Chapter Nine
Kenzie beams at me. "Spencer!"
Her warm greeting immediately has me suspicious; Kenzie's never nice to me. I raise my eyebrows at her friend. "Is she-?"
"Drunk? Oh yes, hilariously so." The Asian girl nods, her dark brown hair with ombre green tips bouncing slightly off her red dress. "Don't worry, she's not nearly as much of a stick-in-the-mud when she's drunk. She has no filter at all; it's absolute fucking gold."
"Jo!" Kenzie admonishes, hitting her friend's shoulder. "Why would I want to stick in the mud anyway? It's so brown."
I burst out laughing, and Jo shoots me an I told you so look. "Is there somewhere I can grab her a glass of water?"
"Sure thing, follow me." I chuckle, stepping back and letting them through so I can shut the door behind them.
"I don't want water." Kenzie pouts. She notices something behind me, and her eyes light up. "Oooh, are those vodka jelly shots? I kick ass at them!"
"Kenzie." Jo says so patiently it sounds like she's talking to a small child, pushing Kenzie in the back so she starts following me. "Jelly vodka shots aren't a game. You literally take them and that's it."
"What?" Kenzie's face falls so much you'd think Jo had run over her favourite cat. "Oooh, beer pong!"
"Spencer man, c'mon!" Someone shouts at me as I walk past, motioning to the ping pong table Kenzie had just spotted. "Come kick ass at beer pong with me!"
I scoff. "Andy, a girl could kick ass at beer pong better than you!"
Kenzie pushes past me, throwing up her arm. "I volunteer as tribute!"
All the guys standing around the table cheer, and the looks some of them shoot her makes my vision tint red at the edges. I push her behind me again.
"No Kenzie, you are coming with me." I say firmly, much to their vocal disappointment. "The only thing you are drinking in the next three minutes is water."
"Not you too!" Kenzie glowers at me, her finger jabbing in my face. "I thought you were supposed to be the fun drunk one!"
"Who says I'm not the fun drunk one?" I ask, offended. "I'm just the fun drunk one who knows how to stop an extremely hot drunk girl from doing something extremely stupid, while also being fun and drunk."
Her cheeks tinge red. "You're talking about Jo, right?"
I roll my eyes. "Yes Kenzie, Jo is the more drunk one out of the two of you. How she managed to drive you here in one piece, we'll never know!"
She smacks my chest. "Sarcasm is not a fun drunk one!"
"You caught me dollface. There's only one fun drunk person in the room, and it's not sarcasm." I smirk at her, and she goes an even brighter shade of red. She looks a little like a walking, talking tomato.
"Uh, guys?" Jo waves her hand between our faces, abruptly causing me to realise how close we'd suddenly become. "Not that I'm enjoying this weird flirt fest or whatever the hell it is, but I actually do want something to drink in the next twenty years, so...."
"Oh right, yeah." I blink. "Kitchen's this way."
"Thank you, oh revered fun drunk one." She drawls sarcastically.
"Cute, but I prefer 'oh revered fun drunk god'." I throw her a wink over my shoulder. Jo pretends to retch.
"Hey!" Kenzie frowns at me. "You're supposed to be flirting with me, not Jo!"
Her comment makes me do a double take, and I stare at her in disbelief. Jo snickers.
"See what I mean? No filter at all."
"Right, uh, yeah." I stammer, words for once in my entire existence failing me, and finally reaching our destination Is the only thing that saves me from potentially embarrassing myself. Scratching the back of my neck, I gesture towards the bench, which is groaning under the weight of all the alcohol that I've provided. What can I say? I serve to impress. "Help yourself."
"Anything that's not alcohol?" Jo asks me, quirking an eyebrow.
"Uh, water?" I gasp, pretending to be insulted. Jo snorts, rolling her eyes. "Just kidding, I know a sober driver when I see them. There's coke and lemonade in the fridge, go nuts."
"Thanks." She grabs an unopened can of coke out of the fridge and slams it shut with her hip. "You can look after Kenzie, right? Because I have an extremely hot guy waiting for me next to the beer pong table and I am so done with making him wait." Without waiting for a reply she salutes me, disappearing into the crowd.
"Wait, Jo!" I yell after her, holding my hands up in the air. "I'm not exactly sober right now!"
She doesn't respond, merely holding her can of drink up in the air as she waltz's away. I groan, rubbing my jaw as I turn around.
"Kenzie-" I gulp, my eyes widening when I can't see her anywhere. Shit. Where did she go?
"Spencer!" A girl calls from the door to my backyard, giggling a little. "Are we allowed to go swimming in your pool?"
"Only in your birthday suit." I wink at her, and she blushes deeply. "Why do you ask?"
"There's some super drunk chick out there with a bottle of whisky and I think she's about two seconds away from falling in." The girl shrugs. "And she's not in her birthday suit either."
I groan again, shaking my head. Found her. I mutter under my breath as I head towards my pool. "I am way too sober for this shit."
I push past what feels like an endless stream of drunken people before I finally get out of the house, and onto the patio by the pool. I shake my head, a small grin dancing across my lips.
Call me what you will, but I, Dionysus, am the god of partying, and I never disappoint.
I find Kenzie sitting on the edge of the pool with her feet dangling over the edge, her heels discarded carelessly on the pavement next to her. She's staring out at the dark blue pool with a far-away expression on her features, her feet causing little swirls to ripple across the pool's otherwise calm surface.
"Hey drunkard." I grin, sprawling myself on the ground next to her. "I thought you were going to stop."
Kenzie's head jerks up, and she stares at me with barely veiled surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"Well, there were several people who came up to me worried about the drunk girl tiptoeing around the pool, so I decided to come and save my pool from splashing someone it would regret." I joke, winking at her.
Kenzie giggles, shaking her head so much that her hair falls in front of her face. "I just acted extra super duper drunk so that everyone would clear out. They all ran when I threatened to puke."
So that's why everyone randomly decided to come inside. I shoot her a teasing grin. "Dollface, you don't need to act very much to achieve that."
"Shut your trap dickface." She grumbles, and I can practically feel her glaring at me through her curtain of hair. "Go away, I'm supposed to be trying to ignore you."
I chuckle, reaching out and tucking her hair so I can look her in the eye. She stiffens, her striking ice-blue eyes widening to the size of saucers. My breath catches in my throat, and pain tears through me quick as lightening. Ariadne. My hand stills in the motion of tucking her hair behind her ear, and I swallow hard. Much to my immense frustration, my voice comes out raspy and barely above a whisper. Get it together Spencer you pathetic idiot! "Why are you trying to ignore me?"
Kenzie breaks eye contact with me so she can take a swig of her whiskey. I honestly have no idea where she got it from; I've never been a fan of whiskey. Mainly because I didn't invent it, but I'm not being biased or anything. "Because."
"Because?" I raise an eyebrow at her. "That's all the explanation I'm going to get dollface? I'm hurt, I thought we were better friends than that."
"See that's exactly it!" She exclaims, pointing her bottle at me.
I grin, snatching it out of her hands and taking a long drink of it. I pretend to ignore the scowl she sends my way when she realises her hand is empty. "What's exactly it? I'm your friend? Didn't know that was illegal in Greece, shit."
She smacks my shoulder, laughing a little. "Stop! Look, now you're making me laugh! You're taking advantage of me while I'm drunk and that's not cool."
"Oh, shame on me. Most boys would take advantage of a drunk girl at a party by trying to get into her pants but I'm so much worse; I'm making you laugh." I drawl sarcastically. "I should be arrested."
The glare on her face is quickly replaced by a sparkling smile that actually renders me speechless for several long seconds. Then Kenzie realises she's smiling, and she makes a sloppy attempt at trying to wipe it off her face; when I chuckle she realises she's failing spectacularly, so instead she settles for turning away from me and crossing her arms over her chest. "Just go jump in the pool."
"Okay dollface." Grinning impishly, I pull off my dark purple shirt and throw it down to the ground next to her, kicking my shoes off on top of it. "If you insist."
At the sound of my shirt hitting the ground Kenzie whips around, horror on her face. "What the hell are you do-woah, abs." She makes no attempt at hiding the fact she's shamelessly checking me out.
I smirk, posing for her. "Like what you see dollface?"
"Yes-no!" She shakes her head, her cheeks reddening. "Stop being so hot, god! You're making ignoring you so hard!"
"Well dollface, maybe it you hadn't dressed up so sexy then I wouldn't be paying so much attention to you. So it's your fault really that you're finding it hard to ignore me." I let my gaze slowly flicker over her, drinking in every single aspect of her appearance. She's wearing a dress that's so unlike Kenzie it initially shocked me a little; it's a tiny black number that emphasizes her small, curvy figure by dipping down at the front into a V neckline and winding around her body in flattering straps. Her hair is pulled back at the front with little loose curls that frames her delicate features, and her makeup is styled in a sexy smoky way that makes her bright blue eyes pop. I haven't been able to take my eyes off her all night - apart from when I lost her - and I would be lying out of my ass if I said that she wasn't the most gorgeous person at this party.
Kenzie blushes even harder. Man, she's blushing a lot tonight. "Flattering me, as much as I love it, won't work."
I can't help but laugh; I've decided that I love no-filter-Kenzie. "Alright then bellissima, if you don't tell me why you're ignoring me then me and my abs will jump into the pool right in front of you and get you all wet." I wiggle my eyebrows at her suggestively.
Kenzie wrinkles up her nose in frustration. "You wouldn't."
I cock my eyebrows at her, putting my hands on my hips. Her gaze follows my hands and she gulps. My smirk deepens. "You really want to challenge me dollface?"
"Yes." She stutters hesitantly, her eyes stuck firmly on my chest.
"Your choice." I shrug, then abruptly start running towards the pool.
Kenzie shrieks, flinching away from the pool. "No, stop! I'll tell you!"
I skid to a halt just before the pool and casually drop down next to her. I flash her a pearly white grin, propping my arms up on my knees and placing my chin on my palms in a childlike manner. "I'm waiting dollface."
Kenzie groans, rubbing her face. "I hate you."
"Nah, you don't." I tease. "You love me and my abs."
"This is why I didn't wanna tell you." She mumbles into her palms.
I grin and bump her shoulder with mine. "Tell you what, let's play a game."
"A game?" She parrots, lifting her face out of her palms just to glance at me incredulously. "Are you serious?"
"Why not?" I shrug. "I'm drunk and sitting by a pool. Why not add a game into the mix?"
"Okay." She replies, still watching me suspiciously. "What's the game? Because if it's strip poker or something I'm not playing that again."
My jaw drops, and I almost fall into the pool laughing. "Can you be drunk all the time?"
Just like that, her expression drops, and Kenzie lowers her gaze to her lap. "Not anymore."
"Not anymore?" I gape at her in shock. "Wait, does that mean that you used to do this? As in party? You?"
"Yeah." She admits quietly, and my eyebrows jump up in surprise. Man, I'm still getting used to this whole no-filter thing; Kenzie is going to have a lot of regret tomorrow morning. I should feel guilty for finding out more about her, but she's so shut off that any chance I get I'm going to leap on it and hold it down. "Towards the end of high school I was into that whole partying scene so much that it kind of got out of hand."
"What changed?"
"I got pregnant." She sucks in a shuddering breath.
My jaw drops again. "What?"
Kenzie keeps babbling, almost as if she's forgotten I'm there. "And that's why I stick around him, because he's the only tie to my mother that I have left since she died from cancer, and Grace has some seriously deluded idea as to what a being a sister entails so that's a bust, and nobody seems to understand that, even though he can be a horrible human being who's more bipolar than you, and at the same time I'm scared that I'm not being a good mother to Jasmine because-"
"Jasmine is your daughter?!"
"-I didn't have a mother figure when I was growing up and all I have to go on is my father and he's not the world's greatest parent for obvious reasons and-"
"Kenzie!"
She blinks, blushing deeper than a radish. "Oh shit. I just said that all out aloud, didn't I?"
"Yes you did dollface." I watch her closely, all traces of joking wiped from my face as quickly as they came. "Are you okay?"
"No." She swallows, jumping to her feet. "I-I need to go to the bathroom."
"Kenzie wait-"
But in true Kenzie fashion, she's disappeared into my house before I can finish my sentence.
I stare after her retreating figure, a strange feeling washing over me.
What the hell was that?
I return to my party shortly after Kenzie, but for the first time in my existence my heart just isn't in it. I look out across the throngs of people and purse my lips into a thin line, trying to figure out a quick way to get everyone out of my house without too much effort. I grin and raise my voice to a loud holler.
"EVERYONE! THE POLICE ARE COMING!"
Ten minutes, and several potentially harmful accidents involving people scrambling for cover later, my house is pretty much empty, save for a few extremely unconscious stragglers, who I drag into a corner of my living room with a roll of my eyes. I'll give them a few minutes to wake up, and then another hour or two to let them figure out where the hell they are. Then I'll kick them out.
I groan and rub my face as I trudge through the hallway, kicking aside empty cups as I go. I hadn't seen Kenzie since she left me beside the pool; Jo and her must've been caught up in all the commotion and left. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed; I'd hoped to see if she was ok before she left.
God, I'm turning into a complete sap. I need to distract myself before I start wanting to watch romcoms with her.
I reach the end of the hallway and glance over my shoulder to double check that there's nobody behind me. An empty hallway is all the reassurance that I need before my fingers ghost over the keypad hidden behind one of my favourite Greek vases - depicting myself and my many worshippers, of course - and type in the password.
As soon as I click enter the wall hisses and moves to the left, revealing a small backlit room.
And that's when my night goes from bad to jaw-droppingly horrible.
Because when I peer into that room, I'm not greeted by the sight of my thrysus stick; the one stick in all of existence that can both harness and remove my powers if wielded by either myself or one of my Bacchae nymphs.
No. The room is horribly, terrifyingly, disastrously empty.