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Although the Darnell their house was frequented quite often by visitors (Ignacio, Antony at times, Christian, Rory -- though Christian had markedly not been there lately, nor Wisp to Missy's) they didn't often do sleepovers as their flat was quite small. Neither did they go on holiday, except for the huge sabbatical when the two girls had gotten whooping cough. Beatrix didn't quite do holidays; her idea of a holiday was sitting back with a mug of hot chocolate and listening to classical music. (Classical music only because her old love, which had been chick flicks, was no longer a real option.)

So it was a fairly awe-inspiring and freakin' sweet move when Beatrix gave in to Jace's thought-out manifesto and -- horrors -- agreed to take them camping. Not only camping, but camping with Irelia; and even more mystically awesome, Beatrix camping out by staying in a cabin on a reserve, with Wisp not actually wanting to sleep outside (and stay inside moping and drawing sad pictures and being goth or something, as she had been asked if she too wanted a friend, had been about to say Rory, realised that Christian would be deprived of Rory and moped around even more). That meant Irelia + Jace + tents + forest for two days, it being a long weekend: hell of rad. It was the closest thing to camping alone without having an Amber Alert. (Maybe M.B. was just frantically relieved she'd found a best friend. Maybe she wanted some zen before Jack's parents arrived. Who knew.)

It was fairly rugged out in the woods, which were warm and summery and fragrant with pine resin; they'd chosen a campsite close to the river for fresh water, as detailed in the numerous military survival manuals that Jace liked to read; they'd set up their tents, groundsheets, collected kindling and stuff for a fire, inspected the immediate surrounds for guerillas or evil ghosts.

"This," she said with satisfaction, surveying their work, "is so goddamn cool. We could get axe murdered in our beds by a crazy person, Rel. Do you know there's like a mental hospital a couple miles from here? Spooo~ooo~ooky."

(Of course, it was an abandoned mental hospital, had been for years, and probably did not house axe murderers.)

"Good idea," said Jace, whose exposure to spooky games had also mainly been through Irelia and her Playstation, and thusly imagined the insides of the mental hospital to resemble those from Silent Hill. Maybe they could find Silent Hill. Badass. "I bet there's like a morgue and maybe some old dead skeletons or something. That's the rule for abandoned mental hospitals. How about we pack some lunch and go find it?"

Irelia could cook. Jace couldn't. It was the perfect symbiotic relationship, if you counted a symbiotic relationship being willing to carry the sandwiches and willing to eat the sandwiches. She herself put useful things into her knapsack -- a Swiss army knife, some sacks, a flashlight, some rope. That was going to be awesome. Oh, a compass, too.

"I'm pretty sure the hospital is to the southeast," she said, "I looked over here with a map when we first decided to go camping. Also, what the hell, flares? I'm not MacGuyver. We'll just have to light a lot of fires."

Her eyes gleamed. Jace Darnell, pyromaniac.

They rarely took offense to each other: both were completely blunt people. "Ha! If I was MacGuyver," Jace said, "I'd make a friggin' hovercraft out of those sandwiches and the tents. That's what MacGuyver can do. He's hardcore."

Jace's eyes danced as she watched the flame, both of their grins unholy and matching. "Let's hear it for flame," she said. "Got your walking hooves on?"

Jace hadn't heard a** about the mental hospital other than that it was abandoned; she squared her shoulders, though, because if she didn't know anything then it was up to her to make something up. "Yeah," she said, making it up on the spot. "I heard that it closed down because there was this creepy old doctor experimenting on the patients, right? Like, real Frankenstein crap. And then they all banded together and they killed him... and they killed like everyone else in the hospital."

That sounded great. They walked down the path, a nice flat clear bit down by the river, grassy and clear.

"Seriously?" Jace mulled that one over a while; dug her toes into her sneakers and whistled through her teeth, which was a sign she was thinking. "Well, I guess they thought that the ladies might have given birth to psycho babies. You know, thinking that insane was in their DNA or whatever."

Another bout of whistling. "They used to do pretty whacked-out things to crazies way back when," she said, "because nobody cared. No wonder they turned into axe murderers."

"Fires," said Jace sagely. "You know, like fire axes? Maybe even chainsaws too, I dunno. If you use a chainsaw, are you still an axe murderer?"

Semantics, semantics.

"I read some badass murder stories too," she continued, flipping her bright red hair. She was a red stain among all the green. "Like about this guy who killed all his wives and hid them down in the crawlspace in the basement."

Jace was thrilled. She had been worried for a couple moments that the mental hospital would look crumbly, amenable, and all in all about as frightening as a tube of toothpaste; in fact, the building was large and ominous and blankly white against the dark forests behind it, stark, and the crumbling steps up to it were lined in rotting chain-link fences. She tripped up these two at a time to peer at the main door; it was off its hinges slightly, leading down to a short corridor to an open atrium.

"Holy hell," she said. "I wish we had a camera."