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When I naively let Parvati into my apartment, her two cousins were trailing behind her, arms loaded with stacks of fabric, yard upon yard of brilliantly colored silk. For the next several hours, the three harbingers of feminine torment subjected me to the horrors of their regular beauty regimens, packed into one long, painful afternoon. At the end of their ministrations, I was relieved that they hadn’t forced me into a corset. It was the only nice thing I could say about the hairpulling, tweezing, curling, scrubbing, creaming, and painting.
I was ready to curse Parvati and her harpies to hell, but before I could open my mouth to say the words, they brought me to stand before the image of a remarkable stranger. Not Freya or Aphrodite but maybe some other, lesser spirit I’d never read about.
I stood before the mirror so long in stunned silence that eventually, one of Parvati’s cousins giggled. “She doesn’t recognize herself,” she said, and all three girls fell into fits of hilarity.
The face in the reflecting glass changed to pink, then red. Turning away, I searched for my pants and boots. Forget Dr. Dwivedi’s stupid dinner. I’ll have to try talking to him afterward. It’s not worth the ridicule.
Parvati grabbed my arm and yanked me into place before the mirror again, though she never stopped laughing. “Sera, look at yourself.” She heaved a few breaths, trying to reestablish her composure. “I mean, really look at yourself. Don’t you recognize that girl?”
Truth be known, I avoided mirrors. Vanity was a luxury, a waste of time, and that whole afternoon had only gone to reinforce my belief. Did a shambling corpse care if I put on lipstick or brushed my hair before it tried to eat me? Would the undead have felt better if I put on a dress before I went out to shoot them?
Any remaining levity drained from Parvati, and she looked at me with something akin to disbelief. “You truly do not know how lovely you are, do you?”
I sniffed and rolled my eyes. “Maybe she is.” I pointed at the reflection. “But she isn’t me. Not the real me.” The real me had no trouble blowing apart a Rotter’s skull or skewering a rat and roasting it over a flame. The real me rejoiced in violence and thrived on subsistence living. The real me often went days without a bath or brushing my hair. But none of what had happened since arriving at Dwivedi’s college had seemed very real.
“There is no illusion here.” Parvati gestured at the mirror. “It is merely a few cosmetics and a curling iron.”
“And a gorgeous sari,” said one of the cousins. Sweetie, if I remembered correctly.
The sari was gorgeous, the shade of a deep-pink rose. Somehow, it brought out the red in my hair and the green in my eyes. Maybe Parvati’s talents wouldn’t help her in an attack of the Living Dead, but she was very good at what she did with fabrics and face paints.
Instead of my bulky boots, the girls presented me with a pair of embroidered silk slippers. Once I’d accepted that it was truly me in the mirror and not some alchemical illusion, I wondered if I didn’t look a little absurd.
Parvati reassured me when I voiced my doubts. “In this place, you will look like another flower among a bouquet of lovely blooms. It may feel ostentatious to you, but I assure you, this is—how do the French say it?—de rigueur for one of my uncle’s special suppers. It helps us remember our humanity.”
When she kissed my cheek, I regretted my earlier unkind thoughts about her.
“I must leave and get myself dressed now.” She gestured to herself as though her lovely sari were a rag. “My uncle will be here shortly to escort you to the dining pavilion. You are to be his guest of honor, you know.”
I didn’t know, and I would’ve preferred remaining ignorant.
“Erik will be speechless.” Parvati waggled her eyebrows and nudged me with her elbow. “I hope I get there first. I cannot wait to see the look on his face.”
“Really?” My cheeks heated. “You think he’ll like it?”
She clucked an exasperated noise as she left the room. “Tonight, even the dead would stop in their tracks for you.”
I scoffed. “If that were true, I’d wear this getup every day. It would make my job so much easier.”
I must’ve stood there inspecting my reflection a lot longer than I’d realized, because Dr. Dwivedi arrived in what seemed like an instant, wearing a beautiful silver brocade kurta and pajama set.
“You look very handsome, Dr. Dwivedi.” I tried for a curtsey. “Silver suits you.”
A wide smile split his face. “And that sari suits you. Our residents will be honored to meet you.” He took my hand and planted a dry kiss on my knuckles. “You look most divine, indeed.”
My nerves gnawed at me as he led me out of my room and into the elevator. I suspected it was the closest I would ever come to riding a carriage, and boy, did I feel like Cinderella. Parvati had been my fairy godmother, transforming me with her peculiar potions and magic.
As Dwivedi held my hand in the crook of his elbow, I wondered if he felt it shaking. When the doors parted, he escorted me down a hall, through a doorway, up a short flight of stairs, and...
Onto the roof.
But it was nothing like the roof of the Savings and Loan. The college’s residents had converted the outdoor space into a world of colors and textures that surely existed only in dreams. Candle-filled crystal lamps glowed warmly all about. A white-tiled floor felt like cool water through my thin slippers except in the places where someone had laid plush carpets. Guests strolled around potted gardens of blooming jasmine, bougainvillea, hibiscus, and other warm-weather-loving plants that could have only survived in hothouses during the city’s harsh winters.
“What do you think?” Dwivedi asked.
I hoped my stunned speechlessness was a sufficient reply.
Young men in starched white jackets and loose black pants passed trays of drinks and food. Dwivedi stopped one of the waiters and selected a glass of golden liquid. Then he handed it to me.
“What is it?” Tentatively, I sipped and realized it was some variety of grape wine, though I was no expert. Bloom and I had found wine in our foraging expeditions from time to time, but I’d never developed a taste for it.
“It is wine made from the Anab-e-Shahi cellar, imported from southern India before the world fell apart. Not much remains in our stocks, but we all enjoy it on special occasions, such as tonight. Now come, let me introduce you to the other residents.”
I kept an eye out for Erik but had no luck spotting him among the crowd. The faces and names of Dwivedi’s guests ran together, but everyone treated me kindly, and by the time he finished showing me around the rooftop, I was ready to find a seat on one of the pretty couches. The slippers Parvati had lent me pinched my little toes.
Before I could make my excuses to leave his side, though, Dr. Dwivedi was introducing me to yet another person. “Miss Blite, I believe you already know my friend.”
A young man with dark glossy hair, wearing a midnight-blue kurta, turned from his conversation with another young man. He reached to take my offered hand, but we both froze when we saw each other’s faces.
Dwivedi inclined his head toward both of us. “Mr. Erik LeRoux, it is my honor to introduce you to my special guest, Miss Serendipity Blite.”
LeRoux? I searched my memory but couldn’t recall knowing his last name before now. We stared at each other like buffoons, our mouths hanging open like broken gates. With his hair brushed off his forehead, the deep-blue highlights matching the blue of his suit, I barely recognized him. Without the formidable black coat and his usual scowl, he looked like a storybook prince—one from One Thousand and One Nights, perhaps.
Hot-cha-cha.