As promised, Zen did her part in the ritual along with everybody else, watching with unabashed interest as her friend's little sister wove together stodgy phrases and beautiful, if somewhat pointless looking hand gestures - but then the candle in the middle of the room flared up, and Diana fell to her knees as if knocked against. Without even really thinking, Zen took a step forward - or tried to, before the skirt fouled her attempt and she hit the floor so hard her palms stuck with a rather painful smack.<br/><br/>Sighing, she got to her feet and shuffled toward the young girl, shaking her head at Gabe. "No, there's still that one other bit that she's got to do once everybody's here, remember? Which is good, because we need to get some drinks and stuff set up in here... maybe pick out some of the side rooms for ourselves."<br/><br/>Grinning at him, making suppositions that marked a girl as slutty where it was just bold in a man, she reached Paige's side and helped her get her sister back on her feet. "You're okay, right munchkin?" she asked quietly, with an encouraging smile. "Tough as nails, and all that..." Then she brushed off her patterned skirt, and shuffled back toward the hallway where she'd left the backpack full of bottles and the little radio that was to give the ballroom music for the party, until things REALLY got swinging. Those shelves along the wall would be the perfect lace to arrange the bottles and cups before people arrived...<br/><br/>...and arrived they did, beginning almost three quarters of an hour later; maps just like the one Paige had used to find their way into the ballroom had been left in a carved box that looked like a treasure chest next to the front door, and with these in hand guests began to find their way in with flashlights and lanterns, the sound of their feet preceding their arrivals. A Robin Hood leapt into the room to land with a mighty thump, looking somewhat disappointed to see so few people there as yet to witness his grand entrance, and wandered over toward the display of drinks Zen had set up. A zombie found his way in, with a piece of gauze trailing off one leg; almost as if he couldn't make up his mind if he was really a mummy or not.<br/><br/>Not everyone was finding their way so easily toward the ballroom designated with the X on the map. "Really Michael, I think we should have turned right back there," Gabrielle said worriedly, a hand lifting to carefully adjust the spreading tropical flower, white with delicate shell pink deep in the bell of it, that was affixed to the front of her up-swept blond hairdo. "Next to that cabinet, I mean - it looked like there was a handle attached to the wall, it might have been a door, don't you think?" The house was unnerving and disorienting, even moreso because she could hear the distant sounds of people walking, but they hadn't run into anybody since they got into the place - and because he'd insisted that it would have an even better spooky ambiance if they came with a real lantern burning, instead of just flashlights.<br/><br/>Whatever it was, it gave Gabrielle the creeps enough that her fluffy white wings shivered along with the rest of her, and she kept close to her boyfriend as she could, comforted by his closeness and trying to studiously not notice just how nice he really looked in the Djinn costume he'd chosen, his dark hair loose against his shirtless back.