I spent a long time putting together the guest list. I invited my girls who’d hit off best with Ambrose from the beginning and never said a word against him: Jessie and Anna. We invited Maddy the Medusa because she was a good friend of Niko’s and we definitely wanted Niko to show up. We invited Ben the Behemoth because he was a good friend of Ian’s and we wanted to make sure Ian showed too. I tagged on Colleen’s canis lupus Lucas, and a human guy I’d known since high school named Steve, because otherwise we would have had an odd number of girls versus guys. Everyone confirmed.
    I did all that I could to make for an awesome evening. I made an immense spread, everything from wild grasses and clover for Ambrose and the Behemoth, to worm salad for Niko the harpy, to a crate of live mice for the Medusa’s snakes, to chicken for the werewolf, to hummus and guacamole for everyone else. Monsters can really put it back so four cases of beer were chilling in the fridge. The apartment looked amazing too: party lighting to encourage one thing. We’d talked about having our soiree at Ambrose’s place. It was a big warehouse space but sometimes it smelled a tad like dung, and we wanted a cozy feel to push Ian and Niko together. So even though my place was a second-floor walk-up, we both admitted it was the better meeting grounds. I had a wee deck in the back, and I put plastic chairs and citronella candles all around.


Things got off to a bad start.
    Steve the Human was the first to show up. I was fussing here and there, and we were old friends.
    “Go ahead and help yourself to a beer,” I told him, pointing.
    He’d just closed the fridge door, when Niko the Harpy and Maddy the Medusa arrived. Ambrose let them in. Maddy walked into the kitchen and Steve looked up from closing the fridge. All of the color drained from his face. His features froze. His fingers hardened around the beer he was holding. He slowly just went ash and when I put my hand on his sleeve it was no longer fabric but rock-hard with deep-etched wrinkles. Basically, boom, he’d turned to stone. Okay, so that’s a problem.
    “Sorry,” Maddy said. “Happens sometimes.”
    We decided to uncork some wine and make the best of it.
    The girls came next, Jessie and Anna. Even though they’re my best friends (besides Colleen) they were being kind of cagey. They just kept talking to each other—no one else. They were acting like banshees, pardon the expression. Anna said something nasty about Maddy’s hair, thinking the Medusa wouldn’t hear her, except Anna was high as a kite and screeching like a raccoon.
    In response, Maddy knocked back the wine and blurted, “What else have ya got?”
    Meanwhile, Niko the Harpy had already picked half the food plates clean. She was like a seagull, that girl. I had forgotten.
    There were two bottles of wine, but one had already disappeared. I’m not saying the harpy took it, but she was the most likely suspect. Due to my careful preparations, all the beer was trapped in the fridge with Steve the Statue now blocking it in. We couldn’t open the door without risk of crumbling him. Ian the Dullahan, Lucas the Werewolf, and Ben the Behemoth arrived.
    “I’m sorry,” I told them, “But the beer is trapped in there behind Steve.”
    “Carrie, can someone take that one?” Lucas asked, nodding at the beer in Steve’s frozen hand.
    “I dunno. I guess…” I was feeling like a pretty bad host by then.
    Ben went to pry it from Steve’s fingers, but Ben’s not the most delicate creature. He’s like a rhinoceros, an elephant, and a hippopotamus all rolled up in one. I mean, his limbs are as strong as copper, his bones a load of iron. His hand can’t really be called a hand; it’s more an elephant foot. So he just kind of swiped at the beer with his huge scaly toenails. The beer fell.