“And now, it’s time to announce this year’s Mardi Gras queen!” says the announcer, a silver-haired, faux-tanned man in a tux. Someone hands him an envelope, and as he opens it, his expression changes. He looks back at the crowd and says, “Well, this is unusual! For the first time in the history of this town’s Mardi Gras Ball, we have a dead tie for queen. We’ve split the winner’s bouquet in half, but we only have one crown and one sash, though, ladies, so you’ll have to share!”
The crowd laughs lightly and then quiets down again in anticipation.
“This year’s first Mardi Gras queen should be no surprise to any of you, since she was last year’s queen too,” the man says in his booming voice. “Let’s welcome Peregrine Marceau!”
The crowd erupts in applause as Peregrine glides toward the stage in a slinky black dress and red-soled Christian Louboutin heels. She accepts the small cluster of roses handed to her, as well as a kiss on the cheek from the host.
“So, queen number one, would you prefer the sash or the crown?” The host holds up a sparkly tiara in one hand and a pretty purple sash in the other.
“The crown,” Peregrine coos into the microphone without missing a beat. “I’ve brought my own sash.”
The crowd gasps as Chloe appears at the foot of the stage and hands over Audowido. He wraps himself around Peregrine and hisses at the audience while the host nervously holds out her crown. She laughs and puts it on as Audowido slithers around her shoulders.
“And now, for the announcement of the second queen,” the host says, inching away from Peregrine. I glance at Chloe, because who else could it be? I know the voting is fixed by the sosyete. She’s lingering near the front of the stage, smiling up at the host.
“Drumroll, please!” the host says, and the drummer in the small orchestra acquiesces with a slow snare roll. “Tonight’s second queen is . . . Eveny Cheval!”
For a moment, I’m sure I’ve heard him wrong, but when I look up at Peregrine, she’s smiling at me knowingly, and I realize this is her version of making peace with me. She’s somehow fixed it so that I get to be her co-queen, which she’s expecting will mean a lot more to me than it actually does. As applause echoes around the room, Margaux appears from somewhere behind me and gives me a not-so-gentle shove toward the stage. “What are you waiting for?” she hisses. “Go on!”
My feet carry me through the cheering crowd toward the stage. The announcer squints at me as I walk up. “Are you Eveny Cheval?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, glancing at Peregrine, who looks triumphant, as if this moment is the answer to all our problems.
The announcer offers his hand to help me on stage, and after ascertaining that I don’t have a reptile concealed anywhere on me, he drops the sash over my head and hands me a bouquet of roses before retreating. Peregrine squeezes my hand and leans toward my ear. I expect her to say something sarcastic, but instead, she whispers, “If I’ve got to share this with anyone, it might as well be you.”
I look at her in surprise just as Pascal slides between us. “Looks like we’re a threesome tonight, ladies,” he says in a Barry White voice as he drapes his arms around our waists.
“You’re truly disgusting,” Peregrine says cheerfully, wriggling out of his grip. I do the same, smacking his roving hand away.
“Well, folks,” the host cuts back in. “Thanks for coming tonight. Please get home safely!”
The band launches into a slow version of “New York, New York,” which makes me homesick, and above us, the houselights come on. “It’s only ten thirty,” I say, puzzled.
Peregrine shakes her head at me. “The ball always ends early so that the controlling sosyete has plenty of time to make it to New Orleans. The rest of the town just thinks it’s because the Main Street district has an eleven o’clock noise ordinance curfew.
“Meet us outside in ten minutes,” Peregrine adds before disappearing into the crowd.
I’m escorted off stage, and I head over to find Liv, who’s been dancing with Drew all night. She’s smiling in disbelief as I approach.
“Congratulations, girl!” she exclaims.
She hugs me, and I hug tightly back. “Thanks,” I say, a little embarrassed. “It’s no big deal.”
“I beg to differ,” she says. “Dude, you just got crowned queen of the biggest ball of the year!”
“Co-queen,” I say.
“A mere technicality,” she replies.
I change the subject. “So where’d Drew go? I wanted to say good-bye to him too.”
“He just went to the bathroom. He’ll be right back. Where’s Caleb?”
I frown. “I don’t know.”
“Did you two have a fight?”
“Something like that,” I mumble.
“Do you need a ride home?”
“Peregrine and Chloe can drive me,” I promise. “But enough about me. So has Drew kissed you yet?”
She looks so excited that I can’t help but smile as she exclaims, “Yes! Totally! And Eveny, he is such a good kisser! I think there’s really a future in this.”
I pull her into a fierce hug. “I’m so happy for you,” I murmur. I hold on just a moment longer than I have to, because who knows what will happen tonight? “Thanks for being my friend,” I say.
She pulls away and looks at me with concern. “What’s wrong, Eveny?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
I turn to walk away and collide with Arelia, who’s hurrying in the opposite direction. “What, now that you’ve been voted the queen of the ball, you’re too good to watch where you’re going?” she demands.
I realize that she looks like she’s been crying. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Are you okay?”
“What do you care?” she asks, sniffling.
That’s when I realize that she’s one of the few people at the ball I haven’t kissed yet. Knowing she’ll think I’m completely nuts since I’ve already seen and ignored her several times tonight, I dive in and give her a quick peck on the cheek. “What the hell?” she demands, her hand flying to her face like I’ve burned her.
But I’m too frozen to reply. That’s because a raspberry-red mark has bloomed on her cheek, exactly where my lips met her skin.
“It’s you,” I breathe.
She narrows her eyes. “What’s me?”
“You’re the one who killed Glory,” I say, my voice hollow with disbelief.
Her gaze slides away from me. “Oh, honestly, Eveny, haven’t we been through this already? Just because Glory mentioned my name doesn’t mean anything.”
“No,” I say. “But the red stain on your cheek does. You’ve been lying about what happened that night.”
She reaches up and touches her face in confusion just as I spot Caleb across the room. “Caleb!” I cry, gesturing wildly. He looks confused, but he hurries over.
“You okay?” he asks.
“It was Arelia,” I tell him tersely.
He looks at her, and she winds her finger in a circle around her ear to indicate that I’m crazy. “What are you talking about, Eveny?” he asks.
“The red mark from my lip gloss,” is all I need to say to make him understand.
“She’s obviously losing her mind,” Arelia begins to protest.
But Caleb interrupts her, his eyes blazing. “You’re absolutely sure?” he asks me.
“Positive,” I say.
“Okay, I’ll take care of it,” he says, already grabbing her arm. She’s struggling and trying to tell us something, but we both ignore her. The red mark speaks for itself. “Hurry. Go join the others and explain. I’ll be along as soon as I can,” he says.
I hesitate. “Will you be okay?”
“I’m fine, Eveny. Just go. Tell Peregrine and Chloe what’s going on.”
I pause and look Arelia in the eye. “I don’t know what your game is, or what you hoped to accomplish here,” I say. “But it’s over. You’re done.”
“Eveny, you have to let me explain!” she cries, but C
aleb is already dragging her away.
He looks back once, and as our eyes lock, he mouths, Go.
I run outside, where Peregrine’s Aston Martin is idling at the curb.
“What took you so long?” Peregrine calls out the driver’s-side window. Chloe, Oscar, and Patrick are wedged in the backseat.
“It’s Arelia,” I say quickly. I cross in front of the car and get into the passenger seat quickly as they all stare at me. “She’s the traitor,” I say as I buckle my seat belt. “She’s from Main de Lumière.”
“The lip gloss?” Chloe asks.
I nod as Peregrine guns the engine. “I can’t believe it,” she says in a tight voice as she roars away from the curb. “Damn it!”
“Where’s Caleb?” Chloe asks after a minute. “He should be here with us, protecting you.”
“He’s not my protector anymore,” I tell them. Peregrine gasps and Chloe sighs in realization.
“What?” Oscar asks.
“She let him go,” Chloe answers sadly for me. “Eveny, do you realize what you’ve done?”
“Yes. I’ve given him his life back,” I say.
“Or you’ve doomed us all,” Peregrine whispers after a moment.
She floors the accelerator, and as the speedometer creeps past ninety, we all stop talking.
We roar through the bayou toward New Orleans and our date with destiny.
31
We’re all mostly quiet on the way to New Orleans as we digest the revelation about Arelia. “I just can’t believe she’d betray us like that,” Peregrine says four times before falling silent again.
It’s not until we get to the edge of the city that Oscar speaks up. “You know, Patrick and I were suspicious of her all along. I mean, the way she was always lurking around and glaring at everyone . . .”
“You never thought to mention that?” Peregrine asks.
“You never listen to us,” Oscar says. “You act like we don’t have brains.”
Chloe jumps in before Peregrine makes the situation worse. “Oscar, Patrick, we’re very grateful for your protection. Peregrine’s just on edge.”
“Of course I am,” Peregrine says sharply. “This girl who’s been acting like our friend for years has just been lying in wait to murder us. It’s a lot to digest.”
“I just can’t understand her motives,” I say. “She had everything she wanted.”
“Not everything,” Peregrine says. “We were always going to be more powerful, more beautiful, and more privileged than her. We’re queens, and she’s not. Some people can’t handle coming in second.”
I think about my first day in the Hickories, when Arelia snapped at me that it had taken her years to become a Doll, and I had no right to assume that doors would open for me just because of my family name. “She did seem jealous,” I admit. “It’s just a long leap from envy to joining Main de Lumière and murdering innocent people.”
“You said yourself that Glory mentioned Arelia’s name the night she died,” Peregrine says.
“I know,” I reply. “I guess I should have listened to my gut all along, but it seemed so farfetched. I’m an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot,” Chloe says as Peregrine begins to weave her Aston Martin swiftly through the city streets toward the heart of the French Quarter. “If anything, we’re the ones who talked you out of suspecting her. But let’s try to forget about Arelia for the time being and focus on what we have to do, okay? Tonight’s important, and our minds have to be clear.”
“Fine,” Peregrine says.
I look out the window and feel a little dazed as I try to turn my thoughts to the task at hand. The streets of New Orleans are heaving with people, many of them wearing hundreds of strings of beads as well as elaborate masks and, in some cases, feather headdresses. The city itself is saturated in bright colors, its soundtrack a cacophony of blaring trumpets, banging drums, and laughing revelers. People swig huge beers and bright red drinks, trip over each other, fall on the pavement, and sing off-key as we inch past on some of the side streets that aren’t closed to traffic. Peregrine’s jaw is set, and her lips are pressed together in a fine line as she drives.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” I say as a woman near our car screams up at several men hanging off an ornate balcony, pulls up her tank top to flash them, and receives a shower of beads and catcalls in reply.
Peregrine finally makes a right turn on a side street and pulls the car into a disabled parking spot along the curb. As we get out and head toward the back door of a big mansion, Chloe explains, “We were here last year to take part in the ceremony with our mothers’ sosyete—that always happens when a sosyete is a year away from inheriting its power—but this year, we’re the ones with the control.” The words make me shudder. Control seems like the wrong way to put it when we’re really just players in a game set up long before we were born.
Peregrine unlocks the mansion’s back door and flips on the lights inside. A huge, opulent parlor, all done in black and white marble, is illuminated before us.
“Beautiful place,” I say.
“It’s ours, you know,” Chloe says, turning to me. “This mansion.”
“Ours?” I ask.
“Yours, mine, and Peregrine’s,” she responds. “The great-great-great-grandmothers willed it to us. It’s our haven for practicing magic in New Orleans.”
“And,” Peregrine says, “our occasional place to get hammered and hook up.”
Chloe nudges me. “You and Caleb should come here some weekend. It’s really romantic.”
I swallow hard. “I’m pretty sure Caleb and I are done.”
Chloe pats my back. “Don’t give up on him yet. What you two have . . .” She doesn’t finish her sentence.
“We don’t have anything,” I say after a pause.
“You’re wrong,” she says. “And now that it’s not his responsibility to protect you anymore . . .”
Peregrine gives me a sour look over her shoulder as she leads us into the kitchen, which has beige marble countertops and state-of-the-art stainless steel appliances. In the corner sits a teak bar with several bottles of liquor on top. “Chloe,” she says, “I think it’s pretty clear Eveny has ended things forever with Caleb.” My heart lurches, and I feel ill as she turns and says sweetly, “Champagne, guys? We’re fully stocked, and hello, we’ve just escaped a murderer! Shouldn’t we be celebrating?”
I look into the fridge, where the top shelf is lined with at least a dozen bottles of champagne with bright yellow foil wrappers.
“I’ll have a glass,” Patrick says.
“Me too,” Oscar adds.
“Me three,” Chloe says quickly. “Eveny’ll have one too. Right?”
“Um,” I say weakly. I should be feeling relieved, but instead, I just feel oddly unsettled. Knowing that Arelia was acting like our friend while she planned our murders unsettles me. It also reminds me that the deepest threats can come from the people you trust the most. I wonder if the person who betrayed my mom was someone she trusted too.
Peregrine plugs her iPhone into a pair of silver speakers and pulls up a playlist. A moment later, there’s music blasting, and Chloe, Patrick, and Oscar head into the kitchen to do shots.
“For one night, Eveny, do you think you could stop being so lame?” Peregrine asks, handing me a flute of champagne. “Let loose. Have fun. We deserve this.”
Margaux, Pascal, and Justin arrive ten minutes later, just as Peregrine is joining Chloe, Oscar, and Patrick for another round of tequila shots in the kitchen.
“The traffic was killer,” Pascal reports as he strolls in and tosses his keys on a coffee table.
“Maybe if you hadn’t stopped and leered at every topless girl we passed, we would have gotten here faster,” Margaux says. She pauses and looks around. “Hey, where’s Arelia? I thought she was with you guys.”
Chloe and Peregrine emerge from the kitchen, looking uneasy. I turn the music down, and for a moment, we just stand in uncomfo
rtable silence.
“What?” Margaux demands. “What happened? Is she okay?”
“Margaux,” Chloe says gently. “Arelia’s the one who killed Glory.”
“That’s impossible,” Margaux says instantly. “This is some kind of a joke, right?”
“I’m afraid not,” Peregrine says. She quickly recaps the story about the lip gloss and the crimson stain on Arelia’s cheek. Before she finishes speaking, Margaux is already shaking her head vigorously.
“No, no, no, no,” she says. “This is all wrong.” She turns to me, her eyes blazing. “What did you say in your charm? Tell me the exact words!”
Startled, I explain that I asked that the gloss turn blood red on the face of the person who was lying about the night Glory died.
Margaux puts her hand over her mouth, and for a moment, she’s silent. “She was lying about that night,” she says finally. “But it’s not what you think. She didn’t kill Glory. She loved Glory.” When we all stare at her blankly, she exclaims, “She and Glory were dating, you morons! They thought you guys would ban them from the sosyete if you found out.” She turns to Peregrine and adds, “You’re not exactly the most tolerant people in the world.”
We gape at her. “Are you sure?” It’s Chloe who finally speaks. “Maybe she and Glory got into some kind of fight—”
Margaux cuts her off. “Just like I’ve already said, she was with me at the time Glory was killed. I swear on the graves of my ancestors.” She turns to me. “You kissed my cheek too, didn’t you? You know I’m not lying!”
“She’s right,” I say uneasily.
“Kiss her again,” Peregrine demands. When I hesitate, she says, “Do it!”
I give Margaux a quick peck on the cheek, and nothing happens. A knot of dread is forming in the pit of my stomach. Margaux’s telling the truth; it wasn’t Arelia, which means the real killer is still out there.
“I told you so,” Margaux says, her face pink with anger.
“We have to let Caleb know we screwed up,” I say.
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