Wish You Were Her(25)

“Who was brutally attacked?” Hera, the arcade manager, asked gamely, in pantomime voice, drawing Allegra back into the game and away from thoughts of secret emails.

“While everyone was asleep in their beds, one of you got up to go for a midnight stroll. You made your way through the square, down Main Street and ended up at the bandstand, where you closed your eyes. You were waiting to meet someone. Someone who was late.”

Allegra grinned, along with most of the room. Only Skye, her sister Star and Jonah remained stoic. Arthur, the unknowing werewolf victim, Allegra noticed, kept glancing toward the basement door.

“While this person was waiting on the bandstand, they were hunted. Then caught. Perhaps the werewolf was jealous.” Simon did a full spin of the room, his arm outstretched. “The first bite was to wound, but the second hit him square in the heart. I’m so, so very sorry.” Simon’s finger landed on the bemused cinema manager.

“The werewolf got you, clean, Lancaster. Right in the heart.”

“Oh, no,” Arthur said, in a flat, deadpan voice that made Allegra stifle a laugh.

“Villagers,” Simon said. “While the victim leaves the game, time for a town meeting! Who could have done this? Who are the secret werewolves among us?”

This signaled the start of a discussion, Allegra realized, as people leaped into speaking.

“I vote Grace,” Skye’s sister, Star, said frankly.

“No chance,” Allegra heard herself retort. “She wouldn’t do in her big brother.”

“Don’t let her angel face fool you,” Arthur said, laughing.

Arthur dutifully left the game and stepped to the back of the room as the accusations continued to fly. Skye nominated Allegra but no one took her seriously. Most people ended up focusing in on Grace, who didn’t seem to mind the suspicion. She took great, theatrical joy in proving everyone wrong by revealing her civilian card and people cursed their own assuredness.

And the lights went off once more.





Chapter Ten


Jonah was surprised that when it came to hunting people in a game of Werewolf, he and Allegra worked rather well together. They silently and curtly picked out their victims and maintained shocked but innocent expressions while fingers were pointed afterward. Jonah was nominated by Kerrie but he talked his way out of it. He surprised himself by cutting a few people off when they turned their suspicion toward Allegra.

He had no reason to keep her in the game, but he did it anyway.

As Werewolf neared its end, the older members of the party began to drift away. Arthur, Odette and Hera left to go to the only bar in town. Jonah’s mother gave him a quick kiss goodbye before disappearing to the upstairs den with Simon’s parents and a few other older townsfolk who had stopped by.

When only the teenagers remained in the game room, Skye snatched the Werewolf cards out of Simon’s hands. She had been voted out in an earlier round and was clearly sick of sitting against the wall with Star.

“I’m bored with this game. Let’s play something better,” she declared to the remaining members of the party.

“Well, who are werewolves out of those of you left?” Grace asked.

Jonah glanced over at Allegra. She smiled demurely as she revealed her werewolf card to the rest of the room.

“Knew it,” Skye muttered. She had accused Allegra plenty of times, but nobody had agreed with her.

Jonah slid his onto the carpeted floor. “What do you want to play instead?”

Skye’s eyes glinted as she scanned the room. Her gaze landed on Grace, who was talking to two of her friends from her dance class.

“Truth or dare.”

There were shrieks of delight throughout the room but Jonah felt his pulse quicken ever so slightly. He knew, as the one who was ever sober, that this game always ended in tears. He looked to Simon, hoping to send his friend a wordless plea that would encourage him to call an end to the idea, but Simon was grinning at Skye.

“All right. Spin the bottle style?” he said.

“Yes!” Star said, grabbing an empty wine bottle from Simon’s basement bar. “Whomever the bottle lands on has to tell the truth or do the dare set by the spinner.”

It was decidedly simple, compared to the role-play they had all been partaking in just moments before. Jonah loved games like Werewolf. Catan. Monopoly.

Truth or Dare and Spin the Bottle always operated with secret, hidden rules that he could never uncover. And the price for breaking an unspoken instruction was always high.

Everyone arranged themselves in a circle. Jonah looked over at Allegra, who was looking unsure and a little anxious. She quickly masked it and slid gracefully into a sitting position between Kerrie and Grace.

“In or out, Thorne?” Simon called over to him.

Jonah reluctantly sat, too, with a great and heavy feeling of dread.

“I’ll spin first,” Skye said jauntily. The bangles on her wrist clinked as she leaned across the carpet to touch the wine bottle. Everyone watched, but she refused to actually spin it, instead merely turning it so that its neck was pointing directly toward Allegra.

“Truth or dare?” Skye asked her.

“You have to actually spin and let the bottle decide,” Jonah heard himself say, but he was ignored by the group. Only Allegra’s eyes briefly flashed toward him. She raised her chin and smiled politely at Skye.