And I'm scared too, if I'm being honest, which I won't be, except right now, briefly, here.
"Fine," I say.
It's one word and it costs me something and she knows that, and she doesn't make it into a bigger thing than it is. She just nods, once, and the grip on my shoulder releases.
"Good."
A beat.
Then she claps her hands.
"MAKEUP!"
The shift is so immediate that I laugh before I can stop it—a short, startled sound that comes out of nowhere and lands in the bathroom and sits there for a moment, slightly surprised by its own existence. Elowen is already moving, already pivoting toward the door with the momentum of someone whose next act has been choreographed since Tuesday, and the dramatic gear-change of it—from quiet and real to enthusiastic and operational in under three seconds—is so utterly, specifically Elowen that the thing in my chest that was tightening loosens by several degrees.
"You haven't seen the dress yet," she announces from the hallway.
"The—what dress?"
She appears back in the doorway already vibrating at a frequency that suggests she has been sitting on information and has reached capacity.
"The seamstress," she says, with the reverence of someone introducing a title rather than a profession. "You know the one on Carver Street—Adina, she does the alterations for the Bloomand Brier event florals, she's extraordinary. I went to her with an original that I'll be honest was—fine. It was fine. It had bones. But bones need a body and it was missing the body so I asked her to reconstruct it, gave her the aesthetic brief, and she has—" she presses one hand to her chest "—she has delivered."
I stare at her.
"You had a dress commissioned."
"Reconstructed. There's a distinction."
"Elowen, I cannot accept a commissioned?—"
"It was already purchased, the seamstress was already paid, the alterations are done, the dress is in my car, and the only remaining question is how magnificent you're going to look in it tonight, so I need you to stop being difficult for approximately forty minutes while I do your face." She points at the bathroom stool with absolute authority. "Sit."
She looks like a small benevolent dictator in a green knit sweater.
I sit.
The makeup process is, genuinely, a different experience than what I do to myself on the rare occasions I bother. What I do to myself involves a mascara wand and approximately ninety seconds of intention before I decide it's fine and leave. What Elowen does is something else entirely—deliberate, layered, the kind of application that doesn't look like makeup when it's done but makes your face look like the best version of itself, which is a different kind of magic and considerably more demanding.
She works in silence for a few minutes. The brushes are soft. The products smell like something expensive and faintly botanical—rose and sandalwood, a cream that goes on warm and smells briefly of vanilla before it settles. My own scent seems to respond to it, the honey and vanilla in my natural signature surfacing slightly, the lime zest threading in at the edges the way it does when something in me is shifting.
Tonight.
Less than twelve hours.
The masquerade is tonight.
The Lucky Clover Society's first annual St. Patrick's ball, venue disclosed upon confirmation which I sent Monday morning from the café counter between a double espresso order and a table of regulars who wanted to know why I looked like I'd slept on a park bench. I haven't told anyone except Elowen. Not Danny—though I think he'd approve, given that he's the one who planted the idea—not the other girls from the café. Just Elowen, who has apparently been operating in full preparation mode since before I officially said yes.
"Close your eyes," Elowen says.
I close them. The brush moves across my lid in a sweep that registers more like a sensation than a sound—warm, soft, practiced. She's humming something low and meandering that I don't recognize, a habit she has when she's concentrating, her version of going quiet while still occupying the air in a room.
"The coin's coming with you?" she asks.
"In my purse."
"Good."
