Twenty-One
Jordan
Fear burns in the girl’s eyes. But their shade of brown seems to silence the sounds in the ballroom. Their uncanny familiarity. She yanks her chin down sharply, watching her feet. I’m not sure what has her frazzled: the pendant on my chest or her worry that she isn’t a good dancer. But she’s quite good. I reach for her chin, to pull her gaze back up, before closing my hand in a fist. I don’t know this girl. I hold her gently against me, following the steps of the music, my body familiar with its rhythm.
The last thing I want to be doing is dancing, but I need to blend in. The song plays on, and the chaos that has wound me in a knot over the last few days eases with each step. It’s been endless: Searching for intel on safe houses that mention anyone who could possibly look like Quell. Combing through Yagrin’s instructions on sun tracking. He really left me high and dry, bailing on that Duncan raid. By the time I got there, one of the residents of the building had been killed. Wearing one of my personas and a stolen law enforcement badge, I cornered the guy inside and managed to bury my dagger in his gut before he hurt anyone else. He was deranged, shouting about all kinds of things: his House’s resurgence, the revenge to be had for all the wrongs done to their House, and how he intended to find Sola Sfenti’s bones and unearth new magic. The Dragunhead’s investigating what exactly the hostages saw before I arrived. The world is unraveling at its seams.
I tried to tell Yagrin about it, but he just wanted to hear more stories of when we were young. Stories I’ve buried. The sleepless nights also don’t help. And Charlie and Yani have been quiet since someone murdered Francis. So tonight, I’m hunting down a suspected financier of safe houses. If Quell’s been in or around them, Audubon would know.
He sits alone in a corner of the ballroom with a briefcase beneath his seat. He is supposedly meeting here tonight with someone. The music peps up, and the next dance is an eight count. My dancing partner executes the moves perfectly, demanding my full attention. I smile. Dancing with someone skilled is so much better…She twirls effortlessly, then folds into my arms for a sway from side to side. She stiffens against me, so I put some distance between us, hoping that will help her relax. But she sticks close, pressing her face against my chest for the next move, and I swallow hard.
“Are you alright?”
She smiles and glances at me for a second; her eyes make me completely forget what I was going to say next. Her arms climb up my shoulders, hooking behind my neck. I hold her waist gently. I haven’t been this close to someone since…I can see her, almost smell her. The music bumps faster, and I skip to it, remembering being tangled like this with Quell, how we wound around to the music with a magnetic synergy as if the song was written for us, each note composed by our beating hearts. Her eyes were the same brown as my partner’s, more breathtaking than a field kissed by sunset and sweeter than honey.
I dance backward a few steps, both of us holding our flat palms one on top of the other behind our backs. And when I look at the girl on the dance floor with me, for a second, I pretend she is someone else.
We rotate, touch elbows, and rotate the other way. Memories of Quell haunt each dance step and shift into the melody. The sounds remind me of her. My dancing partner feels like her. And I let all of it take me until my memories and I are alone in that ballroom. I move faster, beside myself, and miss the next step. It knocks me back to my senses.
My cheeks flush with shame, my heart races. And I can hardly look at the girl. As the music approaches its crescendo, she spins in my grasp one last time, pressing her back against my chest. I hug around her for the final four count before the first dip. She steals a glimpse at me, eyes the color of a satyr butterfly. But as I bring her up, I spot a pair from House of Oralia with artsy painted faces wearing bright teal dresses follow a woman in a dark red suit out a side door, then glance over their shoulders. Perl thinks Oralia is a joke of a House. Now they’re having private meetings? My insides twist. Audubon hasn’t moved. But the ballroom has changed. It’s more crowded. It’s like an ambush. I spot coins on throats everywhere. Draguns. All over this place.
The hair on my arms stands up. No one knew I was raiding here tonight. Charlie hovers near the ballroom entrance. He’s hunched over, as if the bones in his back hurt to move. He’s visibly more frail than the last time I saw him. He scans the room. When he looks in my direction, I can tell he hasn’t been sleeping well either. He is pale and his stare is weary. He takes another look around before ducking out. Is he looking for me? Beaulah? I look for Yani but don’t see her.
The shrill of violins races to the song’s end, and I turn the girl in my arms swiftly, looping her under my arm before bending her backward for the finish. The music ends. The dance floor bursts into applause. She doesn’t breathe, watching me as I set her right on her feet.
“Your eyes, they’re—” But my words are cut off when several things happen at once.
Draguns form up around the dance floor, led by someone I recognize but can’t quite place. The girl, now behind me, is swallowed by the crowd.
Every corner of the room fills with shadows. Dancing turns to scattering. Lights flicker as people dash in every direction, away from the cloaked Draguns swarming the dance floor. People crash into tables, vases shatter, candelabras hit the ground. Shouting drowns out the music. Chaos erupts as Draguns attack—who or what, I’m not sure. I bite the inside of my cheek, my anger boiling as party guests flee to the fringes of the ballroom, the dance floor now a storm of shadows.
Gazing through the haze, I spot her.
Quell.
Wavy ringlets of hair drape over her narrow shoulders, freckles cover her face, trailing down her smooth skin and disappearing into the neckline of her dress. Her deep brown eyes are an abyss. One I used to long to drown in. The gentle curves of her face. The fullness of her lips. That mole near her jawline. It is her. I can’t move, afraid to shatter this moment, if this is actually happening.
She stands in the midst of the chaos and time ceases to exist. She wears the fine red gown of the girl I just danced with. It punches the wind out of me. She stares and it has a hold on me. My throat is dry; the mayhem is silent, and all I can hear is my thudding heart. All I can feel is hers, too. It was her. The truth unsteadies me. The Draguns are after…her. They’re here for Quell! I clench my fists. But before I can summon my toushana or say something, she vanishes in a dark mist.
Bodies jostle around me. The world is hollow of sound. I danced with her. I danced with her! She was right there. In my arms. My heart squeezes so tight I fear it might shatter my ribs. I storm up to the ringleader of this disruption.
“How did you know it was her?!”
“Jordan. I—I mean, sir.” He struggles to tear his gaze from the mayhem on the dance floor. “The target…” His head swivels, brows dented. “Where did—”
Someone nearby gasps, hands cupped over her face.
“Abby?” I say. It’s been months since I’ve seen or even thought about Quell’s old Housemate. Abby chokes on her tears and runs off, scared to death, like half the people in this place.
“You’re Abby’s guy,” I say to him, realizing why I know his face. Last I saw him he wore a stitched talon at his throat.
“Mynick.” He flashes me a silver coin before pressing it to his collar. And I shove him.
“Right now, your name is imbecile.” I drag him aside for a private word. “Why didn’t I know about this raid? Her disguise? Any of it?” The ballroom is a field of wreckage. “This is not how we do things.” I shove him. Not only was I kept in the dark, Quell slipped right through their hands! The Draguns in the room re-form around us. “Fall back.”
Mynick is too stunned to respond. On my periphery, Audubon slips out the door, his suitcase tucked under his arm. She came here tonight for a reason. He could be working with her…
“Shut whatever this is down,” I tell Mynick. “Get to my office and wait there before I rip that coin from your throat and brand it into your skin.”
I hustle out the door after Audubon, the stain of disappointment on Quell’s face as she took in the chaos seared into my mind. I’m firing off a message to Charlie when I spot a closed door at a stairwell exit. Help me on the south stairway. I shove my phone in my pocket, grab the icy magic from the air, and cloak. Audubon flees at full speed. The world shifts, darkening at its edges as I nose-dive through the stairwell from the penthouse floor. I re-form in front of a panting Audubon.
Sweat rains from his brow. His arms are empty. “Who’d you give the money to?” I ask.
His eyes dart to the entry door of the second level of the hotel: it’s propped open by the suitcase. As swiftly as I turn to snatch the suitcase, it is gone. The door swings closed.
I dash through the door to the second floor but find the hotel hall empty—except for a woman in a fancy wheelchair, warming herself under a blanket, waiting for an elevator. I search the halls in both directions, as well as the fire escape outside the window. Nothing. No one.
The woman rolls herself to the elevator. My mind whirring, I walk over to the call buttons and request a car going down.
“Very kind,” she says, tugging her blanket tighter over her lap, pushing her white knotted hair off her shoulders before resting her hands on her wheels.
I send a message to the others as the elevator doors open. The woman rolls forward, catching the corner of her blanket under the wheel of her chair. It slides half off her lap, revealing…the corner of a suitcase.
Her heart races and I feel it, my senses awakening. Her icy blue eyes meet mine.
“You!” I grab her by the throat before she can respond.
Once my captive is securely off to Headquarters, I duck my head back into the ballroom to ensure the Draguns are gone. Thankful that at least this happened at an Order-exclusive ball. If this were a public ball, with Unmarked, this place would be a bloodbath. Still, the relief doesn’t allay my thoughts of Quell. She knew she was dancing with me. Why would she come here? She’s working with someone. She has to be. The crowd has thinned considerably, but the place hasn’t been completely cleaned up. The Dragunhead won’t be happy about this.
“Mr. Wexton, hold it right there!” Mr. Cartier, host of the Veil of Mums Ball and the mayor of Fairfield, marches toward me.
“Sir, I’m very sorry for the disruption tonight.”
“Is this what the Dragunhead had in mind when he put you in charge? You have any idea how much time and funding goes into this annual ball?” His thick mustache twitches. “Not to mention the fundraising we’re doing. All that money for kids—lost.”
All that money to ensure his reelection, he means.
“A person never laid their eyes on a Dragun in my day,” he goes on. “This running raids out in the open, the way you young boys like to do, is no good. I’m going to have a word with the Council about this.”
“You do what you need to do, sir. Again, I apologize. I will get to the bottom of how this happened.”
He wags a finger at me. “This would never have happened on your father’s watch. If he would’ve been appointed, we’d be better for it.”
My jaw tics. “If there’s nothing else, I should be getting back.”
He huffs and stalks off. I blow out a breath, but it doesn’t help. Was Audubon helping Quell? And what about the woman in the chair? She is going to give me answers!