Текст книги "Arise"

Автор книги: Tara Hudson

Соавторы: Tara Hudson
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 18 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 7 страниц]

Chapter

NINE

I stayed frozen near the entrance of the drawing room even when the boy in the suit began to smile. The smile seemed genuine enough, its warmth spreading to his gray eyes until they lost their steely edge. But the moment he pushed himself out of the chair and into a standing position, I jerked backward, taking two quick steps into the foyer.

The boy, however, reacted much faster than I did. Almost as if he anticipated my fear. With two broad strides of his own, he stood right in front of us, hand extended like he wanted me—not Joshua—to shake it.

“Welcome to New Orleans, Amelia.”

My jaw dropped.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected when I’d walked into the room, but a formal welcome certainly wasn’t it. I peeked at Joshua, who stood motionless beside me. Judging by his expression—eyes wide, mouth slightly gaping like mine—Joshua had no idea who this boy was, either.

The boy in the suit could see me, obviously, which meant he was a Seer—one who’d already had his triggering event. But how did he already know my name? The only person who could have told him about me had to be … Ruth? That didn’t make any sense, since he greeted me like one might an old friend, not some supernatural enemy.

Suddenly, I felt my defenses rise. I didn’t take too well to strangers who knew more about me than I knew about them. Blame it on past experience with a certain blond ghost.

I was just about to tell him to back off when Jillian strolled into the room, flopped unceremoniously into the chair the boy had just vacated, and then glanced up at him with an arch sort of smile.

“See, Alex?” She addressed him directly. “I told you she was annoying.”

I blinked back, stunned. Jillian had been the one to tell this boy—Alex—who I was? Not only who I was, but how I was?

Even though she’d just entered it, Jillian didn’t look the least bit surprised by this strange scene. She sprawled across the wingback chair, legs swung over an armrest and face turned up expectantly to the boy in front of me.

And … was I crazy, or did she look rapturous, too? Flirtatious, even? Like she desperately wanted this boy to pay attention to her.

Whatever Jillian may have wanted, the boy’s eyes stayed locked onto mine. Waiting for me to react to his greeting. When I didn’t, he waited for one more second, hand still hanging in the air, before he swung his body toward Joshua and offered him the introductory handshake instead.

“Sorry if I was being rude earlier,” he said. “I guess I just feel like I know you already. I’m Alexander Etienne—a friend of Annabel’s. We’re freshmen at Tulane together, and she invited me to spend Christmas break with your family.” He twitched his head sideways, acknowledging the black-haired girl in the other wingback chair. Then he extended his hand a tiny bit closer to Joshua. “Please—call me Alex.”

Joshua looked at Alex’s outstretched hand for another beat before reluctantly reaching out to shake it.

I thought he would say something defensive to this Alex person. Make some kind of denial on my behalf. Instead, he eyed the rest of room and then asked, “Okay—how many of you can see her?”

“Joshua!” I cried, taken aback by his sudden frankness.

Across the room, the brown-haired boy laughed. “Oh my God, I can totally hear her!”

“Me too!” the blonde chimed in, clapping her hands together like I’d just performed a circus trick.

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at them. Neither of the lovebirds looked directly at me, however. They both continued to stare at Joshua, wearing a matching set of self-satisfied smiles.

The only one who didn’t seem annoyingly entertained was Annabel. Slowly, calmly, she pushed herself out of her chair and strolled over to us. She flipped back her swoosh of bangs, slipped her hands into the back pockets of her skinny-jeans, and grinned at me.

Well, she didn’t grin at me, exactly; it was more like she grinned at the place where she thought I stood. She narrowed her eyes, peering in my direction like Jillian used to do before she could see me. But unlike Jillian, Annabel looked neither pissed off nor unnerved.

Annabel tilted her head to one side, still peering. “I bet we’re freaking you out, aren’t we?”

“Yes.” Joshua and I answered simultaneously.

Annabel barked out a pleasantly dry, throaty laugh and then focused on a spot somewhere above my left shoulder. “Sorry. But we’ve been waiting for this for a while.”

“Waiting for what?” Joshua asked in disbelief.

“To meet Amelia.”

I balked. Again, another living being saying my name like an old friend. It felt surreal, and I struggled, with only moderate success, to keep my cool.

“So,” I said haltingly, “all of you can really … hear me?”

“Kind of,” said the guy with the floppy hair. “You sort of sound like you’re in another room. Or underground.” Then his hazel eyes brightened with an idea. “Like … maybe you’re buried?”

“Shut it, Drew,” Annabel snapped. At that moment she reminded me of Ruth—sharply angled face, hawklike eyes, and in obvious command of those around her. And just like Ruth’s old followers, Drew promptly shut it.

His girlfriend, however, pushed her mouth into a pretty pout. Under her breath she muttered, “I don’t see why we have to do what your cousin says.”

Annabel shot her a quick, cold smile. “You don’t have to do what I say, Hayley. You have to do what Alex says.”

Alex.

While Annabel and the others argued, Alex hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. From the corner of my eye, I could still see him watching me. When he caught me looking, he ducked his head down so that our eyes were level and gave me a small, reassuring smile.

“I’m the only one who can see you,” he said softly, speaking only to me. “Everyone else can just sense where you are. And hear you, thanks to practice.”

“‘Practice’? Could someone please explain all of this to me?”

“Are we making you uncomfortable, Amelia?” he asked in that same just-to-me tone.

“Not really,” I lied. I paused, and then amended myself. “It’s just … well, you’re the first Seers I’ve met who haven’t tried to exorcise me within the first ten seconds of meeting me. Except for Joshua, of course.”

Annabel let out another raspy laugh. “And we’re not going to. Promise.”

For so long I’d wanted to hear a Seer speak those words. Now that one did, I felt a little dizzy.

I put my hand to my head. “I’m sorry, I just don’t get it.”

Annabel slipped her hands out of her pockets, folded her arms across her chest, and leaned back against one of the wings of her chair. Near the fireplace, I caught a glimpse of Jillian’s expression; she obviously wanted Alex to mimic Annabel and lean against her chair. When he didn’t, Jillian scowled heavily and then returned to chipping at her nail polish.

Either unaware of or unconcerned about her younger cousin’s angst, Annabel nodded.

“I guess we owe you both an explanation, huh?”

“That’s an understatement,” Joshua said. He moved even closer to me and wrapped his arm around my waist.

I looked up at him in surprise. He hadn’t touched me so blatantly in front of living people in … ever.

I heard a shuffle of movement as Drew and Hayley joined our makeshift circle in front of the fire. Drew draped one arm across Hayley’s thin shoulders and then the two of them settled backward, evidently ready for story time.

With her audience now prepared, Annabel nodded once more and launched into her explanation.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been able to … sense weird things. I don’t think I fully understood it at the time, and maybe I’m just imagining it now, in hindsight. Growing up in the Quarter, it’s hard not to think you’ve heard something strange, or seen something out of place, every now and then. But I guess everything officially started about two months ago, right after Grandma Ruth moved in with us. I remember—it was fall break, so Drew was here eating all our food.”

“Uh, you mean partying with you on Bourbon Street,” he interjected.

Annabel rolled her eyes. “Like I said, Drew was doing his best impression of a human sponge. But on our last free night, it was raining too hard for us to go out. That’s when Grandma Ruth cornered both of us and gave us the Seer talk.”

Joshua nodded. “I got the same one when I brought Amelia home.”

“Then you don’t need me to give you the details. What might have been different from your talk, though, was Ruth’s change of heart. She told us about you and your ghost, and about how she failed to do her job with Amelia. I guess that’s when Ruth realized that her whole wait-until-their-triggering-event thing didn’t work. Now, she’s decided to tell everyone who’s ‘of age’—meaning over eighteen, I guess.”

“Which is why she left me in the lurch,” Jillian complained, not looking up from her nails. “I hate being treated like a little kid.”

“You hate everything.” Annabel laughed. Then she turned her attention back to us. “Anyway, that night, after we got the supernatural ‘birds and bees’ from Ruth, she introduced us to someone.”

Annabel paused, and, for just a fraction of a second, her eyes darted over to Alex.

I jerked upright. “Ruth introduced you to Alex? And I’m not supposed to be freaked out right now?”

Alex sighed and shook his head. “Annabel, may I take over?”

“But, of course,” she said, smiling and giving him a mock bow of her head.

“Let me just start by saying that I don’t believe in exorcism.” Alex shook his head again, looking mildly disgusted. “I think it’s unfair, not to mention unnatural. Let the dead take care of the dead—that’s my perspective.”

Like Eli wanted to take care of me, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut as Alex went on.

“When I moved here three years ago for college, I immediately sought out a group of local Seers so I could keep learning. I knew them before I met Ruth Mayhew.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “How did you already know what Seers were?”

Maybe I imagined it, but something in Alex’s eyes went cold again. He tugged at his collar with one finger, pulling the fabric down to reveal his collarbone. There, carved around his neck and across the bone, was an old, ropy scar.

One that looked like he shouldn’t have survived it.

When the fabric slipped back, hiding the scar from view, Alex shrugged. “Triggering event.”

“How—”

“Car accident,” he said tersely.

There was more to the scar than that, I could tell. But Alex obviously didn’t want to discuss the topic. A muscle in his jaw flexed, just once, before his face softened again. Then, with a much warmer expression, he continued.

“I could see ghosts long before I joined the New Orleans coven. And to give the New Orleans Seers credit, they’re far more progressive than the group Ruth used to lead. Still, many of their ideas are too … ecclesiastical for my taste. When I met Ruth and she told me about her family, I knew I had an opportunity to be a part of something different. So I encouraged her to introduce me to all the young people in her family at the next Seers’ meeting.”

“What he didn’t tell her,” Annabel interrupted with a wide smile, “is that he didn’t want to teach us to exorcise ghosts. He wanted us to learn how to coexist with them … and how to be aware of them without having to have a triggering event.”

“Which is awesome,” Hayley said, shifting forward in Drew’s arms. “My mom’s a Seer; and ever since I was a kid, she made me go to their meetings. In the Quarter they have this rule that you have to have a triggering event before you get a say in what the group does. And do you think I want to drop a toaster in my bathtub just so I can vote no against exorcisms? Um, no thank you. So I stopped going as much this year. I mean, I’m eighteen now, so I can do what I want, right? But I’m glad I went to last month’s meeting, because that’s when I met everyone here.”

Drew smiled broadly and pulled her closer to him. “When Hayley found out we were trying to contact ghosts without having to go toe-up for a few minutes, she was in.”

With a girlish giggle, Hayley lifted onto tiptoes and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “I was ‘in’ when I met you, sweetie.”

A retching sound came from the direction of the fireplace. I looked toward it just in time to see Jillian stick her tongue out like she was gagging. A little smile tugged at the edge of my lips before I turned back to Annabel, who’d started talking again.

“Alex has been helping us for the last month,” she said. “Teaching us how to listen for ghosts’ voices. You wouldn’t believe how much concentration it takes.”

Drew laughed. “Yeah, except when they’re in the room with you.”

“Totally,” Hayley bubbled. “You’re pretty clear …, Amelia.”

She tried out my name, saying it with a touch of uncertainty. Her eyes focused on something at least two feet above my head, and she pressed her lips together, waiting.

“Um, thanks?” I managed.

Upon hearing my voice, Hayley flashed that spot above my head an enormous smile. At that moment she annoyed me a little less than before. There was something endearing about her enthusiasm. Kind of.

“There’s one thing I don’t get: where does Jillian fit into all this?”

Joshua’s voice startled me.

I’d been too engrossed to realize it, but throughout this entire conversation, he hadn’t moved a muscle. Instead, he’d stood next to me silent and unmoving. I took a peek at his face and saw that he’d composed it into that rare, expressionless mask—the one he wore whenever he didn’t trust what was going on around him.

“Jillian called Annabel a few weeks ago,” Alex explained, not looking directly at Joshua, “to complain about your new girlfriend. One thing led to another and … I’ve been counseling Jillian. Teaching her what it means to be a Seer.”

Beside me, Joshua visibly bristled. No one needed him to say aloud what he thought about Alex “counseling” his little sister.

“Oh.” Joshua’s voice was cold. “So that’s why Jillian’s been such a sweetheart to Amelia lately?”

“That’s all me, bro,” Jillian piped up from her chair. “I accept that I can see her now. Doesn’t mean I want to have a slumber party and braid her hair.”

Despite myself, I chuckled and looked back at Joshua. “You have to admit—at least she’s honest.”

He barely reacted, his icy stare still locked onto Alex. I reached over and ran my hand, just once, down the sleeve of Joshua’s sweater. I couldn’t feel the fabric beneath my fingers, and he probably couldn’t feel the weight of my touch on his arm; still, he could see the gesture, and his face relaxed slightly in response to it.

“How are you handling this?” he asked me quietly, although everyone could hear us. “Are you okay with all of it?”

I looked around at the new, strangely expectant faces, and then I did a quick self-assessment. What I discovered inside surprised me.

“Yeah,” I said, a little stunned at how easily the answer came. “Yeah, I am.”

“You’re sure?” Joshua pressed.

I nodded, feeling an odd mix of lingering apprehension and relief.

“It’s actually sort of … nice that other people know I exist. And that they aren’t trying to kill me.” I shrugged one shoulder in qualification. “Figuratively, of course.”

Everyone laughed, albeit a little awkwardly. I guess I couldn’t blame them—no matter how enthusiastically they greeted me, most of them hadn’t joked about death with a dead girl. Except, perhaps, for Alex.

“Where’s Ruth?” I asked Alex quietly. It seemed strange to ask him instead of Annabel, but he obviously had many of tonight’s answers.

Alex flicked his eyes up toward the ceiling and then met my gaze again. “Migraine. She hasn’t come down all day, and I doubt she will tonight.”

I couldn’t help my audible sigh of relief. Then, inexplicably, I felt myself giving Alex a tiny smile. After all, he engineered this meeting. And whether he knew it or not, he’d just made my last days with Joshua more pleasant: less speaking in whispers; less skulking in corners, avoiding people who might think Joshua had gone crazy if they saw him talking to himself.

Almost imperceptibly, Alex returned my smile—like we’d just shared a private joke or I’d just thanked him. Which, in a way, I had.

After that Alex’s eyes shifted away from mine for the first time since I’d walked into the room. He and Annabel exchanged a quick glance, and then she cleared her throat.

“Well, now that that’s settled,” she said, “go unpack your crap. We’re going out.”

“Out?”

Joshua still sounded skeptical, although his voice had lost some of its chill; obviously, the fact that I’d made peace with the situation had calmed him down too.

Annabel’s lip curled in amusement at her cousin’s tone. “Yeah, ‘out.’ As in, not ‘in.’”

She reached behind her and picked up something she’d left in her chair—a sheet of green paper, which she handed to Joshua. He held it up for me to read with him. Then he raised one eyebrow and looked up at Annabel.

“‘Navidad de los Muertos’?” Joshua quoted from the sheet, which was printed with what looked like black skulls.

“Christmas of the Dead,” Hayley said. “It’s a costume party at our new favorite club. It’s got a kind of dark theme instead of happiness and presents and Santa. Totally subversive, right?”

Drew gave her a noisy kiss on the cheek. “Good vocab word, babe.”

Hayley grinned widely in my direction. “I’m trying to get into Auburn next year,” she confided. “That way Drew and I can be together every day.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jillian droned, swinging her legs around and making a little jump out of the chair. “Less talking, more barhopping.”

“You’re only sixteen—you’re not going with us,” Alex said firmly.

“What?” Jillian shrieked. “But Joshua’s only eighteen.”

“She’s got a point,” Joshua said. “How exactly am I supposed to get in if she can’t?”

Annabel let out another dry laugh. “Let’s just say that the carding policy here is a little more relaxed than the one in Wilburton.”

“It’s not that strict in Wilburton,” Jillian grumbled.

“That’s beside the point,” Alex snapped. “Drew and Hayley and Joshua can all pass for twenty-one. You can’t. And anyway, you should be perfectly able to entertain yourself here.”

Jillian nearly growled as she folded her arms across her chest. But after a moment of glowering, she fell back in the chair to stare sullenly into the fire. She looked, for all purposes, like she would obey Alex’s command.

Hearing how this stranger spoke to his sister, Joshua bristled a bit. But he must have decided that Alex was probably right, because he didn’t press the issue. Instead, Joshua turned back to Annabel and shook his head.

“What about your mom?” he asked her. “Won’t she be pissed that all of us underage kiddos went to a club?”

“Josh, I grew up in the French Quarter. The fact that I didn’t have an after-school job at an S&M shop is enough for her.” She gave him a wry smile, one that strongly reminded me of Jillian’s. When Jillian wasn’t scowling anyway.

“Besides,” Annabel added, “what are you afraid of? That you’ll wake up without a kidney?”

“No, that I’ll wake up without any internal organs.”

Annabel snorted. “This club is totally safe, I promise. And anyway, we thought it was the perfect place for Amelia to have some fun—kind of creepy, really crowded. No one will notice or care if you two are dancing, making out, whatever.”

I blinked back. “That’s really … thoughtful. Thanks.”

All around me, everyone except for Jillian beamed. Alex, in particular, looked pleased, which made me wonder whether the club had been his idea originally.

In contrast, Joshua still looked doubtful. He leaned his head toward me and whispered, “You really want to go?”

“Well … yeah. I really want to go.”

The crazy thing was, I did. At this moment I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more than enjoy myself for a while. I wanted to touch Joshua without fear of discovery, or fear of disappearing. I wanted to spend a few hours not worrying about what lay in store for me. I even wanted to dance.

The idea of it was so freeing, I actually giggled. My first genuine, truly free laugh in what had to be months. When Joshua heard that, a slow smile spread across his face.

“Okay then, Club Kid,” he said. “Let’s go unpack.”

Chapter

TEN

You should stop worrying about your outfit, Amelia. You look perfect.”

The compliment startled me, and I jumped a little to the side, away from its speaker. It was something that Joshua would have said. In fact, he had said it, many times. But right now Joshua walked at least twenty feet ahead of me. He was so engrossed in his conversation with Annabel, he didn’t even notice when I began to lag behind.

If Joshua and I had kept pace, he might have seen me twist at the fabric of my skirt with one hand, might have noticed me gnaw on my lower lip.

But Alex obviously noticed. And although he’d only known me for a few hours, he obviously felt comfortable leaning close and whispering that compliment into my ear.

Upon seeing me jerk away, he held up both hands in a pose of surrender.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t.... It’s just … I’m …”

I floundered with my words and then took a quick, shallow breath. “I’m just not used to people talking to me. Besides Joshua.”

We passed into the circle of light from a gas lamp, and I saw Alex’s gaze shift forward, to Joshua. Just before we crossed back into the shadows, Alex’s eyes reconnected with mine.

“It doesn’t bother you, does it?” he asked. “That I can see you too?”

Even in the darkness I could see his smile. It was playful, teasing. The smile of someone who considered himself my friend.

I automatically wrapped my arms around my waist, hiding the tightest portion of my dress. I don’t know why, but I got the strangest impression that Alex didn’t just see me, he saw through me. As if he could read every hope and fear on the planes of my face.

I shrugged, trying to keep my expression impassive. “It’s a little unexpected. But no, it doesn’t bother me.”

“I hope not. You have no idea how nice it is to finally meet you.”

I felt one corner of my lip tug downward. “Am I the first ghost you’ve met, Alex?”

He shook his head. “No. But you’re definitely the nicest.”

“So far.”

The sound of Alex’s laugh reverberated off the walls of the narrow street. “Okay: you’re the nicest so far.”

I was about to correct him, to tell him that I’d been cautiously nice—so far—when I heard Joshua’s voice calling out to me.

“Amelia? Where are you?”

“I’m back here,” I answered loudly. Then I added, “With Alex.”

Suddenly Joshua reversed course, pushing between Drew and Hayley and walking toward us.

“Sorry,” he said when he got closer to me.

His eyes darted briefly toward Alex. For just a second Joshua let his hand hang in the air near my waist, like he wanted to place a possessive hold on me. He must have thought better of it, though, because he then dropped his arm and tucked both his hands into the pockets of his black slacks.

“I lost track of you for a minute, didn’t I?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “No big deal. Besides, it’s not like you left me completely alone.”

I turned to Alex, to ask that he make room for Joshua on the sidewalk. But without warning, Alex had already disappeared. I squinted into the darkness and saw that he’d taken Joshua’s place next to Annabel, far ahead of us. I hadn’t even heard him walk away.

“Weird,” I murmured.

I turned back to Joshua and saw that he’d stopped in the street. He now stood a few feet behind me, motionless except for the hand he ran through his hair and then left on the back of his neck. Inadvertently adopting that nervous pose I loved so much.

Maybe Joshua worried about abandoning me for a few minutes since things between us had been so strained lately. Or maybe he worried about leaving me alone with Alex for more than a couple of seconds.

At the thought that even Joshua occasionally got jealous, I laughed softly. The corner of my mouth lifted slightly, into a little half smile. I clasped my hands behind my back and took a few deliberately slow steps toward him.

“Whatcha doin’ back there, Joshua?” I teased.

“Trying to figure out how to tell you I am sorry for leaving you alone,” he said, smiling back at me sheepishly. “Really.”

My grin lifted higher as I sidled up beside him. “Don’t be. It gave me a chance to check you out from behind.”

Joshua’s eyes widened, and then he laughed. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”

“Not tonight,” I said, slipping my arm through his. I ran my eyes down his outfit: black pants and shoes; a white dress shirt, its sleeves rolled to his elbows underneath a winter coat. It was the closest thing Joshua had brought to a costume, and it managed to make him look more photo-shoot than costume-party ready.

Not that I was complaining.

I released a small sigh—half contented, half wistful. “You look great, Joshua.”

He chuckled low as we began to stroll forward together, obviously not in a hurry to catch up with the rest of the group. He pulled me closer to him; and, for the briefest second, I felt the brush of his coat’s wool against the crook of my arm.

From the corner of his eye, Joshua gave me a lingering appraisal. “You always look great, Amelia.”

I shook my head. “I always look the same, Joshua.”

“Yeah—great.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “Sure.”

I absently ran my free hand across the top of my skirt and then pulled my fingers through the thick waves of my hair. This time it was Joshua who noticed me fidget.

“Stop second guessing yourself,” he said gently. “You look beautiful. Perfect.”

Perfect.

The same description Alex used. But when Joshua said it, I didn’t feel as though I was being scrutinized. Instead, I felt an undeniable warmth spreading out from my core and up to my face. Once it got there, I couldn’t stop it from bursting forth into an enormous smile.

All of a sudden that impulse returned. The one that made me want to tell him about everything: Eli’s warnings, the bizarre dream of my father, my plan to disappear.

Mostly, I wanted to tell him I loved him. I wanted to say it out loud, at least once.

I had just opened my mouth, preparing to let fly my deepest secrets, when Annabel’s voice stopped me.

“We’re here,” she called back to us.

My mouth snapped shut, and I felt the strangest rush of longing and relief.

I had no time to deal with either since the group had slowed enough for Joshua and me to finally catch up. All together, we rounded a corner, and suddenly a loud clamor assaulted us. The noise was so great, I don’t know how I hadn’t previously noticed the wild tumult of shouting and laughter and pulsing bass.

In front of us, spilling patrons and music into the side alley, was the club. I could hardly see the entrance through the thick mass of people pressing to get inside. On the second and third stories, iron balconies looked ready to collapse under the weight of too many bodies and too many strands of red Christmas lights.

Everyone was in costume, as Hayley had promised. I caught glimpses of pitchforks and black capes and elaborately gory makeup. Many of the partygoers also wore identical masks: skeletal faces, sparkling red under a thick coat of glitter.

While Joshua and I stared up at the spectacle, a group of girls pushed past us, all dressed in gauzy sheeting and slathered with white face paint. Ghosts, apparently.

Watching them, Drew leaned around Hayley and yelled over the noise: “Hey, Amelia—do those girls have it about right?”

“Oh, yes,” I drawled. “When we die, we all get white sheets. Standard issue.”

Our group laughed loudly in approval—particularly Alex, who I’d swear gave me a quick wink. When he turned away, I swept my eyes over the people I’d just met. Drew, Hayley, and Annabel had all dressed in refreshingly unspooky costumes: as a giant chicken, an angel, and a ninja, respectively. Alex, however, stood out most from the crowd in that he didn’t stand out. Aside from a pair of gloves and an overcoat, he hadn’t changed for the party. He still looked every bit the young politician.

Maybe that is his costume, I thought.

“Let’s go,” Annabel commanded us. “Before the wannabe ghosties take our private room.”

Everyone turned in unison to follow her toward the club. Although we moved along with them through the crowded alley, Joshua pulled me back slightly and leaned close to my ear. He spoke in a normal tone; but with all the noise, his voice sounded like a whisper.

“What do you think about all this?”

“It’s definitely … festive.”

“Not exactly Bing Crosby and hot cocoa, is it? Do you just want to go back to the house?”

Looking up at the masked figures writhing all over the club, I grimaced. Then I shook my head and reminded myself to stay positive. To enjoy tonight.

“Nope,” I said, grabbing his hand and tugging him forward. “I want to dance.”

I didn’t wait to hear his response, nor did I look back for his reaction. Instead, I focused on Hayley’s broad white wings bobbing their way through the crowd in front of me. Soon we made it past the sea of bodies and up a few steps to the front door.

Where most entrances in the Quarter had solid wooden doors, a pair of black iron gates guarded this building. Next to them, a hugely muscled man stood with his arms folded across the chest of his tight T-shirt. He looked like a living gargoyle, all scowl and stone. I half expected him to breathe fire when we approached. But to my surprise, Annabel leaped over the final step, used his shoulders to hoist herself up, and gave him an enormous kiss on the cheek.

“Annie,” he cried over raucous sounds coming out of the gates. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Finals,” she shouted. “Missed you.”

“Missed you too, babe.” With a brawny arm, he pushed open one of the gates. “Claudette said you’d be here tonight—your room should be ready by now.”

Annabel gave his forearm a pat of thanks and made a motion with her head that meant we should go inside. The others followed her; but Joshua and I lingered in the doorway, which was too jam-packed with bodies to permit much of a view into the club.

“Are you sure you’re sure?” he said, trying to talk over the drumbeat of a new song.

I simply nodded, tightened my grip on his hand until the fire ignited between our palms, and then crossed the threshold.

The club was so dark inside, we could hardly see the path forward. High above, I could just make out a chandelier entwined with Day of the Dead masks and shimmering tinsel. Someone had replaced the chandelier’s normal bulbs with red ones. Aside from the little pools of flickering light from the candelabra on the walls, everything glowed bloodred: the mirror behind the bar; the gigantic Christmas tree decorated with plastic skeletons; even the dancers themselves.