Combings: 0 (cruelly scorning Inca), alcohol units: 4 (dinner party!) naughty thoughts: 62 (blame dinner party guests), cotton units: 10 (but under supervision of Mary Sue Fanfic Beauty Consultant, so ok), calories: 1100 (Ratpacker stole food off plate at dinner party), days since have had steady groomer: 23, seconds since Vachon last flirted: 0, seconds since last snogged in fanfic: appallingly high number (unreasonable by all standards of humanity), narrow precipices upon which secrets balance precariously: lost count

3pm

Weeks have been filled w/ v. little Incan contact (Harsh, merciless necessity!), yet great forays into scientific illumination achieved (Hurrah!).

Am v. important person filling brain w/ knowledge + theories + brilliance, so am really too busy for time-consuming Incan petting rituals, anyway. Have evolved beyond brushing! Am Omnifemale! Resuming use of conditioner on adult-girl-Homo-sapiens hair helped tremendously toward reducing need for combing, as would be expected in evolved, efficient, imbued w/love o' science-type-person. Is Pardoe's influence (v. influential).

The Pardoe, churning the wheels of experimental theory progress, has devised v. tricky plan centered around festive gathering, filling CERK from tops of turrets to depths of dungeon with merriment and glee —> Dinner Party!

Is coincidentally anniversary date of The Pardoe's birth, but is not like dinner festivity is all about her (Though did get her present <— am not ex-llama slouch!). Also happens to be day LaCroix expected back from cantalouping excursion in the land of plantations, so is not remotely a Bonnie-device for attention-seeking. Are Omnifemales, therefore completely advanced in sociological development past neediness for stories written in selves' honor on timely basis. Time, after all, is relative concept, prescribed by culture as form of mass delusion that sundials and wristwatches somehow prove anybody knows what is going on + has control in wacky universe. (Though being honored in non-timely basis would not kill us, am sure. Would be rather fun + nice, actually, but is not point. Is not happening, so will stop harping + sounding so needy, pathetic, etc.)

No, party is about LaCroix. That alone should make him happy, thereby fulfilling The Pardoe's clever Plot To Bring LaCroix Peace, Harmony, and Contentment Whether He Likes It Or Not, but the pair of us have decided to not rest on laurels + stop there.

Why quit while ahead? Why? Why?! <— Absolutely no reason!!!!

Plan to invite profusion of individuals predisposed to agendas founded upon fulfilling LaCroix's relative contentment w/ State of World.

Also inviting Nick.

Oh, and inviting Ratpackers, Screed, and Vachon. Realize that I wrote party was all about LaCroix and not about The Pardoe's birthday the teensiest tiny bit, but fibbed. Is to be expected. Am in intense withdrawal, bereft of living llama lie, therefore must get in unabashed embellishments of truth where can. Besides, could hardly matter if rodent- friendly-type-persons and Spaniards attend dinner party + distract The Pardoe from the shame and burden of STILL being a Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training after almost 17 months (a record, surely!).

Am certain all guests, no matter how Rattus or Spanish, will recognize dignity of occasion + do nothing that would compromise bliss of fellow (non-male) Bonnie's birthday delight, nor besmirch progress of the Plot To Bring LaCroix Peace, Harmony, and Contentment Whether He Likes It Or Not. Shall envelop General-type-person in Zen- like environment (non-pagoda), like Tupperware of Serenity, keeping the entropy of universe at least temporarily at bay! Hurrah!

Is prickly part of plan that no one quite sure when LaCroix will return tonight, though received missive yesterday commanding that all letters, communiques and e-mails pleading for his attention during his absence (of which the dutiful Cousinly-Receptionist- Still-In-Training decided there was none) be prepared for his eagle-eyed perusal. Is obviously blatant advertisement of reappearance (Ego! Ego!), no doubt timed for peak plot-enhancing moment, as undead Romans are wont to do.

Not to sound non-Cousinly, (though since my return has made LaCroix's list of his Ten Least Wanted Plot Devices just after Lichen Clinging To A Stone, I could hardly be considered most loyal in legion, could I?) am not tickled pink nor busting buttons over the General's looming reappearance.

See, have completely taken advantage of his Roman non-presence. Have used LC's lack- of-being-here in personal quest to avoid Inca! Have been squatting in most refined way imaginable w/in the Nightcrawler's penthouse apartment (yoga), for no one but the most plot-driven goes there of their own free will.

Certainly not any Cousins.

Sane Cousins, anyway.

Illegal occupation made conveniently possible by brief stint as one-third of Cousinly Cerberus during War 9. Apparently adult-girl-Homo-sapiens-type-palm-print never erased from security access banks. V. nice overlooking on part of other Cousinly leaders! Props to them!

After initial shaky start avoiding talons of LaCroix's pet War Eagle (why could master vampire not get new goldfish? Why?!), uninvited penthouse-sitting experience transformed from screaming terror into complete delight! Simply explained to frightening raptor-type-person that life offers more opportunity than recreational killing of stuff. Is Omnieagle! Should fly and soar! Should reach heights of capacity, not claw at susceptible ex-llaman trespassers. After much discussion over a cup o' tea, War Eagle finally agreed, and promptly flapped off to library so could check out series of Harry Potter books, leaving me free to gambol and skip from Roman corner to corner at leisure, without threat of scars or pecking (v.g.)

So...

All persons named Bonnie (both) residing in the halls of CERK, through great pondering + deep musing have deemed that the guest list for LaCroix's Party Of Happiness shall include, but not be limited to:

• Nick Knight (for strange and murky reasons)
• Nancy Kaminski (strange)
• Julia Kocich (murky)
• Jayne Leitch (a reactionary decision, for truly lives in Metro TO, therefore her presence actually makes microscopic shred of sense)
• High Priestess Jules (popular)
• Shele (Mary Sue Fanfic Beauty Consultant — free samples! — and Nunkies Anonymous Poet Laureate)
• Vachon (Spaniard)
• Screed (must wear clothing at all times)
• Libby, Johnsie, 'n McLisa (Could not be lapse in judgment! Could not!)
• Christy (Nunketeer, Cousinly Purveyor of Theoretical Sacrificial Gullible Idiots)
• Bonnie Pardoe (Omnifemale Hostess w/ flair in kitchen)
• Me (Omnifemale Hostess w/ flair for Feng Shoe party decorations!)

• Battle Yaks (cad bastard!)
• Pigeons (no gullible idiots here of any species!)
• Juan Valdez (part of Incan Protection Program)
• Old, Dead Guys (not sure if CERK has proper insurance)
• LaCroix (might not come if suspects fun)
• Amazing + Transcendental Cats Who Sit On Vampire Faces (Carmen)
• Factionwits (shall have none of it!)
• Flirts (no! shall get things done!)
• Fanfic Fairies (mean it! nothing silly allowed!

Hurrah!

High Priestesses, as a rule, are very popular people with many faithful and adoring followers, if you don't count the unfortunates given grout duty, depilated with hot wax, or thrown into the odd volcano popping up in the Metro Toronto area. These followers — fans, if you will — prescribe unquestioning allegiance to any doctrines the High Priestess might choose to spout on any particular day, such as:

"A Pagoda To Nunkies might actually work!"

"Tidiness is next to High Priestessness."

"Conversion Day is our holiday. All other days are not Conversion Day, so must be spent behaving ourselves with reserve and polish."

"Do you hear me? Reserve and polish! Oh! That reminds me! I have a manicure appointment!"

So Jules stopped by CERK after her manicure appointment to collect her mail, which had manifested itself in literal bagfuls as of late. At least half of the mass would be junk mail: prank chain letters from the Mercs (easy to spot because they were always asking for chocolate to sponsor a poor child who had become a Nunkie [sic], funds to protect schools of vegetarian piranha in Ecuador, etc.) or fake bills from the Anarchists Against Continuity (also easy to spot because the numbers never added up). Once she sorted these out, Jules dumped the credit card offers from the Last National Bank Of The Grand Caymans — 'Where Your Money Disappears' — and tucked aside the notice from the 'SpeciesMates' dating service for perusal at some future comfy moment.

The mound of mail left over usually all related to Jules's main goal: Rebuilding the Nunkies Anonymous Shrine. Better, bigger, and with adequately high ceilings. After all, Vachon had pointed out the horrible truth with surprising depth and accuracy during the Conversion Day fiasco of 2001 — what good was a High Priestess without a temple-like structure to govern? She was like a Jaguar without its tyres! A sword pin without a lapel to grace in style! A microphone without a jack!

She was Nick regaining his mortality! Absolutely useless!

The fear of Having No Meaningful Purpose drove Jules like a stream engine, meaning that she'd been quite productive in petitioning funds to build a Shrine that could withstand the 21st century. Hence the bounty of mail.

First, she had a lengthy merry-go-round of correspondence with the insurance company. "While it may appear," Jules had initially written politely, so many months ago, "yes, it may appear  that the insurance policy for the Shrine To Nunkies had lapsed at the time of its destruction, please note on page 231 of our contract, in Section D. regarding Miscellaneous Plot Catastrophes, more specifically Subsection Q. detailing the Eternal Coverage Clause: 'As the premises to be insured is subject to rifts in the continuum of time and space, this policy shall remain valid unless cancelled in writing by someone with excellent spelling and good penmanship.'"

"Regardless of calendar issues," Jules went on to write, "a near-sighted flea could see that your company must pay us gobs and gobs of money. Please make the certified cheque out to 'Julie Stafford, H.P.' Thank you for your immediate compliance."

To which the Undead Mutual Assurance Company filed an elegant reply on custom stationery, "We are the insurance company, so we don't have to do anything you say. Nyaah!"

Thus began the craftily penned thirteen-month round robin of certified letters between the High Priestess and the insurers.

"Do, too!"

"Do not!"

"Do, too!"

"Do not! Infinity!"

"Do! Infinity plus one!"

"What's infinity plus one?"

"That's it! This message is on notebook paper  to prove I mean business!"

"Dear Ms. Stafford: We had no idea you felt so strongly about this issue. To forestall any more unfortunate and frightening appearances of notebook paper within our company post, we are willing to offer you this cheque for half of the value of your old Shrineowner's insurance policy, a generous compromise on our part considering the account had been in arrears for almost two years. Please, please go away and do not send us scratch paper any more!"

Empowered that the reinstatement of the glory and prestige of her High Priestess station was semi-within her grasp, Jules began to promote other activities that could potentially siphon loonies into the Addicts' bank account. She still had a box of those blasted 'Recipes From The Jeweled Peach' cookbooks in the trunk of LaCroix's Jaguar, and plenty of spare pieces from the Shrine wreckage that she could sell on eBay. Funds trickled in, a few dollars in every envelope. At this rate, Nunkies Anonymous might be ready to break ground on the Shrine Mach II in time for War 12 (Theoretically still many construction-friendly months away)!

With this satisfying notion making regular deposits into her bank account of hope, Jules approached the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training's (Really? Still in training?!) desk to request her usual postal-bags-in-wheelbarrow with an almost joyous smile.

Jules felt a prickling in her Manicure of Authority. Any hint of a good mood whistled away like the westerly wind.

Bonnie Kate was busy at her computer, composing what appeared, from a distance, to be a group e-mail. A group e-mail that had troublesome vibes oozing from it like filling from a raspberry donut. Jules cringed. Jules shuddered. She could spot a mess from a mile away, and there was one here — looming, foreboding, taunting, and Jules was very concerned that she didn't have the insurance to cover such an impending disaster.

"What are you writing?" Jules asked in an imperious tone. "You aren't writing..." The High Priestess could barely swallow her distaste. "...Invitations to a party,  are you?"

Bonnie Kate froze in her typing, a 'Rruh-rho!' expression swamping her features. The High Priestess to Nunkies Anonymous did not sound full of the party spirit. Was it too late to mark her off the guest list?

Yes, it was, for Jules had read the list of 'Send To:' designees over the Cousinly- Receptionist-Still-In-Training's shoulder. "And you're inviting me?! What farcical notion could possibly merit a party that would require me to revel during The Season Of Reserve And Polish?"

Well, Bonnie Kate was forward-thinking enough to recognize that 'A Plot To Bring LaCroix Peace, Harmony, and Contentment Whether He Likes It Or Not' might not be the best record to spin when persuading the High Priestess's rapid acceptance of the invite. "Urhm, a Thanksgiving party? Aren't you thankful that you're a High Priestess?" she grinned encouragingly.

Unfortunately, Jules wasn't of the mind that her position had dropped into her lap out of the sky like frogs during the Apocalypse. She had earned  her High Priestess-ship through toil, tribulations and a few legal loopholes. "I don't do  Thanksgiving," Jules insisted.

"Then think of it as a joint birthday party, for me and you! You just had a birthday, didn't you? We can celebrate!" the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training tried to reason with the Nunk Anon High Priestess.

"I don't do  birthdays," Jules countered. This was gospel in the High Priestess's book — no Christmas, no birthdays, no to pretty much any day capped off by serving a significant hunk of roast meat on a platter — Jules had her standards!

Bonnie sighed, humming under her breath, "What do you do? Goody-two, goody-two, goody-goody-two-shoes...."

"What?" Jules asked. "Did you say something?"

"I said, this isn't about you,"  Bonnie attempted a clumsy save, much more successful in writing than it would have been in reality. "This is about everyone else. Everyone!!"

Well, that wasn't true. It was really about Rutledge. And Juan. LaCroix and Vachon. Maybe a little bit about Nick, too.

"Look," Bonnie continued, "we have to have this party, it's vital, to ... to ... the smooth running of CERK and the garnering of funds to rebuild the NA Shrine!!" Bonnie finally scooped an idea out of the muck she was burying herself in and let it fly. "You do want to have enough money to build a new Shrine, don't you? One worthy of the great and powerful Oz — erm, LaCroix?! And there isn't anyone in this town who will provide you with enough money except LaCroix himself. Therefore, this birthday/Thanksgiving party is not about you or me. It's about Nunkies Anonymous, The Shrine, and the Canadian Way!!" Bonnie was now standing up behind her desk, pounding the surface for emphasis, as if she were trying to convince the Continental Congress to dump the tea, not the coffee, overboard.

Jules checked to see if Bonns had foam collecting at the corners of her mouth, but felt the faint stirrings that what the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training had said carried grains of reason. Perhaps LaCroix would be more inclined toward pulling out his gold card to cover the rest of the Shrine rebuilding expenses now that she'd garnered a solid three-fifths of the money needed to start construction. The Roman's pride had been too great to shell out the full lump sum for his own Shrine the summer before last. Maybe two-fifths of his pride would prove more benevolent?

"Fine," Jules relented stiffly. "But, if anything goes wrong, it's not on my head." Then she turned and headed off, mumbling, "Bonnies, why is it always Bonnies? Damn plague of trouble-making Bonnies. Worse than those swarming scarab beetles Qa'ra set upon us. I'm saying it right now: someone else cleans up the rubble this time. I'm not going to do it. I just had my nails done. Honestly!"

Then the High Priestess set herself to the all-important duty of deciding what to wear. LaCroix might be at the party, after all!

Now Bonnie was in the tidy cast aluminum design that was the Cousinly Mess Hall of CERK preparing dinner. Like everything else, Bonnie didn't do something unless she was confident she could. Pushing herself to do things she really wasn't capable of, ready for, always ended in trouble, usually involving concussions (and when one has had as many as a famous NFL quarterback-retired-now-lawyer, it behooves one to be mindful of one's own limitations). That said, Bonnie began preparing the prime rib. There would be roasted potatoes and assorted veggies, there would be light and fluffy popovers, there would be blueberry cream cheese torte and chocolate French silk pie. There would even be blood — two different species — for the vampires. All would be happy. All would go as planned. She'd prove the 'Still-In-Training' part of her title was now completely unnecessary. So there!

With the final hour ticking away on the main course, CERK's security buzzer sounded, signifying someone wanted entry to the restricted section of the Cousins' domain. Bonnie rushed to greet her first guest. It was Libby, actually using the door and not some septic- related piping. "Libby? What's wrong?"

"Nuffin'," she replied. "We can-no use h'our h'usual modus operandi since da tunnels collapsed. We do-no 'ave no candy-fanny-fanfic fairies ta dig h'it h'out, neiffer. We gots h'only diligent, h'underpaid, h'under h'appreciated wee lil' ratsies. Sos, me h'an Johnsie h'an McLista h'an 'er moose 'as gots ta 'use more h'unconventional-type means, loike this 'ere front door." She finished her speech, then waltzed right past Bonnie Kate, like Eliza Doolittle with a right to be in the Queen's palace.

Johnsie was right behind her. He smiled wide. "Pretty, shiny knob," he commented, and Bonnie made a mental note to check his pockets before he left.

On Johnsie's heels was the still-addled McLista. "Havarti?" she said, like she was offering Bonnie a slice, only her open hand was empty. Bonnie just nodded and pointed to the cheese medley trays she'd laid out in anticipation. A moose with LaCroix's face followed McLista inside, but only because the C-R-Still-I-T didn't know how to stop him from coming — like the Grinch with Christmas.

Bonnie followed them into the dining room, but before she could even offer them a seat, the buzzer rang again. It was Christy and Jayne. They came bearing festive armfuls of decorations. "Actually, these are our gifts to you and Jules — you look like the type of people who have pretty much everything they need, so why risk being a bad gifter?" Christy reasoned, quite logically, and rather unexpectedly, given the season. Far too many people in the world — like Nick Knight — had no real klew that they were bad gifters, and, as such, the thought turned out to be as bad as the deed.

"Yes, hmm...thank you. The party decorations are actually the Rutledge's department," Bonns said, giving the bare walls a perplexed look. "Apparently there's an ancient art to gourd placement upon the feasting table."

Jayne nodded warningly. "Feng Shoe — if one decorative squash is tilted just an inch too far to the east at this type of occasion, one could go without snogging in fanfic for years!"

Christy stroked one of her Mickey Mouse ears to soothe her evil thoughts. "Rutledge  is going to be here?" she asked in a tone that suggested it might be fun to roast an ex-Scribe for the main course. "Whatever happened to her last war?"

The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training delivered the perfectly reasonable alibi the Bonnies had devised during their party planning. "Shoe shopping emergency," she said briskly.

"Ohhhhhh." Christy let out the hushed, sacred sigh of a woman with deep affinity for spiked heels. She nodded, holding up both palms to channel a calming flux....<Whoosh! Whoosh!> ... "Whoa. Shoe shopping emergency. Say no more."

Just then, Bonnie noticed a distinct lack of Ratpackers in the room. Normally a good thing — no Ratpackers — Bonnie knew in this instance it couldn't be; they had to be here somewhere. She began to look frantically about the place, under cushions, up the flue of the chimney, under the tables, but to no avail. The only place left was the one place the Ratpackers couldn't be  — she rushed into the Cousinly Mess Hall. Libby was covered in globby bits of cream cheese, Johnsie was coated in chocolate pie filling, and McLista had her head stuck way in the back of the oven. The moose, thank goodness, merely looked on, disbelieving.

"What are you doing? You can't make a mess in the Cousinly Mess Hall!! Out!" Bonnie shouted. "Out, out, out!!! The kitchen is OFF LIMITS!!" Bonnie continued to shout, but the Ratpackers acted as if they hadn't heard her. "OUT!!!" She grabbed Libby by the shoulder and tossed her out, then she went back for Johnsie, only to have Libby slip back into the kitchen behind her. "OUT!! Out, out, out!!!" Bonnie still had a hold on Johnsie's overalls, so she tossed him out, then went back for McLista, but when she bent down to haul the listing list mistress out of the oven, Libby leapt onto her back, latching her arms around Bonnie's neck as if she wanted a horsey-back ride.

And, as if to confirm Bonnie's impression, Libby yelled, "Giddy-yup!!" as she kicked her in the sides — thank goodness she wasn't wearing spurs!! "OWWW! Off, off, off!!" Bonnie now began to yell — at least the consonants varied, even if the tone did not. She thought for certain that Libby was doing permanent damage to her back, especially when Johnsie grabbed Libby around the legs and just hung there, like a tail on a horse.

Then, suddenly, the weight was lifted. Bonns put a hand to her unburdened back, stretching out the abused muscles as she turned to see Vachon hauling Libby in one hand and Johnsie in the other out of the kitchen. He just walked away. No word, no flirting, nothing. And, as Bonnie tried to catch her breath, he didn't return either.

She then remembered McLista in the oven, and finally pulled her out. "Off limits," she said, in case the woman had not heard her shouting before. Then Bonnie closed to door to the oven and prayed that the prime rib and popovers were not ruined.

Bonnie Kate shooed McLista from the room and found Libby and Johnsie now trying to 'help' Christy and Jayne decorate. Christy and Jayne were having none of that, for the Ratpackers' concept of assistance involved shoving all of the decorative bits into their pockets and rucksacks. The elegant party atmosphere swiftly deconstructed into the Nunkies-affiliated smacking at Libby and Johnsie's hands and heads with a horn o' plenty and a sheaf of grain.

McLista headed straight for the appetizer platters again, with the moose firmly at her heels. "You could've pulled her out of the oven," Bonnie mumbled as the moose passed her, not even realizing how ridiculous that accusation sounded. She looked around the room again and found Vachon on the couch — for the first time, there was no instrument of pleasure (guitar) in his hands — but he wasn't looking at her, he was just staring at the front door, as if waiting for someone, which prompted Bonnie to wonder who was still missing.

Her co-birthday girl Jules counted among the absent, as did Nick Knight and Nancy. Rutledge had yet to make an appearance, but then she always ran late, and it was hardly a time-consuming journey to descend from LaCroix's penthouse. The Cousinly- Receptionist-Still-In-Training spared a brief thought to wondering why no one had entrusted her  with super-privileged access to LaCroix's penthouse yet, especially as she tended toward efficient punctuality. Full CERK access could only enhance her making- LaCroix-happy efforts, and said hard work would remain on schedule to boot! It was incredible that the Cousinly Chain of Command had not capitalized on the obvious advantages of giving her free reign to help, help, and help some more!

Well, some things could not be helped. With an uncomprehending shake of her head, Bonns redirected her thoughts back to the un-arrived guests.

Shele had not appeared, but that was also non-worrying, for Shele was another the- perfect-time-to-arrive-is-when-I-get-there type person.

Bonns tapped her chin. Who else was missing? LaCroix, of course, but it was better that he did not stumble upon the festivities until they were in full swing and it was far too late for him to escape. Hmm...and where was—?

The buzzer pronounced the influx of another guest, cutting off Bonns's musings. "I'll get it!" Jayne called. "It could be Jules! Let's surprise her!" Jayne's eyes glinted, excited by the promise of ambush.

Bonns found her gaze drifting couch-wise to Vachon. Was the person he was waiting for behind the door? Seeming to sense her stare, Vachon glanced her way, met her eyes, and quietly shook his head. "Hmm." Curious regardless, the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In- Training crossed her arms over her chest and watched Jayne's, now aided by Christy and the moose, greeting display.

Jayne flung open the door while Christy sprang forward with show-choir hands, both exclaiming in sing-songy voices, "Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!" Meanwhile, the moose spat streamers in various autumnal shades, which fluttered like mutant falling leaves about the doorway. After about a minute of frolic and celebration, Jayne and Christy noted that there was more than one body in the doorway, and neither of the bodies belonged to the High Priestess.

One arrival was Julia. She suddenly looked very depressed. This may have been brought on by the bright orange piece of crepe paper drooping over her brow. Regardless, Julia clasped one hand to her chest, as she whispered wildly, "No No! I can't be older already!" Julia's other hand clutched reflexively at the empty air, as if she was trying to pluck a wine glass from out of the void.

The other incoming guest was Perry, who panted with a happy doggy smile, sniffed at Julia's outstretched hand just in case she carried a treat, then looked enthusiastically unconcerned about the threat of birthdays in a vampire-canine-screw-dog-years sort of way.

"Oh, sorry," Christy said with disappointment. "We thought you were Jules." As if the High Priestess joyously dangled festive paper streamers from her head on a routine basis.

"You said 'Happy Birthday,'" Julia pronounced in cringing syllables as she brushed the clinging tendrils of party decorations off of her person. "You can't just say  things like that to people! We're living in a society based upon civility and reason!" Julia frowned at Christy's mouse ears. "Okay. Maybe not." Fighting to repress a shudder, she demanded accusingly, "Is this a birthday party? My e-mail specifically said this was an occasion to bring Nick and LaCroix together." Julia scanned the room through narrowed eyes. No Nick. No LaCroix. Just Ratpackers, a Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training (Still Training — that must suck!), and Vachon, who was actually doing a good job at maintaining a straight face. "I hope I haven't come to the right party," Julia said, sounding very unhappy.

Before Bonns could jump in and sort out this blip on the radar of festive cheer, Johnsie announced in a helpful manner through a mouthful of cheese, "H'it's tha' Rat-Ass's burpday." He issued a practical demonstration — burp!  — then patted his chest. "Har! Guddun!"

"And it's the vague vicinity of High Priestess Jules's birthday," Jayne explained. "So we thought we'd torment her, 'cause she doesn't do  birthdays. See, our gift to her is really giving her the opportunity to yell at us. High Priestesses need a sense of purpose, you know. An outsource for their authority, especially when the Shrine they oversee has been razed to the ground!"

"And it's five days before Thanksgiving," Vachon offered casually from the couch. "Which vampires always celebrate with a dinner party."

Christy's interest was piqued. "Really?"

"No. Not really."

Suddenly Jules's voice pronounced from the doorway, "This is not  a birthday party."

Libby and Johnsie did a little dance around the spread of appetizers. "H'a Very Merry Un-Burpday!"

Jules walked further into the room with a swish of her blue satin skirt. (An advantage to being High Priestess is that one is never overdressed.) "This is not  a Thanksgiving party."

"H'a Very Merry Un-Thanksgettin'!" Libby started to croon, only Johnsie smacked a cheesy palm over her mouth.

"Duz this mean we git nun h'overs tha' crankyberry sauce????" he moaned.

Libby pried his fingers from her mouth, moving Johnsie's hand to cover his own speaktrap. "Cahn't be. 'Snot Un-Thanksgettin' wi'out tha' crankyberry sauce!"

"No," Jules insisted, pretty much ignoring the Ratpackers, which, if you can pull it off, is usually the wisest course. "This party is for Nunkies Anonymous, The Shrine, and the Canadian Way!" she declared dramatically, sweeping of her arms as if to embrace the world into her fold.

"Now I know I'm at the wrong party," Julia muttered, slumping resignedly into a comfy chair. "Do I at least get to hit somebody with a bottle?"

"On that fine note," Bonns said with full Omnifemale hostessing charm, "can I get anybody a drink?"

As he heard the lift gears churn and whirr, a tinny sound began to blossom in his ears, developing into a full-fledged, high-pitched drone. Fearing mechanical problems, Nick walked back impatiently to the security camera, thumping the side of the display. The annoying pitch continued to thrum unabated.

Nick returned to his chair and picked up his remote control, punching all of the buttons in random order as he aimed it at every piece of electronics in the loft to no avail. The irritating sound continued to grow until Nick felt like he had an alarm clock implanted between his ears. He tossed his universal remote onto the leather sofa and clasped his hands over his ears, but the noise continued, strong and true.

Nick's aggravations soon multiplied. All at once, he realized that his backside was on fire. "Urrggghhh!" It seemed that in his distracted melee of button-pushing, he had inadvertently raised the blinds on the late afternoon sun. Nick dove behind his sofa, little puffy clouds wafting in his wake.

Nancy exited the lift with a spring in her step, peering excitedly around her basket topped with harvest-fresh orange and gold cellophane. Her smile momentarily tangled — Nick wasn't waiting by the door like a normal host. Introspection tainted Nancy's smile with mystery. Where had that vampire detective gotten to this time?!

It only took a moment for Nancy to notice three things (she had powers of observation superlative to the average perky redhead, reasonable, for a start, because she wasn't a redhead): 1) the window blinds were open, allowing a dangerous helping of afternoon sun to bask half of the living area in a golden glow, 2) Nick had left a copy of a Travis McGee novel she'd never read on his coffee table, and 3) Nick, himself, was half-laying, half-crouching, behind his couch, giving Nancy an excellent vantage point in witnessing the wisps of smoke rising off of his rear. If Nancy had more of a fan girl personality, this would have been the point in the story where she would have made some ribald comment about a hot ass or similar. Instead, she asked the constructive and problem-solving question, "Nick, what are you doing?!"

"THE BLINDS..." Nick shouted very loudly. "CLOSE THE BLINDS, NANCY!!"

She nodded helpfully, setting her basket on the floor by Nick's head, unmindful of how he winced with fresh torment in her hurry to give assistance by shading the windows. Nancy dug the remote control from between the cushions, zapped the blinds into a closing trajectory, then looked down to find Nick throwing her basket of goodies across the loft as though it housed a nest of scorpions.

That compelled Nancy to ask a question she'd have bet good money would never escape her Knight-loving lips. "Nick, what IS your problem?!" She rushed across the room to check if the basket contents were bruised or the cellophane damaged. "This fruit basket is for the Thanksgiving party!"

Nick looked at her with wild, desperate eyes. "ARE THERE KUMQUATS IN IT?"

Nancy was flummoxed. She studied Nick, then her festive gift basket, with a bewildered stare, just the type of look a person gives when they are trying to decide if Santa would have been more efficiently served employing flying monkeys rather than elves and reindeer. "You don't mean..." Nancy began, then made a scoffing sound. "'Harvest of the Damned Redux' was just a story, Nick. A fanciful, funny bit of make-believe. It wasn't real. Besides, everybody knows fanfic is full of crap."

"MOST OF IT, YES," Nick confirmed with supernatural volume. "BUT THE KUMQUATS ARE REAL — TAKE THEM AWAY!!!"

Since Nancy was one of the few individuals appearing in this fan fiction who didn't like seeing Nick suffer unduly, she put the fruit basket into the lift, drew the door shut, and shipped it to the ground floor until it was needed for further story intrigue.

After a minute, Nick removed his hands from his ears and issued a relieved sigh. "That's much better," he said at a reasonable volume. "I can hear myself flashback now." He shot Nancy a hopeful smile as he rubbed tension from one temple. "There's a bottle of Skin- So-Silky <tm> under the sink. Could you get it for me?"

"How could I not?" Nancy said happily.

Rifling through the cabinets of an 800-year-old vampire, however, was not the simplicity it was portrayed to be in the brochure. After exhaustive searching, Nancy announced with some consternation, "All I can find is coffee, wood polish and cactus food. Are you sure the Skin-So-Silky <tm> is here?"

Nick's features lost their expressive focus in a quick haze of recollection. "Wait a second. I think I remember where I put it now: the fireplace."

Nancy moved eagerly to search the carved spectacle for stashed loot, burying her right arm up to the shoulder joint as she stretched and reached. Meanwhile, Nick located his broom and dustpan, sweeping up the tiny pile of ashes his sunny adventure had left behind, emphasis on behind.

The first item Nancy unearthed from Nick's fireplace was a bottle, but not of the Skin Pretty variety. It was dark glass, holding 750mL of something suspiciously human marked 'Chateau LaLonde — Special Reserve.' Nancy's lips pursed knowingly, but she replaced the bottle without comment. She was not there to judge.

In her second foray of searching the chimney with care, Nancy's hand located something long and cylindrical, but a bit too spindly and rough to be a container of lotion.

"Did you find it?" Nick called as he disposed of his ashes in the kitchen.

"Wait a second..." Squinting one eye, Nancy gave a sharp tug and felt the object give way. She'd found...something else!

Nancy scratched her head as she eyed the spare shillelagh that had clattered to the floor. Nope, she wasn't going to touch that. "Haven't found it yet!" Nancy called back to Nick, gritting her teeth with renewed determination as her arm sank into the flue for a third try.

After minutes of scrabbling and grasping, Nancy's fingers struck another object. She issued a defeated sigh, for poking the item caused the distinctive crinkle of plastic wrap coating something squishy. It definitely wasn't the bottle of Skin-So-Silky <tm> needed to make Nick immune to the worst effects of kumquat proximity. Still, Nancy pulled her new find out of the fireplace, doing a double-take as she revealed a package of Twinkies. "Oh, for crying out loud!" she exclaimed with exasperation, tossing the snack cakes over one shoulder.

Nick wandered back into the living area, proudly brandishing a pink bottle emblazoned with swirly white letters. "I just remembered that I'd put my spare Skin-So-Silky<tm> in the downstairs bathroom medicine cabinet."

"Gee, Nick," Nancy said, sinking into a mentally exhausted heap on the sofa. "What made you think to put it there?"

Once Nick was properly lotioned, he joined Nancy on the sofa in a cloud of rosy perfume. "Why did you have a fruit basket, again?"

"For the Thanksgiving party!"

Nick frowned. "What Thanksgiving party?"

"The one Bonnie Pardoe is throwing at CERK!"

The blond vampire's expression darkened. "Oh, right. That party. I wasn't going to that. A Thanksgiving celebration at CERK?" Nick appeared dubious. "It has to be some kind of trap involving LaCroix."

"Yes..." Nancy said slowly. "I thought of that, so I e-mailed the Cousinly-Receptionist- In-Training back—"

"She's still  in training?" Nick interjected.

"Yep," Nancy confirmed with amazement. "I'm quite curious what he's training her to do." She cocked her head. "Maybe balance a dodge ball on her nose?"

Nick seemed depressed at that thought. "As far as LaCroix's concerned, I never left the Vampire-In-Training stage."

"Oh, that's a shame," Nancy said consolingly, patting his arm. "But you'll be happy to hear that I asked Bonns if LaCroix was going to be at the party, and she said he wasn't invited!"

Nick appeared thoughtful. "Thanksgiving is an occasion full of humanity. Maybe I should try to make an appearance."

"That's the spirit!" Nancy said, rising from the couch. As she strolled over to the lift, she commented over her shoulder, "Pardoe mentioned that the menu would be friendly to mortals, non-mortals, and mortal-wanna-bes alike! If you're lucky, she'll have a turkey curare buffet, so you can stuff yourself then take a nap in the traditional style."

"That depends on where she got the turkey." Nick left the sofa, joining Nancy as she opened the lift door. He gave the fruit basket waiting patiently on the lift floor a mischievous look, then aimed a conspiratorial smile Nancy's way. "I know you meant the kumquats as a gift to the party hostess, but it just occurred to me..."

"What?"

"I never thanked Vachon properly for all his help arranging LaCroix's Conversion Day gift."

Nancy gave an equally impish, canyon-sized grin. "He was  strangely helpful for a reputed slacker, wasn't he? Yes, we should give Vachon the fruit basket!"

"In that case," Nick concluded, "maybe we should arrive at the party late. I found a rare Travis McGee novel that I haven't read yet — want to share?"

Was there fruit in Florida??? "I'll turn the pages!" Nancy accepted.

As they settled on the leather sofa, but before they became entrenched in good prose, Nancy asked rhetorically, "Do you think Vachon knows about the side effect of kumquats?"

If she didn't have great respect and admiration for Nick as a man, Nancy would have suspected he'd given a boyish snicker. "I hope not."

6:30pm

Gaaahhhhhh!

Am supposed to be downstairs already, decorating Cousinly dining area in graceful + creative Omnifemale manner for dinner party using life-organizing tenets of Feng Shoe, but, obviously, am not. Am in Roman penthouse, writing 'Gaaahhhhhh!' in ex-llama diary. Where has afternoon !&*%$~@ gone????

Is completely The Pardoe's fault. Got distracted playing w/ her birthday present. (obviously good gift) Wasted hours in casual enjoyment!

Previous schedule for feast preparations now complete waste material. Am not clean. Am not coiffed. Am dressed in sweatpants that make buttocks look like head of Sesame Street mastodon + T-shirt w/ 'Love Stinks' emblem (stinky rather like self at moment).

Have not even wrapped The Pardoe's present. Why does this always happen to me?!?! Start out w/buckets of time overflowing in omnicapability, blink once for a giggle, then suddenly am running late w/boat pulling from dock + must make scraggly desperate leap for deck, dropping favorite purse in process into callous depths of lake, ocean, or similar, never to be seen again!! Hate it, Hate It, HATE IT!!!!

Right. Am making new schedule. Is not like everybody arrives on time for parties. Is not like everyone doesn't already know am straggly goose tagging after rest of flock. Shall master last minute Omnifemale effort w/ two scoops of efficiency and actually ARRIVE NOT ON TIME BUT EARLIER THAN EXPECTED. Hurrah!

New Schedule Of Bonnie Rutledge's Preparations For The Plot To Bring LaCroix Peace, Harmony, and Contentment Whether He Likes It Or Not Party:

6:31pm — Wrap The Pardoe's gift in festive paper w/ bow.
6:35pm — Bathe self.
6:45pm — Dry hair, styling in pleasing and attractive manner of girl-adult-Homo-sapiens.
6:55pm — Dress in clothing that accurately reflects size of buttocks (or maybe even makes them appear attractively half-a-size smaller).
7:00pm — Swish downstairs in timely manner.
7:01-7:10pm — Bask in amazement of friends + Vachon + Ratpackers over earliness of lateness.

Right. Am completely on top of self now.

6:34pm

Am off to lackluster start, but am trying not to panic or self-criticize. Have realized now took four minutes of precious efficiency schedule to scribble down precious efficiency schedule. Must wrap The Pardoe's gift instantaneously in order to maintain progress!

6:35pm

Gaaaahhh!!!! Now suspect that LaCroix has no gift wrap stocked in armoire or similar, much less any gift-shaped boxes <— Why?!?!?!

6:36pm

Time keeps on slipping into the future!! Should be doused in Roman bath by now, sudsy + moist. Instead, am standing in middle of Roman penthouse like forlorn Pompeiian refugee, clutching good gift to bosom while staring through ashen gaze at ridiculously expensive stupid Roman furniture containing absolutely no bloody paper, invis-y tape, scissors or cardboard packaging whatsoever.

6:37pm

Actually, perhaps blessing in disguise that found nothing bloody in LaCroix's drawers (furniture).

6:38pm

Stupid #$%^&*~ schedules! Hate them! Hate Them! HATE THEM!!! I mean, what is freaking point of making list of duties + goals demarcated to precise second??? How am supposed to know in advance everything that needs doing + exactly the proper second that it needs accomplishment? Like, if don't foresee that at specifically 6:38pm will need to sneeze snotty brains all over Roman dresser b/c is dusty + antique, valuable seconds wasted + whole rhythm of night plans shot to hell! How could know would sneeze snotty brains? HOW COULD KNOW?!?!

6:41pm

Still not clean (though still have four minutes to rub + dub). Still not coiffed (but not yet at that juncture of schedule so OK). Still clothed in revolting sweatpants that make buttocks appear preposterously large, as if hiding Guinness-record-breaking turnips in britches as part of black market Canadian produce scandal. Huh. Still, sweats v. comfy + conducive to jumping up + down in panic, retaining measure of functionality, so not all bad.

Have found solution to Pardoe-good-gift-wrapping problem. Located v. spiffy box on top of Roman dresser made just to put stuff in. Put good gift in it. Has neat little fleur-de-lis on top + is lined w/ suede. (Perhaps came from Nick?...No, too good a gift!) Am sure LaCroix will not even notice is missing + Pardoe will like immensely.

6:43pm

Am cleansing! Am completely on schedule again! Hurrah!

6:45pm

Am still in full cleanse! New 'Cotton Blossom' body scrub v. refreshing, and is important to appreciate quality products when they come one's way. Am not risking schedule derailment, but am being responsible consumer!

6:47pm

Yes, am off-schedule track again, but cleanliness surely v. necessary requirement for approaching party situations w/ confidence + verve. Shall bubble + exfoliate in cotton- blossomy splendor just one more minute. Allowed too much time to coif hair anyway. Is not like am true llama or Spaniard. Should not overcompensate in hair care department.

~~water~ ~mark~ ~on~ ~page~~

Ta-da! Am bathed!

6:57pm:

Gaaaaaahhhh! Just checked Roman clock again. Surely must be some sort of temporal wormhole between tub + fluffy towel holder. Could not have possibly bathed for one more minute that, in actuality, lasted for ten. Demand nine-minute refund! Am not that scrubby!

Now have three minutes to dry hair + put on stupid clothes so can go downstairs to idiotic party + impress gullible guests w/ timely, non-tuberous buttocks + give Pardoe damn present. Wish was all over + eating B&J ice cream alone.

6:59pm

Second Rule Of Omnifemales = Never Say Die! (First Rule Of Omnifemales = Don't Get Caught!)

Have figured out can multitask remaining preparations on schedule and still arrive at party w/ nebulous illusion of efficiency! Am drying hair and dressing at same time!

7:01pm

Have wardrobe hiccup. Remembered have no wardrobe. Previously vast resources of clothing suitable for all occasions reduced to rubble via destruction of Shrine to Nunkies Wardrobe Room by Old, Dead Guy. Crucial closet-restocking months squandered in favor of goes-with-everything cotton-balled coating of living llama lie.

Have determined current clothing resources are as follows:

     1 green Speedo (clean now, but hardly the ideal dinner party ensemble)
     2 Powerpuff Girls bra + panty sets (1 clean, 1 gently used)
     1 v. cool black dress (w/ still-sticky Whammy stain on skirt from Halloween)
     1 'Love Stinks' T-shirt (stinky)
     1 pair sweatpants that make buttocks appear ready for liftoff in balloon rally (repulsive)

WHAT HAVE BEEN WEARING FOR PAST THREE WEEKS?!?!?!?!

7:03pm

Right. Took centering, putting-on-clothes-while-blow-drying-hair breaths. Sucked in lungful of hot hair-desiccating air, making cheeks flushed + splotchy while coughed as if victim of rare rainforest-derived virus. Feel strangely better, though hair now darting in whooshy angle, as if mimicking horse scene from 'The Ring' and trying to get away from head.

7:05pm

Have donned clean Powerpuff Girls set of undies. Am almost ready! Will just dab at black-dress-sticky-stains with damp Roman washcloth then put on!

7:08pm

NOOOO!!!!! Front half of skirt soaked with water from over-efficient dabbing. Have dark black soggy circle on lighter black fabric. Must now squander portion of efficiency seconds blow-drying skirt!

7:11pm

Huh. Just heard small, wishy-washy, creaky sound.

7:12pm

Wait! Just heard small, wishy-washy, creaky sound, but over cacophony of hair-dryer. Would that not mean large, penetrating, creaky sound????

7:13pm

Is probably no creaky sound at all. Am just letting personal tardiness devolve into buggy- eyed paranoia.

7:14pm

GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

7:16pm

GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

7:21pm

Cannot believe it! Simply CANNOT BELIEVE IT!!!!!

Was completely minding own business blow-drying dress in privacy of borrowed-w/o- permission penthouse, when — out of nowhere — west wall (My relationship corner!) caved in and Screed popped out w/ dozens of pink + white ratsies wearing hard hats flitting in carouche wake as if arriving at party for drinks + bawdy jokes w/ best friends ever!

Screamed for several minutes (Shock understandable).

Looked at damage to Roman penthouse wall. Has carouche-sized hole! Hole opens on dark chasm dropping to who-knows-where in gloomy bowels of CERK. Huh. Am certainly not going to investigate while clothed only in Powerpuff Girls set of undies.

No, am not!

7:22pm

GAAAHHHH!!! HAVE ON NO CLOTHES!!!!!!!!

7:25pm

Right. Assumed can-do attitude of non-freaked out Omnifemale + yanked leather modesty-rescuing trench coat from Roman wardrobe. Proceeded to stomp around penthouse in royal snit. Demanded that Screed explain what the hell thought was doing putting giant hole in wall of LaCroix's flat. Screed explained that Johnsie + Libratsie + McLista + moose + all tha' lil' ratsies had been invited to a 'Holey-day Party' + he was to come too, but had run late trading his old Travis McGee novels at swap meet. Carouche asked what good was Holey-day Party w/o holes? (Irrefutable logic)

Collapsed in self-pitying tears, for is v. big hole. LaCroix will notice for sure.

DOOM! DOOOOOM!!! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Meandering toward the curiously noisy window, Bonns frowned, twisting the line of her mouth like a reactionary molecule as she tried to interpret what manner of happiness- affecting-for-LaCroix form of event this peculiar sound could portend. Taking a brave risk, she grasped the cord of the window blinds within a firm grip and pulled...

...Finding the window far too clouded to determine anything beyond a shadowed, fuzzy shape. It was almost as if someone had deliberately coated the pane with muck so that no light could shine through!

Bonnie shook her head in critical disappointment, causing her dark curls to bounce. LaCroix had obviously allowed the janitorial areas of CERK upkeep to slide since Shelley had worked off her punishment, or perhaps he had errantly assumed he was simply too old and powerful to contend with grime. Whatever the reason, she, as a most excellent and helpful C-R-Still-I-T, would have to see to a bit of regular radio-station cleaning. No doubt LaCroix would be thrilled to find sparkly-shiny, once-more- transparent windows gracing CERK upon his return!

Actualizing her decision, Bonns ducked into the Cousinly Mess Hall for some glass cleaner. She stopped short, noting with horror that Libby was standing in the middle of the kitchen. The full-fledged Ratpacker had her hands tucked behind her back and her eyes tilted ceiling-ward as she whistled a guileless tune.

"What are you doing, Libby?"

"Nuffin!"

"Then what are you hiding behind your back?"

"Nuffin!"

Not buying that lemonade, Bonns sternly held out her palms. "Show me. Now."

Libby scuffed the toe of one sneaker on the linoleum floor. "But Oi's got nuff-"

"Liiiib-beeeee..." Bonns invoked the Ratpacker's name in a warning siren, with no patience to waste on monkey business that could endanger the smooth running of the party festivities.

With an Oi-h'am-h'oppressed pout, Libby slowly unshielded her hands from behind her back. They were slightly smudged with cheese-grit, but empty of any implement of mischief.

"Yes. Well, err..." Bonnie hemmed dazedly, not sure what she should say to an innocent Libby, as it was a completely fresh experience.

"See?!" Libby preened. "Oi wuz dewin' nuffin'!"

Recovering from her momentary shock, Bonns clapped her hands together. "Hmm. Well, you shouldn't be doing nothing in the kitchen, anyway. Out! Shoo!"

Once alone, the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training scratched her head at that surreal turn of the universe, then she resumed her earlier task. She wrapped a wad of paper towels around one hand, swiped a spray bottle of Death-to-Dirt<tm> from the pantry, and returned to the filthy window making an interesting noise.

With a few efficient spritzes, Bonnie set herself to some intense scrubbing of all light- obscuring substances pasting the window. After a minute, she stepped back and surveyed her progress, emitting a sound of dismay. For all her elbow grease, the window remained as black as LaCroix's wardrobe. This would not make him happy at all! Bonns squinted at the label of the Death-to-Dirt<tm>, searching for some secret small-type advice or instructions.

She felt a tap on her shoulder. Bonns glanced to her right and found McLista standing with a platter, empty save for a sprig of parsley. "Tha' moose wants more Havarti," she said simply.

Bonnie looked at her handful of scrubby paper towels and the bottle of cleaner, then back at the empty platter. Another perplexing scraping sound came from outside the window. Noticing the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training's indecision, McLista offered an eager, "Oi could go get h'it meself..." then turned threateningly for a foray in the Cousinly Mess Hall where head-sized ovens waited.

"NO!!" Bonns yelped, snatching the platter from the brain-scrambled listowner, tucking the salver under one arm and the parsley spring absentmindedly behind one ear like a flower. "I'll refill, just give me a minute."

McLista wandered away, seemingly content, in the direction of the moose. Bonnie could see her engineer an emotional explanation for the moose's benefit. The moose merely raised its eyebrows, causing McLista to hang her head.

Feeling the pressure of hostessing a party rise, Bonnie turned back toward the dirty window determined to finish quickly, rubbing at the pane with all her might. Another tap came on her shoulder.

Bonnie glanced around, this time to her left, to find Julia hanging on to her sleeve. "Something's wrong with my Merlot."

The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training's brow wrinkled with concern. Having excellent wine on hand was a primary Omnifemale party hostess duty! "What's wrong with the Merlot?" she asked in sincere distress.

Julia looked around, then cupped a hand around her mouth, whispering, "I think it's leaking." She tipped the bottle upside down and nary a drop rolled free to stain the carpet. "See? One minute it's full, the next it's gone." An evil smile crept over Julia's face. "Any Nick and Natpackers coming to this blowout?" She began to swing the bottle about her head like a club, muttering, "Wonk! Ha-ha!" under her breath.

"Hmm," Bonns said, carefully prying the Merlot bottle from Julia's grasp, clasping its neck in her fingers while keeping the cheese platter tucked under her arm. "Why don't you go ask the moose if he's seen any Nick and Natpackers, and I'll get you a new bottle of wine in a few minutes?"

Julia wandered away, seemingly pleased, in the direction of the moose. Bonnie could see her generating a bouquet of random verbiage, to which the moose turned around, presenting the UF List Cobra with a view of his hind quarters. Stymied, Julia settled cross-legged on the floor.

Bonns turned her attention back to the stubborn-filthy, opaque window that continued to emit a worrisome scuffling sound. Her hostessing duties were mounting like mail in the High Priestess's wheelbarrow, but she refused to let the pressure get to her! She would wash the windows to immaculate condition, stuff McLista and the moose with cheese, provide Julia with plenty of Merlot to make her extra-squiffy, then return to preparing her culinary masterpieces!

There was another tap on her shoulder.

Bonns gritted her teeth, then turned around. "Yes?"

It was Jules. "Just doing a State-of-the-Party check. Is everything running smoothly?" the High Priestess asked austerely.

"Yes, yes! Of course!" Bonns said brightly. "Why do you ask?"

Jules angled her head meaningfully toward Julia and McLista, who now appeared to be engaged in a tug-of-war with the leftover crepe streamers. Being paper, of course, the makeshift rope snapped at their first mighty pull, causing both women to tumble backward through the loving force of gravity. Rather than feeling silly, Julia and McLista immediately whirled on the moose, shaking their fists as if he was to blame. The moose appeared void of a response.

Jules angled her gaze back toward the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training. "No reason." Shifting again, the High Priestess flicked one well-manicured hand languidly toward the Ratpackers. "Johnsie is currently attempting to stick a decorative squash up his nose because Libby said he couldn't. Perhaps you should stop him...?" She let the suggestion hang for a moment, then added, "That is, unless you have insurance that covers nose-squashing."

Bonns forced a smile, admitting nothing. "I'll get right on it. Just let me—"

Suddenly Jules issued a cry of alarm. She straightened one arm, pointing a Rip-Your- Heart-Out-Red nail at the window. "What on earth?!?"

Bonns snapped her eyes back to the smudged bane of her existence. "What? What?" Her shoulders slumped. It was still the same window: blackened, impossible, and making a gritty noise.

"My dear," Jules pronounced. "I am appalled. Simply appalled. When I  invite guests over, I have the foresight to clean first. A shocking display of untidiness!" The High Priestess brandished a coordinating satin hankie out of nowhere and daintily covered her nose and mouth, as if to shield herself from attacking filth. "Dare I hope you at least washed the dishes upon which we'll dine?"

"Yes," the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training bit out, her eyes burning a steady 'Go away!' glare.

Jules turned with a swish of her long skirt, unable to resist tagging on a superior, "This would never happen at a Shrine party..." then glided across the room to gossip with Christy and Jayne.

"Yeah," Bonns growled under her breath. "Because there is no Shrine! Yaryaryar!" She aimed her annoyed look at the troublemaking window, attacking it with another bout of scrubbing.

Someone tapped her shoulder.

"What?! What? What? What? What? WHAT?!?!" Bonns whirled around, reflexively raising the empty Merlot bottle to smack. "I know I'm an Omnifemale, but I can only do five things at once!!!!!"

The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training caught her breath, for it was Vachon. He'd left his station on the couch, and he was looking at her in an undemanding manner. "Oh. It's you," she said, as if she'd just discovered a new nucleotide, and her heart had gone all double-helixey.

"Yes." There was a flash of humor across his features then, "An Omnifemale, huh?"

"Exactly," Bonns confirmed. "Did you want something?" she added in an efficient tone.

"No." He continued looking at her with a straightforward chocolate stare.

"Hmm," Bonnie said, not sure she wanted to be undisturbed in this instance. Practical, however, she abandoned that thought, whisking the parsley sprig out of her hair with a swift swipe of her hand, just in case it looked idiotic, and returned to scrubbing the pesky window.

After a minute, she paused to scowl at her pervasive lack of progress with the window. Vachon observed, "Aren't there other busy and important things you'd rather be doing?"

Bonnie glanced across the room to where Libby was leveraging one foot against Johnsie's chest as she struggled to yank the decorative squash out of his nostril. "Yes, but it is also important that CERK's windows are clean. It is a matter of Cousinly pride."

Vachon grinned knowingly. "The High Priestess gave you grief about it?"

"Yes, but that's not why it's so important." As if! "Listen," she said, motioning toward the pane. Sure enough, the scraping sound occurred on cue, as though something was being chiseled against the other side of the glass. "I want to know what is making that noise, but I can't see through! The only problem is that the window grime seems completely immune to normal cleansing methods." Bonns looked at Vachon through cautious eyes, certain that he would make some sort of flirty or sarcastic comment at this juncture of the conversation.

None was forthcoming. Instead, he seemed to give the challenge of immortal window grime careful thought. "You know who might be able to help...?"

"Yes?" Bonns prompted, shooting a pained glance in Jules's direction.

Vachon followed the direction of the C-R-Still-I-T's gaze and smirked. "Uh-uh. Jules doesn't do  windows. No, I was thinking that when the toga chicks needed their Shrine windows cleaned — back when the Shrine had windows — they used to have the Fanfic Fairies — or something — do their dirty work for them."

Actually, this suggestion sounded extremely thoughtful and plausible, and Bonns was loath to turn it down, seeing as how Vachon was acting strangely supportive and sincere. She spared a moment to ponder Rutledge's insistence that no Fanfic Fairies be invited into their Omnifemale plans, lest the little sprites wreak some form of unforeseen havoc, but surely if she provided them strict instructions to make CERK clean and tidy — no more, no less — they could hardly get in the way? If anything, the Fanfic Fairies would make her Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training duties easier, thereby making LaCroix even happier in the process! "Yes, I'll have the Fanfic Fairies straighten up the place! Thank you for the idea, Vachon."

"Just thought I'd help." With that, the Spaniard returned to the couch and resumed studying the door for some missing guest.

No sooner than Bonns had invited the Fanfic Fairies into the party area with welcoming thoughts, the appetizer platters instantly replenished, a fresh bottle of Merlot poofed into Julia's waiting hand, and all the guests with drinks found them topped off and garnished. Cushions were spontaneously plumped, and the offending decorative squash immediately exited Johnsie's nose with a spongy pop! 

Most importantly, the window before Bonnie was no longer dark and clouded, but sparkly and clean, revealing a trio of chickens in bungee harnesses illuminated by the street lights. They were pecking a hand-sized circle of minute fractures into the pane. Bonns took a step back in surprise, for, while she hadn't really known what to expect, she was 100% percent positive this was an odd occurrence, even among unexpected things.

All at once, the chickens bungeed out of sight, only to be replaced by a figure dressed in black, from cowl to tabi boots. An industrial techno-flavored theme song filtered into the air while the shadow produced a small suction cup, removed the circular section of glass with a small chink!  then dipped a gloved hand into the room to unlock the window sash. While Bonns reflected how greatly this sequence resembled a stunt from that most Omnifemale of television series, 'Alias,' (minus the bungee cord harnessed chickens, of course) the figure in black moved with ninja-swiftness through the now-open window, past the gaping Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training, and straight to the platter of wonton nibblets with plum and orange dipping sauces.

Now that the figure in black had his or her back turned to Bonns, she could easily see the leopard-print pack strapped across his or her shoulder blades. 'A-ha!' the C-R-Still-I-T thought as she approached the appetizers table.

Seeing as how consuming wonton nibblets is next to impossible in a ninja cowl, even more so when plum and orange sauces are added to the equation, the new party guest's identity was not destined to be a lingering mystery. Off came the hood, revealing a hungry-looking Shele.

Bonns glanced from the Mary Sue Fanfic Beauty Consultant/Poet Laureate to the open and vandalized window. "That was fascinating to watch, Shele, but couldn't you have used the door? I'd have unlocked it when you buzzed, since you were invited and all."

"Mmm-hmm," Shele said in a humoring tone. "And be ambushed by the birthday commandos like Julia was? I don't think so. I would have found that displeasing. Breaking and entering is so much better," Shele reasoned, "because, then, I'm  amused."

"But what about the broken—?" Bonnie's voice drifted off as she noticed the state of the window in question. It gleamed, transparent, locked, and intact, just as it should be. Apparently, the Fanfic Fairies were on their tiny toes as far as party favors were concerned.

Bonns sighed with relief, for now her bulging list of hostessing tasks had been whittled down to a single item: keeping an eye on the cuisine's cooking progress. She ducked into the Cousinly Mess Hall, deciding this would be the perfect moment to check the countdown to the main course.

Bonnie reached toward the precise spot on the kitchen counter where she knew, with absolutely certainty, she'd left the stainless steel timer ticking merrily. Her fingers met with an empty space over the marble cutting board. Suddenly awash with panic, the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training brushed her hands searchingly over all the countertops, rummaged around in the drawers, and hunted in the overhead cabinets, finding absolutely no timekeeping devices whatsoever.

Bonns scoured her memory, trying to remember what she might have done with the very important stainless steel timer. Think, think, she urged herself. Did you see it when you were last in the kitchen with Libby?

Bonnie straightened in instant illumination. Moving purposefully through the throng of party guests, the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training seized Libby by an earlobe, "H'owie-h'ow! H'oppresshun!", and marched the misfit back into the Cousinly Mess Hall.

"Where is it?" Bonnie demanded, releasing her hold on the Ratpacker.

"H'ow!" Libby said, tugging on her own ear as she tried to look and see if it had been stretched like Silly Putty. Changing tactics, she blinked mournfully at Bonns. "Oi'm nawt supposed tew be h'in tha' kitch-sheen!" she said, then made a break to leave.

"Not so fast." Bonns caught her by a belt loop, beginning the interrogation. "Did you touch my timer, Libby?"

Libby held her breath, assuming that if she waiting long enough to answer, Bonnie just might forget that there had been a question. One-one thousand...two-one thousand...three- one thousand...Just when the Ratpacker began to turn purple, she gulped, "Mebbe Oi did."

"And did you move  my timer?"

Libby scratched her chin with one paw. "Lessee h'iffen Oi kin recall...Oi may 'ave givin' h'it h'a wee nudgee, h'iffen yew guessed Oi diddit. H'otherwise, nope, diddunt budgit!"

"Liiiib-beeee..." It sounded like death in two syllables.

"Oi h'only burrowed h'it! Shoved h'it fer safe keepin'! Yew kinnawt leave h'a shiny- pretty-tickee jes' sittin' h'out inney h'open wheres snatchee types loike Johnsie kin jes' pick-h'em-up!"

"And where did you put my timer for safe keeping, Libby?"

"Noice n' comfy h'in tha' wastey-bucket h'unner tha' sink," Libby confessed, beaming.

"The trash. You put it in the trash," Bonns repeated, shaking her head. Well, at least that was easily remedied. She would simply take her timer out of the wastebasket, give it a good wiping off, and things would be back in order. Bonnie moved to the sink, opened the lower cabinet...

...And found a pristine white trash receptacle, devoid of any garbage, much less a handy stainless steel timer.

"Oi diddunt dew h'it!" Libby immediately yelped.

"Fanfic Fairies!" Bonns seethed. "You emptied my trash! You little fiends! Out! Out! Out of CERK!!!!"

7:30pm

Unending emotional distress <— No end to it!

Wiped at floody eyes and slurpy nose with silky Roman neckroll pillow. Perhaps not wisest choice, but for odd reason, master vampire penthouse establishment not brimming w/ easy-reach Kleenex<tm>, Puffs<tm> or similar. Has lots of decorative cushions, though. Huh.

Through reduced, tear-filled and clogged-with-runniness vision, saw hole in LaCroix's flat still present. Apparently was not just some freakish hallucination induced by overdose on yummy 'Cotton Blossom' body wash.

Adding to overall cataclysm, Screed standing next to hole like proud, father-type-person, spouting barely intelligible by-play of underground rat-liker POV such as, "Wot? Jes' h'a bonk holey. Snazz bam jammie! No need ta look loike ha' slug h'in need o' cerveza!"

Hurrah, Screed! Excellent advice. Shall grab six pack of brown bottles (Strangely enough, beer, like vampires, incompatible w/ sunlight. Hmm.). Shall drink self squiffy. Shall be insensate when LaCroix arrives later + slugs all for knocking gaping hole in flat.

7:34pm

Screed now performing strange ritual of psyching-out-the-doom, actually being rather decent about entire situation considering was personally quite judgmental about his naked-on-Incan-mattress-with-bicycle-tire-+-guinea-pig spectacle the summer before last. Did not scream once at my Powerpuff Girls underwear. (Unlike self, who screamed like girl, but am girl-adult-Homo-sapiens, so OK <— Fulfilling archetypal role by emitting high-pitched sounds in moments of stark terror)

First, carouche crouched by enormous hole in LaCroix's flat, scratching head as if hole sparkly + mysterious + unlike any hole previously known in universe. Then, carouche twitched nose, speaking w/ verbose confidence that said hole was "struct'ly sound wit' tha' diverted soil piper n' plentee o' supportin' fer h'a ratsie-type h'improventment!" Told me should cheer up. Told me was my lucky day. Told me was really Best Thing Ever that lil' ratsies installed new transportational outage between LaCroix's desk + bust collection (statues). Carouche proceeded to march around flat w/ hands in air, cheering self on, as if were Muhammad Ali w/o hair + shiny shorts. Floats like bee, stings like butterfly, etc. Expect announcement of 'Oi am tha' Rattest!' imminently.

7:42pm

Carouche appraisal of hole situation continuing without pause or gap, in manner of Frida Kahlo unibrow.

Screed peered + poked at hole some more, then said, "Some bodies would bite fer this 'ole. Drops straighty tew Lobby h'access, h'it does. Roight 'nuff room tew h'install h'a secret pass-a-way tew h'a Hide-H'a-Bonnie nook h'in tha' Post-H'it cupboard!"

In the Post-It cupboard?! Secret passageway?! Hide-A-Bonnie nook?!

Am v. chipper now, for have realized that carouche not completely deluded-w/-positive- thoughts idiot, but actually sharp + sneaky gadgeteer seizing opportunity. Could totally use nook for mini-office where can start new career as non-llama-girl-adult-Homo- sapiens-type-person. Post-It cupboard crucial amenity to any efficient habitat. Is Omnifemale lifestyle necessity! Plus, secret passageway would fulfill minimum daily requirement for living lie (Am deceit junkie). Altogether excellent remodeling suggestion on part of carouche. Major obstacle now is First Rule Of Omnifemales = Don't Get Caught!

Hmm. How to accomplish installation of secret passageway to Hide-A-Bonnie nook w/in Post-It cupboard before LaCroix's foreshadowed return? How? HOW???

Matter shall require deep thought. Need well-informed opinion from sensible person who has klew. Perhaps should ask...

Screed?

7:48pm

Am amazed. Am really amazed. Have practically transcended. Apparently, Screed is, like, SMART-type-person w/GOOD ideas. Now realize that whole naked-on-Incan- mattress-with-bicycle-tire-+-guinea-pig scenario forms weed of singularity on grassy knoll of good Screed judgment brought on by Spanish cat tempting carouche to experiment w/ wonky prairie dog blood at non-speciesist rave (Bad kitty!). Totally understand how could happen, for everybody knows cats (especially Amazing, Transcendental ones kept by Spaniards) are tricky treat mongers.

Screed suggested that don't need to finish repair of hole in LaCroix's flat before His Monkeyness returns. Completion of secret passageway to Hide-A-Bonnie nook w/in Post-It cupboard construction not necessary. Can use extra helping of treachery instead. Shall spread word that highly disreputable persons not named Screed or Bonnie broke into Roman penthouse while master vampire off cantalouping in land of plantations. Shall cover gaping hole in LaCroix's flat with beautifying plastic to appease vampire aesthetic sensibilities. Pardoe can inform master vampire w/ official stamp of Cousinly- Receptionist-Still-In-Training efficiency that someone really v. g. contracted to repair huge wall blemish. Ta-da! Screed + lil' ratsies can build secret passageway to Hide-A- Bonnie nook w/in Post-It cupboard at leisure! Hurrah! V. clever of Screed!

7:50 pm

Huh. V. strange. Only turned around for minute, contemplating quickest source of large amount of beautifying plastic needed for coverage of gaping hole in LaCroix's flat when carouche-type-person released upset cry. Source of Screed sadness:

GAPING HOLE COMPLETELY GONE!!!

Wonder where hole went? Was big plot device! Big, as in bigger than breadbox! Bigger than Caddy trunk! Bigger than ego of American Idol judge! That big!

Oh, phone ringing. Wonder who it is?

7:56pm

Was Pardoe on phone. Conversation rather confusing, so shall print it here for later deciphering:

I answered: "Hello? Who's this?"

A voice said: "Bonnie!"

So naturally I answered: "Yes, this is Bonnie speaking. Please identify yourself."

"Bonnie!"

Experienced deja-ecoute. "Right, right. Like I said, you've reached Bonnie. But who are you?" 

(Heard an exasperated groan over the phone line.) "Bon-nie." (Was well-enunciated this time.)

So I said: "Hmm. I think we're having a communication breakdown. Parlez-vous francais? Je m'appelle Bonnie. Et votre nom, s'il vous plait? Espanol? Me llamo Bonnie! Quienes son usted? Nihongo? Watashi wa Bonnie-san desu! Namae wa nan desu ka...?" (See? Confused, but in a multi-cultural, 'We Are The World'-type way!)

(Shouted in shouty voice.) "MY NAME IS BONNIE! YOUR NAME IS BONNIE! SNAP OUT OF IT!!" (Muttered in muttery voice.) "'Who are you?' she says! As if she doesn't know that she's she, and me's me! If we don't know, who does know? Who? I'm asking you!"

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and consulted Screed, since he seemed to know everything. "If we don't know, who does know?"

Screed shrugged. Appeared more interested in piece of lint floating on air current. Caught it and stuffed lint into pocket. "Dunno."

(Shouty voice returned.) "IS THERE SOMEONE UP THERE WITH YOU?!?!" (Descent into fervent sotto voce.) "You are squatting in LaCroix's penthouse. A penthouse, let me emphasize, to which his return has been imminently foreshadowed! If LaCroix finds out that I've known and condoned your unlawful habitation of his residence — you, his ninth least desired plot device — why, he'll be unhappy! UN-happy! With my job as Cousinly- Receptionist-In-Training! ACK!!! ACK!!! LC will blame ME — ME!! — for letting disreputables past security!!! ACK!!! It will end my career as 'STILL-In-Training' — how will that look on my resume?! I'll be blacklisted, no one will hire me, I'll be forced to live in sewers or abandoned churches with seemingly-slackerly-flirtatious Spanish vampires...." (Bemused pause) "Oh, hmm..." (Sudden renewed indignance.) "I can't believe you allowed somebody up there! Are you out of your freaking mind?"

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and consulted Screed again. "Am I out of my freaking mind?"

"More n' loikely." (Felt beacon of hope. If a Ratpacker thinks you're loony, you're either perfectly sane, or too mad for worrying to do any good.)

Back on phone with Pardoe, I said: "Maybe I'm irrational, but then again, maybe my mind is simply in disarray and needs a good tidying up. Regardless, this evening has been very untidy and inefficient thus far. This phone call is making me very late for the party!" (Heard noise of pique on other end of line.) "Besides, I didn't invite Screed. Wait! I tell a lie. I did invite Screed to the party.  You know that. I didn't invite him to come busting into the penthouse, though..."

(Shriek.) "Screed!" (Tired sigh conveyed The Burden of Responsibility.) "Whatever. Nevermind. Just send Screed down here. Don't let him take anything!"

I looked at Screed. He was at LaCroix's desk, fondling the shiny, gleaming, all- knowingness of the Cousinly Rolodex. "Don't take that!" The carouche snorted.

(Pardoe continuing with orders. Suspect Omnifemale party-hostessing causing her great stress. Could not be conversation with me.) "And you..."

"You?"

"No."

"Oh. Me?"

"Yes," Pardoe said. "I need you to go downstairs to the garbage collection. Wait until the dumpster bings, then immediately come up to the party and tell me."

"The bin will bing?"

"Yes."

"Is this something new, or has it always done that?"

"Just go! Now!"

This is when I try to tell her I'm not dressed. "But I'm not—"

But she's v. impatient! "Go!" (Pardoe hangs up phone, ending call.)

V. odd conversation that.

7:57pm

Yes, v. odd.

CERK has neatest, newfangley gadgets! Imagine! Wonder where can get own bingy bin?

8:03pm

Right. Screed sent off to party w/o further shilly-shallying. Whether he made it to party, or is now rummaging through Cousinly bathrooms stealing all the chrome toilet-paper holders remains to be seen (Hopefully by someone other than LaCroix).

Am currently downstairs w/ worldly possessions + Pardoe gift, standing next to Cousinly dumpsters in Powerpuff Girls underwear w/ modesty-enhancing trench coat, waiting for bin to bing.

Bing, Bin, Bing!

Huh.

Bare feet are obnoxiously cold. Shall non-sensibly boot self while waiting for bin to bing, then see about putting semi-damp black dress on over unmentionables like normal, clothes-wearing-type-person.

8:05pm

Do lurvvvv looking at non-sensible boots! Are so stylish! Are black pleather, too, so not oppressing any species by robbing them of skins to tan + drape resulting hide about extremities for sake of tyrannies of fashion (Unlike certain modesty-enhancing trench coat). No! Is vinylicious, man-made plastic! Footwear comes up to knee + is chunky w/ skyscraper heels looking v. mod. Lurvvv them!

Overwhelmed with gazing affection, laid boots flat in alley w/ dress arranged in appropriate minimizing-bottom-a-half-size manner on asphalt above. There! Shall look quite nice when actually dressed. Don't know why had such turmoil over wardrobe deficiencies earlier. V. silly of me!

Feet not so cold anymore. Am certain cause is beaming pride as peruse dress + boots that is keeping self snuggly! Shall admire ensemble just a wee more while waiting. Surely bin has ages before it will bing?

8:06pm

Bin not binging yet. Ha!

8:07pm

Bin still not binging.

Dress still pretty, too. Whee!

8:08pm

Is really just so great having non-sensible boots. Am so v. lucky am living in society where free to devote energies to frivolity in footwear! Where have right to inflict bunions upon self! Where can limp and laugh all the way to friendly neighborhood podiatrist's office! (Actually, will limp anywhere over two blocks away.)

Could have been born into some exotic culture favoring flat sandals and slippers, or an island that goes sloppy barefoot on beach all the time b/c is just too casual to put forth shoe effort.

Could have been born in Birkenstock. (Is somewhere near Belgium, I think.)

Could have born in impoverished state...WITHOUT SHOES!!!! (Or, yah, yah, w/o food or shelter <— v. important things, too)

Yay me! Have non-sensible shoes! Shall skip for joy!

8:09pm

UNNFF!! 

Have toppled over on pavement. Bottom landed on 3-inch heel poking up like dangerous bottom-poking thingie.

&%^*$#@ non-sensible boots!

Why so clumsy? WHY?! Because vicious non-sensible boots tripped me, that's why! Bastards!

8:10pm

Oh.

Lack of grace was not fault of subversive non-sensible footwear...exactly. Just realized feet do not feel cold, b/c feet have lost feeling from  cold. Should really put on boots now, taking precautionary stance to prevent frostbite, numb knees, etc.

Shall slap everything on in seconds + become toasty-swaddled lickety-split! Ha-ha! Am no dummy!

P.S. Bin still not binging.

8:11pm

Have written that boots are pleather? Is stretchy type. Thing about stretchy type of pleather is that is as cooperative as lifestyle guru investigated for insider trading. Is called form-fitting pleather — but what form?!? A cannoli-footed princess, perhaps, but exposure to elements has rendered own trotters to bloated bulk of frozen bar cake.

Omnifemale Experiment #2: Take frozen bar cake. Take tube-shaped rubber balloon. Place frozen bar cake inside tube-shaped rubber balloon. Observe result. (S/b revolting.)

Know is physical law of nature: matter is neither created nor destroyed. Atoms just so much slutty bags of charges ready to shack up w/ any other slag atoms given the attraction + opportunity, bonking in mad molecules day + night. Couples. Threesomes. Foursomes! Atomic orgies! Universe simply nanometer-sized Melrose Place! Know this. Do!

What WANT to know, what would really ENJOY an explanation for, what would make it ALL BETTER, would be for some smarty-farty person to explain why MY bloody molecules always seem to be repelling the footwear or garment they NEED to be attracting with the most urgency!?!?

WHY CAN NEVER DRESS QUICKLY?!?!?!

Toes entangled in boot shaft fabric until resembling knotted tourniquet boa constrictor about heel. Am freezing off tootsies as I write, and pleather boots just mocking my torture! Just mocking me!

Oh.

Perhaps should put down recycled pencil + try using both hands.

8:12pm

Uuhhhhh-urrf! Grrrrrmmmmmbbblleee. Uh! Ah!

Ta-da!!! Boots on!!

Took tentative steps. Identified frozen feet capable of full range of hobble + wobble motions!

And, as suspected they would, look oh-so-fabulous on me! Hurrah! Forgive pleather for all past misunderstandings. Lurvvv pleather!

Shall just smooth out wrinkle below right knee, then will see about putting on clothes like normal-type-person w/ no crises of physics or otherwise.

8:13pm

While bent over, self-grooming, heard the most startling sound!

Was not binging of bin.

Was familiar voice saying, "Hello." (!!!)

GAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Oh, hope it is not—

8:14pm

IS INCA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Doom! DOOM!! DOOOOOM!!!!!!!!

What if recognizes me w/o cotton balls? What if notices am writing in proverbial diary + draws horribly accurate conclusions?

Oh. Perhaps should stop writing in diary. Is all obvious.

8:15pm

But...

What if Inca KILLS me??? Am in deserted, dark alleyway w/ only a bin that should go bing to save me! Everybody else all having grand time at party — laughing asses off...drinking selves sqiffy...savoring scents of freshly baking popovers + prime rib...beating Ratpackers away with sticks — sharing traditional holiday celebratory activities that know and love, while my unknown, unloved, ex-psuedo-llama self is drained drier than LaCroix's wit!!!

At least will die w/ boots on (v.g.).

8:16pm

But...

Realize that am in deserted, dark alleyway + vampire nearby potentially p.o.ed enough to inflict harm, doom, ouchies, etc., upon my person...

But is not like my name is Tser. Now that  would be trouble.

Am a Bonnie! Might actually escape dark alley unscathed!!!

Okay. Enough being wordy + possibly sentencing self to death. Shall stop writing now.

Mean it!

Juan hadn't said anything past "Hello." Bonnie frowned. What had he been doing while she had been bent over at the waist, ostensibly straightening her pleather, but, in reality, scribbling last-second, tell-tale, confessions? What could  he have been doing for the past four minutes?

<Noticing the size of your bottom,> a naughty part of Bonnie's conscience whispered in her head.

<No! The Inca? No!> the fine, upstanding (neglected) part of Bonnie's conscience protested. <I'm sure Juan was looking at the bin that has yet to go bing, or admiring my suave black dress, or my...Ack!> Unable to concentrate further on this issue of the past, Bons attempted some good, solid thinking toward the future. <Think! Think! The Inca said 'Hello.' In return, you should say...>

"Oh, hell-o!" Bonnie peered at the Inca, curious for some sign she had, in fact, chosen the best response, as opposed to going with the rejected non sequitur of spontaneous, pathetic shrieking for mercy. (Time away from the Cousins had made her weak.)

Juan glanced down. Her eyes followed, quickly assimilating that her posture had rendered her modesty-enhancing trench coat open for business. The Powerpuffs Girls were seeing far too much action this evening, yessiree!

"What are you doing?" the Inca asked.

Bonnie quickly cinched the borrowed coat tightly about her waist, putting Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup under wraps. She gestured at the dumpster. "I'm just waiting for the bin to bing."

Juan glanced at the trash. "You think this bin will bing?"

Bonnie nodded confidently.

"The bin?" he reiterated.

Bons nodded a little more slowly this time. "Yes. Why do you ask?"

"In my experience," Juan explained, approaching the dumpster as if it was Exhibit A in the trial of her intelligence, "it would be something inside  the bin doing the binging." After a quick survey, he swiped one agile arm through the trash, producing a mound of white and silver with a twisty knob on front. "Something along the lines of this kitchen timer." Juan bobbed the device from side to side. "It's still ticking."

Bonnie's right fist clenched at her side. At that moment, she craved writing 'Incan smartass' in her diary more than being fully clothed or gobbling a pint of Cherry Garcia. "Of course," she said, acting like she'd known it was a silly kitchen timer Pardoe had sent her to witness all along. "Some people don't want to rummage around in refuse, you know. I am not a trashy person."

The Inca smiled, nicely accepting her excuse, and held the timer out to Bonnie as an olive branch.

She resolved to be magnanimous and demonstrate good-manners-even-when-not- heartfelt, just like a real girl-adult-Homo-sapiens-type-person. "Thank you," she said, equally nice.

As soon as Bonnie's fingers encountered white plastic, the timer emitted a sturdy "BING!"

They were both still holding the kitchen timer, the Inca watching Bons expectantly, while she cracked the whip on her deductive powers. Why was he staring? <What do I say? Something non-llaman!>

"So..." Bonnie began hesitantly, "we banged." <Erk! Bad!> She nodded toward the timer, to allay any misinterpretation.

"Yes," the Inca said.

Juan still looked like he expected her to speak or do something. It was making her very nervous. For a rash second, she considered falling back on old llama habits and doing a spit and run. "Err..."

Luckily, another familiar voice called from around the corner. "Juan? You there?"

The Inca let go of the timer. Bonnie, distracted, lowered her hand to her side as they both turned their heads in the direction of the new arrival. Whistling, Tracy Sue entered the alleyway. "Tough luck. No sightings on this end."

The Inca nodded once, checking off a personal mental list. Bonnie smiled with lots of teeth, fighting back a groan. The Vaqmadre! Gah! She waved with her free hand. "Oh. Hell-o!"

Tracy Sue froze, blinked once, twice, three times, then continued deeper into the alley, her leathers subtly creaking in soundtrack. "Where the hell have you been? I wasted almost all of War 11 looking for you!"

Juan's gaze had momentarily wandered back to studying the contents of the dumpster, but at Tracy Sue's interrogation, his eyes snapped away from the empty cartons and shredded paper. He frowned. "This is the Bonnie you were trying to find? The Rutledge?"

The Bonnie in question thought he could stand to look a Chicklet more impressed. Indignant feelings were cast aside, though, as she noticed that Juan had picked something else out of the bin — a well-read copy of 'The Llama Less Traveled' that she'd tossed in a self-actualizing moment while straightening up for the party — and was now giving it a funny stare. Bonnie tried not to panic. Flitting her eyes nervously between the question- filled Tracy Sue and the evidence-holding Inca, she began to hurriedly gather her clothing and other worldly possessions off the pavement. "Ooh! I'm late! I'm late for a very important date!"

Tracy Sue set to arguing. "No, you don't get off that easy! I want to know what hap-!"

But, startlingly, the Inca came to Bonnie's rescue. He held up one palm, as if to tell Tracy Sue "Stop." Still eyeing the copy of 'The Llama Less Traveled,' he said, "She needs to go. We banged." He finally lifted his gaze as Tracy Sue made an incomprehensible sound. "That is, her timer banged several minutes ago. Your friend Bonnie obviously has something urgent to do," he said, adding, "at the CERK party."

The women turned to stare bemusedly at the Inca, talking simultaneously.

"I wasn't invited to any CERK party!" Tracy Sue complained. "How do you know about our CERK party?!?!" Bonnie sputtered.

"Vachon mentioned it. A party for the Pardoe's birthday, yes?" He began to stare at Bonnie thoughtfully again. "Now that Tracy Sue brings it up, it does seem strange that we weren't invited."

<Hmph. As if just because Vachon was invited...> "Right. It must have just been a technical oversight." Bons gave a nervous little laugh. "It's not like we have a reason for not wanting you at the party! I mean, golly, Tracy Sue's in town! Surprise! Who knew? Sure you're invited!" she told the Vaqmadre. "And you," Bonnie added for Juan's benefit. Then, giving an effort toward subterfuge, said, "You're the Inca, right? We haven't met before, have we?"

"No, not that I'm aware," the Inca said.

"Rii-ight," Bonnie flashed another brilliant smile, stooped down once more to stuff her journal into the shelter of items in her arms, then began to move out of the alley. "Well, that's settled! Let's go to the party!"

*************************************

November 23rd, continued

8:22pm

FACTIONWITTAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With a disgusted huff, she strode back into the kitchen. She just couldn't wait for Bons to return with the trashed timer. No, she just had to check on the food now. But, to her horror, when she reached the oven, she noticed the dial was now set to BROIL! She hadn't put the heat up that high! It shouldn't be more than 350 for the popovers!! She grabbed an oven mitt and tore the door open, only to be met with a billow of smoke.

"No!" she moaned as she squinted her eyes against the stinging vapors, then reached into the oven and pulled out first the popovers, and then the prime rib.

Then, she stared aghast at what lay before her: the roast was charred and black, and the popovers, well, weren't over anything; they were pop-unders. Flat, dark brown, unappetizing little pots of overcooked plasterboard. This mangled collection of charcoal was all she had to show for hours of Omnifemale hostess preparations and labor. She wanted to cry. It was all a disaster! There wasn't any way to fix this! And, knowing her luck, LaCroix would actually show up to see it all!! "Still," he'd sniff, realizing it had been wise to leave the 'In-Training' attached to her title for a while longer. NO!!!

A soothing voice interrupted her downward spiral of self-pity. "What's wrong?" Bonnie turned to find Vachon standing beside the door. She just made a motion with her hand, as if to say, "Just thinking outside the oven." Vachon nodded, like he understood, like he, somehow, didn't blame her for the mess.

"The Ratpack strikes again, huh?" he asked.

It suddenly dawned on Bonnie that he was right — it WAS the Ratpack! They'd been in the kitchen earlier — they'd been in the food, they'd been in the oven, they'd managed to chuck the timer into the trash! LaCroix couldn't blame her for THEIR behavior ... could he?

"You know, Screed has his moments," Vachon continued, "but they're never this extreme." Then he moved beside her, to survey the damage now sitting on top of the stove. "Well, no one came for the food anyway." His expression lifted in a self-effacing smirk. "I didn't." Vachon's features shifted again, this time looking like he commiserated with her disaster. "They all came to see you, right?" he offered hopefully.

But Bonnie had to shake her head. No, she was pretty sure it was mostly the food that had attracted them all to the gathering. Food and vampires — what else did these people think about from noon to elevenses? She had bragged about her cooking, raised expectations, and this is what she got for thinking so well of herself.

"All right...I don't claim to know much about cooking, but it doesn't look too far off from a piece or two I've seen roasted over a campfire... Is this charred all the way through?" he asked, pointing to the prime rib. Bonnie Kate just shrugged. She was afraid to find out, but Vachon just blazed ahead, taking up a carving knife and fork and slicing right in. The inside of the meat was raw — blood red. "Umm, looks yummy," he commented, but Bonnie just made a face. "What say we just whittle off the burnt parts, then slice up the rest and pop it in the microwave?"

Bonnie nodded. It sounded like a reasonable plan. It was quite helpful of Vachon to have suggested it. Decent, even. She'd maybe even go so far as to use words like 'reliable' and 'sincere' to describe his actions, at least privately. It was so...unexpected!

"Good, you get started on that," Vachon continued talking, "and I'll see what I can do in the way of some biscuits." Within just a few moments, without even glancing at a cookbook, Vachon had a cutting board full of rolled dough. He was slicing out rounds with an inverted glass and placing them on a cookie sheet. Then, he slid the sheet into the oven, checked the temperature setting and closed the door. "Give those ten to twelve, and you should be all set," he informed her.

She was amazed, and very impressed. He looked like he'd done this sort of thing before, like maybe he'd been a short-order cook or something at some point in his life. Obviously not the slacker so many thought him to be. But, as she opened her mouth to ask him about his experience, he suddenly got the strangest look on his face. He tilted his head to the side, like a cat who'd just heard a sound no one else in existence had heard, then just wandered out of the kitchen without a word, and without a backwards glance.

Bonnie was taken aback for a moment by the odd behavior, but she pushed herself forward to follow him. She eased open the kitchen door — afraid to actually leave the kitchen completely unattended again — and peeked out. There, standing in the entryway, was Juan Valdez (a.k.a., The Inca) and Tracy Sue Morris.

Juan had a book in one hand, the missing timer in the other.

There was no sign of Rutledge.

Vachon was beside Tracy Sue. Flirting. Shamelessly.

Bonnie just shook her head and went back to repairing the damage to the dinner.

*************************************

Can you still be a High Priestess if your Shrine has been reduced to a pile of rubble, topped meekly by a bad Conversion Day gift in the form of a tattered Chinese-paper pagoda? Bonnie didn't think so, but apparently Jules did. And, to prove it, the High Priestess was standing in the Cousinly Mess Hall, pointing an accusing finger tipped with Rip-Your-Heart-Out-Red nail polish, looking like she was going to do just that.

"Mmm-hmm... Burned dinner, didn't you? Any other cataclysmic disasters I should know about?" She looked around the kitchen, noticing the spotless counters, the neatly stacked dishes, the gleaming silverware, and the grime-free windows. "Perhaps a little unauthorized  use of the Fanfic Fairies? Hmm? There are rules you know. Union negotiations. Procedures and regulations which must be followed, requisitions to be filled out, dissertations to be written, ways and means committee meetings to attend. Not just anyone is responsible enough to realize that you need to be careful what you wish for ... because it might come true."

Bonnie simply smiled. She wasn't a member of Nunkies Anonymous. Jules had no real power over her here. "Be gone," the C-R-Still-I-T finally said. "...before someone drops a Shrine on you!"

Jules quickly glanced up at the ceiling, but saw that it was quite intact and not in imminent danger of collapse — as well as having been recently repainted a lovely and burnt-prime-rib-smoke resistant shade of morning glory blue. The Nunkies Anonymous High Priestess gave Bonns a narrow stare, this time pointing straight at her. "I've got my eyes on you..." That warned, Jules turned with a mighty swish of her satin skirt and left the Cousinly Mess Hall. Quiet descended all around Bonnie.

<Ding, dong, the witch is gone...>

Then she had to get back to work. She remembered the biscuits Vachon had prepared, pulling them from the oven just in time to prevent a low-budget reenactment of the prime-rib-burning incident. They were puffy and golden brown, and smelled delicious. If it hadn't been for Vachon...

But Bonnie stopped that train of thought from leaving the station — there would be no side trips down Vaquera Memory Lane for this ex-Vaq! The past was the past, and right now she had quite enough of the present to deal with!

She grabbed the plates, the silverware, and the napkins, which were expertly folded into beautiful crane— er, goldfish. Goldfish? Dern Ratpackers!!! This would NOT make LaCroix happy, should he happen to arrive home in time for this little soiree, which he wasn't officially invited to, but was being thrown for his ultimate enjoyment just the same. And to be reminded of poor MIA war-veteran Spike the goldfish in such a callously festive fashion ...well, it just wasn't right.

Hastily she unfolded each napkin, then quickly refolded them into fully-blooming roses. Onto the tray they went, then out the door to the dining table she headed. But, as she began to arrange the place settings, she happened to glance up and see him ... Vachon ... flirting ... with Tracy Sue, Vaquera extraordinaire. Bonnie gulped, transfixed by the scene as if it was a gory accident on the shoulder of the QEW.

Look at him, she thought. He'd been so nice, so helpful, so ... sincere. Not fifteen minutes ago. He'd made biscuit dough! But now, now he was all ... being friendly ... with Tracy Sue. Touching her hair. Putting his hand softly on her shoulder. Smiling that charmingly cocky grin at her. And she was eating it up like he was spoon-feeding her chocolate pudding!

But, apparently, Bonnie wasn't the only one who'd noticed Vachon and Tracy Sue. The Ratpackers had as well. On top of that, they'd noticed Bonnie noticing Vachon and Tracy Sue. Quiet as mice — and, yeah, they'd learned from the best — they'd crept across the room and were now standing behind the C-R-still-I-T, like a Greek Chorus.

Libby sounded a soft and gentle tuning note, then began to sing — "WHY WOULD A FELLOW WANT A GIRL LIKE HER? / A FRAIL AND FLUFFY BEAUTY? / WHY CAN'T A FELLOW EVER ONCE PREFER / A SOLID GIRL LIKE ME?!" — at the top of her lungs!!!

Bonnie whipped around, nearly sending the dishes and silverware flying, then she grabbed the offending choir and hustled them off into the kitchen.

"We kinnawt be h'in 'ere!" "We're four-bitten!" "'H'off limits! H'out! H'out! H'out!' ya said!" they all protested at once.

"Well, you can't be singing songs like that out there!!" Bonnie told them.

"Oi sung h'it proper!" Libby protested, tears welling up in her eyes. "Oi got h'all tha' notes roight, h'an put h'in just tha' roight h'amount h'a let'ers, Oi did!!"

"Nawt h'in 'ere, nawt h'out dare. Make h'up yer bloody mind!" Johnsie protested.

McLisa leaned over and whispered, "Guess now we know why she's h'a Rat's Ass, eh?"

"Hey! I heard that!" Bonnie said, glaring at the addled list owner.

Lisa smiled. "Oi know."

Bonnie sighed, then firmly addressed the assembly. "Look: he's got a right to flirt with whoever he wants..."

"Whomever," all three corrected her. Bonnie glared.

"...She's a Vaquera; it's practically in their constitution! It's certainly in their nature! And it's not like I  care. I really don't. Been there, done that, slept on his couch! Old news. Got it, you three? OLD. NEWS. So, leave off with the Rodgers and Hammerstein soundtrack, would ya?"

"Me finks she duff protest too much," Libby whispered quietly to Lisa.

"Me finks h'a rose by h'inney h'other name wouldn't smell loike burnted prime rib," Lisa whispered to Johnsie.

"Mucho h'adios h'about nuffin', h'if ya h'ask me!" Johnsie said quietly to Libby.

"Oi did-no h'ask ya," Libby replied.

Then they all smiled innocently back at Bonnie, all batting their wide eyes like the perfect angels they'd never be.

Just then, the kitchen phone extension rang.

"All right. Back out there," the C-R-still-I-T ordered. "Go find something else to do ... like, maybe, play with the nice, shiny, pretty yardage of satin currently ensconced on the settee," Bonnie suggested, trying to hustle the tornado which called itself the Ratpack out of her Cousinly Mess Hall so she could answer the phone, not noticing the bottles of blood which each had somehow managed to swipe off the counter and covertly stuff down their trousers.

"Hello, nurse!" Bonnie heard the Ratpackers declare as she headed back into the kitchen. Let the Miss-High-And-Mighty Priestess of the NA deal with them for a little while!

"Meeeeeeeeeeeep!!!!!" A llama's voice sobbed into her ear. "The Inca's aaaaht the paaaarrrr-teeee!"

This mournful declaration did not stop Bonns from continuing her kitchenly responsibilities while conversing on the phone. (Omnifemale Rule #3: Multi-Multi-task!) She put the assorted veggies on the stove then began to inspect the glassware for any wayward spots as she talked. "Bons! Where are you? What happened?!"

"I'm in the Cousinly Baaaa-throom, regroooouping," Rutledge sniffed pitifully, then warbled out the tale of her run-in with Juan and Tracy Sue in the alleyway. "I haaaad to invite them! They made  me!"

"Being away from Cousinly influence has made you plush! You could have been firm. You could have informed Tracy Sue and the Inca that an invite for Vachon does not equate an invite-by-proxy to every social leech he knows!" Pardoe could hear the scratching of a recycled pencil on paper. "You're writing down every word I say, aren't you?"

"Am going through withdraaaaawal!" Bons howled. "Whole Incan encounter drove me to mad diary craaaaa-ving! Shoved timer in Incan direction when reached party entrance + fled to Cousinly Bathroom. Had to! Desire to scribble 'GAAAAHHHH!!!!' all over CERK station walls v. strong!!"

"Hmm," Bonns mused, throwing down her polishing cloth "I'm glad you didn't. That wouldn't make LaCroix happy when he returns. Good save."

"Was near thing-g-g!" The echo off the Cousinly Bathroom walls reflected in Bonnie's sorrowful wail. "How am supposed to survive paaaaart-teeeee without completely giving self away like present with pretty bow?!?!?" More sounds of frenetic writing came over the line.

"All right, Bons," Pardoe made her voice very stern. "It's time for some Tough Omnifemale Love."

"Meeep!"

"I want you to stand up, put down your pencil and diary..."

"I caan-hann't!"

"Put them DOWN, Rutledge!" Bonnie heard the thump of a book dropping and the clatter of a pencil against tile. "Good. Now walk to the mirror..."

"O-kay..." sniff 

"...And repeat after me: 'I am an Omnifemale...'"

"I am an Omnifemale," Rutledge repeated obediently.

"I am calm and capable."

"I am...hmm...calm...and...err...capable,"

"I will speak in complete sentences, not bizarre shorthand..." Pardoe listed with a Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training's eye for detail.

"I will speak in complete sentences, not bizarre shorthand..."

"...And I will not get caught..."

"And I will not get caught!" Rutledge sounded enthusiastic, if not entirely convinced.

"Good!" Bonns congratulated. "Now blow your nose, and get to the party!"

"Hmm..."

"What is it, now?" Really, Bons was becoming quite exasperating!

"There doesn't seem to be any form of paper products in the Cousinly Bathroom, and all the chrome toilet paper holders are missing!" There came a pregnant pause. "Urm, Screed hasn't arrived at the party yet, has he?"

"One sec." Bonns put down the phone and performed a swift reconnaissance of the party guests as she transferred the perfectly sparkling crystal to the table. She saw Tracy Sue and Jules on one couch, gossiping with Christy, who was pointing energetically at her high heels. She saw Julia playing 'Spin The Empty Merlot Bottle,' with the Ratpackers, only every time it was Libby, Johnsie or McLista's turn, they'd simply take the bottle and try to run, forcing Julia to bodyslam them and take her bottle back. She saw Jayne playing a round of gin rummy with Perry and the moose. The moose was winning. She saw the Inca, quietly reading the book he'd brought with him. She saw Vachon with Shele, and, no two ways about it, he had to be flirting! He was letting, actually inviting, Shele to demonstrate each and every sample in her Mary Sue Beauty Consultant arsenal upon his person, including a tattoo in black eye shadow of a skull and heart encircled with the slogan 'I Love My Faction' on his forearm!

Bonnie marched back into the Cousinly Mess Hall, picked up the receiver, and reported with a butter-smoothness contrary to all she was feeling, "No Screed here."

"Yak!" It was a typical Rutledge response when confronted by unsettling news.

"You did  shoo him out of LaCroix's penthouse, didn't you?"

"Why, yes, but..."

"But?"

"That doesn't mean he didn't go back! What if he's nesting? Infesting? Gah!"

Bonns eyed the main dishes, nigh to be served. At that moment, searching for Screed in every nook and cranny of the station hardly seemed surmountable. She would address the carouche issue after she'd gotten the half-dozen problems ahead of it out of the way. "We'll deal with it later. Just come to the party — dinner's ready!"

"Hurrah!"

"Oh, and Bonnie...?"

"Yes, Bonnie?"

"Remember: You won't get caught."

"v.g. — uh, I mean, very good!"

****************************************

The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training set a dish of veggies and the biscuit warmer on the dining table, trying not to notice or think about Vachon. Tracy Sue was at his side again, and he was flirtatiously showing her his eye shadow tattoo. The Vaquera moved to trace the skull image with a fingertip, only to have Shele smack her hand away with a loose powder brush the size of a fist. Bonns saw the Fanfic Beauty Consultant produce a bright orange bottle with a black logo reading 'DDD.'

"This is Mary Sue's new product — 'Dermis Darn Douceur.' Sure, it sounds French, makes skin soft and smells like candy, but it also works as an excellent eye shadow tattoo fixative!" Shele whipped out a cotton ball (whoosh-ka!)  and immediately began a demonstration upon the Spaniard's person.

Bonnie retreated to the kitchen, narrowly repressing a scowl. She collected the array of bottles she'd decanted from blood bank rejects and LaCroix's personal store for the full- fledged vampires out of the Cousinly Cupboard, then she returned to join the others.

Amidst the hubbub of chatting, flirting, and Ratpacker-wrestling, the CERK security buzzer sounded anew. Bonns's eyes lifted expectantly from setting the table. More guests! Bonnie and LaCroix would not need to be allowed in, so that meant the arrivals had to be — unless there were more gatecrashers, the C-R-Still-I-T qualified mentally, shooting a brief glare at Tracy Sue now fondling Vachon's eye shadow tattoo to her heart's content — just had to be...

"Nick!" Julia exclaimed, immediately releasing McLista from a headlock. "Oh, thank god!" She hauled herself to her feet, lurching as her grip slipped on her bottle of Merlot. "You're here. That's just...that's just..." Her features twisted as she searched for a word. "Incomprehensible." The Uffer scratched her temple. "Pardoe said you were invited, but then, she's working as a Cousin. Cousins lie,"  Julia said emphatically, obviously disturbed that such a universal credo had been proved surreptitiously fallacious. "I wonder if that's why she's still In-Training?" she conjectured. "But never mind that, Nick. You're here!" Julia threw herself at him in a drunkenly affectionate embrace, remaining careful to not slosh any of her Merlot bottle. "Someone I'm glad to see is finally here!"

Nancy peered over Nick's shoulder, waving one hand. "Julia, I'm here, too!"

"Good for you, Nancy!" Julia cheered absently. Most tellingly, Julia made no move to let Nick go. He was her raft, her lighthouse, her St. Bernard (She'd had quite a bit of Merlot, remember), her party favor! "I am so glad you are here, Nick."

"Glad to be here." Nick quite possibly could have been lying. He gingerly unhooked Julia from his neck, then held the door open with one hand as he made room for Nancy to pass. She entered, her face only visible from the nose up due to the large fruit basket in her arms. Nick kept his stare pinned on the brown wicker and its harvest of contents as Nancy walked by, a roguish grin tickling his mouth. Nancy, for her part, beamed conspiratorially.

Julia's gaze wobbled, her eyes temporarily resembling marbles hitting a tile floor, then her vision narrowed into twin points of singular confusion. Nick seemed awfully intent upon that fruit basket. You could even say Nick was excited about its fruity bounty. Elated. Punchier than Julia herself. Julia shook her head at the idea — Nick a cornucopia fetishist? Does...not...compute!

The last time Nick had appeared so enthusiastic about any form of Homo sapiens-friendly nutrition, he'd been — gak! — wired on Lidoveuterine B. Mortal! For Julia, this thought reached a degree of gravity almost powerful enough to sober her completely. She opened her mouth to make a pronouncement summarizing her observation that Nick might have gone off like a quart of milk on a summer windowsill or Mary's nursery-song lamb, expecting to make a great plot advancement, only her declaration was overshadowed by the Inca.

"HELLO," Juan said very loudly. Perry emitted a series of urgent barks.

The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training, Jules, Christy, Jayne and Tracy Sue offered their greetings likewise.

The Ratpackers said nothing. They were too busy tying each other's shoelaces together.

Shele said nothing. Welcomes were the height of socio-emotional pandering, and she was far too passive-aggressive to indulge in such polite nonsense. Was there anything in saying 'Hello' to Knightie-types for her amusement or advantage? No, there was not.

Vachon said nothing. He frowned at Perry, who padded in a circle, nearly chasing his canine tail, which was mainly interesting in that it meant Vachon had stopped flirting again for more than a picosecond.

The moose said nothing, because moose are strong and silent types.

Julia observed Nick and Nancy as they offered polite hellos in return. They were distracted, however, exchanging sneaky looks between themselves, followed by meaningful glances at the fruit basket and Vachon. This Spanish interest fertilized Julia's bewilderment even further — Nancy never  had an interest in Vachon! He was as appealing to Kaminski as squash cookies coupled with fanfic about strippers.

The Ratpack rolled past Julia, a human jungle gym of flailing arms, entangled legs, and one finger entrapped in a double-bow knot. <Something unusual is afoot,> she thought.

Nick cleared his throat, obviously preparing for a solemn speech to mark the festive occasion. "I have a gift..." he began.

"DO YOU HEAR THAT?" the Inca shouted. Perry whimpered and began frantically scratching one golden ear, suggesting the need for a flea-check when he got home.

"Yeah, yeah," Tracy Sue whispered, nudging Juan with an elbow so he'd tone it down a notch. "Nick has a gift. We all heard."

"Ahem. I have a gift," Nick repeated. "For..."

Bonns and Jules — the ones whose birthdays were stalking the party — realized they were leaning expectantly toward the blond vampire. Both instantly shifted their postures to nonchalance. Gift-schmift...they didn't care what Nick had! Besides, they knew he was a bad gifter. Each woman began to earnestly hope Nick's present was for the other, because she  deserved it!

"It's for Vachon!" Nick pronounced.

"WHAATT?!" Everyone exclaimed, except the Inca, who'd clapped his hands over his ears as though he couldn't bear hearing the news in a fit of sibling rivalry.

"Oh, I get it," Julia muttered. "This party...It's not for birthdays, Thanksgiving, Nunkies Anonymous, the Shrine, or The Canadian Way. It's to celebrate Global-Let's-Drive-Julia- Batty Day."

Nancy stepped forward to present the basket to the Spaniard. She appeared ready to burst.

"I know it's a belated thought," Nick explained, "but it struck me that this was the perfect occasion to finally express my appreciation for all the help you gave me in devising an appropriate Conversion Day gift for LaCroix in 2001."

Vachon rubbed the stubble on his chin thoughtfully. "I'm amazed you've earned the reputation for being a bad gifter."

"Really?" Nick said.

"No, not really."

Nancy extended her arms for Vachon to take his present, her lower lip jiggling with anticipation. Vachon didn't move. Nancy broke into an eager smile, studying the Spaniard for any sign of immeasurable kumquat anguish.

"Okay, you've got me. I'm not the best gifter," Nick said good-naturedly. He watched Vachon as carefully as Nancy. "But, in my defense, I'm not the one who had the brainstorm of building a Pagoda To Nunkies."

Jules choked out a sound of protest. "The idea was sound!"

"Yes," Shele agreed facetiously. "The idea was sound. The pagoda roof wasn't."

"I told LaCroix not to stand up..." Jules crossed her arms over her chest, rather miffed over being reminded of the calamity.

Nancy's expression gradually lost its streak of fiendish glee. Vachon didn't appear bothered at all by the contents of the fruit basket, simply perplexed. At this proximity to the kumquats, he should be out of his mind at the hellish ringing in his ears. Why wasn't he cringing in torment? He should be prostrate on the floor—

Everyone turned in alarm as Perry began to howl, except for the Inca. The Inca fell to his knees, yelling, "AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!!"

Nancy slipped a peek at Nick. Guilt was sweeping over his features like a plague of locusts noticing an Egyptian field. "It's all my fault," he whispered.

Nancy slapped one hand over her eyes. "Oh, brother!"

Vachon looked over his shoulder, directly at the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training. She tried not to add any meaning to it, like imagining Vachon turning to her signified special trust or respect. It was a moment of crisis, not time for mushiness!

"He's afflicted somehow!" Vachon shouted over Juan's careening to make the noise stop.

"I didn't do it!" Rutledge appeared in the doorway, her hands raised in surrender. "It wasn't me!"

"Of course it wasn't you," Pardoe moved closer to the other Bonnie. "How could it be? You just got here."

Bons's eyes widened. "That's right!" She flicked her gaze suspiciously among the other guests. "So who's guilty?"

A plaintive voice rose from the jamboree of knotted Ratpackers. "Oi diddunt dew h'it!"

Two more denials jumped in competitively from that cheesy throng, one strangely originating from someone's sneaker, the other from someone else's rump:

"She diddit!"

"Oi diddunt! Oi'm h'inny-sent! H'it wuz tha' Moose!"

The whole thrashing Ratpacker-entity latched onto this accusation and began to chant, "Moose! Moose! Moose!"

The moose was speechless.

Out of this insanity, Nick spoke, confessing with sublime angst, "It's all my fault."

No one listened to him, naturally. It was like the boy who cried wolf — Nick had expressed guilt for so many things over the years that when he actually was at fault, no one wanted to blame him.

"Now, Nick..." Nancy tutted, shoving the fruit basket in Jayne's direction, since it was heavy and no one seemed interested in taking it off her hands. "There's no 'I' in 'BLAME,' remember?" Was she an enabler, or what? Actually, what Nancy boiled down to was a person disinterested in getting caught, rather Omnifemale in that sense.

Julia was crouched over the whining Perry, trying to interpret what had gone wrong. "What is it, boy? What's that? Something fell down a Well O' Doom? The plot? Show me where, Perry! That's a good boy!"

Nick was inconsolable. "It's no good, Nancy. There's 'ME' in 'BLAME'! The poor dog..."

Nancy waved her hands carelessly, still trying to shut Nick up before someone — say, Vachon — actually listened to him. "Pshaw! Perry's a big puppy! You should have heard him when he got his Fever vaccine at the vet. You'd have thought we were cutting off his -"

More screaming erupted. It was Jayne, screeching to high heaven, "THERE ARE STRAWBERRIES IN THIS FRUIT BASKET!!!" After several summers working the berry fields of Ontario, Jayne had acquired a ...<hand motion>...psychological problem with strawberries. "NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!"

Pardoe gingerly plucked the troublesome basket out of Jayne's paralytic grip, then grabbed Rutledge's arm, tugging her along. "Why don't you help me with this fruit in the kitchen? The prime rib is ready — everything's bound to look saner after the prime rib."

*********************************

Pardoe peeked out of the Cousinly Mess Hall, checking the state of the dining room's occupants. "What do you know? Just the promise of prime rib seems to have calmed them!"

"The Inca's not afflicted any moooore?" A trace of the llama's voice broke loose. Rutledge stood at the sink, examining the contents of the loaded fruit basket.

"Juan looks fine. He's lowered his voice — he's even letting Shele show him some of her Mary Sue products."

"You know, that new 'Dermis Darn Douceur' smells nice. It reminds me of an Indian dish a friend of mine's mom used to make called 'burfi.' It was, like, this sweet paste she'd concocted from milk solids and attar of roses."

"Blech," Bonns said, beginning to feel confident again that her cooking would impress. Compared to barfy, or whatever it was named, her prime rib and blueberry cream cheese torte were bound to dazzle.

"Mmmm," Bons hummed the thought. "Burfi rolled in poppy and sesame seeds — I wonder if Shele knows the Mary Sue recipe?"

Bonns watched as Shele dabbed a cotton ball of 'DDD' on Perry's nose. Perry, in turn, licked his chops and barked happily. "It's a cosmetic lotion, Bonnie. It's not food."

"Hmm...I heard it makes a good eye shadow tattoo fixative, though."

"Hmph," Bonns grunted. Still spying out the kitchen door, she saw Vachon had recovered from any concern for his vampire sibling. He was back on the couch, Tracy Sue curled up next to him, and he looked horribly, stinkingly, deliciously as if he was flirting within an inch of her life. "Big deal."

A grinding noise churned from the sink, inspiring the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In- Training to abandon her outpost in favor of guarding the food and getting the rest of it on the dining table. She found Rutledge perched on the countertop with the fruit basket next to where the prime rib waited for its carving and presentation, staring down into the sink's whirring depths. "What are you doing with the garbage disposal? Nothing needs disposing!"

"Jayne was right," Rutledge explained, holding up one, large red berry. "The basket does contain strawberries." She threw another handful down the sink. Grind-grind-grind. "Strawberries are out of season, hence the wisdom of Jayne's fear. It's totally bad Feng Shoe. Having fruit out of season is like telling the Universe, 'Heya! Slap me with as much non-linear chaos as ya got, baby!' That's not a good thing. Besides — an out of season fruit that looks this plump and juicy? It's probably riddled with space fungus that will make us turn purple and grow scales."

"Or..." Bonns countered before popping the strawberry in her mouth, "...it was grown here on Earth, on the Equator or in a hydroponic greenhouse."

Rutledge watched for any lavender or mauve rashes appearing on the Pardoe's face. When none grew apparent, she conceded, "Or that."

"Come on, off!" Pardoe tugged her fellow (non-male) Bonnie off the countertop. "That's so unhygienic. Nobody wants your ass next to their beef!"

Rutledge's non-sensible boots landed on the kitchen floor with a depressed clonk. "Tell me about it. Do you realize it's been over one hundred million seconds since I was last officially snogged in fanfic?"

"We should have known that Mary Sue would come to the rescue," Nancy sighed. "Now that Perry and the Inca aren't hearing the Ringing of Beelzebub anymore, would you like to quit saying it's your fault?"

"But it was my fault!"

"Ni-ick!"

While Nick and Nancy conversed in their private huddle, Christy had taken it upon herself to unravel the Ratpack, a goal much easier stated than achieved.

"Hold still!" she reprimanded, smacking the tangle of limbs.

"'Old wot still?" Christy was 90% sure the voice belonged to Johnsie.

Someone, very likely Libby, followed, "Speakin' uh 'oldins — h'inneybuddy's got h'a battyroom? Oi needs h'a precautionary pee!"

The other Ratpackers welcomed this news. "Lemme h'out! Lemme h'out!"

"A-ha!" Christy pulled back from the muddle of ratsies-types, her mouse-ears knocked askew, brandishing a sneaker in one hand. She studied it, frowning at the tennis shoe as if it was part of a Sigfried and Roy show. "Where did the shoelaces go?"

The shoelaces had somehow remained behind, where they continued to bind a pair of Ratpackery ankles together. Christy made a huffy, determined sound, then stood. She decided to search for a pair of scissors, though she was quickly reaching the point where any sharp object would do.

As Christy crossed the room, she passed Jayne, who was busy with some last minute adjustment to the decorations. Jules was watching Jayne carefully — if she had  to endure festive notions dangling from the ceiling, she was determined they would be secure!

"I'll grant you this much, Jayne," Jules admitted. "You know your way around a gourd."

"Thank you," Jayne replied cautiously. Gourd-knowing — was this a marketable skill? "The roundness of the dangling squash should absorb any bad Feng Shoe if the strawberries come back. The leafy autumnal canopy — I rethought that. It's bad chi for the mortals to have dead stuff around."

"Which explains the negative premonitions I have regarding the number of vampires at this party that are not LaCroix," Jules said tartly enough for a blue-ribbon apple pie.

"Plus, no one wants tree debris falling in their soup," Jayne pointed out.

"Hmm," Jules said thoughtfully. "It's fortunate for the Cousinly-Receptionist-STILL-In- Training that you could pitch in and do her party decorations. Didn't I hear Rutledge was supposed  to do the job?"

Jayne shrugged. "She got here rather late," she said, adding with a sarcastic smirk, "Maybe Bons had another shoe emergency."

"Indeed." Jules arched an eyebrow. Her dark red nails twitched. "Grout Duty for her! Now...to acquire some grout." When LaCroix arrived, surely he would finance the rest of the Shrine-rebuilding fund, if only to punish his ex-Scribe? This promising thought consoled Jules.

Juan observed Jayne as she strung a pumpkin from the ceiling, gently tracing the cover of the copy of 'The Llama Less Traveled' he'd found in the CERK dumpster with his thumb. "That woman — Jayne? — she knows a lot about Feng Shoe," he commented.

Shele was occupied with giving the moose a makeover. She stood on her tiptoes, looking around one antler, and declared, "Everybody knows Feng Shoe is full of crap. Cosmetics — now that's the path to world domination! You, pass me a cotton ball."

The Inca produced a cotton ball from Shele's backpack of Mary Sue Fanfic Beauty products. The fluorescent lighting made the small wad of cotton gleam with an unearthly whiteness. Juan experienced a sudden urge to comb it. "This cotton ball..." he told Shele, "It reminds me of my lost llama."

Impatient at waiting, Shele reached around the moose and plucked the cotton ball from Juan's grasp. She dabbed it in her jar of bronzing powder, which turned the cotton ball a muddy color. Shele caught the Inca's expression as it grew even more broken-hearted. "That is so sad," she crooned, but in an insane-people-don't-buy-enough-beauty-products kind of way.

With a few more strokes upon the moose's features, Shele completed her mission. "Julia!" she called, turning the moose for a display of the after-product. "What do you think?"

Julia looked at the moose, did a double take, shook her head, then gulped a swig from her Merlot bottle. Why, he looked pretty!  And scary. After all, the moose had LaCroix's face. "You've brought out the blue in his eyes," she praised.

Christy stepped around Julia, scratched Perry briefly between the ears, then skipped into the Cousinly Mess Hall. "Can I borrow your Cousinly Kitchen Shears, please?" She smiled expectantly at the Bonnies, waiting for their positive response. She'd said 'please,' don'cha know?

The Bonnies, however, were on a hunt of their own, and too busy to answer polite inquiries.

"What do you mean they're not there?" Pardoe demanded as she slammed the fridge door on the fruit basket. "I left the cow's blood on the counter, right next to the kitchen timer!" The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training stared at the bare expanse of countertop and carried out a rapid deduction. "The Ratpackers!! They took the blood I got for Nick!"

Bonns marched out of the Cousinly Mess Hall on the warpath. Bons and Christy trailed behind for the sideshow. If the Ratpackers were tadpoles, they'd be ripe for flushing!

The tangled mass of Screed fans, unaware that their ratty asses were in hot water (for something new, that is), were up to their usual hijinks.

"Sumbiddy's 'and h'is h'in me pocket!"

"Wuzn't me!"

"Wuzn't me!"

"Give me shiney knob back!"

"Kinnawt catch me!"

"Snort! Yer tied tew me paw. Yew kinnawt h'escape!"

"Oi kin!"

"Oi'll thromp ya!"

"Ow! Rat-packery h'oppression frum wit-h'in, h'is h'it? 'Elp! 'Elp! Me faction's h'oppressin' meselfishness! 'Elp!"

The Ratpack throng tumbled and heaved. Suddenly, there was a CRACK! 

"H'oopsie."

"Yew dislocated me moo bottle! H'inney two parts!"

"Oi'm h'okay! Oi'm h'okay!"

"Oi'm not! Me bottom's soggy toast!"

"Whee-Har!"

"Oi'll thromp ya!"

CRACK! 

"Yew made me wet meself!"

"Oi wanna break me moo bottle tew!! Give h'us h'a pushie..."

"NO!" Bonns shouted. Choosing which Ratpacker limb to grab in order to save the day equated knowing which wire to pull first to disarm a bomb.

*CRACK!*

"Oi diddut!"

"I give up," the C-R-Still-I-T muttered, then turned away from the mess the Ratpackers had made on the dining room floor. Assuming a resolute timbre, she announced. "DINNER IS SERVED!!!"

Christy nudged Rutledge's arm. "She's not going to serve the Ratpackers on a plate, is she?"

Bons shook her head. "But the night is young."

"Unless you want to lick it off the Ratpackers," Pardoe told him.

"No, I think I'll pass."

Still, Nick had enough nerve to look askance when the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In- Training had the brilliant idea of offering him a goblet of the prime rib au jus. "It's mostly  cow's blood...only cooked with herbs and spices! Try it! You'll like it!"

Yeah. That's what Nat said whenever she handed him something green in a beaker. "I'll just try the turkey curare," he said, bravely patting his stomach.

The C-R-Still-I-T's expression grew stony. "There is no turkey curare."

"But I thought it wasn't Thanksgiving without the turkey curare," Nick teased.

Silly Nick. You don't tease a person holding a meat fork, even if you are a vampire.

Nancy, however, was on the alert. She covered Nick's hand with her own and cautioned in a low voice, "Just take the glass and smile."

Nick did, even going so far as to try a sip. His features shifted involuntarily, displaying a degree of dismay usually reserved for people who've just realized they've stepped off a cliff. "It's...uh...interesting."

Nancy smiled benevolently at Nick's good manners. Libby, to her left, passed her a bowl of veggies. Nancy's beaming expression dissipated as she realized the bowl contained a medley of zucchini, eggplant and tiny carrots.

Nick, in turn, was watchful of her reaction. "Come on, Nancy," he murmured in her ear. "Just take some squash and smile."

Bonnie (the Pardoe) settled into her end-chair with a thump. The meal, overall, seemed to be going well, as long as you didn't count the picky-eater Knighties. Her main sore point was the seating arrangements — the severe degree of the Ratpackers' mischief proved that it was unwise to allow them within arm's length of each other. In addition, there were the extra bodies of the Inca and Tracy Sue to work into place around the dining table.

Hence the new seating plan, where the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training wound up at one end of the table, and High Priestess Jules reigned over the other (she won by popular vote). Somehow, somehow, while almost everyone else had at least one Ratpacker flanking them, Tracy Sue sat between Vachon and the Inca as pretty as you please, having the time of her life.

Bonnie (the Rutledge) sat on the left side of the table, between McLista and Perry. The benefit to this arrangement was that she was not seated next to the Inca. The drawbacks were McLista stealing her silverware and Perry pawing her under the table. Spritzing the addled listowner with water seemed to take care of her utensil issues, but no amount of polite rejections, tapping of the nose, or commands to 'Heel!' seemed to dissuade Perry's familiarity. He was a vampire doggie masher!

Libby and Johnsie...well, all of the Ratpackers had been swaddled in plaid towels, left over from War 11, so that their cow-bloodstained clothing wouldn't mark the furniture. McLista only indulged in minor kleptomania as she ate, but Libby and Johnsie were absolutely terrifying. Their cheeks (facial) had been scrubbed and shone with cherubic rosiness. Their hands had been washed, the cheesy grit scraped out from under their nails, and they used their fingers to grip their silverware with dainty precision. They executed each bite of their prime rib, each nibble of their biscuits, each dab of their napkins with grace and manners that even the High Priestess could not fault. The looming impact, the sheer magnitude, the unspeakable enormity of this faintest soupcon that Johnsie and Libby were actually behaving themselves at the table had more than one person silently questioning reality and the nature of existence. No one made eye contact, just in case the vision of Ratpackers conducting themselves in an orderly fashion could strike the unwary blind.

Vachon drew the gathering's interest with a rap on his glass. He'd just poured a refill from the dustiest and most forbidden-looking bottle Pardoe had pulled from LaCroix's store, and the crystal rang a slightly off note. Vachon eyed the level of his glass, took a tiny sip, then tried again. Ping! The glass chimed a perfect C.

Now that he had everyone's attention, the Spaniard raised his glass. "I'd like to propose a toast. To our lovely hostess, Bonnie, who cooked this meal and borrowed the best blood, all while, in true Omnifemale fashion, getting five things done at once."

<He called you 'lovely,'> Bons mouthed across the table.

<Go me!> Bonns mouthed back, trying to fight the welling sensation of marshmallow gooiness in her chest at Vachon's gesture. How gallant of him, especially to give her credit for the full meal when he'd made the biscuits! It almost made up for a full evening of shallow flirting. Almost.

The diners saluted Vachon's toast with their assorted glasses of Merlot, blood, grape juice, au jus, Zombie Beachcomber, etc. "Here, here!" while the Bonnies released a cheer of "Omnifemales, hurrah!"

"I don't get it," Nick appeared curious. "What's with the 'Omnifemale' bit?"

Jules virtually shooed the word away with a flick of a hand. "It's one of those incidental morsels of vocabulary Bons persists in inventing."

Julia topped off her Merlot glass. "It means something? I thought 'Omnifemale' was the name of a cult."

"An Omnifemale..." Rutledge began in a lofty, slightly defensive tone, "is a term used to describe a woman with a variety of developed skills ranging from the physically and intellectually challenging to the artistic."

Jayne and Christy struck up a duet, channeling an old perfume commercial:

"I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan,
And never, ever let you forget you're man
'cause I'm a woman, W-O-M-A-N!"

"Just to make sure I'm on the same page..." Nancy mused, "...you're saying that an Omnifemale could diffuse a nuclear warhead, write an essay about it, then fold that essay into nifty origami mobile that doubles as lethal weapon?"

Bons grinned as she nibbled a tiny carrot. "Something like that."

"Sounds nifty!"

"So it is  the name of a cult!" Julia concluded.

"But that sounds the same as the idea of a Renaissance Man. Why don't you simply say 'Renaissance Woman?'" Nick questioned. It sounded logical and less prone to requiring an explanation to him.

Shele made a show of checking her Hello Kitty watch. "Because the Renaissance is o- vah...by about three and a half centuries. It is now the Information Age!"

"The Information Age..." Julia repeated, shaking her head. "And I still don't know how the hell I wound up at this party."

"It's a better title for an era than 'Age of Stretchy Fabrics,' The Fake Tan Age' or 'Age of Indifference.' You have to agree on that."

"Yes..." Julia pondered deeply, twirling her Merlot in her glass. "But the Renaissance was such a kicker. 'Age of Rebirth'..." she mused. "How are us culture-come-latelys supposed to compete with that? Brand ourselves 'The New And Improved Renaissance — With Extra Stain-Fighting Power!'?"

Nick looked dubiously humorous. "Let me guess — with a Pop Art logo."

Vachon gave him a half-smile. "They're not that cool."

Someone protested. "Hey!"

"What do you think?" Julia asked, nodding at the Inca.

"That's not fair, you know," Vachon commented. "Asking him. He's biased."

"The Renaissance..." the Inca's eyes glittered hotly, "was the Age of Conquistadors that crushed the People of the Sun, plaguing the Four Corners, stealing and raping our lands for their own."

Vachon held his hands out at his sides. "I told you he's biased."

"So that's two votes for the Renaissance: Cool, one for the Renaissance: It Sucked," Shele summarized. "It's still not the Renaissance NOW."

"I've got it!" Julia snapped her fingers. "We, dear friends," She waved her hand over the majority of the table, "and you other people...We are living in The Conundrum."

"The 'Age of Problems With No Satisfactory Conclusion,'" Christy expanded, "No, that's more like a description of 'Forever Knight.'"

"No," Jayne shook her head. "I think what Bons has already said was, we are now in the Age of Omnifemales." She paused to glance between the vampires and Johnsie. "Except for the men, of course."

Someone protested. "Sexist."

"Arr-Alright," Julia said without conviction. "The Age of Omnifemales — I'll drink to that. But keep in mind the amount of Merlot I've downed," she qualified. "I'll drink to anything at this point. Even a cult."

"Here, here! Omnifemales, hurrah!"

"But it was Patt who really egged him on — 'I'm A Little Teapot,' 'Kumbayah'...she was unstoppable!" Christy erupted in a spate of giggles and thumped the tablecloth. She pointed at Bonnie (the Rutledge). "Ohmigawsh! If only you'd seen the look on Patt's face when the Australian stripper tweaked her! You would have died! Oh, you should have been there!"

The laughter tapered into an uncomfortable silence, as if everyone had just noticed a dead albatross plopped in the centerpiece.

"I'm sorry that I wasn't there," Bons said softly.

"Piffle! I'm sorry you didn't pay the Shrine's insurance premiums!" Jules prickled with resentment. "Everyone's sorry you didn't pay the insurance premiums!!!"

Nick raised one hand and offered the rest of the table's occupants a boyish smile. "I'm not sorry about that, actually."

The Inca was indifferent. "It was just a building."

"Just a building?!" Jules's eyes nearly popped from their sockets. "It was a bastion of reserve and polish!"

Even Jayne and Christy had to snicker at that one. Jules glared them into muffled silence, then targeted Bonnie (the Rutledge) with a point of her red-tipped index finger. "Pay the insurance. That's the one job, the only  thing that you absolutely, positively needed  to do. Your singular responsibility, and you completely fouled it! No, you couldn't pay the insurance premiums when they were due, but you certainly found the presence of mind to invest in your very own Non-Sensible Shoe Closet with state-of-the-art security system to keep Christy at bay—"

At this point, the Nunketeer stuck out her tongue at Bons, "I still got in there. Neener!"

Jules was now engaged in a full-fledged tirade. "Ohhh...and somehow you managed to find the wherewithal to organize an All-Camel production of 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' AND drum up four thousand names on your petition to become 'Bon Bon,' the Fourth Powerpuff Girl..."

The High Priestess clucked in exasperation. "All these, no doubt crucial and life- shattering, things you managed to accomplish, and yet, somehow, SOMEHOW, you couldn't make out a simple little cheque to the Undead Mutual Assurance Company!"

"I'm a Vaq leader, and even I'm not that slack!" Tracy Sue pitched in. "The Church is totally covered."

Vachon's features compressed into a contemplative puzzle. This was news to him.

The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training felt a bubble pop inside her. "The Church is insured? That's crazy! The place was condemned! Granted, all those candles are a fire hazard, but what's there to destroy? Vachon's snazzy red comforter? The ever-so comfy couch?"

"Yeah!" Bons joined in. "The nipple-tweaking painting!?"

"How do you know about the nipple-tweaking painting?" Tracy Sue demanded ferociously.

"Oh, when someone has a nipple-tweaking painting," Christy winked meaningfully, "word travels."

"All I know is the Unnamed Faction put good time and prune juice into booby-trapping the Shrine last War, and the Old, Dead Guy knocked the place down before our hit could run to its proper conclusion," Julia pronounced. "With an emphasis on the running. When the Shrine's rebuilt, I want an attack do-over!"

"If  the Shrine's rebuilt," Jayne said murderously.

"What do you mean if?  You're such a drama queen!"

And they were off on a Bonnie-blaming, Vaquera-bashing, Up-With-UF round of factionwittage of which they could be well-and-truly proud, even if the vampires interspersed the occasional, ego-puncturing, "What's the difference?" comment.

Her attention wandering from the debate, Libby gobbled a huge bite of blueberry cream cheese torte and noticed that one shoelace knot remained tied in a double bow about her pinkie finger.

"Oi mustafa fergotten sum'fin," she said to herself. She peeked at each of the faces around the dining table. It was a motley bunch. Even so, Libby's eyes became big circles as she noticed a deficiency. "Screedie! 'E h'is not 'ere! 'Snot Un-Thanksgettin' wi'out Screed!" She glanced around the table again. Once she was certain the other droogsies were distracted by their argumentating, she motioned for Johnsie and McLista's attention.

"OY!" She said this loudly. "OI 'AVE DRAWPED ME SPOON! OI MUST FETCH H'IT H'UNNER THA' TABLE!" She winked at the other Ratpackers — *WINK* *WINK* — then disappeared under the shroud of the tablecloth.

McLista scanned the party guests, noting their animated chattering about things other than what Libby was doing under the table, and announced, "OY! OI 'AVE DRAWPED ME NAPPY-KIN! OI MUST FETCH H'IT H'UNNER THA' TABLE!" She made eye contact with Johnsie — *WINK* — then disappeared under the shroud of the tablecloth.

"OY!" Johnsie said, excited to join in on all this winking and vanishing, "OI 'AVE DROPPED ME TROUSERS! OI MUST FETCH H'EM H'UNNER THA' TABLE!!" He attempted winking at himself — and bore a strong resemblance to Popeye — then disappeared under the shroud of the tablecloth.

"Whazzap, Libs-mate?" Johnsie asked once the three of them were assembled under the table.

"Oi remembered sumfin' — Screedie never showed h'up h'at tha' part-tee!"

Johnsie scratched his head. "Why, yew 'ave struck h'upon h'a plot thingee here!" He moved his hand, scratching Libby's head some for a change of pace. "Whar could 'e be?"

"Mebbe 'e diddunt come h'on porpoise," McLista reasoned, "becauser there's no crankyberry sauce!"

Libby gasped. Johnsie gasped. McLista gasped. "That's roight!" Libby declared, shaking her be-tied pinkie finger in their faces. "We fergot tha' crankyberry sauce!"

They huddled, crying in unison, "'SNOT UN-THANKSGETTIN' WI'OUT THA' CRANKYBERRY SAUCE!!!"

With that, the Ratpackers cast off their plaid towels and began creeping toward the Cousinly Mess Hall.

Christy and Jayne bounded from their chairs to console and soothe their leader, while Jules swooshed a handkerchief from her decolletage and used it to dab at her running mascara.

"It's all unfair, and you did this to me!" she said. "It was my grand gesture — leaving Nunkies Anonymous so that LaCroix would have to publicly admit he couldn't replace me! Well, he admitted it, and I got my High Priestess-ship and my Vice-Presidency back, but did I have a chance to revel in my power and prestige? Did I receive my Cousinly Employee Of The Month Award? NO!!! The Shrine falls on Patt's head, and you..." Another point in the ex-Scribe's direction, "...you beansprout, you didn't pay the insurance!!! Now, I don't get to work at CERK anymore. SHE—" This time Jules jabbed a finger in the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training's direction. "—She gets all my old station duties!"

"I do?" Bonns looked askance. "I don't see why you're complaining, then. I've freed up your time for Shrine-Mach-II fundraising!"

"Exactly!" Jules railed. "And that's all I ever do! Money, money, money!!!! Budgeting, forecasting, itemizing expenses...A HIGH PRIESTESS IS NOT AN ACCOUNTANT!!!!! It's been nearly a year and a half, and I still don't have enough cash! I'm tired. I want things the way they used to be — when I lounged on divans and had dozens of Addicts to scrub tile for me..."

Jayne and Christy stared with meaningful, dollar-sign eyes at Nick.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked.

"It might have something to do with you being the richest man in Canada," Nancy guessed.

Jayne nodded. "Do The Knight Thing..."

"Write Jules A Cheque," Christy completed.

"Oh, no." Nick pushed away from the dining table. "This isn't any of my business. And after the Pagoda To Nunkies fiasco, you shouldn't want it to be any of my business. Let LaCroix help his own faction."

Instantly, Jules's spine straightened. Her tears faded away as she stomped her foot in annoyance. "I told  you he wouldn't fall for it, Christy!"

Christy straightened her mouse ears and shrugged. "It was worth a shot."

"Hmph! And now I have to retouch my makeup!"

Nick shook his head and began moving toward the seating area, stopping short as Julia leapt through the air in front of him. Wouldn't YOU stop short if you witnessed Julia leaping?

As dessert had progressed, those less invested in the Shrine debate had begun to wander away from the table. Shele and Julia were among the first, and they had struck up a rousing game of 'Cobra.' Similar to the simple child's game of 'Shark,' both women jumped, climbed, and bobbed over pieces of furniture. They made a circuit of the room, all the while careful not to touch the carpet (which was infested with an imaginary swarm of poisonous snakes).

Yes, Shele and Julia were rather intoxicated.

Nick caught Julia mid-air, whirled her around and deposited her atop the sofa. "Thank you!"

Shele named names. "Dirty cheater! Pumpkin eater!"

Julia made a face at Shele as she waved her arms at the wide expanse of carpet between the stool upon which Shele stood in crane stance, and her own position. "You are doomed! You're going to fall into the bottomless chasm! You are cobra food! Ha-ha!"

Shele made a face of her own — 'Oh, yeah? Watch this!' She rifled through her backpack and pulled out a grappling hook shaped like chicken feet. Launching it into the ceiling, Shele tugged on the cord to test its security, then swung toward the couch. Unfortunately, she bonked into Nick, who was still standing in the middle of the floor, trying to judge whether it was his public duty to commit them.

"What are you doing?" Nick asked.

Shele looked at her rope, then down at the invisible-cobra-infested floor. "Hanging around." She tried to rock in the direction of the couch, but only succeeded in spinning herself dizzily in place. "Hark! I feel a poem coming on."

"If you must," Julia said, "but do try to aim away from Nick."

Shele cleared her throat, and began to spout verse:

"If you can keep your spirit when all about you
        Blame you for their shortfalls or their rotten luck...
If you can trust your judgment when all men doubt you,
        But make allowance that your judgment may suck..."

Well, it was the start of a poem, but it damn sure wasn't Rudyard Kipling.

Nick listened, transfixed, until Shele gestured that he should give her a push. Push, he did, and Shele landed triumphantly next to Julia on the couch.

Julia snapped her fingers in disappointment, and she began to scope out her next destination — an occasional table! Standing tippy-toed on the couch's armrest, Julia wrapped her limbs around the support column barring her path. As she scooted inch by inch until her sneakers touched her goal, she began to expand Shele's poem with another stanza:

"If you run late, or fill time with fickle patience,
        Or lie, but only to make the truth appear...
Or spout hate, when frustrated by loving cadence,
        And yet not be too brave, nor harbor great fear..."

Julia sat on the occasional table with a fiendish chuckle — it was only large enough to seat one.

Shele gave the rigging in her hand a disgusted look and flung it away — you're no good to me! It boomeranged, popping her in the face like a rubberband with an attitude. Shele shook an angry fist at the bobbing cord — Wise guy, eh? — then did something completely unexpected. She jumped straight into the imaginary bottomless chasm, "Ahhh! Ahhh!", pretended to hop over the striking heads of the invisible cobras, then climbed atop the dining table, collapsing across the High Priestess's place setting as though she'd reached a Shele-sized stalagmite. "Whew!"

"Honestly!" Jules huffed. "What is wrong with sitting in a chair, may I ask?"

Shele sat up like a prairie dog, pondered this question, then resumed the poem:

"If you can dream — and fall in love with wistful hope...
        If you can plan — and not make plans your prison...
If you can meet disaster and find how to cope...
        And shed tears, but retain a sense of vision..."

Jules huffed again. "I do not  make plans my prison!"

Bons watched the Nunkies Anonymous Poet Laureate, now marching down the length of the dining table with Patton-esque intensity, then glanced over at Julia, who was monkey- barring the length of the fluorescent lighting to reach the Cousinly Sideboard. Bons scooted down a chair so that she was sitting next to the Pardoe. "They are so drunk."

"You've been that drunk," Nancy called across the table. "I have pictures."

The C-R-Still-I-T clapped her hands together. "Everyone is full and squiffy — it's a good party!"

The Bonnies let out a cheer. "Hurrah!"

Shele sat down in front of them, narrowly missing the remains of Pardoe's chocolate silk pie. She rummaged in her backpack of Mary Sue Fanfic Beauty Consultant supplies and pulled out a handful of cotton balls, which she blew into Rutledge's face.

"If you can confront your failures with hard frankness,
        But not call your soft faults your definition..."

Bons batted the cotton balls away from her eyes, nose and mouth, sending Shele a scowl. With a sudden yip of horror, she looked at the Inca, terrified he may have seen something incriminating.

Ack! He'd seen everything!

Shele cradled the vegetable bowl to her chest and began to generously ladle Nancy's dessert plate with squash. Setting the vegetables aside, Shele produced her sample bottle of 'Dermis Darn Douceur,' took Nancy's hand, and squirted a dollop into her palm.

"And accept that the world carries evil and goodness,
        Wishing ease for the weak with no protection..."

As Nancy stared bemusedly between the eggplant now souring her cream cheese torte and her silky, rose-scented hands, Shele dug in her bag of tricks once more. She produced a pad of leopard-spotted Post-Its<tm> and a pen with a skull-shaped eraser. Then, smirking in a Naughty Shele way, she began to scribble. Ripping off the top note, the Nunk Anon Poet Laureate attached a message to The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In- Training's forehead that instructed in curly letters for the reader to 'Drink Me.' Bonns scowled — like she was naive enough to wear that with vampires present! Bonnie proceeded to fold the Post-It into a tiny airplane, which she bounced with a whifft!  off the side of Shele's head.

Shele pretended to not notice the C-R-Still-I-T's indignation as she began to orate another quatrain:

"If you can know yourself, and register no qualm
        When words like 'gullible' and 'idiot' are thrown..."

Pardoe couldn't help it. She had to at least glance  at Vachon. He languidly raised his glass again, sending her a look that made her flush. Bonns turned her head, and she took a dignified sip of her Merlot. <He is flirting. I shall not encourage him. It's just the wine warming my cheeks (facial) — wine, wine, wine!

Julia had reached the Cousinly Sideboard, and, placing two silver buffets upon the floor, stepping-stoned her way toward also climbing on top of the dining table. She yanked on Jayne's arm, and Jayne stepped up to the plate — well, actually on  her bread plate. They did a brief tango down the length of the table as Julia recited:

"If your brain stays sharp and you remain poised and calm,
        Having the depth to perceive your mind your own..."

Christy hopped up on her chair and pirouetted as Julia twirled a finger over her Mickey Mouse Ears.

"If you can force your heart to meet your mind and soul
        To balance what is right and worthy and true..."

Shele wound up sitting at Tracy Sue's place setting, picked up her slice of chocolate silk pie and took a bite. Tracy Sue picked up her steak knife in a no-nonsense manner, and motioned for Shele to put her pie down, and keep her hands where she could see them.

"Then hold your self-esteem when others bring you low
Through strength of will seeing the beauty in you..."

Julia scratched Perry's rump until he dropped to the floor and began to roll on the carpet. Making 'Oh no!' noises (there were, after all, still invisible cobras on the prowl), Julia sat in his chair, then pulled the vamp dog into her lap.

"If you can be a tramp yet maintain your virtue..."

Shele pointed at Julia as she pronounced:

        "And feel cynicism yet not become cruel..."

Julia put a hand over her heart, mouthing the word, 'Me?' Shele nodded and pointed to Julia again. 'Yes, You!'

"If you can ignore those yaks who would demean you
        For a chance fate of birth, and still keep your cool..."

Julia bowed and gestured toward Shele, who then dangled from one of the decorative pumpkins hung from the ceiling, spinning herself as she spun the lyric:

"If you can fill any extra October hour
        With sixty minutes' worth of heaven and hell..."

Shele dropped from the pumpkin and did an Elvis pose — thankyouverymuch — as the Bonnies clapped and whistled. Julia motioned for her to lean closer, and there were several seconds of frantic whispering — "What rhymes with 'hell'? I don't know — Airedale? I'm not saying that!" They turned back to the dining table audience, cleared their throats, then alternated speaking:

"You'll be life's wondrous..."
          "Kaleidoscopic..."
                    " Power...."

Until the final line, where they jumped down from the table and stood side by side, Tweedledrunk and Tweedledaffy, and voiced in unison:

"And — what is more — you'll be an Omnifemale!"

As she watched Shele emit her thirteenth choking cough, Rutledge made a sound of discovery. "Oh, that reminds me!" Bons rummaged mysteriously within her clothing. "Cha-cha! Happy Birthday! Here's your damn present."

Pardoe sat back in her chair, calculating the permutations of a death scene putting one in mind of birthdays. <How Circle of Life!> "I don't want to know where you had that hidden."

Bonnie set the gift in front of the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training, then called down the length of the table, "I didn't get you a birthday present, Jules!"

"Thank you!" Jules called in response. After all, she didn't do  birthdays. Then again, she had no problem doing  presents. High Priestesses liked adoration, as a rule. "I appreciate your thoughtfulness!" Jules added dryly. "No, wait...that's not it...no, it's coming to me...Ah! I appreciate that you're full of—"

"That box," Nick interrupted. "It looks familiar."

Bons bounced in a rabbity manner, leaning over the table to block Knight's view. "Oh, this ole thing? It's just a box! A dime a dozen! Practically cardboard!"

Bonns glared at her fellow (non-male) Bonnie, who was getting in the way of her opening her own damn present! "Do you mind?"

"Yeah, Nick!" Bons repeated obliviously, "Do you mind?"

"I meant you," The C-R-Still-I-T stated, pointing at the other Bonnie's seat to indicate her rump should be there.

"Oh."

Bonns studied her present closely. It was a nice box, as boxes go, certainly not  cardboard. It looked completely constructed from black leather — rather a speciesist present from Bons, once she thought about it.

Rutledge squirmed in her chair, waving her arms. "Open the box! Open the box! The present's inside!"

Obediently — very obediently considering it was her damn present! — Pardoe opened the box. Inside, she found a freakish rag doll and some large stickpins. Bonns sighed. One couldn't win all the good gifts, but at least the box was nice. "Wow," she said graciously. "Uhh, what is  it?"

"A Mad Hatter Voodoo Doll!" Rutledge hopped out of her chair again, swooping on the contents of the gift box in her eagerness to demonstrate. "It's a toy of destruction and power!"

"Hmm," Bonns said, tugging, then finally snatching her damn present out of Rutledge's clutches. "That might not be bad." She wielded one of the pins, jabbing the Mad Hatter doll in the head. "What happens when I stab it here? Do I lobotomize my enemies?"

"Not quite. That's the Feng Shoe Hair Chakra. It'll just give someone a bad hair day."

The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training eyed Tracy Sue, who was again flirting like mad with Vachon. "That's a start."

"But for it to really work," Bons explained as she pushed Perry's paw off her knee for the millionth time, "you have to attach a personal item of your victim. For example..." She brushed one hand over Perry's head. "Using Perry's fur, I can attach it to the Coronary Epicenter, and his attentions will fade. It's for banishing old loves, you see," she added in a low voice.

"Picking on the dog? Not with my new Mad Hatter Voodoo Doll!" Pardoe replaced the doll in its box, making sure the lid was on securely. "Besides," she retorted with a whisper, "isn't there someone else you should be trying to banish? Someone you're supposed to be saving through cool, unavailability? Someone you shouldn't be banging with in alleyways?!"

Rutledge slumped morosely in her chair. "Yes. Yes, you're right." She paused for a beat, her forehead prickly. "You look," she said, then mouthed, "What's the Inca doing now?"

The C-R-Still-I-T peered past Vachon and Tracy Sue, who were either exchanging obscene gestures or miming something to do with the clutch on their motorbikes. "He's writing down something."

Rutledge gave a tiny shriek. "Gah! A list of incriminating evidence!"

At that moment, Perry poked his nose in her lap with alarming familiarity. "Gah! Julia! Will you control your vampire dog!??"

Suddenly, a shiver ran down Pardoe's spine. "I just got the strangest feeling. Like there's something I should have noticed, but I'm just not seeing it. Plot holes — they come and go so quickly here."

Bons patted her hand. "You're just being a perfectionist. You just can't accept that the party's gone swimmingly well, except for the minor possibility that the Inca knows I'm an ex-llama and is scribbling down his plan of revenge as we speak."

"Hmm." The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training took a thoughtful sip of her Merlot. Was that it? No, she didn't think so. "Hmm."

******************************************

Meanwhile, in the Cousinly Mess Hall, the three Ratpackers mulled over their culinary issues.

"Fink!" McLista pronounced. "Iffen yew wuz h'a crankyberry, whar wuld yew bee?"

"Tha' Natpack?" Johnsie guessed.

"Tha' Knoighties?" Libby echoed.

"Fiddle-dee! Oi'm h'earnest!"

Libby and Johnsie exchanged bemused looks. "Oi thought she wuz McLista?" Johnsie whispered.

"H'it's Satur-today. She's h'always 'alf-past-h'it h'on Satur-todays," Libby replied.

"Fink!" McLista repeated. "'Snot Un-Thanksgettin' wi'out tha' crankyberries! 'Snot Un- Thanksgettin' wi'out Screed! Fink! Whar's tha' Rat-Ass hidin' h'em?"

Johnsie and Libby thought long and hard. Thinking made Ratpackers itch, so they scratched various spots on their ratsies selves.

"Yew-reeka!" Libby announced. Johnsie sniffed his shirt, but shrugged, for he was his usual Limburger-y self.

"Oi shall look-see h'in tha' sink!" Libby said.

"Yew fink tha' crankyberries h'are h'in tha' sink?" McLista had her doubts.

Libby shined with such certainty, Johnsie nearly stuffed her in his rucksack. "H'or tha' trash. Nat'ral 'idey-'oles, they h'are!"

So, with Johnsie and McLisa each holding one of Libby's ankles aloft, they dipped her head into the sink plumbing for a look-see.

"Wot'cha see, Libby?" McLista asked.

"H'erm....Buncha black stuff."

"Black crankyberries?"  McLista prompted.

"Nawp! Oi meant tew h'imply 'tis dark! Oi need h'a loight tew see tha' crankyberries!"

McLista looked at Johnsie. "Wot tew dew, Johnsie?"

Johnsie looked at McLista. "Wot tew dew, McLista?"

The Ratpackers pulled out their duct tape and, fashioning an intricate sticky sling about Libby's ankles, attached each of her feet to a cabinet handle. McLista dug in her rucksack, pulling out a box of matches. Johnsie groped behind the oven, unfastened the gas line, then fed it down the drain with Libby.

"H'okay, Libsmate!" Johnsie called. "Jes' loight h'a match, 'n thingees shuld bee bright n' shiney h'enuff fer yew tew peepers yer full!"

"Yep!" McLista echoed. "Johnsie n' Oi will jes' stand waaaay h'over 'ere!"

Johnsie and McLista crossed the Cousinly Mess Hall and stepped into the Cousinly Pantry, closing the doors behind them. "Safe-tee foirst!" Johnsie said.

"Yep!" McLista agreed. "Oi wuld nawt try thissun h'at 'ome!"

Then they covered their ears as they waited for the big *BOOM!*

Libby, however, poked her head out of the sink. "Bummee! H'it's tew soggy tew loight h'a match!" She wriggled and squirmed, untaping her feet from the shiny cabinet handles, unscrewing and pocketing those while she was giving the effort. "Wot Oi need h'is h'a loight bulb!"

Libby wandered to the refrigerator, opened the door, and began pulling items off the shelves at random, throwing the unsatisfactory objects over her shoulder to litter the kitchen floor. "Pickleds — nawp! Butter — nawp! Cream — nawp! H'eggiweggs — nawp! Jammiwams — nawp! Cheesey-munches...Yurrrm! Whazz this? Oy! H'a froot-tooty bass- kit!"

Libby pulled the fruit basket out of the fridge, stepped over the spilt milk and broken eggs, and scurried over to the Cousinly Pantry. Yanking the doors open, Libby cheered, "Lookit wot Oi found! H'a froot-tooty bass-kit! Crankyberries h'are froot-tooty — must bee some h'inside!"

Johnsie and McLista, however, had covered their ears while they waited for Libby to explode. They heard none of Libby's ransacking of the fridge, nor her approach, so when the Cousinly Pantry's doors suddenly opened to reveal a hovering fruit basket, Johnsie and McLista jumped in surprise. A dozen cans bumped off the shelves and landed on their feet, causing the two to hop in place. "H'owie! H'owie!"

*Clank-clonk-clunk!*

Libby sat on the linoleum floor, the fruit basket between her legs. Vandalizing the carroty and gold cellophane wrapping, she grabbed a handful of kumquats and squinted at them curiously. "Lookit! H'exotical orange crankyberries!! Oi found h'em, Oi did!"

McLista bothered to pick up a pair of the tin cans that had crushed her toes. "Lookit! Oi found sumfin' tew!" She grinned broadly, flashing all her teeth. "Yummity, jellity crankity berrity!"

Johnsie also picked up two cans of cranberry sauce and brandished them proudly. "Yummity, yummity!"

They struck up a jig, twirling elbow-to-elbow as they chanted:

"Yummity, jellity, crankity, berrity
Oi'm gonna eat-h'a-thee
H'in tew me bellity!"

The Ratpackers had found their precious cranberry sauce (as well as the 'exotic' orange ones Libby insisted should be fancy garnish), but they still had one lingering riddle: how many Ratpackers does it take to open canned goods?

"Me mallet's ready 'n h'aimed!" Johnsie called. "Fire!"

"We're nawt ready! We're nawt ready!" squeaked Libby and McLista, who'd pulled the long bendy-straws and were stuck holding the cans in place during the test phase.

*SPLAT!*

Johnsie gazed at the post-splatted-can Cousinly Mess Hall in wonder. "Blimey!"

"Oo! Oo!" Libby twittered. "Gimmee that mallet!"

"Nawp, me!" McLista argued. "Oi 'ave h'inferiority!"

*SPLAT!* *SPLAT!* *SPLAT!* *SPLAT!* *SPLAT!* *SPLAT!* *SPLAT!* *SPLAT!*

It is an understatement to say the Ratpackers lost control of their actions. The kitchen had become a still-life study of scarlet explosions. Globby bits of gelatin plopped from the ceiling, landing on the Ratpackers' upturned, mesmerized faces. Chunky red splats resembling homicidal Rorschach blots clung to the cabinets, slowly oozing their way downward under the kiss of gravity. The floor swam ankle-deep in broken eggs, mashed pickle, and the contents of a can of yams McLista had wonked with the mallet in an overly excited moment.

"Oooooooo," the Ratpackers sighed.

"Now yew dunnit! 'Ow h'are we tew serve tha' crankyberries when they'res h'on tha' walls?" McLista demanded.

"H'easy-peasy!" Libby gingerly opened one of the cabinet doors, hefted a giant silver platter almost wider than her arm span, then squeegeed the red sauce off the outer surface of the cabinet door until it dropped onto the platter with a thwip!  "We jes' scrapes h'it 'n serve!"

So, with a plastic shovel and a spatula, the Ratpackers set to molding their gastronomical masterpiece.

"Vachon's flirting with Tracy Sue again?" Rutledge quipped.

"Shut up. No...that's not what I had in mind." <At least not until you reminded me, thankyouverymuch!> "No, I was just considering how we went to all this effort, and now I'm beginning to suspect LaCroix isn't going to show up."

"WHAT?!?!" Amazingly, Julia had heard this statement and reacted. For the past half hour, she'd become squiffy past the point of communication, ignoring pleasant comments made in her direction such as, "Julia, you're sitting on my pie," "Julia, I don't think the moose wants  to give you a ride," and "Julia, that's not a remote control in my pocket." Really, it was a wonder she was still alive and able to throw a hissy over the insinuation of LaCroix's non-appearance.

Nick became very disapproving at this information, as if he'd been betrayed — again! "Nancy told me LaCroix wasn't invited."

"You told me LaCroix wasn't invited!" Nancy repeated, just in case Pardoe had forgotten.

"If she'd invited LaCroix," Vachon said logically, "he wouldn't have come."

"Exactly," Bonns confirmed.

"I forgot," Nick downed a fatalistic gulp from his glass. "He always shows up uninvited."

"Poppycock!" Jules declared from the other end of the table. "I always issued LaCroix an invitation for Nunkies Anonymous gatherings, and he always  arrived in due course."

"Yes, Nunkies always arrived," Christy said thoughtfully, "just in time for someone to get caught borrowing his car without permission..."

"Christy," Jules warned softly.

"...Or when the whole faction had just toga partied themselves into a stupor and Screed had just stolen the Nunkies Fantasy Manual..."

"Chris-ty!"

"...Or, you know, just when the Old, Dead Guy was hiding in the shrubbery, just primed to drop Pigeons Of The Apocalypse on everyone..."

"CHRISTY!!!" A nerve bulged in Jules's forehead.

"But, yes, Nunkies always made an appearance," Christy summed up happily. "Those were good times." She sighed with pleasure, repeating in a voice choked with emotion, "Good times!"

"The problem is," Jayne complained, poking her dessert fork into the air, "you people are expecting him too much. LaCroix comes when he's least expected."

"Like the Spanish Inquisition," Vachon said wryly.

Half the table assumed Monty Python voices, chorusing, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

The Inca stood. "On that note, it is time for me to get back to my business." Juan nodded politely towards Rutledge. "Thank you for inviting me." Then he nodded at the Pardoe. "It was...interesting."

The Inca paused by Tracy Sue's chair. "Are you coming?"

"No," she said, blissfully unaware of the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training staring 'Go! Leave! Flirt here no more!' daggers in her direction. "I'll hang out a while longer."

Unwisely, and before Pardoe could think to tie her to her chair, Bonnie left her seat, scooped up the copy of 'The Llama Less Traveled' that the Inca had abandoned at his place at the table, and followed him to the door. "Wait!"

Juan turned, eyeing her peculiarly.

Bons felt very dim-witted. She was supposed to be avoiding the Inca, so it was in actuality a victorious event that he was leaving the party. Why had she gotten up from the table and followed him? Why?!

She held out the dingy paperback Juan had left next to his unused fork. "You forgot your book." See? She was being a good citizen, returning wayward property!

The Inca shook his head. "It's not my book."

"Well, you brought it upon the premises, and you were reading it." She tapped the front cover with her fingernail. "Are you sure you're not a pervy llama fancier?"

Juan gave her a stern look. "You seem strangely interested in my interest in llamas."

Bonnie pouted, fully aware she was being a brat, and not very clever to force her presence on the Inca, not while he seemed so godawful determined to get out of there. "I am simply making polite, farewell conversation. Some people think it's all the rage."

"Some people say 'goodbye.'"

"Goodbye? Ugh, so cliche." She made a 'yaryaryar' face. "So...are you going to tell me? Are you a pervy llama fancier?"

The Inca's response was annoyingly bare of emotion to dissect later in a diary or similar. "Not exactly, no. I had a llama, and I lost her. "

"That sounds rather careless. I didn't think llamas were the type to go a-roving."

Juan betrayed a hint of amusement. "This one is. She has a criminal record."

"Ooh, she sounds tough. So you didn't fancy her?" Bonnie prompted again with an air of non-caring.

"Who?"

"The llama!" Getting the straight dope from the Inca was like pulling vampire teeth!

"She was a pet." He said it smoothly, as though the llama held no more charm than a rock in a box.

A pet? A PET?!?!?! Bastard! Cool, Unavailable Ice Inca! "Some people think their pets are pretty, snogging important!" Bons claimed with a stomp of her non-sensible boot. "Take Vachon and his cat, for instance."

The Inca almost grinned again. "Vachon does not snog his cat."

"Irrelevant." Bonnie was quite indignant now, quite past reason. He'd called her a pet! As if snuggly sofa time was no more than trash littering a roadside in New Jersey! "I see it all very clearly now!" She sounded infinitely self-righteous. "How long has it been since this llama went missing?"

"Halloween."

"Well, then, Mr. Inca, that's a mighty stretch of time," she sniffed. "Maybe your llama prefers the harsh, cruel, cold world over the threat of your hospitality."

Juan nodded stiffly, but his eyes looked a bit sad and determined. "I will keep that in mind...when I find her."

Bonnie's mouth had drifted open and now resembled a panting Muppet. This was the first clue she'd picked up on that the Inca was searching for her ex-llama self. (Bonnie really could be awful oblivious sometimes when it came to noticing obvious things, such as stop signs and not-being-a-llama-but-a-girl-covered-in-cotton-balls.) He does miss me! Goody! Err...no, bad, for he must not find me...but, whee!

Juan paused in opening the door and turned back around. "I almost forgot. This," the Inca said as he slipped a folded piece of paper out of the copy of 'The Llama Less Traveled' and pressed it into her palm, "this is for you."

"Oh." Bonnie found herself catching his sleeve. "One more question before you go?"

By now, the Inca looked wary of her questions. "Yes?" Very brave, the Inca.

"You aren't experiencing an overwhelming desire to wear high heels right now, are you?"

The Inca quizzically shook his head. "No."

"Oh, goody!"

A new, mocking voice entered the conversation. "Indeed."

LaCroix filled the doorway with black imperiousness. He radiated inconvenience that no one had bothered to pick him up from the airport. He exuded aggravation that people, mostly non-Cousinly people, had summoned the nerve to celebrate, feast, and hang decorative squash from his ceiling. He glowered, his eyebrows earthquakes of displeasure that one of those people was the Spanish couch-squatter.

LaCroix did not look happy. He did not appear filled with Peace, Harmony, and Contentment. He actually looked rather put out.

"Gah!" Bons waved her arms to alert the Cousinly-Receptionist-Still-In-Training that now was the time she should pull out her Tupperware of Serenity, but Pardoe was already ahead of the game. She'd gathered the party guests about her in a huddle and was whispering instructions.

The door to the Cousinly Mess Hall opened.

"Gah!" Bons repeated.

The Ratpackers swayed and weaved into the room as they lugged an enormous platter of cranberry sauce molded into the shape of the Pagoda To Nunkies with little orangey kumquat bits stuck on top.

LaCroix growled, putting one hand to his ear. "WHAT IS THAT INFURIATING NOISE?"

"Just Ratpackers, sir!"

The three Ratpackers grew tired of sharing the load of the huge, shiny, silvery tray. Control of the cranberry masterpiece became a battle of greed. The swaying and weaving became pulling and shoving.

"Oi wanna hairy-carry tha' crankyberries!"

"Oi sneezed h'on h'em! Oi wanna hairy-carry tha' crankyberries!"

"Goopies! 'Tis moine! H'all moine! 'And h'em h'over!"

"Moine!"

*smack!*

"H'owie!"

*slap!*

"Urp!"

*flick!*

"Givvit 'ere!"

Johnsie and Libby simultaneously gave mighty pulls on the silver tray, yanking it from McLista's grip. The force of their tugging heaved the platter off-balance, catapulting the mound of cranberry sauce into the air. Johnsie and Libby stumbled backward, accidentally braining McLista with the wayward silver tray. Little cartoon birdies flew about her head as she slumped to the floor.

The other Ratpackers sat upon McLista's chest. "She's been panned!" Johnsie cried, squooshing McLista's eyelids in an attempt to force her to open her eyes.

"We needs smelly-salts!" Libby informed him. "Try yewr cheesy breath!"

"H'okay! Paaaahh!" Johnsie breathed in their fallen comrade's face.

The victim sputtered and wheezed, waving her arms as she found her voice. "Get...get OFF of me, you...you RATPACKERS!!!!"

Libby punched Johnsie in the arm. "Yew h'un-broke 'er! She's Meanie-List-Missy h'agin!"

Johnsie scratched his head. "Yew fink she still wants 'er moose?"

The Ratpackers scurried away as McLisa, her mind un-addled by the new knock to her head, reared her classic Cousinly-list-authoritarian-self and began to search for a rolled up newspaper with which to thwap out some much-needed discipline.

Meanwhile, the mountain of cranberry sauce continued to hurl through the air in an alarming trajectory. Rutledge did not duck, for she was too short to worry. The Inca ducked, because he was paying attention. LaCroix, unfortunately, did not duck. He was too busy glaring across the room at the huddle of people who seemed to be purposefully ignoring his arrival. Let this be a lesson to the glarers of the world, for angry stares bring dire consequences.

*SPLAT!*

Just then, the crowd at the dining table turned around, their faces lit with joy, and gave a mighty cheer of, "SURPRISE!"

The Cousinly-Receptionist-Still(Oh, god...make that FOREVER)-In-Training's shoulders sank first. LaCroix, he who was supposed to be happy, he who was meant to experience Peace, Harmony, And Contentment Whether He Liked It Or Not, he who should be glowing with the goodwill of friendship and joviality, was now covered down to his shoulders in cranberry sauce, a kumquat perched on his nose.

Vachon — this time flirting with death — dared to laugh.

LaCroix plucked the kumquat off of his nose with as much dignity as any 2000-year-old vampire can pluck a kumquat off of his nose. He yelled instinctively, "NICHOLAS!"

Nick, naturally, looked guilty. He had to be to blame somehow for the kumquat on the nose, didn't he?

"What did I warn you?" High Priestess Jules announced, seeing her chances of a plump bank draft from LaCroix evaporating under the heat of LaCroix's glowering. "I told you this party would wind up on someone's head!"