"Yeah. They do a couple fund-raisers a semester here. This is kind of a weird one-but they did it last year and it brought in a lot."
Not weird, Thea thought numbly. Weird doesn't begin to describe it.
Half the room was empty, just scuffed hardwood floor, a broken basketball backboard, and exposed pipes in the ceiling. But the other half looked like a cross between a medieval dungeon and a casino. She walked slowly toward it, her footsteps echoing.
Wooden booths of various sizes were decorated with orange and black crepe paper and fake spider webs. Thea read one banner after another.
"Fortune telling... Drench a Wench... Bobbing for Shrunken Heads?"
"It's bobbing for apples really," Eric said, seeming embarrassed. "And the gambling isn't real. You do it all with goblin money and exchange it for prizes."
Thea couldn't stop looking at the booths. Wheel of Torture: a money wheel with a dummy dressed like a witch spreadeagled in the middle. Bloody Blackjack. Devil's Darts... a dart game with a cork witch as a target.
And there were witch figures everywhere. Cloth witches on nooses hanging from the overhead pipes.
Cardboard witches leering from the tops of booths. Paper witches dancing on the wall. They were fat, skinny, white-haired, gray-haired, cross-eyed, squint-eyed, warty, funny, scary... and ugly. That was the one thing they all had in common.
That's what they think of us. Humans. All humans...
"Thea? Are you okay?"
Thea whirled. "No, I am not okay." She gestured around the room. "Will you look at this stuff? Do you really think it's funny? Something to party about?" Hardly aware of what she was doing, she spun him around to face The Iron Maiden-a wooden replica with rubber spikes.
"What are people going to do? Pay to step into that? Don't they realize that it used to be real? That real people were put in it, and that when the door closed, those spikes went into them, into their arms and their stomachs and their eyes..." She couldn't go on.
Eric looked as stricken as Dani had earlier. He'd never seen her like this. "Thea-look, I'm sorry... I never thought..."
"Or that." Thea gestured toward the Wheel of Torture, the words tumbling out. "Do you know how they really put a witch on the wheel? They broke every bone in her body so they could just thread her arms and legs through the spokes like spaghetti. Then they put the wheel on a pole and left her up there to die...."
Eric's face contracted with horror. "God, Thea..."
"And these pictures--the witches who got tortured didn't have green skin and evil eyes. They weren't monsters, and they didn't have anything to do with devils. They were people."
Eric reached out for her, but she spun away, staring at a particularly ugly hag on the wall. "Do you think this place is all right for a party? That this is good fun? That witches look like that?" She flung out an arm, close to being hysterical. "Well, do you?"
In her mind's eye she could see the world: Dani and Blaise and all other witches on the left; Eric and the students here and all other humans on the right, both races hating and despising each other-and herself somewhere in the middle.
Eric caught her shoulders. "No, I don't think it's all right. Thea, will you just listen to me for a second?"
He was almost shaking her-but she could see that there were tears forming at the corners of his eyes.
"I feel awful," he said. "I never thought about taking this stuff seriously-and that's my own stupid fault, and I know it's not an excuse. But now that you say it, I do see how terrible it is, and I'm sorry. And I never should have brought you here, of all people..."
Thea, who had been starting to relax, stiffened again. "Why me 'of all people'?" she demanded.
He hesitated a moment, then met her eyes and spoke quietly. "Because of your grandma's store. I mean, I know it's just herbs and positive thinking- but I also, know that in the old days, there would have been somebody out there pointing a finger and calling her a witch."
Thea relaxed again. It was okay for people to think
Gran was a witch-if by "witch" they meant someone who talked to plants and mixed up homemade hair tonic. And she couldn't disbelieve Eric, not under the intensity of those steady green eyes. But she saw an opportunity and seized it. "Yeah, and they'd probably have burned me for giving you this present," she said, opening her hand. "And you'd probably have been scared or superstitious if I asked you to keep it with you all the time: you'd think I was putting some kind of a spell on you-"
"I wouldn't think anything," he said firmly, taking the little green pillow from her. It smelled like fresh New Hampshire pine needles, which was what was in it-mainly. She'd also added a few protective herbs and an Ishtar crystal, a golden beryl in a star cut with thirty-three facets, carved with the name of the Babylonian mother goddess. The charm was the best she could do to help him fend off Blaise's spells.
"I would just kiss it and put it my pocket and never let it out of my sight," Eric went on. And he did, stopping after the kiss to say, "Mm, smells good."
Thea couldn't help smiling at him. She chanced saying, "Actually, it's just to remind you of me."
"It will never leave my pocket," he said solemnly.
Well, that worked out nicely.
"Look, there's probably something we can do about this place," Eric said, glancing around again. "The school board doesn't want any bad publicity. Why don't I run and borrow a camera from the journalism class, and we can take some pictures so people will see what we mean when we complain?"
Thea glanced at her watch. "Why not? I think I've already missed French."