“Landon,” she says, landing her palms on the cube edge. “Any progress on the Peterson file?”
I nod. “Running a few patterns. Something’s off in the Q4 statements, but I want to confirm before escalating.”
She raises a penciled brow. “Confirm quickly. There’s an external audit in three days, and if this blows up, we’re all getting dragged.”
She leaves before I can answer. Her cologne lingers, settling in my throat. I swallow it with a mouthful of stale air.
Clicking to the work I’m actually supposed to be doing, I scan the Peterson file for anything I might have missed. Nothing. The file looks clean. Boring. Not nearly as exciting as the secret I’m working on. I open a new sheet and start typing up a report for the compliance queue when I hear the mail cart approaching.
The courier is new. He looks terrified, probably from hearing too many stories about what happens when you misplace an interoffice envelope. He stops at my cube, eyes locked on the floor, and sets a heavy cream envelope next to my keyboard.
“For you,” he says. The envelope is unmarked, but the paper is thick, the kind of stock you get engraved for a wedding or a funeral. There’s a crest embossed in gold on the flap, but it’s not one I recognize. Maybe a private club, maybe a law firm. Definitely not government-issue.
My name is printed by hand on the front, not typed. I run a thumb over it. The ink is raised, old-school. I break the seal with the corner of my thumbnail. Inside is a single card, thick enough to stop a bullet, the kind you see in movies about secretsocieties. The invite is for a Valentine’s Day masquerade gala, all gold leaf and red script. I have to read it twice to process it.
You are cordially invited to the Annual Aequitas Society Valentine’s Soiree, February 14th, 7pm. Formal attire and mask required. Venue and further instructions to follow.
I read it again. The beneficiary is the same charity I’ve been digging into. There’s a line at the bottom, handwritten in a smaller, meaner script: “We hear you appreciate a puzzle. Attendance is mandatory.”
The tips of my fingers tingle, the way they do before a fight or a blackout. For a minute I just sit, letting the card rest against my palm, feeling the weight of the thing. Someone wants me there. Someone knows I’ve been looking.
I scan the cube farm, but nobody is watching. Or maybe they’re all watching and just pretending not to. I slip the envelope into the pocket of my jacket, heart beating fast enough that I can feel it in my jaw.
On my lunch break I head to the parking lot and sit in my car, the engine off. I search “Aequitas Society” on my phone. First page is all legal theory, Latin for justice or some shit, then a few half-dead links about “philanthropic events for discerning patrons.” Nothing concrete. The photos are all the same: men in suits, women in gowns, everyone’s face half-masked, all smiling like they’re in on the joke.
The invitation is burning a hole in my jacket pocket. I fish it out, reading every letter, every flourish, like it’ll morph if I look away. The card stock is cool and dry, the gold lettering smoothunder my thumb. I imagine what kind of money it takes to print invites like this, and who’s behind the mask.
I go back inside, hands shaky, and try to act normal. I print off a few extra sheets to justify being away from my desk. When I pass the kitchen, the records intern glances up, and I see him clock the envelope poking from my jacket. He looks away quick, but he’s already told someone by the time I’m back at my desk. The office rumor machine is faster than the internet.
I spend the rest of the day reading the invite, flipping it over in my hands, scanning for hidden messages or microdots or whatever the hell a society like this would use to communicate. Nothing. Just that line— “We hear you appreciate a puzzle.” It’s enough to make my head ache.
Back at my screen, I try to run the last few queries, but my mind is already at the masquerade. I imagine the room: velvet and crystal, music tight and controlled, masks that look expensive even from a distance. I see myself there, sticking out like a sore thumb, the only one in a thrift store suit and a mask I made with glue and construction paper.
At five I pack up and leave, but the envelope comes with me. I walk to my car with it clutched in my hand, so tight the edge leaves a dent in my palm. I don’t know what’s waiting for me at the other end, but I know what it means to get an invitation like this. It means someone’s been watching.
It means the game is starting, whether I want it or not.
I pace my living room, the envelope on my coffee table. I can’t keep my eyes off it. The gold crest catches the TV’s blue glow and refracts it, making the invite look even more out of place against my thrift store furniture and mismatched rug. Everything in the apartment seems wrong-sized or accidental, from the table with one short leg to the couch that sheds more foam than a rabid dog.
I want to think it through. I want to be methodical, like with the spreadsheets. But my thoughts keep looping the same ugly pattern:They know who I am. They know I’m looking. They want me to show up.
I make laps from window to kitchen and back before making a coffee and sipping it. My body runs on nerves and caffeine, the two mingling in my blood until I’m not sure if I’m shaking from excitement or fear.
On the wall, my collage of newsprint and sticky notes seems to vibrate with new meaning. All those hours connecting dots, and here’s the connecting line, signed in gold. I want to tell someone, but there’s nobody to call. My mom is three states away and wouldn’t understand if I spelled it out in crayon. My friends all work jobs where nobody ever gets secret mail or wears a suit unless it’s their own funeral.
I could text the compliance director, but I don’t want her seeing me as more of a liability than I already am. I settle on calling the only person I know who might care, an old journalism school friend who once lived for this kind of intrigue, but theline clicks to voicemail before it even rings. I hang up without leaving a message.
I catch my reflection in the TV. I look like hell. My hair is a compromise between curly and chaos, my jawline sporting the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow. The bags under my eyes are so deep you could lose a phone in them. I wonder if I’m even capable of passing for someone who belongs at a gala.
I go to the closet and dig out my one suit, a hand-me-down from a cousin who outgrew it, which means I inherited it with the armpits already worn through and the cuffs shiny from use. I put it on anyway, because I need to see it in the mirror. The pants are a little tight, the jacket a little big. The tie is a shade of blue nobody would ever call bold, but it’s the only one I own.
I practice introducing myself in the bathroom mirror, using the name on the invitation, then my own, then just “Landon” to see which sounds less desperate. I picture the room, the lighting, the music. I imagine the looks I’ll get. The mask requirement is a mercy, but even with my face hidden, I’ll still move like an outsider. There are people who wear confidence the way I wear guilt, and I know the second I walk in, I’ll find every one of them.
I sit on the edge of the bathtub and breathe, let the silence fill the apartment. I want to believe this is just a networking stunt, or a prank, or even a recruitment ploy. But that line—We hear you appreciate a puzzle—turns in my chest like a drill bit. This is bait, pure and simple. And I’m the rat that can’t stop looking for the trap.
Taking off the suit off, I hang it back up, careful not to wrinkle it more than necessary. I fold the invitation and set it on the coffee table, next to the remote, and stare at it until the words blur. I think of all the ways this could go bad, and all the ways it could go right. There’s a thin, sharp thrill in the possibility, but it’s shadowed by something darker—a knowledge that if I don’t go, I’ll regret it, and if I do, I might not come back the same.
A failsafe. I need a failsafe. A text, to my journalist friend: “Got invited to a masquerade. High society, hush-hush. If I don’t text you after the 14th, tell the papers I was murdered by some kind of secret society.”
