by Scott Tracey
No one stopped us as Jade walked right past the teachers at the door, with me in her wake. If anything, the teachers who saw us started whispering amongst themselves more than any of the students.
The hall itself was a far cry from the mediocrity of the building’s exterior. Someone had rigged up tiny spotlights, pastel shades of blue, purple, and green. The spotlights moved every few seconds, just slightly, but it was the effect they created that was so impressive. Someone had hung probably a thousand prism crystals, and the light beaming through them created a shimmering landscape on the ceiling.
I laughed at the sight of it because it was a rare moment of unexpected beauty. That someone had thought this up, and brought their version of a winter wonderland to life was impressive, to say the least. Round tables done up in blues and whites, along with matching centerpieces, lined one side of the hall. Everything had been considered, and it was exactly like walking into the kind of school dance that I’d only ever seen on television before.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Jade said on my arm, trying to sound bored but looking impressed all the same.
“Are the dances always like this?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I think so. The school always goes all out. I think the dances were really important to … ” she stumbled over her words, and then forced herself to continue, “to Catherine when she was in high school, and that never seemed to go away.”
Just another way Catherine’s influenced the high school. But something like this wasn’t Catherine’s usual brand of awful. Why couldn’t they do more things like this, and less with the trying to ritually murder each other?
We walked further into the hall, and I led her towards one of the corners, one with a good vantage point of both the way we’d come in and the hall itself. There were about a hundred students here. I guessed that there were five to six hundred kids enrolled at the high school. I leaned closer, to be heard over the sound of the music. “How many people do you think are going to be here tonight?” I asked her.
Jade’s eyes narrowed in thought. “A lot of the seniors, probably. Last winter formal and all. A lot of underclassmen, too, because it’s the last dance of the year that’s open to all students. Prom’s for juniors and seniors only.” She did some quick math in her head and said, “Maybe about three hundred all together?”
Three hundred would work. I licked my lips, pulled the sunglasses from my pocket and slid them on. “That’s perfect,” I said, smiling wide.
“Do you know the only thing worse than a Thorpe and a Lansing going to the dance together?” A voice interjected loudly, over the music. “When two Lansings fight over which one is really his date.”
Trey stood there, looking amused. He’d gone the traditional route, wearing a black suit with the jacket unbuttoned, a black vest visible underneath, hiding a gray tie. He looked …
“Wow,” I said, forcing my eyes up to his face. My own suit felt a little tight around the shoulders, but Trey’s looked …
“Hi,” he said softly, with a warm smile.
“No, that’s fine, I spent hours getting dolled up to be the dateless girl,” Jade said with a sigh, stepping away from us. Trey’s eyes drifted towards her, and his expression tightened, but she pressed her hand against his arm. “I won’t go far,” she promised. “I know Braden didn’t decide to come to the dance because he didn’t have anything better to do on a Saturday night. Something’s happening.”
“Something’s always happening,” Trey muttered. He didn’t like his sister getting involved in the goings on in Belle Dam, but none of us could pretend like it wasn’t happening. Jade wasn’t stupid. She was actually more astute then most of us gave her credit for. Mostly because she was smart to stay out of things as much as possible. She knew this wasn’t her fight.
Jade seemed to realize that we’d exhausted this particular topic of conversation, at least as far as it could happen in public. “Save me a dance,” she said to me, squeezing my arm even as she looked over my shoulder for someone’s date to snag. Her neck craned as she scoured above the heads and shoulders of most of the student body, and it took me a moment to realize what she was doing. Looking for Drew.
I blanched and looked away.
“Come on,” Trey said a few moments later, nodding towards the dance floor. One of his hands reached up and carefully pulled the sunglasses off of my face. Having them back on had been nice: a barrier against everything that was going on. I could hide behind them, and no one could see what I was thinking. “I want to see who I’m dancing with,” he said, tucking them into my pocket.
I pulled up short, shaking my head. “I don’t dance. And besides, I’m not here to have a good time. You know that.”
He had an easy smile on his face. “One dance won’t set the world on fire.”
“I kind of hate you,” I whispered, even as I let him lead me out into the middle of the dance floor. His timing was impeccable, of course, because the moment he stopped and turned around to face me, the music changed and a slow song started. Of course. Trey’s smile erupted into a full-blown laugh, and his arms slid easily around my waist, tightening the gap between us. I slid my arms around his neck, and ducked his head so we were eye to eye.
“Coincidence?” I asked, as one of his hands shifted, sliding under the bottom of my jacket.
“Maybe,” he agreed, dragging his mouth closer to mine, and I couldn’t look away from his lips. I bit the inside of my cheek, and looked up into his eyes. We swayed and moved to the beat of the song, and even though I’d never slow danced before, Trey kept control of both of us, setting a pace that I could just follow.
It wasn’t until the song hit the refrain that I really started to laugh and loosen up. “You had this planned,” I accused.
“Maybe,” he said, noncommittal. I only knew the song because Uncle John had listened to it a lot when I was growing up. “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel.
“You are a nerd,” I told him seriously. “Did you scour through every song that had ‘eyes’ in it somewhere so that there’d be a moment?”
The humor dropped off his face, and Trey pulled away enough to look over my shoulder. His mouth had settled into a sharp line. Oh. He had. And here I was, being an asshole about it.
“Sorry, I don’t do well with romantic gestures,” I said, leaning closer into him. “My first kiss was while I was on the run from some hellhounds. Did I ever tell you that story?” Trey finally looked down at me, and though he tried to stay stony and cranky looking, a smile was threatening to break out. “That guy was a good kisser,” I sighed. “I wonder whatever happened to him.”
“Chased away, I imagine,” Trey said seriously. “You have heard of breath mints, haven’t you?”
I was so caught off guard I lacked any sort of retort at all. And the longer the silence, the wider Trey’s smile. “But his loss is my gain,” he whispered into my mouth a moment later.
I shouldn’t have kissed him. I should have pulled away. This wasn’t about having fun or being with a boy. This was supposed to be about Lucien. About finishing what Grace had started.
But this was the only time I was going to be at a high school dance. The only time I’d get to be in a room like this, have a gorgeous guy spinning me around the floor and know for a fact that it was okay. That the moment was perfect.
That I was happy. God, what would John have said, to see me right now? Being a sap and getting run over by feelings.
I leaned in to Trey’s kiss and tried to surreptitiously pull one hand away to wipe at the corner of my eye. But Trey’s hand got there first, and I opened my eyes, startled. His eyes were still closed, but he knew. His thumb rubbed soothingly across my cheek, but he never pulled away, and eventually my eyes closed again, and I lost myself to the moment.
No one came to interrupt us or to tell us to stop. No one paid us any attention at all. But eventually the song ended, and Trey and I pulled apart. My brain was in a haze, and I couldn’t seem to remember what was wrong with
staying here and dancing with Trey all night long.
“You needed a crowd, right,” Trey said, his hand still cupped around my face. “You’ve got one.”
Sometime during the song, more people had poured in. Trey pulled me close to him, and even though it was a faster tempo, we danced and laughed, but the reminder that tonight wasn’t just about spending time with Trey stuck in my head now.
Five minutes. Then ten. Finally, what had been a small crowd when we first walked in packed around us. I could see why they went with the hall. It was bigger than the Harbor Club, and they were going to need all the space if people kept coming in at this pace. I didn’t do an exact head count, but it looked like at least the three hundred Jade had predicted were already here.
“I’ll be right back,” I murmured. I pulled the sunglasses out of my pocket and put them back on, darkening the room significantly but returning me to my comfort level. I walked through the crowd like a zombie, my thoughts not with what I was about to do, but on Lucien. Where was he right now? What was he planning? He hadn’t come after Trey yet, but he would.
I vaulted up the steps and onto the stage, staring out over the crowd. I opened my vision, seeing past the normal world and into the secret sight of the witch eyes. Three hundred and twenty-seven people. Sixteen adults. Thirty are drunk, two of them teachers. There’s a kid I’ve never met, a kid named Stephen, and he’s got a flask he keeps refilling out at his car and sharing it with friends. One of the teachers caught him and drained the rest of it himself. The girl with the swimmer boyfriend is about to hook up with her best friend’s brother, and a couple of girls are sharing the first of many significant looks.
I took a deep breath. This was it. The beginning of the end.
I opened my eyes. Time to begin.
thirty-three
It was the crystals that made it so easy. The way they hung and sparkled along the ceiling like a cavalcade of stars. It was easy to focus on them, and easier still to link the lights with my magic. Someone turned a spotlight on me, I couldn’t say for sure if it happened because I wanted it to or if someone simply decided that a Thorpe on the stage needed to be lit. Either way, the beam struck me as my head faced the stars, and little by little the room started to follow my gaze. To see what it was that I found so interesting. And that’s when I had them.
The lights hypnotized them. One by one, the crowd fell under my sway, lulled into silence by the sparkling metronome of lights. There was a pattern deep in the flash, coached by magic and focused through me. I could feel it as each person was added to the collective. Magic rushed through me, a cleansing fire that warmed my bones and gave me the strength to get through this.
Someone turned off the music. All movement in the room stilled. Even Jade and Trey were caught up in the moment, eyes vacant and jaws slightly parted.
From here, I could have done anything to them. To any of them. They were puppets, and I was the master. No one would stop me if I walked the crowd and thinned the herd however I saw fit. I was a god to these tiny creatures, and they would learn to fear me, and rightly so.
No. That wasn’t me. I shook my head, and focused on myself. On the reasons that I was doing all of this. This wasn’t about controlling anyone. It was about freeing them.
“You may not know me,” I whispered, and yet my words carried to every corner of the room. They couldn’t hear me but it focused me to use my words. “But I know all of you. All your lives, you’ve been pieces on the chessboard. Pawns. But even a pawn can fight back if he knows how. So tonight, I’m giving you that option. All you have to do is look me in the eyes, and say yes.”
One by one, the crowd turned down their heads and looked towards the stage. It was like staring into the heart of a zombie apocalypse, just waiting for the starting gun to ignite everyone into motion.
This was only half of the process, though. Using a trick I’d learned from Grace, I split my vision until I was seeing two different things at once. My magic coiled around me, and I split my sight again. And again. I split it three hundred different ways until I saw the world the way a fly does, out of a thousand different eyes. I looked every single person in their eyes, all at once, and I didn’t collapse under the strain.
Blue light began to fill the room, a beacon of magical energy that could probably be seen from space. Grace would no doubt feel it, as would any witch worth their weight. But just as quickly as it built, I turned the demon’s power loose, circling the exterior of the building like a guard dog, building up wards and protections to keep what we were doing in here secret. To hide from prying eyes.
As far as the adults were concerned, it was nothing more than a momentary blip—a pulse of energy far on the other side of town. Certainly nothing to get out of bed for. At least, so long as Catherine and Jason did what they were supposed to, and stayed the hell out of it.
The blue light continued to glow until it drowned out the other colors in the room, and everything was washed in azure and cobalt.
“Do you want to make your own path?” I asked them. “Do you want to hold your own destiny again?”
As they said yes, one at a time and each one a significant moment in its own right, the spell snapped into place. Magic wrapped itself around all of them, no matter if they were sixteen or sixty. Everyone in this building was part of the same moment, but for each of them, it was a new start.
A free start.
It cost a lot of power. A lot. I staggered back as the light diminished and the magic started to fade. But even as weak as I was, I smiled as the dance picked up exactly where it had left off a few moments before. No one was any the wiser about what happened, the spotlight clicked off, and I hopped down off the stage.
But I had just given three hundred twenty-seven people the same gift I’d been given. Freedom from Lucien’s sight. Freedom from his influence in their direction in life, freedom from the never-ending hunger that meant Lucien was devouring someone’s potential. As far as Lucien was concerned, there was a tangle of threads that had suddenly vanished completely, and I was responsible.
If nothing else, I’d done one thing good with my power. I’d saved over three hundred people from his influence.
Trey was on me the moment my feet hit the floor. “Everything okay?”
I nodded, leaning on his arm. “We’re good.”
“What do we do now?” he asked, eyeing the door.
“Now we wait,” I said. “And hope that Lucien was paying attention.”
An hour passed, and even though I thought it would be impossible to relax, Trey proved me wrong. We moved across the dance floor a couple of times, he threw his sister into my arms until we were dancing and laughing too hard to even move, he pulled me up against him near the drink table and kissed me chastely, slinging his arm around my shoulder. It was the most surreal night of my life, the two worlds I couldn’t manage to maintain on my own had been woven together so seamlessly.
It made me wish I’d made different decisions. Maybe I could have found a way to balance school on top of all this. Maybe I should have tried harder.
“Stop brooding,” Trey whispered. We were dancing to another slow song, our foreheads pressed together.
I mustered up a smile. “I’m fine. Just … thinking.”
“Well, stop. Everything’s going to work out.”
I didn’t get it, this faith he had. He really did believe that everything was going to be okay. “How do you do that?” I asked honestly. “You know what we’re up against, right?”
“I know they’re up against you,” Trey said, his smile never faltering. “And you have this way of always making the unexpected happen.” He lifted his head away, and looked around the dance. “Four months ago, who would have put odds on a Thorpe bringing not one, but two Lansings to the winter formal as his dates?”
I laughed. “It’s just a shame that Jade looks so much better in a dress than you do,” I teased.
Trey’s expression changed, and he pulled me in tight against hi
m, his entire body suddenly tense. “Look,” Trey said into my ear. “It worked. He’s here.”
Like it was a move we’d practiced a thousand times before, we swayed to the music, but each movement turned us more and more until I spotted him, lurking underneath the curved staircases that led to the upper landing. This time it was Trey who reached into my pocket and put the sunglasses back on. It was all about appearances.
I left the safety of his arms and walked towards the stage. I didn’t even have to focus my power, people moved out of my way simply because I wanted them to. A hall full of teenagers, and so many of them were turning to watch me. Did they know what was going to happen? Or were we still connected?
I climbed the stairs to the stage slowly, one foot in front of the other. Walked to the edge, then looked out at the crowd. The magic I had inside of me split through my skin, and I felt like a different person from the one who’d been trapped in Trey’s arms just a few moments before. I was something new. I could have anything I wanted, all I had to do was want it bad enough.
Heat and cold warred within me, and ice came out the winner. My skin hardened into frosted armor. This was my moment. This was the beginning.
A crook of my finger, and the spotlight clacked loudly on, and my world was a luxury of light. For seventeen years, that much light pouring right into my face might have kicked off a world of trauma. But tonight, it was like a baptism.
He couldn’t help but spot me. And like a moth to the flame, he headed towards the spotlight, and towards me. The winter voice whispered murder in my ears, and my power surged like barely constrained waves. But it wasn’t the right time to break him. First, he had to suffer.
“What did you do?” Lucien hissed, climbing the stairs and circling me.