I fold another napkin. It comes out slightly lopsided. I refold it.
The doorbell rings.
My mother sets down her napkin and clicks off to the hallway. I stay at the table, smoothing out a crease. I can hear the door opening. My mother’s voice, bright with the particular warmth she reserves for people who aren’t me.
And then a man’s voice. Low. Confident. Smooth as anything.
I don’t recognise it.
I frown slightly, turning in my chair. Who else is coming tonight? Mum didn’t mention anyone. Maybe a friend of my aunt’s? One of Dad’s work colleagues?
“Adam!” My mother appears in the dining room doorway with an expression I have genuinely never seen on her face before. Something between delight and confusion and a sort of dazed quality, as if someone has recently shone a very bright light at her. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me you were bringing a guest?”
I open my mouth. Close it.
And then the guest walks in.
He’s tall. Very tall. Dark hair, slightly dishevelled, falling across his forehead in a way that looks careless but is somehow perfect. A suit that costs more than my monthly rent, possibly more than several months of rent, charcoal grey and exquisitely cut. The suit is slightly disarrayed, the jacket not quite sitting right on the shoulders, the tie loosened just a fraction. Like someone who has dressed impeccably but then been slightly shaken about.
His eyes find mine across the dining room.
They glow red.
Just for a second. Just long enough for me to see it. Then they’re dark again, normal, warm and smiling, and he’s crossing the room towards my mother with a bouquet of flowers that he must have conjured from thin air because where else would they have come from, an enormous armful of white roses and eucalyptus that smells incredible.
“For the hostess,” he says, and his voice is Hex’s voice wearing a stranger’s accent. Slightly off. Slightly too smooth. “I’m so sorry I’m late. Dreadful time getting away from the office. You know how it is.”
My mother takes the flowers and actually giggles. My mother has never giggled in her life. “Oh, these are beautiful! Adam never mentioned he had such a charming friend.”
“Adam is very modest about the people in his life,” says Hex, turning to look at me with an expression of warm amusement that is entirely Hex and completely unnerving on a stranger’s face. “Aren’t you.”
It isn’t a question.
“I,” I say. “Yes. Very modest.”
My mother hugs the flowers to her chest and hurries off to find a vase, already calling out to my father upstairs. I stare at the man standing in my mother’s dining room. He stares back at me. His posture is slightly wrong, like someone piloting an unfamiliar vehicle. His right hand keeps doing a small, involuntary twitch.
“Are you possessing someone?” I hiss.
“Yes,” grins Hex, through a stranger’s face.
“Hex!”
“He was just standing outside a pub looking bored. He’ll be fine.”
“He’ll be fine! How do you know?”
“I know he’ll have a lovely evening.” Hex gestures broadly around the dining room, a gesture that is slightly too large for the space and nearly takes out a candlestick. He catches it. Just barely. “Now stop looking at me like that. Your mother is coming back.”
She is. I can hear her heels. I shut my mouth and arrange my face into something that hopefully doesn’t look like suppressed hysteria and settle back into my chair.
The evening begins.
Hisname,apparently,isSebastian. He works in finance. He has a flat in Mayfair and a house in the Cotswolds and a boat, though he’s modest about the boat, waving it off as nothing much. My uncle asks what kind and Hex names something that makes my uncle go very quiet for a moment.
James arrives with Priya, who is lovely and warm and clearly baffled by Hex in the nicest possible way. James takes one look at Sebastian and straightens his tie.
My aunt asks how Sebastian and I met. Hex doesn’t miss a beat.
