by E. E. Holmes
She took a step closer to me. I did not back away.
“Our clan is old. It is strong. We look to the past and the future, and we shape our own destiny. Each of us knows what she must do to maintain our legacy, our power, and our longevity in the Durupinen world. This stunt you and your sister have pulled is just that: a stunt, quickly forgotten in the long march of power for which you have neither the stamina nor the ambition. Enjoy yourself. Have some champagne. You may even be able to scrounge someone up to dance with you while you look like that. And remember it all, when you look back at it from the gutters where you belong.”
And placing a hand imperiously upon her belly, she lifted her chin into the air and strode away, the girls behind her all but holding up her skirt for her.
I stood for a moment, speechless, staring after her. Then Milo leaned in and whispered to me. “It’s nice to know we can all mature and leave the petty disagreements of girlhood behind us, isn’t it?”
I actually managed a laugh, though it wavered a bit. “Yeah, she’s matured so nicely, that one. And to think we used to dislike each other.”
Milo snorted then narrowed his eyes at me, I could feel him probing into the connection, assessing the moods and flashes he found there. “You okay?”
“Peachy.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said, popping an eyebrow like a champagne cork and pursing his lips at me.
Peyton sat beside a man I could only assume was her husband. He was at least ten years older than her, and he had clearly had too much to drink. He was laughing raucously with the man sitting on his other side, sharing in what I imagined, for my own satisfaction, was a crude joke. Her own flute of champagne stood untouched, naturally, until her husband reached across her, snatched it up, and drained it in a single gulp. A brief shadow passed over her face as she watched him do this, then she turned away and leaned across to another bridesmaid, who was already chattering away to her.
“She’s just going to sacrifice herself to this, isn’t she?” I said aloud, though more to myself than to Milo.
“Who? Peyton?” Milo asked.
“Yeah.”
“Sacrifice herself to what?” Milo asked.
“To this,” I said, gesturing around. “To the family name. To the right house in the right neighborhood. To the husband with the best resume, and the race to produce the next Gateway. It’s horrifying.”
“Yeah, well she’s pretty horrifying. Maybe this really is what she wants,” Milo suggested without any real conviction.
“She’s never given a single goddamn thought to what she wants. Not really,” I murmured. “It was eyes on the prize since she was old enough to walk. I mean, my God, imagine growing up with Marion for a mother.”
“I’d rather not, thank you,” Milo said.
“And now Peyton’s just turning into her. Treating a baby like some kind of trophy instead of an impending human being. Imagine having to live as that kid when they find out she doesn’t have the Gift. Or even worse, imagine having to live as that kid when they find out she does have it. From rosy-cheeked baby to pawn in the political game, just like that.” I snapped my fingers.
Milo let out a low whistle. “And I thought my family was bad.”
“She thinks everyone in this room envies her, but actually… I don’t think I’ve ever felt sorrier for anyone in my entire life,” I said.
Hannah appeared at my side, looking anxious. “Are you okay? I saw Peyton talking to you. She looked… well, like Peyton.”
I laughed again, and was glad to hear that the tremble had gone out of it. “Oh, it was a delightful little chat. She’s a charmer, as you know.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here with you,” Hannah said, biting at her lip guiltily.
“No worries,” I told her. “You had schmoozing to do. Besides, Milo scented the drama a mile away, and swooped in to save me.”
“It’s true, my drama-sensors are on constant high alert,” Milo agreed.
“What… did she say?” Hannah asked. It couldn’t have been plainer from her expression that she didn’t really want to know, so I decided to gloss the whole thing over. After all, my skin was fake, my hair was fake, my cleavage was fake—half the people in this room were only pretending to enjoy each other’s company. So, I smiled right along with them.
Just get through the night, Jess.
“Nothing,” I told Hannah, shrugging dismissively. “Honestly, nothing worth a second more of your time or mine.” I stuck out my arm and within seconds the passing waiter had thrust a glass of something into my hand. “Cheers,” I said, and knocked it back.
Hannah frowned. “You don’t usually drink much,” she said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I will be once I stuff my face full of five courses of dinner,” I assured her.
“Luckily, I think they’re starting to serve dinner, now; look,” Hannah said, pointing to the head table, where the bridal party were taking their seats. A line of waiters stood along the wall nearby, trays perched on white-gloved hands, ready to serve small plates of salad. I recognized Bertie, Savvy’s Caomhnóir, among them. I watched as he readjusted his tray precariously so that he could wave to her as she strode across the room from the bar. She threw him one disgusted look and stalked toward us, looking bad-tempered.
“They put Bertie on kitchen duty, huh?” I asked, smirking at her as we made our way to our table.
She rolled her eyes. “Of course they bloody did. What else could they do with him? No one would believe he was security, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to hang off his arm and pretend to dance with him. And even at this he’s bloody useless. He’s supposed to be undercover, so what the buggery bollocks is he doing waving at me, the great prat.”
We made our way to table number nine, which was located near the fireplace and which bore our name cards. I’d half expected to be seated at a table crammed into a broom closet, but Hannah’s recently elevated rank had evidently been enough to earn us seats near the dance floor. A quick scan of the tables revealed that Celeste was sitting on the opposite side of the room. I heaved a sigh of relief, before lapsing into silence with everyone else as Riley stood up and gushed her way through her maid-of-honor speech. At long last, after much toasting and polite clapping, the waiters began circulating amongst the tables.
I was gazing around the room, people watching, when my salad arrived, so I could not say for sure how the note got under it, but as I looked down in anticipation of spring greens and a fancy vinaigrette, there it was: a piece of paper wedged beneath the edge of my plate. I stared at it curiously for a moment, then looked around for our waiter, who had already vanished from the vicinity and could easily have been any one of a dozen now striding amongst the other tables.
For reasons I could not quite explain to myself, my heart began to hammer. Fingers trembling slightly, and looking around to make sure no one was watching me, I eased the paper out from beneath the china and transferred it to my lap. Then, under cover of unfolding my napkin and arranging it in my lap, I looked down and read the words scrawled upon the paper.
Come to the powder room in the entrance hall.
Come now, alone.
Please.
I closed my hand over the note, crumpling it into a tight ball. The palm in which it was clutched was beginning to sweat. I stared around the room again, searching in vain for an answering stare, a nod, any signal that might clue me in as to who had sent me the message. I picked up my fork, speared a cucumber, and put it in my mouth, thinking furiously.
I did not recognize the handwriting on the note and had no idea who sent it. As I saw it, I had two options. I knew how to find the powder room referenced in the message—I had waited outside it for Savvy between the ceremony and the reception. I could excuse myself, go to the powder room, and find out what this was all about. There were at least a dozen people in this room that I did not trust, but I couldn’t see how the situation could be dangerous. The mansion was swarming with Caomhnóir and Milo wa
s a single silent summons away. My other option was to ignore the message and eat my food. What could be so secretive or urgent that anyone in this room couldn’t just approach me themselves?
What, indeed. Okay, there was really only one option.
Maybe it was the uncharacteristically large amount of alcohol in my bloodstream, but I was feeling bold and maybe even a little reckless. I stood up, placing my napkin on the table and grabbing for my clutch.
“Ladies room,” I told Hannah when she looked up at me inquiringly.
“Do you want me to come—” she began, but I waved her off.
“No, no, eat your salad,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I kept to the perimeter of the room, hoping to be noticed by as few people as possible. Luckily the long-awaited arrival of the food was as good a distraction as I could have hoped for. I opened up my clutch and pretended to be digging around in it as I walked; hopefully anyone who saw me would think I was simply going to touch up my lipstick or some bullshit like that.
The lobby was nearly empty, with the exception of two passing waiters and a young woman having a loud, tearful argument via cell phone in the shadow of the grand staircase. The doors into the grounds were opened wide, and I could see two Caomhnóir stationed beside them, staring stone-faced and motionless out into the twilight, like Buckingham Palace guards, but without the impressive hats.
I crossed the room casually, still digging in my purse to avoid eye contact with anyone, and eased open the door beneath an elegantly scripted sign that read “Powder Room.”
My first frantic thought was that I had walked into the wrong place, despite the clearly labeled door. The room in which I found myself was not a bathroom, but some kind of elaborate parlor, full of settees and end tables and presided over by a massive crystal chandelier. I spun on the spot and stifled a scream at the sudden appearance of a woman on the far side of the room, then cursed my own stupidity as I realized it was merely my own reflection in a full-length mirror. The room was full of them, I realized now, for the purposes of primping and reapplying. As I looked at my own wide-eyed reflection, the sudden appearance of another figure just behind me sent my heart into my mouth for the second time in half a minute.
“Olivia!” I gasped. “You… uh… surprised me,” I said, with a failed attempt at a smile. “Sorry, I should be better at handling sudden appearances at this point in my life.”
Olivia barely seemed to register my babbling. She was scanning the room nervously. “Did you come alone?” she asked.
I stared at her, hardly able to believe my ears. “Did I…?”
“I said, did you come alone?” Olivia snapped, ducking into the adjoining room and checking under all of the bathroom stalls for feet.
“I… yeah,” I said. This didn’t make sense. What the hell would Olivia want to see me for? Was this her way of confronting me without making a scene? “So you sent me that note?”
She looked at me, her face completely unreadable. “Yes.”
“And have you arranged this little rendezvous to verbally assault me on behalf of Clan Gonachd? Because if you have, I should remind you that Peyton and I already had a delightful chat. So, if you’re worried that I don’t already know exactly how much your whole clan despises me, I assure you, I do,” I said.
Olivia just stared at me, as though unsure of what she should say or do next.
I snorted and turned for the door. “Right, well, if that’s it, I’m just going to head back to the—”
“Our whole clan doesn’t despise you,” Olivia hissed.
I spun around. “I’m sorry?”
She bit her lip and looked down at the floor, where the hem of her gown skimmed the polished floorboards with a soft swishing sound. “We… we don’t all hate you.”
“You’ve got a really funny way of showing it,” I said.
Olivia wrung her hands together, glancing nervously at the door again. “It’s complicated. Look, delving into all of that… that’s not why I asked you here, and there’s no time, anyway. I need you to… to come with me.”
I stared again. “Come with you where?”
“Upstairs.”
“And why the hell would I do that?” I asked. “The last time I went somewhere with you, I was blindfolded and left in the woods to be tortured.”
“I know… I’m… I’m really sorry about that, now,” Olivia said, bouncing on the balls of her feet, twisting her hands together agitatedly. “But times change… people change. Things aren’t the way they were, and… and anyway this isn’t about me. I just need you to come with me. Please.”
Something in her expression gave me pause. “I can call my Spirit Guide and have him here in a second,” I warned her.
“I know. Please, we don’t have much time,” she said.
I hesitated just one more moment. I must have lost my goddamned mind. “Okay. Let’s go.”
She sighed with relief and turned without another word toward the adjoining room with the bathroom stalls. But instead of entering one of them, she turned the corner and pressed on a panel in the wall. It sprang open with a creak, revealing a narrow, tightly spiraled staircase.
“Servant’s staircase,” she whispered in reply to my wary look. “Follow me. And take your shoes off. They’ll make too much noise.” She was already sliding her feet out of hers.
I followed her up the staircase, careful to keep my feet clear of the trailing hem of her gown, and silently rejoicing at every step that I was temporarily free of my torturous footwear. At last we arrived on a narrow landing. I struggled to catch my breath while Olivia eased the door open and peered around it. I stole a glance out of the narrow window in the wall beside it. We were three floors up from the ground now.
“It’s all clear, come on. Quickly, now,” Olivia said, and slipped out into the corridor beyond.
We emerged into a hallway that seemed to belong to another house altogether. The carpets were faded, the walls were dark paneled and dull. The light fixtures were dusty and the doors that led off the hallway were set with dull brass plates and knobs.
“These are the servants’ quarters,” Olivia whispered, in answer to my evident confusion. “At least, they were, when this house had a full-time live-in staff.”
“Olivia, what are we doing up here?” I whispered.
“You’ll see in a moment. Just hurry up,” she replied over her shoulder as she set off down the hallway.
We crept along until we arrived in front of a door at the very end of the hallway that said, “Footman’s quarters.” Olivia turned to face me. Her cheeks were flushed.
“Go ahead in. I’ll wait out here for you. We only have a few minutes.”
“Olivia, what in the hell—”
“Just go, will you?! You’re wasting time!” she cried, looking quite desperate.
Too alarmed to argue with her, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. The room beyond was dark and musty; the only light was that of the dying sun, which spilled in a golden orange patch through an arched window set up in the eaves.
I peered around the gloom, afraid to step forward, unsure of what was waiting for me. Every Durupinen sense I had was on high alert for the presence of a spirit. This was exactly the kind of room that should be haunted; the clatter and murmurs of living people felt as distant up here as though they were echoing up from another world altogether. It was no surprise, then, that when he stepped forward out of the shadows of the far corner, I was sure he was a spirit. I tensed, defenses on high alert, ready to fly or to fight. Then he spoke.
“Jess.”
My heart stopped. I knew that voice. Oh God, I knew that voice.
“Jess, it’s okay.”
The question that escaped me was more of a sob than a whisper. I didn’t dare trust myself, in my half-mad longing to see him again, to hear that voice again.
“Finn? Is that you?”
In answer, he took another step out of the corner, so that the fiery light splashed across his
features, throwing into sharp relief every feature I so longed to see—his broad shoulders; his square jaw, clenched tight with emotion; the sweep of his hair tucked behind his ears where it had escaped his ponytail. And his eyes, alight with every fierce thing that was threatening to overwhelm me.
“Don’t be frightened. It’s only me,” he said, his voice low and hoarse.
A sound escaped me, a wild half-laughing sob. “Only you? Only you?”
I dropped my shoes to the floor and stumbled forward just as he strode forward, closing the last of that terrible distance between us. I flung myself into his arms, arms that enveloped me, lifted me from the ground as though I were nothing, and enfolded me. He let out a ragged gasp into my hair. I reached up with both trembling hands and found his face, running my fingers over it as though I could memorize every plane of it with my hands, burn it into my fingertips so that I could trace him into existence whenever I wanted. His eyes fluttered closed at my touch, as though he were memorizing the feel of me in return. Then he reached down and pressed his lips to mine.
It was dizzying—the longing, the shock, the taste of passion and salty tears, all tangled up together in this one, stolen moment in the fiery light of the dying sun.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he whispered against my lips.
“Don’t,” I breathed, kissing him again.
He pulled away just enough to speak, our lips still touching. “But it was my fault. The notebook. I’m such a bloody fool,” he murmured. “How could I have been so—”
“It’s not your fault. They found the sketch, too. The one I did of you in the Traveler wagon,” I told him. “Wasn’t it only a matter of time?”
“I suppose. But I’m just so sorry—”
“Don’t you dare apologize to me,” I told him, pulling back enough to look into his eyes. “Don’t you apologize for loving me. I don’t want to hear those words come out of your mouth. Ever. I’m the one who should be apologizing to you.”