by Emma Savant
I frowned and swirled my drink around in my cup.
“Do you have your dress for prom?” Brittney asked. The question was directed at Elle, but another girl with dramatic dark makeup answered first.
“Yes. Oh my God, Britt, you are going to die,” she said. “You know how I couldn’t find anything when we went shopping? Well, my mom took me to this vintage store when we were down in Cali and I got this dress that I swear to God belonged to Marilyn Monroe. I mean, not really, but it looks like it. Peter is going to die.”
People died a lot in her world, apparently.
“Awesome,” Brittney said with a tight smile. “You’re so lucky to have curves for that kind of dress.” The other girl and I both seemed to figure out almost instantly that “curves” meant “fat.” The other girl cut her eyes at Brittney, who had already turned to Elle. “What about you?”
Elle nodded, a movement that was tiny compared to every other gesture I’d ever seen her make. “I found one yesterday,” she said.
“And?” Brittney prodded.
“It’s pretty,” Elle said.
Brittney raised her eyebrows. “Okay, then,” she said to the group. Another girl leaning against the back of one of the couches caught her eyes and smirked.
“Of course it’s pretty,” Tyler said, leaning in to squeeze her. “Everything my baby wears is pretty, right? You’re like a little doll.”
Elle curled in on herself even more. Normally, she would have told him not to call her a doll and to respect her as a woman and a business person. Instead, she just did nothing. I felt toward her. The inevitable buzz of her jewelry surrounded her, but underneath it all, she just felt tired. She gazed out the front windows of the café. Her eyes held the same longing I usually saw in indoor cats as they looked out on the world from behind glass.
“Did you guys hear about that restaurant that closed downtown?” one of the athletic-looking guys said, the loudness of his voice suggesting he’d had enough dress and doll talk for one day.
“Yeah!” another guy said. “What babies.”
Brittney perked up, attention on alert for gossip. “What happened?”
“Guy thought the place was haunted,” the first guy said, like that was the stupidest conclusion in the world. “Said the pots and pans kept flying off the shelf, so he freaked out and closed the whole place down. Super successful restaurant. One of those seventy-five-dollar-a-plate kind of places. Just shut the whole thing down—bam.”
“Wow,” she said. “Some people.”
“For real,” he said.
I sipped my drink. This was familiar, somehow.
I remembered Aubrey telling Imogen that her best friend’s apartment building was haunted. My mom telling me months ago that Dad was working late because some idiot had filled a Humdrum building with poltergeist charms. Queen Amani’s frown and comment, We’ve all been having trouble. My dad yelling about some case of his where someone had been attacking ghost hunters.
One of those incidents would have been unusual. Two would have been downright weird. Poltergeists were rare, and Glim academics had been debating for years whether ghosts even existed.
I set the cup down on the table. Someone was inventing ghosts and planting them all over Portland. Someone was trying to freak us all out.
No, more than that.
A shiver ran all through my body, tingles creeping down my arms and legs like I’d been hit with someone’s stage fright coming at me from every direction.
In an instant, I understood, without having to think about it more or ask any more questions. Someone was trying to scare the Humdrums. They were doing it on purpose, they’d been at it for a while, and they’d been able to evade my dad, the Council, and Amani. Someone was trying to cause trouble, they were serious about it, and they were good. Maybe even better than the Faerie Queen herself.
Suddenly freezing cold, I clutched my steamer in my hands and sipped it, eager for warmth.
I couldn’t prove it; I just knew, the way my mom sometimes did. My own struggles with Elle suddenly seemed pitiful. Who cared what an intern godmother did with her first case? Maybe it didn’t matter so much what I did with her. Hell, maybe the Oracle wouldn’t even care. If my dad and Amani were trying to figure out what was going on with all the weird hauntings, the Oracle had to be working on it, too. Maybe I could slip Elle under the radar.
Suddenly, my plans for the prom stopped feeling like a risky exercise in self-sabotage and started sounding brilliant instead.
They started sounding even more brilliant when Tyler turned to Elle and said, “At least you’re not going to that nerd fest with that charity case friend of yours, right?” and Elle suddenly looked sadder than a basset hound.
“I doubt he’d want to go with me now anyway,” she said in a little voice.
“Good,” Tyler said, the idiot lovesick look I was responsible for back on his face. “Because you’re all mine, aren’t you, princess?”
Behind the counter, Greg had the pleased expression of someone who knew the ending to a story and expected no surprises. Not so fast, I thought.
Olivia: Operation Cinderella is a go.
I put my phone back down and started planning exactly how I was going to pull this thing off.
Chapter 28
The theme was “Starry, Starry Night.” Most of the girls had taken that to mean “rhinestones, and pile ’em on!” One girl had even found a minidress printed with the Van Gogh painting and then attached a diamond-spangled black chiffon mermaid skirt to the hem. It should have looked tacky but it actually turned out amazing. She was a Humdrum, too. Evidence, I thought, that not all Humdrums “lacked the creativity and follow-through only magic can provide,” as my dad had pronounced at dinner the other day.
Imogen had talked me out of the slinky black dress I’d been picturing. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she’d said. “Your hair is dark. Your skin is super pale. You’ll look like a chess piece that can’t decide which side it’s on.” Instead, I’d found a deep teal gown with one shoulder strap made of twining gold leaves and a belt in the same pattern. It fell in tiny chiffon pleats down to the floor. I felt odd in the thing—it was about a thousand times fancier even than the dresses my parents made me wear to fancy dinners—but I felt pretty, too. That was an okay change of pace.
Being in this room, however, was not. Prom didn’t feel that much different from fundraising dinners, except the crowd was younger and more awkward. “Maybe not more awkward,” I said to Kyle, after reflecting a little. “People at fundraising dinners have the whole thing going on where they’re trying to discreetly hint at how much they’re donating. There’s always some woman who corners me and says ‘Don’t tell your dad, but I donated five thousand gold to this cause tonight! I must be so drunk! Don’t tell your dad.’”
“Classy,” Kyle said. He high-fived me.
I pulled a paper cup of butter mints off the table and tossed a pink one in my mouth. We’d wandered immediately to the refreshments table, where I was happy to stay the rest of the night. So was Kyle. He wasn’t a bad date, all things considered—both of us were interested in the food, and both of us were there for Elle. If I was GlimDates.com, I thought, I’d match us immediately.
Prom was being held in a ballroom downtown, and its hardwood floor, warm fairy lights, and elaborately carved white U-shaped balcony looking over the room made it feel like the kind of place that deserved overpriced dresses and the ungainly attempts at romance starting to bloom all over the dance floor. The couple I was most interested in, though, hadn’t arrived. I’d texted Elle, asking if she wanted some help from her faerie godmother to get ready for the ball, but she’d said Tyler’s friends were getting ready together. She didn’t call them her friends, I’d noticed.
I hoped Kyle was right. Otherwise, this evening was going to get a special kind of uncomfortable.
If it hadn’t already. I spotted Lucas across the floor. Aubrey was clinging to him in a slinky dark purple gown that made her hair look even mo
re fiery and spectacular than usual. It was unfair for someone our age to be as pretty as she was. Weren’t we all supposed to be stuck in the ungainly “I can’t figure out where my elbows are” phase for at least a few more years? She had no trouble figuring out where her elbows were, or in positioning them and every other part of her anatomy in the most attractive arrangement possible.
“You’re right; it’s disgusting,” Kyle said, looking toward her.
“Don’t magic me,” I said.
“I’m not,” he said. “Your face says it all.”
It wasn’t like he was any more discreet. He jumped whenever a blond girl walked into the room, then sunk back down to pick foil-wrapped chocolates out of a giant crystal bowl.
A few minutes after I actually started counting the number of times Kyle perked up and deflated again, his eager patience was rewarded. Elle swept into the room on Tyler’s arm, leading a whole group of his friends.
It took me a second to realize what was different. For the first time in weeks, she looked like herself. And herself was magnificent. She floated in a stunning sleeveless gown with a skirt made of layers and layers of rose-pink tulle. Fabric roses peeked out from under ruffles and cascaded down from a ribbon in her hair. The gown’s pink lace bodice hugged her and gave her the bearing of a queen.
But the best part of the whole ensemble was the fact that she wore no jewelry at all. Not a brooch, not a necklace, not even a set of diamond studs for her ears. Her skin was bare from the dress on up, flushed rosy, but from nerves or excitement instead of magic.
I felt out toward her. Nothing but her own faint jitters met me, and the void felt like clean spring air. I grabbed Kyle’s hand. He gaped at her, eyes sparkling.
I’d never seen someone actually in love before. Not like this. He looked at her like she was the sun and the moon and the stars and every first-edition comic book he’d ever seen all rolled up into one.
And she looked past him like he wasn’t even there.
Tyler, who resembled a catalog model than ever in his three-piece suit, pulled her onto the dance floor in time for the music to switch to something slow. Elle fell into his arms like she belonged there, the grace of her bare arm up against his shoulder giving the effect of a swan covered in flowered garlands. Golden ringlets spilled from where they’d been artfully pinned up on her head and she seemed shy and unsure of herself. It wasn’t a look I was used to seeing on Elle, but it did something nice for her.
Tyler had noticed. He leaned in until their faces were almost touching. They looked perfect there, him handsome and her beautiful, him leading her around the floor while she followed with her eyes demure and downcast.
They looked perfect.
More to the point, they looked perfectly wrong.
Even now, during the grand ball her dad had paid for in wishes, she looked like she didn’t belong.
Kyle’s jaw set as he watched them. Emotions warred on his face, rapture over Elle and anger at the guy who had her in his arms.
“You okay?” I murmured.
“Fine,” he said.
“This is going to turn out okay,” I said.
For the first time, he looked like the unsure one. “She seems pretty happy,” he said, watching her with a look that said he wasn’t sure whether to be happy for her or just pissed off.
I put a hand on his arm. “She still gets a choice,” I said.
I couldn’t make many promises to anyone right now. But I could promise him that much. I’d barreled ahead without giving anyone choices for quite some time now. It was time to settle that score.
Or it would be, if I could get Elle to look over here long enough to catch her attention. For a second, I thought she might be leaning up to kiss Tyler. But then I saw her face contort into annoyance and watched her say something to him. Something sharp, from the looks of it. They only had to turn a little in their dance for me to see exactly what was going on.
His hand rested on her butt. She grabbed it and put it back up on her back. He pulled her closer, leaning down at her with the lovey-dovey romantic face, then down the hand slipped again. This time, she smacked it away and took a step back. I tugged my ear just in time to hear what was going on.
“What’s your problem?” she said.
“I don’t know what you’re freaking out over,” Tyler said. To either his credit or his shame—I couldn’t decide which—he looked genuinely confused. “It’s prom night, babe. I’m supposed to give you the night of your life.”
“Sticking your hand on my ass isn’t the way to do it,” she said. For a brief second, she lifted her head and her eyes flashed.
That was the Elle I knew.
Kyle, who was eavesdropping with even less discretion than me, quirked his mouth.
She stepped back into his arms. “Let’s try again,” she said, as if she was scolding a small child. “You’re a very nice guy, Tyler. You’re trying to be one, anyway,” she amended, as if the first thing hadn’t been entirely truthful. “You need to keep being nice.”
“What’s not nice about this, baby?” he asked, leaning in and nuzzling her ear.
I expected her to get upset at him again. She stiffened for a second, and then she sighed and patted his shoulder, like he’d done the best he could. And maybe he had.
“Never thought I’d be stuck with you,” she said, more to herself than to him.
“You are stuck with me, baby,” Tyler said with an over-earnest voice and intense stare. “You’re stuck with me forever.”
This didn’t have the romantic impact he’d been expecting. She pressed her lips together like she was trying not to laugh. Then, with no warning at all, her face crumpled and she squeezed her eyes shut as if to hold back tears. She buried her face in his shoulder before he could see. Thinking he’d wooed her completely, Tyler pulled her close and they kept tracing the same worn-out circle on the polished floor. Waves of loneliness rolled off her like this was the closest to love she was ever going to get.
“He needs to get his hands off her,” Kyle muttered.
“You need to remember how patience works,” I said firmly. Kyle hadn’t noticed her crying; Tyler’s hands all over her back occupied most of his attention.
I pulled another paper cup of butter mints off the table. “Listen, you keep an eye on them,” I said. I couldn’t watch them and worry about him all at once. It had been a long few weeks; I could only do so much at a time. “I’m going to walk around, okay?”
“Sure,” he said. He glanced at me just long enough to offer a smile, then went back to staring at Elle and Tyler like they had broccoli in their teeth and it personally offended him.
Love was weird.
I skirted the edge of the dance floor, watching for anyone I recognized. We’d shared a limo with Imogen and Jacob. They were in the center of the dance floor now, of course. She seemed to like him a lot. I was glad. He was a nice guy, and Imogen didn’t always go for nice guys. He twirled her and her gorgeous lavender silk gown swirled and lapped around her ankles. Next to her, Brooke from my English class danced snuggled up to her boyfriend. I couldn’t remember his name.
Looking around, I realized I didn’t really know the names of that many people. I recognized them by sight, and I could pick out the Glimmers in a split-second by looking over my glasses, but there weren’t many people I’d call friends. I’d always been like that—happy to have just one or two friends that I cared about deeply. And I could pick them out on the floor in a split-second, too. The first was Imogen, who laughed as Jacob dipped her into an elegant back-bend. The other was Lucas. We weren’t really that close of friends anymore. We had been once, though, and I had a hard time letting friends go once they’d made it onto my VIP list.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t seem to stop staring at him.
Cortney and Mallory stood together near the door, talking to one of the chaperones. They looked better than they had the last few times I’d seen them. Elle’s charms seemed to have worn off completely.
Mallory looked like she was already into her sophisticated twenties. She wore the same kind of slinky backless black gown I’d pictured for myself tonight, and her hair had been swept into a sleek French twist. Cortney was her exact opposite in a short, fluffy yellow dress and curls held up with diamond pins. I waved at Cortney as I passed, and she waved back and said, “Hi! You’re Elle’s friend, right?”
I nodded, a little surprised she recognized me as more than a Pumpkin Spice customer. “Kind of,” I said.
“We’re all super glad Elle is getting some friends,” Cortney said.
“Well, some of them,” Mallory said, looking darkly out toward the floor where Tyler was still attempting to sneak his hand down to Elle’s butt. “The less rapey ones.”
I’d never been categorized as “less rapey” before. I assumed it was a good thing.
“Oh my God, Mal,” Cortney said. “This is why people accuse you of having no tact. You heard it here first, folks,” she announced to the chaperone and me.
“Please, girls, not now,” the chaperone said. Her familiar tone made me look twice. She looked a little like Mallory, with high cheekbones and dark hair.
Mallory caught me staring back and forth between them and relaxed into a smile. “This is our mom,” she said. “Deborah. Mom, this is one of the girls Elle’s been hanging out with.”
Deborah smiled at me. She had a pretty, vaguely Italian face, with strong dark features and olive skin. “I’m so happy to meet you!” she said, and her voice was warm. “It’s so great to meet one of Elle’s friends. Aside from her friend Kyle, she doesn’t really seem to want us to meet anyone.” She shrugged, like this was simply to be expected when you had teenagers.
I caught a wave of panic from across the floor. I looked up, startled, to see Elle staring. Her gaze darted from me to Deborah to each of her stepsisters in turn, then landed back on me. Her eyes were wide, like she was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t figure it out. I frowned at her and drew my eyebrows a little together, but she only shook her head quickly and tried to wave me over.