1
The Invitation
Theinvitationarrivedina thick, white envelope with my name written in swirly gold calligraphy on the front.
Naturally, I assumed it was for a wedding. Or a really upscale baby shower. I couldn’t think of who I knew who might be getting married or having a baby, but the reasonable little voice in the back of my mind suggested that maybe there was some distant cousin I’d forgotten about, or perhaps a friend from my childhood who’d fallen in love with a mega-rich tech tycoon and decided to invite everyone she’d ever known to their elaborate nuptials in Hawaii.
I mean, it waspossible.
The envelope was sealed with a glob of blood red wax, and while something had definitely been stamped into the wax at some point, the invitation’s perilous journey through the mail system had left the symbol completely unidentifiable, with only a few ridges to suggest what it had once been.
Either way, it was by far the fanciest thing I’d ever received in the mail, so I took my time prying it open, taking care not to rip the envelope. I’d always been pretty steady-handed, thanks to my job decorating cupcakes at a little tea shop downtown, so though it took some patience, I was able to lift the flap without causing any damage.
And it was absolutely worth the trouble.
The invitation inside was just as beautiful as I’d hoped, crafted from thick, textured paper with gold leaf trim around the edges. There was a strange little sigil at the top—like three interlocking triangles with a rose at the center—and I briefly wondered if that had been the symbol pressed into the wax seal on the envelope.
And then the words beneath caught my eye, dancing across the page in the same swirling metallic script I’d seen on the envelope:
To the esteemed Ms. Marigold Pearl Parsons
You are Cordially Invited to a Private Masquerade
At Eight o’clock in the Evening on May 11th
At the Crestwood Estate.
Black Tie and Mask Required.
A strange little shiver moved down my spine, like my intuition was telling me this moment wasimportant, but I was more confused than anything else. Aprivate masquerade? That sounded like an odd theme for a wedding or a baby shower, but given that there was no mention of either brides or babies on the invitation, it looked like my initial assumption was wrong and the event was no more than it claimed to be.
But who throws a black tie masquerade ‘just because’ in this day and age?And why had the host gone through the trouble of sending out such an expensive invitation without bothering to put their name anywhere? There wasn’t even a return address on the envelope.
My gaze flicked down to the location once more:the Crestwood Estate.
Honestly, that was the most intriguing part of all of this. The Crestwood Estate was notorious in my little city. In part because it was wild and mysterious and located on the cliff overlooking the dangerous waters of Graykeep Bay, but mainly because it was the home of the equally wild and mysterious Crestwood brothers.
I had absolutely no connection to the Crestwood brothers. For one thing, they were billionaires, and I, well, most definitely was not. I worked as the baker/whatever-else-was-needed at the tea shop, could barely afford the rent on my mediocre apartment, and spent most of my nights on the couch watching murder documentaries, scrolling through a dating app, or updating one of the three fanfiction stories I’d been writing since my freshman year of college.
I shouldn’t have even been on the Crestwood brothers’ radar.
As far as I knew, the Crestwoodsneverinteracted with us “normal” folks. Mostly Alastor, Octavian, and George Crestwood stayed locked away at their estate—at least when they weren’t flying to New York or Paris or Monaco or wherever it was that rich people went to do their rich-people things—and despite the fact that they lived only a few miles away from me, they remained a mystery.
But even though I didn’t know much about them—no one did, really, except for the fact that they were very rich and very secretive—I knew that this was weird. If my name hadn’t been printed, quite clearly and beautifully, on both the envelope and the invitation itself—with my middle name, no less, which I never ever used on anything—I would have been absolutely convinced there’d been a mistake.
But my name was there. Someone had definitely invited me, and I had no idea what that meant. My life didn’t normally lend itself to adventures like this.
I grabbed my laptop and pulled up the most recent chat window.
GoldieGirl19:You guys are never going to guess what just happened.
Within seconds, my friends responded.
the_mEsmerizer:you finally got laid?
47Blob:nah, I bet she just bought another one of those little cactus plants she loves so much.
I rolled my eyes, even though neither of them could see me. Esmer (the_mEsmerizer), Isaac (47Blob), and I had the sort of friendship where we expressed affection through teasing, but deep down, I knew that neither of them judged me for being a twenty-three-year-old who wrote fanfic, hadn’t been on a date in over a year, and yes, had a bordering-on-unhealthy obsession with succulents.
