slam the door to the nursery.

Emma got up and shouldered her pouch. "Thank you for nothing, Amy or whoever the hell you are."

"Amy, you need to say something to her. Anything. So that she doesn't do something so reckless again." Caleb was standing next to Amy, his body stiff, unyielding, indifferent to anything but his sister's face. A face that was on the very verge of anguished tears.

"Look, I know you don't want to trust me right now, believe me, I do. But you have to realize your brother wouldn't have wanted this."

The little light that still lived in Emma's eyes died before Amy could even finish her sentence. She barely spoke the words that would haunt Amy's dreams for the days to follow.

"He's not here to tell me that is he?"

✧

A/N: What do we think of new-old Amy? The party's just getting started but the mood has taken a nosedive. Did you catch all the new clues revealed in this chapter?