There was a festive touch of deep cranberry stain around the edges. Later on, when reporters were interviewing the guests and trying to put together a timeline of the night, Captain Tiggleman would say they should have known something was terribly wrong from the beginning. Even the invitation looked like it had been dipped in blood.

Zara

I want to go on record saying I was not the one who brought that gift to the party. It couldn’t have been me. Look at the facts: I’d only flown in that day. I’d never met any of these people and I didn’t know what a Secret Santa game was until Claudine told me. Sure, yes, I brought a gift; we all did. That was the point. But no way did I bring that gift. Don’t even think it.

See, this was a really weird time for me even before what happened that night. It was right after my breakup with Liam. Six months we’d been together. Personal record. I know that’s longer than most people thought we would last. I was twenty-three. He was thirty-four. Which meant together we were fifty-seven, exactly how old Prince was when he died. I was a former Disney TV child actor turned music sensation. He was a shock rocker who’d been mentored by Marilyn Manson and boycotted by conservative religious groups. I didn’t have a single tattoo. He had thirty-two—thirty-three if you count the one he got of my name on his left bicep. Though I saw he recently changed it to Zarathustra, which I guess is some book by this mopey old philosopher dude that has a really long Wikipedia page. Does that count as thirty-four, then?

Anyway, people have Liam all wrong. That whole “prince of darkness” thing is mostly a schtick. Yeah, I said it. An act. It’s phony. He thinks it’s “performance art.” Which is why I called it a schtick. Because he is a total asshole and the thought of making him angry makes me very happy. He has no idea what performance art even is. It’s an actual thing.