Author's Notes: I didn't actually intend for this story to be so seasonally appropriate when I started writing it, but here we are in October with a Halloween chapter!

Anyway, happy Halloween! Hope you have a fun and safe one! I'll be back with Chapter 3 around mid-November.

Kissed Connection

Chapter 2: Spin the Bottle

Amity thought a lot about Homecoming in the month after. Not the Homecoming game (they won) nor the dance (it was okay) nor the fact that she was crowned Homecoming Queen (Boscha had been very annoyed; almost as annoyed as finding her championship trophy in its trophy case a few days later gift wrapped in multiple layers of Saran wrap with a note to let Hexside know it sucked). No, the part Amity thought about was where she'd had the most amazing first kiss with a girl and hadn't even tried to ask her name.

It was just as well though, if Amity were to consider it. She didn't have time for kissing with her first mid-terms to prepare for or the SAT to take. And even after those tests, she didn't have time for dating with her organizing Student Council fundraisers and charity clean-up days at the beach. And even after those events came and went, who could think about tracking down a Glandus girl who seemed to have literally zero social media presence when her mother and father were breathing down her neck to impress her bosses at her internship so it would look good on her impending college applications?

So.

Yeah.

Just as well.

By October, Amity had nearly stopped thinking about her, even if she did see the beanie every time she opened her desk drawer and even if she did idly seek out Glandus gossip (mostly by way of her friends in sports or cross-school clubs and sometimes the local news).

So of course Amity would find her when she least expected it.

It was Friday night and Halloween proper, and the party was in full swing downstairs if the deep bass notes of the music were anything to go by. There was definitely no party upstairs where Amity was in her bedroom, flinging off the headphones that hadn't been as noise-cancelling as advertised.

Amity was going to murder the twins when she found them. Since they were still visiting from college for their October break (which Amity had been suspicious of though it apparently was a real thing), they'd told her they were going to just have a few of their Hexside friends over for a small Halloween get-together while their parents were out of town. Amity had gone with it out of sibling solidarity, but their definition of 'small get-together' was rapidly becoming 'high school rager', and Amity was not going to go down with the twins when their parents eventually found out.

She had just pushed off from her desk when her door was flung open. She turned to shout at what were probably two drunks looking for a spot to debauch but stopped mid-yell when she saw Emira and Edric slink in.

"Oh perfect," Amity said, "Just the siblings I was looking for."

"Aw, Mittens, did you miss us?" Edric asked, leaning against the open doorway. He had attempted to dress like some sexy vampire with a frilly shirt, very fake-looking fangs, and the glimmer of glitter dust (ugh, seriously, Edric?). Emira, also dressed as a sexy vampire sans the glitter but with blood-red lipstick, slid a hip onto the edge of her desk.

"Yeah, no, I was going to tell you to shut it down," Amity said.

"Aw, come on, don't be like that…" Emira said. "Not when we came up here to convince you to join us."

"Join you? And have Mom and Dad ground all three of us when they find out about this illicit party?" Amity asked.

"Three of us? It's going to be pretty hard for them to ground us when we go back to college," Edric said.

"Oh, great, so it'll just be me then," Amity said.

"Relax, they're not going to ground you…" Emira said reassuringly.

Edric reached over to ruffle her hair. "Yeah, you know how many parties Em and I got away with when we were in high school that they knew nothing about? I promise we'll look out for you, sis."

At Amity's suspicious look, Emira added, "And honestly, it's kind of too late. Party's already going on."

While Amity was skeptical about her brother's promise, she had to concede that Emira was right. The party was already happening; if their parents found out about it, she'd still be punished. She might as well enjoy it. It's not like she could concentrate on her college application essays anyway.

"Besides," Emira was saying as if she could read Amity's mind, "you could use a bit of fun."

"Yeah, you've been on edge this whole past week," Edric contributed. "Stressed, short-tempered… snippy."

"I have not," Amity said snippily.

"I feel like you haven't smiled once since we've gotten home," Emira said, supporting their brother because of course she did.

"If I'm stressed, it's because not all of us can rest easy knowing they're already students at the country's best college," Amity shot back. It came out a tiny bit bitter, but Amity was a tiny bit envious. Emperor's College was their parents' alma mater, the top Ivy League in the country. The twins had applied their senior year and were accepted easily. Amity was gearing up to apply early action for the school, but in addition to not finishing her application essays, she was still waiting to hear back on her SAT score. If it wasn't higher than her last test… Amity didn't want to think about it.

Emira waved her hands at her younger sister dismissively. "Mittens, you're an overachiever like the rest of us. You can afford to let loose for a couple hours."

"Forgive me if I don't feel like hanging out with Boscha and Skara on a Friday night. I only see them almost every day."

"You don't necessarily have to," Edric said. "The party's gotten way bigger than that. Word got out somehow…"

"Yeah, there's people from everywhere… Aortic, St. Epiderm, Glandus…" Emira said, picking up the thread.

Amity's head snapped up. "What?"

"I'm just saying, this party's out of control," Edric said. "In the good way. Not the 'we've-called-the-police' kind of way."

"Well... " Amity said, trying to stay casual even as she knew she was in from the moment Emira had mentioned Glandus, "…okay."

Amity flipped the back cover of her notebook up, neatly closing it. She folded her recently-forsaken headphones on top of it and headed for the door, but Emira stepped bodily in front of her.

"Not so fast, sister."

"What are you doing?" Amity asked. "I thought you wanted me to go with you to this party."

"You're not wearing a costume."

"I hadn't planned to."

"Yeah, I can see that, and we'll definitely talk about how you decided to do homework instead of make Halloween plans later, but in the interests of making this party worth your while, you need a costume," Emira said.

"She can be a vampire like us, easy. Put her in a black dress. I've got some extra fangs," Edric suggested.

"Absolutely not," Amity said. "I've been over matching sibling outfits since family portraits circa middle school. And I'm not wearing glitter."

Emira snorted. "Okay, who do you want to dress up as?"

"She can be a cat," Edric said. "Put her in a black dress and draw some whiskers on her face?"

"What is with you and sticking me in a black dress?" Amity asked.

"Don't mind him. He was in the middle of something when we came upstairs to get you."

"Yeah. My date arrived. And they're waiting for me," Edric said. "So the quicker the better. Chop chop, ladies."

"Come on, Ed, take this seriously," Emira scoffed, "your date can wait a few more minutes. Our widdle sister needs our help!"

"First off, you can knock off the baby voice," Amity said, "And second, I'll find… something."

"Okay, Mittens," Ed said, "first thing you see!"

"Ed! This is probably the coolest party Amity'll ever attend..."

"Em! I've been trying to ask them out for years, and this is my one shot before we go back to school…"

Ignoring her siblings as they squabbled, Amity mentally reviewed her closet options and tried to brainstorm something she could pull together last-minute. Edric's suggestion of going as a cat was certainly doable, but felt somehow not… stand-out enough. Not that she was sure who she was trying to impress since it was very unlikely that Beanie Girl would be at the party. She'd have to be pretty lucky.

Frustrated, she cast her gaze about the room where it landed on the cover of the Good Witch Azura book that was peeking out from under her mattress where she'd stuffed it earlier and paused. An Azura costume? She felt herself cringe; she was used to keeping her love of the Azura books hidden away, literally in this case, and dressing up as Azura felt almost hopelessly nerdy.

Besides, Azura's costume was way too complex… Now Hecate's, she could approximate with a formal dress she'd worn last year for a dance. She wouldn't be able to do the character's signature three faces, but she could cobble together the headpiece. The idea was interesting and felt… good. She'd look nice at least, she'd be making a nod at something she loved, and maybe, it would make her a little bit lucky.

She shimmied into a sleek turquoise dress and fastened a gold belt at the waist. For the headpiece, she fished out a crescent moon cardboard cutout from an old school science project she'd stored in the back of her closet and stuck it onto her Homecoming crown with some bobbypins from her desk. Perfect. Donning the crown, she faced the twins.

"There," she said.

"This is better…" Emira said. "But who are you supposed to be?"

"Hecate from The Good Witch Azura," Amity said and then at Edric's quizzical look, added, "It's from a book."

Emira made a face. "Maybe we should revisit the black cat costume."

"I didn't exactly have time to plan this out," Amity said defensively. "And may I remind you that this was your idea?"

"I didn't think you'd use the opportunity to cement your status as a nerd!" Emira said. "'Uh, hi, I'm Amity and I study the dork arts'."

"Say one more thing, and I turn you both in to mom and dad right now," Amity groused, reaching for her phone, and Edric stepped in between them.

"Alright, alright, claws in, Mittens. You too, Em," Edric said, linking his arm through Amity's. "Besides, I think she looks great."

"Don't get me wrong… she's our little sister. Of course she's hot—"

"Weird," Amity put in.

"—and I did ask what you wanted to wear," Emira sighed. "But please, let me do your makeup. Two minutes, tops."

"Okay, but no glitter," Amity warned, and Emira lifted her hands in surrender before reaching for the eyebrow palette in Amity's vanity drawer.

Betrayed, Edric let Amity's arm drop and collapsed on her bed. "I'm going to die alone," he pronounced.

Five minutes later, Emira declared her done, and all the Blight siblings walked down the elegant house stairs into the impressive crowd below. Amity couldn't help scanning people's faces as they descended, but it was no easy task to find a very specific someone with most people in costume.

"Finally," Edric said, practically vibrating by the time they got to the bottom stair. "Now, if you'll excuse me, my date has been waiting for their drink for entirely too long, and I'll never forgive either of you if they left."

"Yeah, yeah, go on," Emira said.

"Good luck!" Amity said.

Emira pushed Edric in the direction of the kitchen with a last encouraging word. Then she put an arm around Amity and led her to a drinks table, pouring something in and pushing a red Solo cup into Amity's hand. "Do me a favor. Try to have fun?"

Amity took the cup from her sister and regarded her suspiciously. "Why?"

"Why what? Have fun?"

"No, not that… Inviting me to the party, helping me dress up, making my drink… Why are you being so nice right now?"

"I'm always nice."

"That is patently untrue."

A look briefly crossed Emira's face, kind of as if she'd bitten into an extremely sour pickle and then quickly spit it out. So it was utterly unconvincing when her answer was, "Sisterly love?"

"Sisterly love didn't stop you from posting pages of my journal all over school when I told mom and dad you'd skipped summer school a couple years ago."

Emira winced. "Okay, harsh, but fair. But you know we've apologized every day since for that. And… I'm actually not lying."

"Uh-huh."

The same look crossed Emira's face before she let out a big sigh.

"Truth time, Mittens. We weren't around much for you when we were all in high school..." Emira said, and Amity realized that the sour pickle look must be what happened whenever Emira actually tried to be real with her… which is probably why she so rarely saw it. "And being at college… well, it made us realize that we want to be. While Ed and I haven't always made it easy for you, we do, you know, care."

"Right…"

"And you don't seem very happy."

"It's just college application season. I'm fine," Amity protested.

"So convincing," Emira said. "Look, I don't know. I may be way off, but you're doing everything Ed and I did our senior year, and I know how it is, and if you listen to my advice at all, I'm telling you, life's not all school and trophies and awards."

"Mom and Dad would kill you for saying that."

"Mom and Dad may not always have their own priorities straight when it comes to us," Emira said. "Mitte—Amity, I'm not telling you to change your life. I'm just saying try to lighten up for one party? Please? For me?"

Whatever Amity had been expecting, it had not been Protective Big Sister Emira. Maybe it was the peach schnapps in her cup talking (which, really?), but she impulsively hugged her older sister anyway.

"Okay," Amity said. She thought this might prompt Emira to leave her, but instead, her sister walked her over to a group of about a dozen people sitting in a circle and, with hands heavy on Amity's shoulders, shoved her down into an empty space on the floor. Skara beamed from right next to her, as a chorus of welcomes sang out from the rest.

"Enjoy!" Emira said, much too airily, and when Amity turned to the center of the circle, she saw a spinning bottle.

"Don't tell me…" Amity said.

"It's Spin the Bottle!" said Skara (dressed like an angel), giggling.

Amity turned her head to glare at her sister who didn't seem to notice from across the room. Murdering Emira was officially back on the table, heart-to-heart or no. But for now… she just sat back and hoped it wouldn't get too awkward. She looked around the circle, noting some other familiar faces from Hexside, like Boscha (dressed like a devil) across the circle and Viney (dressed very cutely as a witch) who had an empty spot next to her.

Okay, this wasn't too bad. She could survive this. One or two rounds and then she could check out the rest of the party.

She had just finished plotting out the final details of her perfect revenge against Emira when Skara nudged her shoulder after giving one of the guys a noisy but platonic kiss on the cheek. Amity took the bottle and spun it, hoping it would land on anyone but Boscha.

It spun once, twice, three times, rocking erratically until it finally stopped, neck pointing to the space next to Viney.

"It's you, Viney!" Skara pronounced.

Viney squinted at it. "No way," she said. "It's pointing at L—"

"Sorry, sorry, sorry! What'd I miss?" said a familiar voice behind Amity, and she froze.

There was no way it would be this easy, would it?

"Just in time!" Viney said, grinning up at none other than Beanie Girl, sans beanie, wearing another questionably fashionable outfit in the form of a purple and white cat hoodie over cropped shorts, black leggings, and battered white slip-ons.

Beanie Girl fit herself into the space next to Viney. "In time for what?"

Viney giggled and indicated the bottle that was now pointing her way. "You're up."

Beanie Girl glanced from the bottle to its spinner, looking at Amity for a beat too long, as if uncomprehending. Amity felt her mind buzz with worry… then a smile curled slowly onto the other girl's face.

So she did remember.

"Come on, Casanova, hurry it up," Viney prompted after they continued to stare at each other for a hot second, pushing the girl's shoulder and also simultaneously reminding Amity that they were both the main attraction of this strange party game.

Amity's stomach fluttered—anticipation, not apprehension, her mind helpfully supplied—and she moved as if on auto-pilot to the center of the circle, mirroring the other girl as they rose on their knees and inched towards one another. When they met in the middle, Amity hesitated. Now that she was actually face-to-face with the person she'd been thinking about all month, she didn't know what to say. Even if the other girl recognized her, there was no guarantee that she would have been thinking of the kiss like Amity had. Would it be weird of her to admit she thought about their fake kiss a lot? Is that a thing you should tell someone who you'd technically never introduced yourself to?

Oh, Titan, the silence had gone on for too long.

"Um, hi," Amity said profoundly.

"Hi," the other girl said, equally profoundly. "So we meet again."

"So we do."

"Less awkward banter! More awkward kissing!" someone, Jerbo (dressed in some sort of purple swamp monster abomination costume as far as Amity could tell), yelled good-naturedly. Amity winced.

The other girl didn't look phased though, putting a hand on Amity's arm. "We're going to kiss now if that's alright with you," she said cheekily, and Amity smiled back at her.

"Since the people demand it," Amity said, which was better than saying nothing but wasn't what she wanted to say at all. But the girl huffed out a small, very cute laugh and leaned forward, and their lips met for one glorious searing moment before there were cheers from the circle.

Amity was pretty sure that meant they should stop—public displays of affection were not becoming of a Blight in any case—but her hands of their own will flew up to grip the front of the cat hoodie as she pulled the other girl flush to her, mouth opening to tangle their tongues together, matching the other girl's enthusiasm.

If their first kiss had been lightning, a quick burst of electric chemistry, this one was more like a fire, heat rushing through her from the inside, warming her as if she'd been cold this entire time without realizing it. The other girl had either learned from their last time or had practiced on someone else—and yeah, Amity didn't like that thought—because whatever she was doing to Amity's bottom lip with her teeth was turning that rising warmth hot, igniting a spark of pleasure that thrummed through her and made her weak in the knees. She would've fallen over if they'd been standing, she was sure of it. She wondered if the other girl felt anything like Amity did, hoped the girl felt as desperately alive and dizzily giddy as she—

"All right, break it up! Some of us haven't gotten any action yet!" Viney called out, and Beanie Girl—Amity really needed to come up with another nickname for her seeing as the girl wasn't even wearing a beanie; Cat Hoodie Girl? Mystery Girl? Dream Girl?—pulled back, flushed and beautiful, and said something heated back to Viney in Spanish that Amity didn't catch.

"What does that mean?" Amity asked.

"You don't want to know," Viney said in a stage-whisper. "It was very rude."

"Hardly!" Cat Hoodie Girl called back on an exasperated laugh as she moved away from Amity.

Amity hadn't wanted to stop. But the person up next was grabbing the bottle so she supposed they had to. They returned to their separate and opposite spots in the circle, and Skara nudged her.

"Oooo, that looked like fun…" Skara sing-songed conspiratorially. Amity, who'd been openly staring right at the girl she'd just half-made-out with in front of witnesses, felt herself flush. "Was it a good kiss?"

"It was… fine," Amity lied instinctively. It seemed wrong to gush about it somehow when she didn't want to admit how intensely she felt about it and, worse, didn't know if the other girl felt the same way.

"Uh-huh. So who is she?"

"I don't know," Amity admitted as the game picked up and the person two spots away from the Cat Hoodie Girl spun the bottle. "Not from Hexside."

"Definitely not. She's cute! I would've noticed," Skara said. "It looked like you knew each other though."

"Nope."

"So you're not planning on chatting her up afterwards?"

"Nope," Amity said absently, because she wasn't just going to plan to talk to the girl, she was determined to do it.

They watched Viney spin the bottle which landed on Jerbo and continued to watch with rapt fascination as Viney whipped a hand out quick like a coiled snake to trap her friend into a headlock and pepper his face with increasingly sloppy and gross kisses. Amity snickered when Jerbo tried to fend Viney off, his attempts silly and weakened by his own laughter until Viney took pity on him and released him with one last friendly smack. The whole thing was entertaining enough that she missed what Skara had said.

"What was that?"

"I said, so you don't mind if I do?" Skara said again, and something panicky shot through Amity, too fast for her to identify.

"Do what?" she demanded, replaying their conversation as fast as she could, head whipping to look at Skara.

Dimly, she heard the bottle spin and stop, and Skara squealed instead of answering her.

"Ooh, my turn!" Skara said, and Amity felt the bottom of her stomach drop out when she saw that the bottle Cat Hoodie Girl had spun pointed definitively at Skara.

Cat Hoodie Girl's eyes flicked to Amity's briefly before Jerbo and Viney shoved her forward. For her part, Skara enthusiastically moved to the middle, and Amity froze, stiff, as Skara planted a kiss firmly on the girl who'd commanded Amity's attention for the better part of a month for what had to be the longest five seconds of Amity's life. When they pulled apart, Skara leaned back in to whisper something in the girl's ear, giggling as she did so, the other girl nodding in answer to Skara's unheard question.

Scratchy, nervous, antsy energy flared up intense and hot in Amity, and she didn't know what to do with it except stand up, babble something about getting another drink, and run off towards the kitchen.

There, she put ice into a cup, wavered on what to actually drink, and settled on water over anything stronger. Sipping the water helped calm her, but it did nothing to help push away that jittery, unpleasant feeling she'd had back in the circle, and she didn't know what was wrong except what the hell did Skara think she was doing and—

Oh, so this was jealousy.

Which was silly really. They'd exchanged exactly two kisses, and even though Amity's world had tilted sideways both times, when it came down to it, she barely even knew the girl. Cat Hoodie Girl didn't owe her anything.

But that didn't mean Amity was going to give her up either.

She was Amity Blight, and she'd never lost at anything before, and she really didn't want to now. She wasn't sure what 'not losing' entailed when it came to winning the other girl over, but hiding in the kitchen was certainly the coward's way out, and she definitely wasn't that either.

Downing the rest of the water, she two-pointed the cup into the trash, strode quickly out of the kitchen… and ran smack straight into someone coming in.

"Oof!" Cat Hoodie Girl said, her forehead knocking solidly into Amity's face.

"Owwww," Amity groaned, stepping back, hands flying up, not sure what was throbbing only that it hurt. "We've got to stop running into each other like this."

"Oh Titan, we really do. Are you okay?" the other girl said in a tone so devastatingly guilt-ridden that Amity almost felt bad for her.

"My nose," Amity said mournfully.

"I can fix this! Here." The other girl steered her back into the kitchen, crowding her against the counter and forcing Amity to hop up and sit on it, where there was apparently more light to see by.

"What are you doing?" Amity asked.

"Checking you out," the girl answered. Then quickly, she cleared her throat very loudly. "Your nose! Checking your nose out. It doesn't look broken… We can just put ice on it."

Amity thought about objecting, but the girl scooped some ice from the drinks table into a thin kitchen towel she took from an oven door handle and made a makeshift ice pack, stepping into Amity's space to carefully and tenderly press it against her nose. For all her scrapes and sports injuries growing up, Amity had never been treated like this—like she was something delicate, someone to be cared for—and heat crept into her cheeks at the contact.

"We should leave this on for a few minutes," the girl said, apparently committing herself to doing just that.

"Okay," Amity whispered in the face of the girl's competence. From her position on the counter, Amity was now just a little taller than her impromptu nurse: she could see the way the girl's eyelashes curled, could detect there was a faint beauty mark just under the crest of her cheek, could tell she smelled faintly of something sweet and citrus-y and lovely like lemon candy. She cleared her throat. "You seem like you know what you're doing."

"Not really. My mom's a vet, so I know some things… and sometimes it translates to humans," the girl said with a sheepish smile. "Is this okay?"

"Yes. Thank you, uh… I don't know your name," Amity said. "I just call you Beanie Girl. In my head."

"Not wearing a beanie though."

"Cat Hoodie Girl recently."

"Oh yeah, that's better. I called you 'princess'."

"Not a princess though," Amity said. "I recently became Homecoming Queen."

"Oh, I didn't know I was in the company of such exalted royalty," the other girl said with a mock dip of her head that Amity found way too endearing. "Should I call you Your Majesty?"

Amity laughed. "Please don't."

"You say that, but my guess? You'd secretly like it," the other girl said. "Otherwise why would you keep wearing crowns?"

"This is more a headpiece than a crown," Amity argued. "Part of my costume."

"Your costume?" Cat Hoodie Girl—because Amity still hadn't gotten her name—looked Amity up and down, inspecting the crescent moon-crown craft abomination Amity had created.

"It's okay if you don't know who I'm dressed as," Amity jumped in. When she'd put the outfit together, she'd forgotten that she might have to explain what her costume was, and getting into her embarrassing love of the Azura novels felt more like a third-date topic and not a first-time-interacting-with-the-girl-you-kissed-in-a-fakeout-makeout-situation topic.

"The thing is," Cat Hoodie Girl said, "I do know what your costume is."

"Are you sure? I'd be really surprised if you're right."

"What would you be willing to bet?" the girl asked, her voice coming out low and enticing, and only then did Amity realize how close the girl was, that the entire time she'd been gently pressing the ice pack against Amity's face, she'd been standing intimately between the v of her legs as they dangled over the counter. Amity could easily kiss her if she nudged her knees in and leaned forward.

Amity swallowed. Hard. "Uh… your name?"

"Let me get this right. If I guess your costume correctly, my prize would be for me to tell you my name?" the girl said, and then, looking up through her damn lashes, added, "I don't know if you know how deals work"—(which was a ridiculous thing to say to a Blight but Amity was already too far gone by that point)—"but you're supposed to wager something I really want."

Amity thought about suggesting a kiss, but she was determined that there wouldn't be any more kisses with this girl until she learned at least one useful thing about her.

"Fine," Amity said. "You guess right, you get my name."

"Now we're talking," the girl said, a radiant smile crossing her face. "... Hecate."

Amity, who'd been expecting her to guess something generic like 'moon goddess' or 'anime cosplayer', gaped. She knew in theory there were other people out there who liked Azura, but it could be considered something of a niche fantasy series as she'd discovered the first time she tried to bring it up with someone in middle school before she knew better, so in practice, she'd never talked to anyone who'd actually read it. Of course, she did her very best to never mention the series or hint that she liked it in any way for the last five years, so maybe that made a lot more sense in retrospect, but still. What were the odds this costume would work for this girl?

"You know Azura?" Amity asked, stunned.

"Know it! I've consumed everything in the fandom… the books, the side comics, the authorized handbook, the unauthorized handbook, the author's professional and personal Twitter feeds… and don't get me started on the movies," the girl gushed.

Philosophically, Amity knew she shouldn't be so starstruck because someone happened to share an interest in the book series that saved her from a rather lonely childhood as the least talented Blight and the odd sibling out.

Problematically, however, Amity couldn't help the way her heart flipped over in her chest.

"...I mean, you don't have the three faces, but the headpiece really sold it," the girl was saying, completely oblivious to Amity's inner thoughts, "What I'm most surprised by is that you went with Book 3 Hecate because it would've been easier to go with her Book 5 final fight costume evolution given how short your hair is."

"I… haven't read Book 5," Amity admitted.

"You haven't?! And you call yourself a fan?"

Amity pressed her hand to her chest in mock insult. "How dare you! It only came out eight days ago. The local bookstore hadn't received their copies yet, and the library won't carry it for another week, so sorry some of us didn't pre-order the book so they could then pull an all-nighter reading it from cover to cover on the first day of release."

"Is it possible to feel both seen and judged?" the other girl asked, squinting up at the ceiling for answers, and she looked so cute that Amity laughed. "If you're laughing like that, then I think your nose is going to make it." She gently pulled the ice pack away.

Amity missed the contact. "Does it look okay?"

"Hold still, let me see," the girl said, setting the ice pack down. She lifted her hand to cup Amity's cheek, ostensibly to better look at her nose, and Amity couldn't help but tilt a little into the touch.

"Well?" Amity asked as Cat Hoodie Girl continued to stare.

"You look perfect," the girl said softly, then jerked her hand back and fisted it as if only now realizing what it had been doing. "Oh, uh, I meant, no harm done! Your nose will live to breathe another day."

"I'm glad. It was going to be hard to look down on people without it," Amity said.

"Ha, well, you don't have to worry about that, Your Majesty."

Amity reached out to tug one of the girl's hoodie strings. "Not 'Your Majesty'."

"Hm?"

"Not 'Your Majesty', not 'princess', not 'Hecate'," Amity said, tugging on the other string to pull the girl closer. "My name is—"

"AMITY!"

Startled by the shout, Amity would've fallen off the counter if not for the other girl steadying her on it as Edric and Emira burst into the kitchen talking over themselves.

"They just texted—"

"—probably got two hours—"

"Amity, we've got to—" Edric stopped himself short and considered Amity's position. "What are you doing?"

"Uh…" Amity glanced down from her hands still holding the hoodie strings to the other girl's hands which had flown to her waist when Amity nearly fell.

"Treating a nose injury," the other girl said weakly as Amity slid off the counter so they stood side-by-side.

"Okay, sure," Emira said, taking it in stride. "Sorry to interrupt whatever is going on here, but we've got a situation, and you—" Here, Emira gripped the hoodie of Cat Hoodie Girl and, to Amity's horror, started pushing her out of the kitchen—"need to go."

"Wait, wait, wait," Amity said, "What's going on?"

"Check your texts," Edric said, and Amity glanced down at her smartwatch, her stomach twisting with a thousand anxious butterflies as she read the latest text from her dad. "Mom and dad are coming home early."

"Anything I can do to help?" the other girl was saying to Emira as Amity's brain started to spin. She was going to be sick.

"Trust me, if you care about Amity at all, the thing you can do to help is disappear and take everyone you know with you," Emira said. The other girl didn't look convinced, so Emira said, "Please. She'll talk to you later."

Emira hustled the other girl out before she could protest then turned to her siblings.

"Here's what we're going to do," Emira said. "I'll get everyone else out. You two get everything back in order."

Edric and Amity looked at the incredible mess they could see both in and from the kitchen and then back at Emira.

"Go!" she insisted, then charged back into the living room, shouting. Edric and Amity started cleaning the kitchen, and the next two hours were a whirlwind of activity as they kicked everyone out and got the house back in order.

It was exactly two and a half hours after they'd shut down the party that Odalia and Alador Blight came home to a suspiciously clean house, immediately and correctly guessed someone had thrown a party, and would have grounded Amity until the new year if Emira and Edric hadn't fallen on the proverbial sword and taken the heat off their sister so she'd have a lesser sentence.

("You and Edric didn't have to take all the blame," Amity had said later. "They cut your credit limit in half for six months!"

"Eh, trust me, there are worse things," Emira said, waving it off. "I promised we'd look out for you… or try to, at least. You still got grounded 'til Thanksgiving. That's three weeks."

"Better than three months," Amity said. "But we can call it even since you made me play Spin the Bottle."

"'Even', huh? I feel like you owe me if that's where you met that girl you were making out in the kitchen with."

"We weren't making out."

"Not yet you weren't.")

And it was exactly three hours after they'd shut down the party that Amity lay back on her bed in her room, resigned to her grounding… and realized she still didn't know Cat Hoodie Girl's name.