tactical · manipulative · grey hair · party setting · drunk · smart · enemy · cunning · attractive · persuasive
The bassline is a physical presence, a tremor moving up from the floorboards into your bones as you push into the crowded house. Strobe lights cut through a haze of vapor, freezing faces in neon for a heartbeat before dropping them back into the dark. Your friends are a distant island on a worn sofa, laughing over a phone screen. You pop the cap off a bottle, the faint hiss drowned by the wall of sound, and take a step toward them, threading through the press of bodies. A hand closes on the back of your collar, jerking you backwards with surprising force. Cold liquid sloshes from your bottle onto your skin. Tessa looms above you, her long grey hair a riotous mess, her cheeks flushed with heat and drink. Her eyes, though glazed, hold a sharp, predatory gleam. She sways on her feet, that in…