CHAPTER 13
Vaughn
The boy screamed as the guillotine blade dropped, spattering blood from the severed head onto the plastic-draped floor beneath.
Then he leaned in closer to examine the head. “Cool,” he said, and moved on to the hallway lined with mummies that popped up from their sarcophagi, trailing their dusty shrouds, to scare people as they walked past and tripped the motion detectors.
I grinned, the mastermind standing in the dark, watching the kids move through my haunted house.
It was two weeks before Halloween, the time of the annual fundraiser for the preservation of historic Virginia homes. And I had to admit, this year it really put the fun back in fundraising. Six historic homes in the neighborhood, mine included, had been decorated for Halloween, and were giving out candy and other treats. Those who donated were allowed to bring their family through the tour, and the preservation society must have advertised far and wide because there were more people than I would have expected, including some in their twenties—a demographic notoriously hard to fundraise from. I’d like to meet their new fundraiser and see what her angle had been. It never hurt to swap strategies.
When I’d first received Joanna Madsen’s email that this year’s fundraiser was to be a Halloween tour, I’d been excited. We’d never celebrated Halloween when I was a child. My parents were always at fundraisers of their own, or attending proper adult parties, and living in a fairly rural area of Virginia, with large houses spread far apart, wasn’t conducive to trick or treating, even if my parents hadn’t dismissed it as begging for food.
And when I’d learned that Buck and Jennifer Murphy from across the way were also participating, I was doubly excited, because it was a chance to show them up. My decorations simply had to be better. It wasn’t a feud, per se, because the Murphys didn’t realize they were a part of it. But I knew. I knew that they said things like, “We moved here for the schools,” to me, and, “We wanted a neighborhood of people like us,” to Mr. Smithson down the street, who openly flew a Confederate flag. When the Chens moved across the street from the Murphys the next year, they had been chilly at best. I knew they had a Choose Life bumper sticker on their Lexus SUV and a nine-year-old daughter who they dressed like a beauty queen even though she really wanted to play soccer.
Which is why, when Buck Murphy first clapped a hand on my shoulder and asked where Mrs. Vaughn was, I lifted an eyebrow and said, “Or the other Mr. Vaughn,” and watched him jerk his hand back like my sweater had burned him. And why, when Jennifer Murphy asked me where I got the flowers for last spring’s neighborhood association meeting, I slid Eduardo Ortega’s card across the table to her and asked, solicitously, if she’d like me to make introductions, watching the slight flare of her nostrils as she left the card where it was.
All battles must be fought on their own terms of engagement. And by the terms of the neighborhood association, having the best Halloween decorations was my opening sally. Oh yes, the Murphys were going down.
Jim and Monica Brubecker had gone with a Victorian Halloween, very prim and proper and full of gourds. Harmon and Janine Tivoli had set up a charming pumpkin patch in their polo field, with scarecrows and bales of hay, and a little cart giving out donuts and apple cider. The Giegers, who had an absurd number of children whose names all began with K, had decorated for a kids’ Halloween, with a bunch of cutesy nonsense.
My favorite was Bob and Barbara Chen’s Salem theme. They’d set up a kind of history lesson on the Salem Witch Trials, complete with different explanations historians had given for the outbreaks. Something told me the overlap in the audiences for the Chens’ and the Giegers’ houses would not be large. Something also told me that the Murphys would be offended by anything to do with witches, especially right across the street from them—a fact that I imagined the Chens would be well aware of—and I made a mental note to wink at them the next time I saw them. I made a secondary mental note to arrange a neighborhood holiday gift exchange and manipulate it such that I could give the Murphy kids the entire series of Harry Potter books and DVDs.
And me? I had created the haunted house of my dreams. Weeks before, when I’d told William I was going to do a haunted house, he’d smiled and launched into stories about the haunted hayride that he and Charlotte had gone on at the local apple farm as children. They’d sat in hay-cushioned wagons and after being driven through various horrors, left to wend their way through a corn maze that deposited them in the barn, where there was cider, bobbing for apples, and (in the instance of Will and Charlotte’s fourth grade visit, and much to Will’s mortification) vomiting, after eating an inhuman amount of candy corn, donuts, and caramel apples.
I loved hearing William’s stories. I was slowly realizing that though he didn’t share much of himself with most people, it wasn’t because he was private. It was because he didn’t imagine that people much cared. Once I’d made it clear that I was interested and I did care, he’d begun telling me more and more.
After our picnic, we’d gone on date after date, like we were trying to make up for lost time. Multiple dinners (one at a restaurant fancy enough to make William uncomfortable, a mistake I hadn’t repeated); an avant-garde play I’d gotten tickets to as a thank you to the Vaughn Foundation and hadn’t wanted to suffer through alone; the movies several times (I let William choose and he picked a moody horror film and an action blockbuster as if he thought I might protest either). We’d even gone to the National Portrait Gallery, and I’d gotten William all hot and bothered by whispering in his ear all the ways a person might perpetrate a theft of one of the portraits. He’d flushed bright red and squirmed away from me, conflicted. He was hard in his pants, confused about how he could be so aroused hearing about something he should condemn.
It was heady, the effect I had on him. Watching him fight his body’s reactions, so different from his mind’s, I wanted to pin him to the wall, spread him open, and force him to confront the riot of complexity that the world was. That he was. I wanted to overwhelm him, take him out of himself and everything he recognized and give him a mirror that would reflect him back to himself the way I saw him. Beautiful, brave, and scared.
We went on date after date, until we reached the point where it wasn’t dates anymore. It was just being together. I couldn’t get enough of him, in bed or out. I wanted to learn every inch of his body and know everything about him, hear every story.
Hearing about childhood Will made me want to pull grown Will closer to me and keep him near. Not because his stories revealed anything awful, but because being reminded that he’d been a child, and not always the hyper-competent, gun-toting, stoic FBI agent he was now, made him seem more accessible. More vulnerable.
Then there was the fact that I’d never really had a childhood. Not in the way Will and Charlotte did, with play dates and soccer teams, grocery store birthday cakes and backyard water fights—and, apparently, haunted hayrides, complete with eating until puking. There were just things that Vaughns did, and things that Vaughns did not do. I played golf and polo, socialized with the children of my parents’ friends and colleagues, or the other children at boarding school. For my tenth birthday, I’d told my mother I wanted a Pac Man cake, and ended up with a six-tier lemon chiffon affair.
Something about hearing Will’s story of the haunted hayride debacle made me more determined than before to have the best Haunted Historical House ever. I’d started weeks ago, ordering the set pieces from various online retailers and renting a few from a special effects company in D.C. When I called Valerie to ask if she wanted to come over and help decorate my house for Halloween, she’d arrived prepared for something very different. What she found was, in her words, “the lunatic trappings of a madman.”
“What in holy hell are you doing here?” Valerie had asked.
“I’m making a haunted house. I would have thought that was self-evident.”
“I thought you meant ‘Come over to decorate’ as in, drink whiskey and look at how your staff had decorated for Halloween.”
“Ah. Well, I have plenty of whiskey. But we’re making a house of horrors.”
She’d giggled, but after about two glasses of Lagavulin she’d kicked off her Manolo Blahniks and started squirting fake blood with glee.
It had taken us hours, but I thought the effects looked pretty good. Now, watching children scream and adults clutch each other in fear, it felt completely worth it.
I got a text from Will that he was outside and I went to meet him, sticking close to the walls so I could watch everyone enjoying themselves.
“Well, hello…Count Dracula?” Will was wearing a rayon cape velcroed over his suit. Clearly he’d come straight from work.
He held up a pair of plastic fangs and nodded. Then he gave me a once-over, and his eyes got huge. “Are you…are you Lucius Malfoy?”
I gave him a turn so he could appreciate my costume. “Indeed.”
His eyes narrowed and he stepped close. I leaned in for a kiss (since he hadn’t inserted the fangs yet) but he spoke softly into my ear.
“How did you…uh, why are you Lucius Malfoy?”
He couldn’t possibly have thought he could admit to having thought I looked like Lucius Malfoy when we first met and expect me not to tease him about it. I hadn’t quite expected the heat in his eyes, however. “Why? Do you like it?”
“Um. I. Maybe.”
“Just something I threw together,” I said breezily. “Come, let me show you the haunted house.” I offered my elbow and he took it, tugging his cape out of the way. As we walked in the front entrance, where there was space to mill about and have a drink for those who didn’t wish to enter the house of horrors, Will’s gaze darted around.
At first I assumed he was uncomfortable holding my arm in public, but when I moved to ease away, he pulled me closer to his side.
“What is the deal with these costumes?” he hissed in my ear.
I followed his eyeline, but all I saw were a few dukes, a Marie Antoinette, the bass player of KISS whose name I couldn’t remember, and a smattering of the usual zombie brides, pirates, and animals. “What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re all…” Will made a gesture with his hand up to the height of his head that I did not understand. “You know, real.”
“I hate to break it to you, William, but—”
He elbowed me. “They’re costume costumes. ‘Going to a Halloween party in a movie’ costumes. Like…rented or something.” He spat the words out like they indicated a personal betrayal.
“What’s the problem?”
His head drooped a little. “I’m just…” He plucked at his own cape and tossed the plastic fangs next to a jar of candy corn sitting on the buffet table against the wall.
“You’re perfect,” I said, leaning close. I grabbed him by his cheap cape and pulled him to me, looking in his face for indication that he didn’t want to be so close in public. But all I saw was a slight irritation in his eyes, just as I often saw when he realized the gulf between our habits, which quickly gave way to a darted glance at my mouth. I plucked at his cape and smiled. “Just don’t get this thing anywhere near an open flame.”
I kissed him softly, reminding myself that ravishing one’s boyfriend in a haunted house was something better done after the guests had gone home.
When we broke apart, William smiled. “Oh, sorry, probably shouldn’t leave those there.” He pocketed the fangs he’d dropped.
I bet he put things back in their proper place at the grocery store if he decided he didn’t want to buy them, and always returned his shopping cart to the designated area. Hell, he probably returned other people’s orphaned carts to the designated area.
“Are these…is that homemade candy?” he said accusingly.
“Well, these candy corn and all the jelly beans were commercially obtained.” I pointed to the dozen or so jars of candy that glowed like multicolored jewels on the table. “But yes, the candy bars, peanut butter cups, peppermint patties, and truffles are handmade. Not, of course, by me. My culinary aspirations don’t stretch quite so far. Would you care to try some?”
William was looking at the candy display like it was either something very distasteful, or something he wanted a great deal. With William it was sometimes hard to tell.
Then he reached out a tentative hand for a Snickers bar, changed his mind and reached toward the truffles. Then his hand just hovered over the table and he turned to me, stricken. I laughed. Something he wanted, then. He looked like a kid faced with the impossible choice between favorites.
“How about you try something now, and I’ll have the rest wrapped up for you to take home later?”
Will nodded and leaned into my side.
“May I make a suggestion?” I curled an arm around his waist, holding him close, and handed him a piece of candy from a tray at the back of the table.
He took a tentative bite and then his face lit up, eyes flying to mine. “How did you know?”
“You chose a Milky Way with dark chocolate at the movies,” I said. “Twice.” I was slightly offended that he would be so surprised I’d noticed. “So I had Priscilla make them.”
Will rested his head against my shoulder for just a moment. It was a gesture that I hadn’t seen from him before, and it hit me right in the gut.
“Thank you,” he said softly, and finished his candy.
“Shall we go through?”
When I took Will’s hand, he let me, and I led him through the foyer to where the haunted house began. “Just let me know if you get scared,” I teased, squeezing his hand.
Will shot me the unimpressed look I associated with Agent Fox. It said, Sure, let’s see your cute little society version of a haunted house. I couldn’t wait to prove him wrong. Still, he didn’t let go of my hand.
We walked down the cobweb-draped corridor and I made a subtle signal behind me for the man in charge of letting people through to hold off for a while, leaving us alone. I’d never been much for horror movies—they bored me. But here, holding Will’s hand as we ventured forth into the threatening dark, I could see why people liked to watch them on dates. Will walked half a step closer to me than he usually did, held my hand a little tighter. I felt sensitized to his presence at my side. Attuned to his responses to our environment.
The cobwebs draped down like Spanish moss, and the fog machine made the corridor soupy. We walked slowly forward and came to the room with the guillotine. Cackles and screams poured from the hidden speakers, then the blade dropped and blood spattered the floor.
“Cool,” William said, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing as he leaned in to look at the severed head just as the kid I’d seen earlier had done. “Where’d you get this?”
“I rented it from a prop house in D.C.”
In the hallway of mummies, eerie sounds drowned out all ambient noise. As we walked past the first sarcophagus, the mummy slowly sat up, arms raised, zombie-like, eyes glowing through its wraps. Then the second sat up, and the third, and William grinned, trailing his fingers over the edge of the sarcophagus and peeking inside.
The mad scientist room had lights strung from the ceiling to look like lightning striking and a reanimating the corpse laid out on a medical table. Trays of scalpels, forceps, clamps, retractors, and curved needles, all spotted with blood and gore, lay beside the body.
“You can touch all the organs and blood,” I told Will, indicating the bowls on the table that held liver, spaghetti, and more of the blood mixture with red Jello clots in it. He leaned in close, but didn’t let go of my hand to touch anything. We left as the lightning struck again.
As we crossed the threshold into the hallway, Will relaxed, seeing nothing coming. Which was precisely the idea.
The man in coveralls and a chainsaw jumped out from behind a curtain, accompanied by chainsaw revving noises. It was the first time I’d experienced it, and it was a very good effect.
But rather than grabbing my hand or gasping, when the man jumped out, William pushed me behind him and scrabbled at his side for his gun, tearing his cape off in the process. When he realized that his gun wasn’t there, he jumped forward, and the man in the costume dropped the chainsaw, and backed away, hands raised. All told, it only took two seconds, maybe three. Then William backed up, bent down to rest his palms on his thighs, and ran a hand through his hair.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the man in costume, voice shaky with adrenaline. “Sorry, man.”
I stepped forward slowly, not wanting to get hit by accident, and when I knew I was in Will’s line of sight, I put my hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
He nodded, clearly embarrassed. “Yeah, uh, sorry, I just. You know.”
I took William’s elbow and led him a few steps down, where I knew there really wasn’t anyone else waiting to jump out, and pushed him against the wall.
He wouldn’t quite meet my gaze.
“You pushed me behind you.”
His eyes flicked up, then he gave a one-shouldered shrug and looked back down.
I leaned forward and tilted his chin up, kissing him deeply. He returned the kiss, grabbing my hands and squeezing them. “It’s almost done,” I whispered. “Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry,” he muttered sheepishly.
“No need to be sorry. You just almost shot an actor in a Halloween costume, that’s all. Good thing you didn’t actually have your gun.”
“I wouldn’t have shot him,” William grumbled, but he pulled my arm closer and linked our elbows.
The last room was the haunted library. As we walked in, whispers jumped from the speakers hidden throughout the room. The windows glowed red. Suddenly, there was a creaking sound, and a book flew off the shelf. On the wall next to the grandfather clock, a painting in a large gilt frame tilted on its own, then hung askew.
Will leaned into me. “Even your haunted houses can’t resist messing with art,” he murmured, and I squeezed his hand.
Then, all at once, a dozen books began to move, their spines sliding slowly out from the ones on either side. Then, one by one, they flew off the shelves onto the floor, and the door slammed shut behind us. William startled slightly. The whispers crescendoed and the lights strobed, making everything appear to be moving toward us. Then a door on the other side of the library opened slowly, showing us the way out.
“That’s it,” I said softly. And I could have sworn I saw just the hint of relief on Will’s face.
“Gentleman,” a voice said once we’d exited the library, and an arm pointed us in the direction of the rest of the party.
“Jesus!” William yelled, and jumped backward, almost into me. I grabbed his shoulders to steady him.
I looked where Will was looking, but all I saw was a man in a clown wig and makeup with a stuck-on red clown nose. The man didn’t react to Will—or, if he did, his painted on expression hid it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
William walked in a purposely wide arc around the clown, keeping an eye on him and grabbing my hand. “Yeah, nothing. Just, clowns, man. They’re…they smile so big, it’s like…I uh. Just. I’m not a super-big fan, that’s all.”
“Did you read It at an impressionable age, William?”
“No, it’s not the, um, scary clowns. Just the…” He nodded toward the regular old birthday party clown at the exit.
“I’m trying very hard not to tell you how adorable I find the idea that you rushed in to kill the man wielding a chainsaw, protecting me with your life, but you’re scared of children’s clowns.”
“Shut up,” he muttered.
“I did say I was trying very hard, not that I was going to succeed.”
William started to give me that look, but I grabbed him and pulled him around the corner, and away from any prying clown eyes. I looked at him for a moment. William Fox, who’d leaned his head on my shoulder, then pushed me behind him to keep me from harm’s way. Then…nearly shrieked at seeing a clown, and who was now regarding me suspiciously.
I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed. I held him to me, my nose in his hair, and just stood for a minute, maybe two. He relaxed into it, his body molding against mine, finally hooking his chin over my shoulder. Immediately, all I wanted was for everyone to be out of my house so I could lead Will by the hand to my bed, get him out of his horrible suit, and possibly find some utility for the staff I was carrying as part of this Lucius Malfoy costume. As I began narrowing down its possible uses, Will’s stomach growled loudly.
He glared at his stomach as if it had let him down, then looked up, a hopeful little smile playing on his lips. “Hey, can we go back to the candy?”
I kissed him then nodded, leading him back there. He placed one of each of the homemade candies on his plate and grinned at me. I made a mental note that William was very fond of chocolate, and we went to perch at one of the high-top tables in the corner of the room.
“This is wonderful, Vaughn,” Charlton Essex said, hand on my elbow as we passed.
“Glad you’re enjoying, Charlton,” I said. “Have you been through the others yet?”
“Only the Murphys’.”
“And how was it?”
“Oh it was lovely. Nothing so dramatic as you have, but quite well done.”
Ha. Take that, Murphys.
At the table, Will said, “You look like you just won a prize.”
I stood close to him. “I hate the Murphys. Once, Jennifer made a snide comments about how my trees are unkempt. They’re weeping willows, for god’s sake.” Will just raised an eyebrow, like I was ridiculous. “More importantly, they’re horrible racists who seem to want their daughter to be the next JonBenét Ramsey. Besides, I don’t care for their dog.”
Will’s eyes got big but he couldn’t speak because he was stuffing chocolate into his mouth. Then he groaned around the peppermint patty, a deep, shocked sound of pleasure that shot straight to my dick.
“Oh my god, where did these come from?”
“Priscilla,” I said, and he rolled his eyes at me. I kissed him lightly just to taste it on his lips.
“So,” he said. “That haunted house was amazing. I want to go through again and see how everything works. Like, those mummies were motion-sensor activated, right? And the—”
“You can poke and prod at anything you like.”
“But,” he went on, “at the risk of sounding…um, just, that all must have cost you a fortune. But this was a fundraiser, right? So…”
“I may have gotten slightly more enthusiastic about the project than the budget strictly warranted,” I allowed.
He smirked at me. “Don’t you do this for a living?”
I raised an eyebrow. “I think people are enjoying themselves, don’t you? Appreciating the effort that went into it?”
“Couldn’t you just have donated the money you spent on this haunted house and probably it would’ve been more than you raised?”
I didn’t dignify that with an answer, but I did take half of his homemade Snickers bar.
“Wait, this isn’t even about the fundraiser, is it? You just wanted to beat the Murrays or whoever.”
“Murphys,” I said flatly, and shuddered.
“It is! This is, like, the rich people version of having the nicest lawn,” he accused. “Do you have an ‘outdo the neighbors’ line item on your budget spreadsheet?”
“I filed this under ‘unexpected home maintenance,’ if you must know.” Then I found myself confessing, “I always liked Halloween. I never really got to do it as a kid. Maybe this was my way of making up for that.”
Will’s expression softened and he smiled at me. He had chocolate in his teeth.
After a minute of concentrated eating, he glanced tentatively up at me. “Wait, do you really have a spreadsheet?”
He was giving me that same suspicious look that I’d seen him direct at the candy display and my Lucius Malfoy costume. I leaned in close, and said in his ear, “If it makes you hot, I do.”
He practically choked on a mouthful of candy and I patted him on the back.
After clearing his throat, he said, “You make me feel…complicated things, Amory.”
Amory. It sent a shiver through me that pulsed in my stomach and made me feel like I was smiling even though I wasn’t.
“Well,” I said. “Excel may have powerful tools to deal with complications, but I’m sure we can find more interesting ways to map out your feelings.”
Will looked turned on, then self-conscious, then settled at flirtatious. “Tell me about your macros and Visual Basic,” he said, and winked luridly, waggling his eyebrows at me.
I laughed. “I’m officially out of my depth with regard to Excel. I pay people to think about those things for me.”
“To be honest,” William said with a faraway look, “I don’t do a lot with spreadsheets, but one time I made one for my climbing expenses and I researched macros because I got bored adding the same columns over and over again.” He blinked and refocused on me. “Uh, my stories are…not as charming as yours.”
I wrapped a hand around his neck and pulled him in, kissing his mouth that was sweet with chocolate and mint.
“Charm is overrated,” I murmured against his lips.
Will looked deep into my eyes and swallowed hard. “Not when it’s genuine.”