by Meg Cabot
“No,” I’d said. “It’s something your dad is doing using data from people who bought his new Quarks.”
“How’s that going to work?” Brandon wanted to know.
“That’s what I’m asking you,” I said, frustrated.
“Well, if I knew that, would I be here with you?” Brandon asked. “No, I’d be in my dad’s office, telling him I knew and to get the hell out. Right? So try again.”
I hunched along beside him, defeated. Christopher and Felix had to be onto something…but that I was Project Phoenix? It was all just too crazy.
Still, at least Christopher was trying.
Which was more than could be said for me. I was at a party. Worse, a boring party for celebrities. I saw Madonna getting out of a limo right in front of the red carpet leading up the steps to the wide-open front door (which was a bit weird, because she lived right around the corner. She could almost have walked. Although not in those heels, I realized when I looked at her gladiator platforms). The governor of New York was going inside just ahead of her.
“There’s Nikki Howard!” the paps gathered on either side of the gold security ropes cried when they saw me with Brandon. “Nikki! Is it true you and Brandon Stark are engaged?”
“Absolutely,” Brandon said drunkenly into the first microphone thrust in his direction. “Hey, watch the drink.”
“No,” I said. “We’re just friends.”
“I’m engaged,” Lulu said to a reporter who had asked her whether her album was ever going to drop. “Well, okay, engaged to be engaged someday. I’m a bit busy at the moment to be thinking about getting married, recording my new album.”
“Lulu,” I hissed at her. “Can it on the engagement stuff. No one’s supposed to know about You Know Who.”
“Oh, the identity of my husband-to-be is a secret,” Lulu squealed as I dragged her past the uniformed security guards posted on either side of the door and into the town house. “He’s very shy. You know. Not used to life in the spotlight yet.”
Inside the Stark mansion, there were models in Stark Angel bra-and-panty sets, complete with wings— not any of the models from the show I was going to do later, though, and their wings were smaller, for better maneuverability— to offer glasses of champagne to everyone and take people’s coats as soon as they entered. Farther into the house, which was sumptuously decorated and made up entirely of marble and black wood paneling, were magicians, jugglers, a fire-eater, and acrobats from Cirque du Soleil.
Lulu took one look at the fire-eater, who had quite a circle of admirers, and said, stomping her foot, “I knew I should have a fire-eater at my party.”
Brandon, who’d traded his empty glass from the limo for a flute of champagne from a passing Stark Angel’s silver tray, made a face.
“Fire-eaters suck,” he said. “Your trapeze girl was great.”
“Really?” Lulu looked skeptical. “I don’t think anyone even noticed her. She was hanging way above everybody’s heads.”
I stood there holding my champagne, which of course I wasn’t drinking, wondering what I was even doing there. We’d meandered into Robert Stark’s cavernous ballroom— the ceiling was twenty feet high, at least, and painted with cherubs that looked like chubby versions of the Stark Angels who were wandering around (minus the bras) and dotted all over with humongous crystal chandeliers that glittered like the drop earrings I was wearing. All around us were celebrities who were drinking and chatting and crowding the impressive buffet, where paper-thin curls of roast beef and fat ruby-red strawberries and caviar in gold bowls with mother-of-pearl spoons and huge pink shrimp sat curled in chilled bowls and were being served on fine china plates by caterers in white suits. I saw Madonna again, this time talking to Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jay-Z hanging out with Bono. Everyone was there, at least for a little while. It didn’t seem like the kind of party you stayed at for a long time…just one of those parties where you stopped by, said hello, and left….
Part of that might have been because the French doors leading from the ballroom out to the back garden were wide open, and a chilly breeze was coming in. Then again, the room was roastingly hot because of all the bodies in it. People were milling in and out of it, not even bothering to get their coats to go outside.
“Oh, look,” Lulu said, pointing at someone over by the buffet. “There’s Taylor Swift. I’m going to go tell her about Steven. She’s going to be so happy for me.”
I grabbed Lulu’s arm before she got more than two inches away.
“Would you stop?” I whispered. “No one’s supposed to know about Steven.”
“I won’t tell her his last name, silly,” Lulu said. “But I’m just so happy. I’m busting to tell everyone I know!”
She wrenched her arm out of my hand and hurried off. There really wasn’t anything I could do to stop her, beyond tackling her and sitting on her, which I was pretty sure wouldn’t go unnoticed.
Brandon, who’d disappeared for a minute or two, reappeared holding a plate of shrimp, which he chewed noisily in my ear.
“Have you tried this shrimp?” he asked. “It’s freaking amazing.”
“Would you get away from me?” I said irritably. “I hate you.”
“You’re so moody,” Brandon remarked, chewing loudly. “Just because I kidnapped you and tried to force you to be my girlfriend. I thought you’d be over that by now. Here, just try a bite.” He waved a shrimp in my face. “The cocktail sauce is really good.”
“Stop,” I said, and stepped away from him…
…right into the path of Rebecca, wearing a long black evening gown, which fit her body like a second skin and had a slit up to her pelvic bone, practically.
“Oh, good, there you are.” She grabbed my arm. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What are you doing, hiding in this corner with Brandon? Why aren’t you mingling? You’re here to mingle. You’re the Million-Dollar-Bra Girl.”
Brandon let out a giant horselaugh at that.
“Million-Dollar-Brawr Girl!” he said, doing a pretty good imitation of Rebecca. “Better get cher brawron!”
Rebecca sent him a withering look.
“Brandon,” she said severely. “Are you drunk?”
“Of course,” he replied, licking a shrimp.
“Get out of my sight, then,” Rebecca said. She began steering me away from Brandon, toward the center of the room. “Mr. Stark Senior has been asking for you all night. He wants to introduce you to some of his shareholders.”
I hurried along beside her, practically having to jog. I had no idea how she walked so fast in such high heels. We were approaching a group of tuxedoed men and women in evening gowns.
“Found her,” Rebecca called in her Brooklynese.
The people turned and the group broke apart a little. I saw that at the center of it was Robert Stark, looking as absurdly handsome— only older, of course— as his son. He smiled at me, his teeth startlingly white against his tanned, weatherbeaten face. He’d been using his own Stark brand teeth-whitening strips, I saw.
“Ah, there she is,” he said, and put his hand on my bare back. “Nikki Howard, everyone, the star of this evening’s performance.”
All the old people smiled at me. They looked kind and attractive and rich. Very, very rich. The ladies had a lot of diamonds dripping from around their necks, and the men’s faces were very puffy and red, like they’d had too much to drink already.
“So nice to finally meet you, dear,” one lady in a long beige dress that was tastefully decorated in sparkles at the bottom said, reaching out to shake my hand. She said her name, but I instantly forgot it.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said.
She seemed to hold on to my hand for way too long. It was creepy. I wanted to get away from her, and from Robert Stark and the rest of his friends. Or shareholders, I guess they were.
Except that two things happened at once.
One was that I glanced down at our clenched hands and noticed that around her slender, blu
e-veined wrist was a black velvet cord, and that from the cord dangled something that looked to me like a gold bird that was on fire.
Or, you know. A phoenix.
And when I looked up, wondering if I was interpreting what I was seeing correctly, I noticed someone over her shoulder, just coming into the ballroom.
And that was Gabriel.
Who, like me, was undoubtedly being forced to come to this party by his agent.
Except that he was with someone. A pretty brunette of about average height, who was wearing a purple dress with a black corset laced up tight to flatter her cute figure, and matching purple eye shadow. It took me a second to recognize who she was, Lulu’s makeover had been so complete:
None other than Nikki Howard.
Eighteen
“EXCUSE ME,” I SAID TO THE WOMAN who was still holding my hand. “I actually have to go make a phone call.”
I didn’t want to say I had to go say hi to someone I knew, because I didn’t want to draw Robert Stark’s attention to Gabriel’s date. I had no idea whether or not he’d been alerted to the fact that Nikki was still alive, or if he knew whose body she’d been put into or what she looked like.
But I figured the less attention I drew to Nikki, the better.
But Robert Stark, it turned out, wasn’t done with me.
“Oh, I’m sure your call can wait,” he said, putting his arm around me and turning me so I couldn’t even see Gabriel or Nikki anymore. “There are some more people I’d like you to meet. This is Bill and Ellen Anderson, also Stark shareholders, as I’m sure you know.”
I found myself shaking the hands of more old people in evening wear…again dripping in diamonds and rosacea…and again with black cords around their wrists with what looked to me like a gold phoenix dangling from them.
Hey, I was no expert on mythological birds. But if it had fire shooting out of its wings, was it not a phoenix?
It seemed like everyone Robert Stark dragged me around the room to introduce me to that evening had a phoenix either on her wrist or hanging from her clutch. It was so bizarre!
I hadn’t seen any gift bags being given out at the door. But maybe I’d just missed them. Maybe Christopher was completely wrong, and Project Phoenix was some kind of charity and all the Stark shareholders were donors.
It seemed kind of rude to ask, especially when they were being so gracious to me, taking so much time to ask how I was and saying how nice it was to meet me, and all of that. My mom had always told me to be kind to the elderly. I couldn’t exactly run away, even though I really wanted to. I was dying to ask Gabriel what he was thinking, bringing Nikki here.
Was she going to cause a scene? Confront Robert Stark about what he’d done to her? Didn’t she know he’d just have his security staff drag her out? No one would believe her, anyway.
Finally, Robert Stark seemed to be satisfied that I’d met enough of his shareholders, and he said, glancing at his platinum watch, “Well, I’m sure you’ll be needing to leave for the studio to get ready for tonight’s show.”
He wasn’t kidding. I saw that the hands of his watch said it was close to eight thirty.
“I do have to go,” I said. “It was really nice meeting your friends.”
“Shareholders,” he corrected me. “Never mix business with friendship, Nikki. That’s something you never could keep straight, isn’t it?”
I stared at him. Was he kidding me? Did he really think I was Nikki? I mean, the real Nikki? Did he really not remember?
“Uh,” I said. “I’m not Nikki. You know that, right? You know I’m really Emerson Watts?”
You killed me, I wanted to add. You killed me and put my brain in Nikki Howard’s body because she was blackmailing you. The real Nikki’s here in this room, you know. She can back this whole story up. Do you want me to get her?
But my heart was thumping so hard just from the few words I’d said, waiting for some response from him, some acknowledgment. I couldn’t get further than You know I’m really Emerson Watts? before Robert Stark lowered his sleeve over his watch, looked over my shoulder, and smiled broadly.
“Ah, Gabriel,” he said. “So good to see you. Thank you for coming. Can’t wait to see your performance tonight. Who is this lovely creature you’ve brought with you?”
I spun around slowly, hardly daring to believe any of this was happening. Robert Stark. Robert Stark, the man who had ruined my life, was actually about to speak to Nikki Howard— the real Nikki Howard, the one he’d tried to have murdered.
And he didn’t even know it.
Nikki looked even more amazing up close than she had from across the room. It wasn’t that she appeared so different than she had before. She did, obviously, because she’d gone from looking like a washed-out rag to a punk rock princess.
Her hair, now dyed almost jet-black, had been scrunched dry rather than flat-ironed, so the natural waves framed her heart-shaped face in a more flattering way.
And her makeup, rather than being a carbon copy of how she used to do it when she was in her old body, had been done for her new face, so that the tones played up her new eye color and emphasized the curve of her lips and cheeks.
It was more like she was carrying herself differently. She seemed…proud. And playful. And, yes…hot.
Suddenly, I could see why all those guys— even other girls’ boyfriends— had gravitated to Nikki. It was totally obvious to me now that it had never just been about her looks. It was about something more. Something I knew I didn’t have, because I had something else. Something that was essentially, irrevocably…Nikki.
“Why, hello,” Nikki said, extending her hand toward Robert Stark. Not in a handshake. So that he could kiss it. “You can call me Diana Prince.”
Diana Prince? Diana Prince? How did I know that name?
Oh, my God.
Diana Prince? That was Wonder Woman’s alter ego.
Nikki Howard had named herself after Wonder Woman.
“So nice to meet you, Miss Prince,” Robert Stark said. And he actually raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. “Have we met somewhere before? You seem familiar.”
“Oh,” Nikki said, with a kittenish smile. “I think you would remember having met me.”
“I certainly would,” Robert Stark said, smiling back. “Well, Gabriel, like I said…good luck tonight. Miss Prince…Miss Howard…good evening to you both.”
And he walked away, toward a set of his guests who were waiting for him by the ballroom doors.
It was only after he was out of earshot that I realized I’d been holding my breath the whole time, and released it.
“Oh, my God,” I cried. “You guys. I nearly had a heart attack just then. Nikki— I mean, Diana. What are you doing here?”
“Oh,” Nikki said, looking after Robert Stark, her purple-lined eyes narrowed. “I just wanted to see his face one last time. Before it’s behind bars.”
“I tried to keep her from coming,” Gabriel said. It was only then that I realized how highly frustrated he looked. “But she insisted. Loudly. I think my eardrums are broken.”
But now I was beginning to suspect his frustration had nothing to do with disliking Nikki. The opposite, in fact.
Nikki rolled her eyes dismissively in Gabriel’s direction. Turning to me, she said, “Please tell me your friend with the leather jacket came up with something we can use to put that scumbag in jail. Other than our word that what happened is true.”
“He has,” I said. “Some kind of theory, anyway.” I didn’t want to tell her that Christopher’s theory was totally insane, and that it revolved around…well, the two of us. “But he has no proof….” I let my voice trail off as I stared toward the ballroom doors, having just noticed something.
“Or maybe he has,” I added thoughtfully.
Nikki and Gabriel turned to look in the direction I was staring.
“Oh,” Nikki said, still bored. “That’s nothing. The old people are all leaving. They always do that. Because i
t’s after eight. Way past their bedtime.”
“It’s not just the old people,” I said. “It’s only the old people I just met. The Stark shareholders. Where are they going? They aren’t getting their coats.”
I started walking swiftly toward the doors myself.
“Uh, Nikki,” Gabriel said, conscious that, despite the mass exodus of the shareholders, the ballroom was still crowded with people who might think it strange if they overheard him calling me Em. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back,” I said to him. I was jogging now. Which wasn’t easy in heels.
But when I got to the hallway the shareholders had disappeared into, it was empty. Well, except for a staircase cordoned off by a velvet rope and manned by a Stark security guard.
“Excuse me,” I said, going up to him. “Did you see Robert Stark go by here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “He’s upstairs.”
“Oh, great,” I said, finger combing some of my hair out of my eyes in a manner I hoped he’d find irresistibly fetching. “Can you let me up to see him for a minute? I’m Nikki Howard. I just have to tell him something about the show tonight. It’ll only take a second.”
“I know who you are, Miss Howard,” the security guard said, with a polite smile. “Unfortunately, I can’t let you up. Authorized personnel only.”
As he said this, Mrs. Whatever Her Name Was, with the blue veins and the sparkles around the bottom of her skirt, came hurrying up.
“Oh, hello again,” she said to me, with a vague smile.
“Hi,” I said, smiling back.
Then, to the security guard, she said, “I’m so sorry I’m late. I had to go to the little girls’ room.”
She actually said that. The little girls’ room.
Then she did something extraordinary. She held up her bracelet. The one with the phoenix— or what I thought was a phoenix, anyway— dangling down from it.
And the security guard said, “Of course, madam.”
And he undid the velvet rope and let her up the stairs.
Now of course I was bursting with curiosity to get up those stairs and find out what was going on up there.