"Hey, you remember what I said last year, right? We're Zombie Boy and Ghost Boy. I'm not ever gonna leave you."
"Promise?"
"One hundred percent."
***
In which Alistair fights the monster that possessed his friend alongside his friends, while trying...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Chapter Forty-Four: Lunchtime Negotiations
(The Hellfire Club, Pt. 4)
***
When the warning bell rang, Alistair left the janitor's closet and immediately ran into one of the people who worked with Nancy on the school paper and the son of the owner of the record store Rowan and Eddie had worked at last summer, Leo. After a weird and awkward conversation that was undercut by Ricky arriving and insisting he wanted to talk to and help Alistair—which he didn't want to talk or need help—Alistair managed to end both with the feeling Leo thought he was more insane than he probably thought he was before and went to his class. Immediately he noticed his friends there, Mike, Dustin and Cami immediately shooting him wordless questions while Max looked confused, but the confusion cleared on Max's face to be replaced with grim understanding at seeing the look on his face.
Alistair tried to ignore them as he sat in his seat and focus on his class, but he couldn't for long when Cami started poking him and Dustin pelted paper note balls at his head that had Alistair write back and say yes, he's fine, and sorry for snapping. That swayed his friends' worry and they gave up, which Alistair was glad for—they didn't need to keep digging and see what a fucked-up mess he was. That led to him, Mike and Dustin plotting how to sway Eddie at lunch after this class, Alistair keeping his mouth shut on the likelihood of that working while also focusing on class and trying to ignore Allie, Ricky and the other ghosts looking at him and their concern, Hugin's concern through the bond—the raven had immediately demanded if he was okay, which he was, Alistair was fine—and dark thoughts of his status among the living hissing in his head. Hey, at least he could multitask—and given how he ignored ghosts for years, he was pretty good at ignoring those thoughts. At least he wasn't being plagued by his death.
Soon, the class ended and the moment Alistair had been kind of dreading had arrived—lunch with the Hellfire Club.
He shuffled into the cafeteria with everyone else and got his food, not even bothering to pray it tasted good, and waited for Mike and Dustin to get theirs. When they did, they turned to the table the Hellfire Club usually sat at... and saw Eddie slam down a magazine and yell out, "And even... murder!"
The metalhead and the other members soon laughed at what Alistair presumed was a bullshit article about D&D, but he hardly cared about that. Not when it told him everything he needed to know—Eddie was revved up today. Granted, he was always revved up, but he was more so than usual today. And that meant the likelihood of convincing him slip further from a low chance into zero.
Fuck, this is not going to go well.
"Shit, he seems really revved up today," Dustin said, also noting that just like Alistair did—and also as nervous as Alistair of what that could mean for moving Hellfire to another night.
