Even through the fog of alcohol, I could tell something was off. Had been for quite a while.
Was it magic? Was that it?
I looked down at myself with a puzzled stare. What was I doing again?
The question was forgotten as Caroline slammed into me. She hugged me around the neck, pressing her cheek against mine. “Listen, Lena! Do you hear that?”
I nearly choked from how hard Caroline squeezed me.
“Let go!” Deborah slapped at her hands. “That’s Aileen’s neck.”
Movement beyond Nathan’s shoulder distracted me from Caroline’s choking grip.
Liam?
I rubbed my eyes, wondering if that alcohol had hallucinogenic properties. Surely, I wasn’t seeing my loverexiting the barrow. That definitely wasn’t Alches beside him. A blot of shadow whose form went in and out of focus.
Maybe I was a little drunker than I had thought. Why else would I be seeing those two together?
Caroline shook me, breaking my focus. “It’s our song!”
Anton lowered his voice as he leaned toward Nathan. “Does something seem off to you?”
“It’s the fairy dance,” Nathan replied tersely, no longer looking so relaxed. “They must have succumbed to its song.”
Caroline’s hand was on mine, dragging me to my feet. I shot one last glance toward the barrow’s entrance, but the man I thought I’d seen and his hound were long gone.
“Should we intervene?” Anton asked.
“We can’t. The magic has already caught them,” Connor answered. “The best we can do is let it play itself out.”
“Crap.” Nathan sounded slightly aggravated. “Somebody grab them before they run off.”
In the next second, I found myself back on the dance floor from the beginning of the night. Strobe lights played over the crowd as the music pounded in my chest.
The party had grown since our departure. There were now so many bodies that it was hard to move. Their gyrations mimicking sex.
Not just mimicking, I realized as a satyr bent his partner over. His hips plunging forward to impale her on what looked like a monster cock.
Her mouth opened wide from pleasure or pain. I couldn’t tell which.
Looking around, it dawned on me that many of the dancers were in various stages of undress. All of them still swaying to the music.
“We should go back,” I slurred.
Despite my words, I made no move to follow through on the thought. My body felt disconnected from my brain.
“Pretty vampire, care for a partner this evening?” purred a man whose features were blurred out and indistinct.
I got the feeling he was good looking, but it would have been impossible to provide a description later. Not his hair or eye color. Let alone his facial features.
“No.”
The answer erupted from me without conscious thought, the idea of someone who was not Liam touching me in such an intimate way so abhorrent that it shredded the fog of magic I was under for a moment.
The stranger took my response graciously, bowing slightly. “Very well. The night’s magic is meant to lead you to your deepest desires. You must consent for them to take hold.”
Caroline was tugging at my hand again. The next thing I knew, we were on a different part of the dance floor. The stranger and the orgy distant memories. We lifted our arms in the air, catching the rhythm and falling into the dance for the second time that night.
