Sacrificed

Chapter Thirty-Four: Stolen Kisses

Armed with a backpack full of sugary arsenal it didn't take much for Luxor to convince Gemma to allow her to create a special day. In fact, Gemma all but rounded up everything, scooping items from the kitchen and the storage room in hope Luxor would make some much-needed friends.

Translation: allies.

Luxor followed her around from destination to destination, abandoning control and stood back and watched her do all the work. All the while the destruction of her blood in the laboratory sunk heavily in her memory bank. At least her blood couldn't be tested on unless Ollie broke their pinky promise and stabbed her in the back. Gemma smiled over her shoulder and zipped the bag up, her smile and personality shadier than a wide-brimmed umbrella except with her you'd be scorched or drown depending on her mood.

Ollie had run back to the laboratory to retrieve Hunters iPod because "a par-tay ain't nothing without some groove." When Luxor returned half an hour later she was again dancing and miming to another depressing song.

"Hey, hey where have you been?" Celeste had found her and was painting her nails sky blue, and coating it with glitter hardener. The bottles dangerously hung on the curve of the arm of the couch.

"Stel." She replied.

Celeste wrinkled her nose and closed the lids of the nail polish tightly. "What possessed you to do that?"

Luxor simply sent her a knowing look and that's all it took for Celeste to know. Strike two for Gemma for the day. It was anybody's guess what hair-brained scheme she was up to next.

"Ready to go?" She blew her nails to dry them.

"Go, where? What about the movie?" Ollie asked Luxor, her voice hitching an octave.

"I'm not going anywhere yet, we're commemorating Evie's birthday."

"Fine." Celeste huffed and slumped back down. She picked up a bag of balloons and tore the corner with her teeth, ready to blow them up. "Guess you'll be needing help for this shin-dig."

For the better part of the last hour, they worked together, hummed to whatever song came on and strung up streamers around the perimeter of the entertainment room and securing it with tape.

"Wow, somebody has pulling power." Hunter leaned against the doorway and admired the decorations. As suspected he had found her just as he always did.

"You have no idea," Luxor replied suggestively with a coy smile and ripped open the corner of the black tablecloth.

The smooth and seductive vocals of Justin Bieber crooning Despacito bled through the speakers; hot and sticky. Luxor hummed innocently swinging her hips and shook the sheet over the long trestle table that she had set up under the window sill before she sprinkled rainbow confetti all over.

Hunter arched an eyebrow and swallowed back a reply.

"Yuck, even I got that," Ollie said over her shoulder from the ladder and reapplied the fallen streamer to the corner.

"Well close your ears Dumbo. Better still how about privacy...both of you."

"Hunter don't call her that." Luxor threw a roll of sticky tape across the room at his head. He ducked and instead in time and it hit the projector. "And they are being useful, unlike you." She lobbed a roll of streamers and again she missed her intended target.