The Last Party by Cassidy Lucas

Author:Cassidy Lucas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

21

Saturday, June 25, 2022

Twyla (the Hostess)

TWYLA WAS PASSING THE BARN, IN SEARCH OF ARNOLD, WHO’D MANAGED to wander out of the house in the two minutes she’d left him to fold the clean towels, when she heard the scream.

The guests’ caterwauling from the Andromeadow had surely been heard all over Topanga. Twyla knew she should be grateful—the goddess had truly been watching over her this morning, when the bees had swarmed but not actually stung a single guest during their bizarre naked footrace. She had found the wrecked hive cracked open at the edge of the meadow, still buzzing with a handful of bees. Surely the work of a black bear, lured by the prospect of honey. Twyla hoped the queen bee had survived and that not too many workers had drowned in the pool of honey.

The big black doors of the barn were closed, as Sibyl was doing a session with two of the guests, the beautiful Asian woman and her sporty redheaded wife. Nocturne and Diurn were in the pen outside their stall, splashing each other with water from their trough.

“Arnold?” Twyla called out. Could he have stumbled into the barn?

Twyla hurried over. When she was a few paces from the barn door, it swung open and the Asian woman—Jodie? Janie? Twyla hated how her brain was no longer good with names—stumbled out, blinking in the weak sunlight, the blindfold Sibyl required in her sessions dangling from the woman’s slender hand. Summer (that one Twyla could remember) ran out, nearly pushing her petite wife to the ground.

“There’s some things in—in there!” Summer shouted, pointing into the dimly lit barn.

Sibyl appeared behind her, looking flustered, her blindfold pushed up on her forehead, her mass of bright red curly hair half escaped from the bun.

“Twyla!” Sibyl called. “Hi there! Joanie, Summer, and I were just taking a brief interlude to relocate—”

The woman Joanie (apparently) said, “There’s some sort of critter in the barn. Like, vermin. A lot of them. An entire nest or something.”

“Loads,” Summer said. “I’m not sure, but I think one of them ran across my sandals. The top of my foot stings. Like, what if it bit me?” She looked to her wife—the way a child might look to its mother for reassurance. “What do you think, babe? Should we go to the ER? Just to be safe.”

“No one needs to go to the hospital, Summer,” Sibyl said. “It’s probably just a few beechies—they’re like chipmunks’ cousins.”

It couldn’t be, Twyla thought. She’d been so careful to chase them out. She’d swung the broom at them, which went against her pacifist nature, calling shoo, shoo! Then she’d stuffed the holes through which they’d entered the barn with wads of steel wool before nailing squares of plywood over the openings.

So how had they gotten back in?

She must have missed a hole.

She cursed herself for being careless. Arnold was to blame—giving her so many extra worries.

Topanga was overrun with the weird little rodents that hopped like kangaroos. They were technically ground squirrels but looked like a cross between a chipmunk and a capybara.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.