Being in peak condition Ambrose has good reaction times. He lunged and grabbed it before it could hit the kitchen tiles. Everyone laughed, and Ambrose thumped his pectoral muscles and raised the beer above his head, triumphant. That was when I spotted something near his hooves. Two gray stone chunks. Ben had gone and knocked off two of Steve’s fingers.
    “Oh damn,” Ben said, like it was nothing. Well, I guess he’d never met the guy, right?
    I felt just horrible that this could have happened. Steve had always played the guitar. He’d never been a professional musician or anything, but still. What really topped it off was when Ambrose handed the beer to Ian—like, here you go, buddy. Ian didn’t even drink; the guy was skeletal and had no mouth. I ran to my bedroom in tears.
    Ambrose charged (again) down the hall, knocking over a decorative table to get to me. In the end he calmed me down with that sweet musky breath and his solid embrace. Steve was already gone from us, he told me, and “There’s nothing we can do for him now.” We returned to the kitchen. Jessie and Anna had disappeared. So had Ben and Lucas. We found Ian, Niko, and Maddy out on the deck. This was a good sign. Our plan was working in this regard at least: Niko and Ian were spending time together.
    “Can you snuff these things?” Maddy asked. One of her snakes was waving at the citronella, dodging its green head, tongue extended.
    “What’s the problem?”
    “My snakes are starving, they’d really like some insects.”
    I told her there were a dozen mice inside.
    “Not anymore. Sorry about that.”
    “What do you mean?” Ambrose asked. He was always quick on the defensive.
    Maddy blew out a couple candles, and then lit up a cigarette right away, which I thought was a real contradiction. She waved the cigarette around. “You know Ben. He knocked them over. They ran everywhere. They’re in your walls now, honey.”
    “Only nine.” Niko grinned like she’d done me a big favor. “I managed to prey on three while they fled.”
    The two monsters exchanged glances and I realized for the first time that maybe Maddy and Niko were not just friends, but together. It had been a long time since Ambrose had seen her, but that would ruin our plans for Ian—and the whole purpose of the party. I wondered how they worked that out, with Maddy’s head swarming with snakes, and Niko being a worm-eater. Then I thought maybe that was part of the appeal. I noticed a few of Maddy’s green locks hanging decapitated.
    It was at that moment the missing foursome burst out of the bathroom. Jessie and Anna had brought the coke, which I should have realized before since they weren’t ordinarily so chatty.
    I opposed Ambrose doing it because it went against his clean living thing, and he said glumly, “There’s no beer. This isn’t a party.”
They all went back in. When they emerged from the bathroom again, it was clear they’d done a whole lot of blow to make up for the lack of swill. Jessie and Anna started checking out the monsters.
    “Look,” Jessie said, gesturing to Ben, “His tail hardens like a cedar.”
    “That’s not his tail,” Anna said.
    “I like your hair,” Lucas growled, skulking up to Jessie, playing with her teased-out retro do. “There’s so much of it.”
The foursome started canoodling, Anna and Ben against the kitchen sink, and Jessie and Lucas out on the deck under the full moon. Lucas was making a real racket, while Ambrose, jacked up, sprinted up and down my hall, charged through the bedroom overturning a mattress, and into the living area where he knocked a couple pictures off the wall. I’d never seen him this way, but then, he’d never been high around me before —unless too much Red Bull counted.