Page 100 of Foes & Cons
“That’s it. I can’t, I . . . I’m leaving.”
I rush to the door, vaguely aware of someone calling my name but I have no interest in talking to Charlie or Vivian or anyone who has recently given me a heart nosebleed, which I know sounds ridiculous but now I’ve said it I have to stick with it.
“Eliza, wait, please,” calls Felix, but I don’t stop because he, too, is on my list. “Wait. It’s about the competition.”
The competition? I sigh and turn to look at him.
“What about it?” I say, crossing my arms. “Is it cancelled? Was it a fake competition for a reality show about obsessive freaks? Have I been disqualified for being overly attached and emotional and stubborn and incapable of processing any form of change, Felix? Is that what’s happened?”
Felix’s eyebrows pinch together over his glasses and he wrings his hands together. He steps forward and shakes his head.
“You came second. We’re announcing shortly but I couldn’t let you just leave without knowing you get to have coffee with Damon Van Schwartz. I mean, isn’t that brilliant? Congratulations, that’s every fan’s dream!”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling like a balloon losing the last of its helium. “Brilliant.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
LILA MURPHY
I just feel like everything around me is crumbling.
BUD LEROY
And I really want to unpack that with you, Lils, but everything around us is crumbling. This crypt is literally crumbling RIGHT NOW.
Vampire Falls. Season three, episode ten – “Kiss Your Death”
I wander aimlessly, my heart sinking further as Felix’s news snakes its way around the attendees and follows me through the hotel. There are a few tears, a few shocked faces mourning our precious weekend, but most people seem placated by Felix’s new venture.
Not me. I feel hollow, like my very core has been swept away by the death of this weekend, my convention, losing the competition to Vivian (Felix didn’t have to say it, but it’s obvious she’s the winner), and Roxy. All of it. I can almost hear my name floating away as I slope round a corner.
“Eliza! Eliza?”
I look round, realising that someoneiscalling my name rather than my feelings of desperation manifesting themselves. Fake McKinley jogs down the hallway towards me.
“Hey,” I manage.
A couple of Fallers run round the corner, shrieking that they’re about to miss their autographs and he pulls me out of the way. Their carefree laughter and excitement lingers in the hall, even as they disappear around the corner.
“Are you OK?” Fake McKinley says. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He looks down at me, his thick eyebrows pulled together. I heave a massive sigh and shake my head.
“I’m sorry . . . I . . . everything is . . .”
Another small group stampede round the corner and we step back, letting them past in a flurry of excitement. The noise and the fans and the corridor all press down on me, and I feel like there’s too many people but I’m all alone and I . . .
“Hey,” says Fake McKinley, his voice gentle and calm. He takes my hand and squeezes it. “Let’s get out of here.I know a place.”
I automatically start to protest, wanting solitude so I can really wallow in my aloneness, but the warmth of his fingers around my hand is nice because it’s a feeling other than the despair that’s about to overflow. I nod, then follow him down the corridor. He pulls his phone out, sends a couple of messages then puts it back in his pocket.
It feels like we walk the entire length of the hotel until we finally stop at some double doors, where everyone’s favourite independent adjudicator, Dimitri, waits.
“Hey, man,” says Fake McKinley, bumping Dimitri’s fist, “thanks for this. Appreciate it.”
“No worries,” says Dimitri, tapping the security panel by the door with a card attached to his belt.
Fake McKinley holds the door open and nods me through the doors, and chlorine floods my nostrils. Our footsteps echo off the tiled floor and walls of a short corridor, then we walk through another door to a decent-sized swimming pool. It’s such a shift in the environment I’ve been absorbed in over the weekend, that I forget my entire life has fallen apart.
