Guests flow up the staircase in pairs and trios, masks gleaming. But it’s the colors that I notice, a silent language I don’t speak. The men’s masks are almost exclusively black or white—sharp onyx and blank porcelain. In contrast, many of the women wear a startling uniform crimson. I watch a man in a severe black mask lean close to the woman on his arm. Her mask is the same blood-red. She doesn’t react to whatever he whispers, her posture as still and perfect as a doll’s. A strange chill traces its way down my spine. It’s a pattern, I realize. A code. And I’m suddenly, terrifyingly aware that my mask is crimson, and my father’s is white. Perfume, champagne, polished wood; money has a scent, and it’s everywhere.
“Mayor Graves.” A man in a midnight tux bows slightly as we reach the top. His mask is black with a small feathered crest. “Welcome back.” His gaze flicks over me in a quick calculation and lands on my father again. “We’ve placed you near the fountain.”
“Perfect,” my father says. His hand doesn’t leave my spine.
We’re ushered into a ballroom that looks like it holds history in its teeth. Frescoed ceiling. A chandelier so heavy it could murder a room. The floor is a mirror of marble. Servers drift like ghosts with silver trays filled with champagne and canapésin the practiced invisibility of good help. My eyes catch on their masks. Each one is the same plain, unassuming blue as the one the valet wore. The pattern clicks into place with a cold, simple logic. Blue, then, is the color of the staff—present but unseen, a separate class entirely.
I remind my lungs to function. Inhale. Exhale. Keep my shoulders tall, chin up, mouth soft: the posture of a daughter who belongs.
But something in the air is off. It’s too choreographed. Conversations rise and fall in the same rhythmic phrases, smiles held a half-second too long. People are watching each other like gamblers—eyes bright, hands still.
A violin quartet saws out a waltz. The tempo is languid and wrong for how fast my pulse runs.
We make a slow parade along the room’s edge. Men turn toward my father with those politician smiles that show teeth and nothing else. Women glance at me to assess my gown, posture, and pedigree. The chandelier scatters light across my silver gown, making it look as if coins of gold and white slide over the fabric as I move.
“Champagne?” a server murmurs.
“Yes,” my father answers, taking two flutes and pressing one into my hand as if it is a prop. “Don’t drink it,” he adds softly.
He never likes me dulled. He likes me polished.
We pass a series of glass cases along a gallery wall. Inside, velvet displays cradle necklaces, bracelets, watches. Each bears a small card—Lot 3A, Lot 3B—followed by tidy lines of provenance, appraisal value, donor name. A charity auction, then, I tell myself. A gala performance; a little glitter to soften the checks.
Relief pricks and recedes. The cards sit too neatly. The numbers march in an exacting hand: 1A–1F, 2A–2F, 3A–3F. Sets. Families. Groupings. Odd.
The music changes, making the crowd’s hum shift with it, a subtle lean toward anticipation. A steward steps onto a low dais at the far end of the room. It's just a shallow rise in the marble, framed by two towering arrangements of white lilies. The mask has no design. The sound of his voice through the lapel mic is very smooth. His voice has the warmth of an elevator.
“Friends,” he says, and the word slides around the room like oil. “Thank you for your continued generosity. We’ll begin our private selections momentarily. If you have not received your folio, please see your attendant.”
Private selections. Folio.
As if on cue, men at the perimeter raise slim booklets bound in ivory leather. My father has one already—of course he does. He doesn’t offer it to me. His thumb caresses the spine, as if the book is purring. He tucks it under his arm, the way you tuck a letter bomb.
He leans down, mouth angled toward my ear. “Don’t wander.”
Which means he wants to talk to someone I shouldn’t hear.
“Of course,” I say. My smile stays painted on.
He moves off into the current, pulled effortlessly into a cluster of men near a carved archway. A woman in red twines her hand through one of those men’s elbow; I catch the flash of a signet ring, a crest engraved so deep it looks like a wound.
I drift toward the fountain the steward mentioned—a circular pool framed by low marble, water jetting from the mouth of a stone swan. It hushes the edges of sound. The air is cooler here.
Across the courtyard beyond a set of open French doors, lanterns swing from magnolia trees. People move through the glow like moths. A different hum reaches me—lower, sparser. The conversations here are not social; they are transactional.
A hushed voice says, “Lot Four is delayed.”
Another, colder voice cuts in. “I don’t care. The buyer is getting impatient. Tell him she will be made ready for him after the final bell.”
Made ready. The phrase snags in my mind, cold and sharp. Ready for what? The words feel wrong, clinical, like they’re discussing livestock, not a person. A knot of unease tightens in my stomach.
I set my untouched champagne on the fountain’s lip and follow the sound.
The courtyard is arranged like a series of small theatres. Pavilions of gauze and gold fringe section the lawn into discrete rooms. In each, a pair of chairs and a pedestal table wait, intimate and precise. Attendants in black stand at the mouths of the pavilions, their faces hidden by the same simple blue masks as the staff inside, hands folded. The rule is confirmed. Blue means you belong to the house, not the party. Between the pavilions, on low platforms draped in ivory, people stand.
My stomach drops before my mind forms words. They stand perfectly still, like living mannequins. Each wears a neutral garment—a silk slip, a linen shift. And each wears a simple mask of the same startling crimson.
The same red as my mask. A cold dread, sharp and specific, blooms in my chest.
