The boy chatted as they danced, but she would barely have been able to hear him over the noise of the crowd, even if she hadn’t been straining her ears for the sound of someone spotting her. She nodded when he spoke and laughed when he smiled, barely even noticing when he pulled her too close so he could hold her body against his bare chest.
As they neared the far side of the ballroom, he lowered his mouth toward her ear and dropped his voice. “What do you say we slip out for a bit and get to know each other better? I’m sure we can find—”
“There she is!”
The voice carried over the noise of the band and the dancers, landing on Vivian’s ears like a siren. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the two burly men pushing their way through the crowd, trying to circle around the dance floor to cut her off.
She slid out of her partner’s arms, leaving him with a quick, “Thanks for the dance,” as she ran for the door. She didn’t look back to see if the two men were following; the shouts of irritation and a few yelps of pain told her they were still in pursuit.
The door at this end of the ballroom was tucked into a corner, and still closed instead of wide open like the ones at the other end. Vivian flung it open anyway and discovered a staircase heading up; she hesitated, but there wasn’t much choice. She kicked the door closed behindher and dashed up, praying it would open up somewhere she could hide.
It was longer than she expected, with a landing and a turn but no door at what she thought was the second floor. There was nothing for it but to keep climbing; she could hear the men’s curses as they came through the door and discovered the staircase themselves. A moment later, the clomp of their feet echoed up after her.
Vivian took the steps two at a time and was panting by the time she reached the top of the stairs and threw open the door there. She slammed that one behind her as well, cursing frantically when she discovered it didn’t lock. She whipped her head around, trying to get her bearings in the few seconds she had to make a decision.
She was at the end of an empty hallway, stacked with extra chairs and lined with old photos of the Odd Fellows through the years. There were doors opening off the hall, but if she went in one of those and the men followed, she’d be trapped.
The footsteps were pounding up the stairs behind her; her time was up. Vivian ran toward the end of the hall. Maybe it would end somewhere crowded so she wouldn’t be alone when the men caught up to her.
Her luck wasn’t in. Around a turn in the hall, she found herself dashing toward an open gallery, carpeted in a deep burgundy and scattered with marble pillars, a spot where guests could mingle with drinks or spill over into extra dancing space when the downstairs filled up. At the moment, it was empty; the party hadn’t yet made its way up to the third floor. But across the gallery, she could see the stairs heading down. And the second floor, she knew, was crowded with people.
Vivian risked a glance over her shoulder. And then her feet met nothing, and she was tumbling through the air.
It was only a moment before she caught her balance; the hallway had ended in three steps down to the gallery. Vivian bit back a yellas she landed on one foot and felt her ankle buckle beneath her. She gasped as she grabbed at a pillar to haul herself up.
She managed a few more steps, but a jolt of pain shot up her leg. Whimpering, Vivian ducked behind a pillar, trying to breathe quietly even though she was panting with fear. Her ankle throbbed, and she could feel sweat dripping down her back. But everything was still and quiet, and she let herself hope that she had shaken them off.
Vivian craned her neck just far enough that one eye could peer out from behind the column. Then she pulled back quickly; the two men in dark suits, one with an enormous mustache and the other with shoulders like a mountain, had just reached the three steps where she had fallen. Her breath stuttered through her chest, and she pressed her face against the marble, praying the chill of the stone would help her think.
There had to be somewhere she could go to get away from them. Could she find Leo if she made her way back down? He and Mags were almost certainly still dancing or drinking, but he’d be watching for her. Could they sneak out and find a cab before…
Laughter filled the gallery suddenly, a dozen voices talking over each other in a cheerful, drunken babble that made Vivian jump, then press herself more tightly against the pillar, hoping she hadn’t given away her hiding place. A crowd of women tumbled up the stairs, gossiping about the dancers and complaining about sore feet, more than one stumbling and tipsy while their friends kept them upright.
“I thought there was a washroom up here?” one of them called, the others chiming in helpfully and pointing in multiple directions before they finally decided they had climbed one floor too far and needed to turn around.
The small crowd flowed around Vivian without noticing that someone was hiding there. She took a deep breath and waited until she was surrounded. When she was sandwiched between a medieval ball gownand a pirate queen, she stepped away from her hiding place and joined them.
She wanted to look back and see if either of the men had noticed, but she couldn’t risk it. There were no shouts or running feet, and she told herself that was a good sign. But for all she knew, they were still following, just waiting for an opportunity when fewer people were around.
Vivian was swept down the steps, trying not to stumble on her injured ankle, and back into the heat and noise of the party. She let herself be carried along into the washroom, where the women scattered to fix their lipstick and powder, adjust their costumes or wigs, or disappear into the back room to take care of personal business. Several simply threw themselves onto the upholstered benches, resting their feet while they chatted and sighed and wondered cheerfully about who would get into different kinds of fun trouble downstairs.
Vivian stood with her back against one wall, still shaking too hard to move. She couldn’t stay in the washroom all night. She didn’t think those men would spend much longer looking for her—she couldn’t be worth that much effort, could she? She was just some unknown girl who wandered into their game and pulled a runner without causing any real trouble. But what if the man she’d been talking to told them she’d been asking questions? What if they were outside the door, waiting to grab her the moment she tried to leave?
“Oh, sorry!”
One of the women stumbled into Vivian as she tried to fix the ribbons on her shoe while hopping on one foot. Vivian grabbed her arm to steady her, and several of her friends laughed and yelled at her to sit down before she broke her neck. As they helped her into a seat, one turned to thank Vivian, then frowned.
“You all right there, sugar?” she asked, sounding genuinely concerned. She was wearing a men’s suit, a walking stick in one hand. Her blond hair was cut so short it could only barely be called a bob, andshe wore not only deep red lipstick and mascara but had lined her eyes strikingly with kohl powder. “You look a little green around the gills. Too much gin?”
“No. Sorry.” Vivian shook her head, shrinking farther against the wall, her mind still outside with the men who might or might not be there. “I didn’t mean to crash your party.”
Her statement was met with a chorus of protests as the whole group turned to see who had wandered in with them. Seeing so many strange faces turned toward her put Vivian on guard—what if one of them turned her in? But at least she wasn’t alone, cowering behind a pillar and praying two bully-boys didn’t drag her downstairs for questioning or worse.
She took a shuddering breath. “Any chance some of you could help a girl out? I gotta get back downstairs to find my pals, but I… I need to make sure no one sees me do it.”
“What happened?”
“Hell, are the cops here? Are we being raided?”
