Chapter 80: Toast

POV: Carly

The Hole was loud and warm and smelled like smoke and something sweet and slightly chemical that she did not want to examine too closely.

She stood at the entrance with Katy beside her and let herself have exactly three seconds of looking at the room before she had to be someone who walked into it with confidence.

Vampires everywhere. Some she recognized from class. Some she did not. The specific energy of a supernatural gathering that was different from a regular student party in ways she could feel rather than see. Louder somehow. Faster. Like everything was running at a slightly higher frequency.

There was blood on the bar counter.

She looked at Katy.

Katy looked at the blood.

"Normal." She said. "For this crowd."

"Great." Carly said.

She looked for Niko.

She found him.

He was already coming toward her with that expression the one she had started to understand was specifically for her and nobody else in the room and she felt her shoulders come down from around her ears.

His arms were around her from behind before she had registered him arriving and she yelped and then laughed because she was apparently never going to stop being caught off guard by his speed.

He turned her around.

"There's my pretty girl." He said.

She looked up at him. "There's my handsome guy."

Katy made a sound behind them that communicated deep suffering.

"Hello Katerina." Niko said over Carly's head.

"Do not." Katy said.

Carly pointed at both of them. "Behave."

"It's not me." Katy said.

"It's definitely her." Niko said.

"I will leave." Katy said pleasantly. And walked toward the bar.

Carly shook her head and looked back at Niko and he was looking at her with that full expression and she thought that a room full of people who were technically her natural enemies felt significantly less terrifying with him right next to her.

"You look incredible." He said.

She felt the heat in her cheeks. "Katy's work."

"You always say that." He said. "Give yourself some credit."

She opened her mouth.

"Monroeson!"

Enzo was cutting through the crowd with a bottle raised above his head and Mauricio right behind him with the specific expression of someone who had been watching Enzo do things like this for a long time and had stopped trying to prevent them.

They arrived.

Enzo looked at Carly.

He looked at her for a moment.

Then he looked at Niko.

Then back at Carly.

"Gorgeous." He said. To Niko. "Well done."

"She is right here." Niko said.

"I know." Enzo said. "I said it to you because you need the reminder that you did well." He turned to Carly and his expression shifted into something that was more genuine than its surface suggested. "Hi."

"Hi." She said.

"Lorenzo." He said. "But everyone calls me Enzo."

"I know." She said. "You gave me detention."

He grinned. "That was a gift. I saved you from the headmistress's wrath."

"Mauricio O'Neil." Mauricio said from beside him. He extended his hand. Calm. Measured. "We met briefly."

"We did." She said and shook it.

He nodded. That was it. But it was a warm nod and she filed it away.

Enzo was already turning to face the room.

"Oi." He said. Which somehow carried over the music and the noise and the general chaos of forty supernatural students at a party.

The music dropped slightly. People turned.

Carly suddenly felt very visible.

Enzo raised his bottle.

"Gather round." He said. "We have a guest of honor."

Niko pressed his hand to the small of her back. She felt it and steadied.

"Now." Enzo said. "I'm not going to pretend any of us saw this coming. Because we didn't. Five years of looking across the cafeteria at each other and the last thing any of us expected was to be standing here toasting to the fact that our faction leader went and got himself a witch girlfriend." He paused. "A McPherson witch girlfriend at that."

Light laughter around the room.

Carly exhaled slowly.

"But." Enzo said. "Here we are." He looked at her directly. "Carly. You walked into a school cafeteria full of people who had opinions about you and you sat down anyway. That took something." He tilted the bottle slightly. "Niko doesn't care about much. Anyone who knows him knows that. So when he does it's pretty obvious and it's been pretty obvious for a while." He glanced at Niko. "So I propose a toast. To our most unexpected guest. To Carly McPherson. Who apparently is the only person on earth capable of getting this particular vampire to act like a functioning member of society."

Laughter. Genuine this time. From all around the room.

Niko shoved Enzo in the chest.

Enzo did not move. Just grinned.

"Cheers." He said.

The room echoed it.

Bottles raised.

Carly stood in the middle of it and felt something she had not expected to feel in this room.

Welcome.

Not performed. Not polite. Just the genuine version of it from a group of people who had every reason to give her the opposite.

Enzo offered her the bottle.

She shook her head. "I don't really drink."

"Just a little." He said. "It's bad luck not to drink to your own toast."

She looked at the bottle.

She looked at Aurora across the room.

Aurora looked back.

Aurora reached over and took the bottle from Enzo's hand and drank from it without breaking eye contact with Carly.

The room went slightly quieter.

Carly reached out and took the bottle from Aurora's hand.

She drank.

It burned all the way down and she was absolutely not going to let that show and she managed it with everything she had and handed the bottle back to Enzo and heard the room erupt and felt Niko's arm come around her waist from behind.

"That." He said in her ear. "Was extraordinary."

"I need water." She said quietly.

He laughed against her neck.

She leaned back into him and looked at Aurora who had turned away and thought that she had not come this far to be intimidated by a red cup and eye contact.

She was not going to be.