I hadn’t spent much time with people my own age, but I’d read enough school stories to know gentlemen weren’t supposed to take young ladies out alone into the dark heat of a summer night. But then, I wasn’t really a lady, was I?
“No, thank you,” I said. He blinked with the stunned expression of a man who knew the word no existed but had never actually met it in the flesh.
He leaned closer, one damp hand reaching toward my elbow. “Come, now—”
A silver tray of champagne materialized between us and a low, unfriendly voice said, “May I offer you a drink, sir?”
It was Samuel Zappia, dressed in the crisp black-and-white uniform of a hired server.
I’d barely seen him in the last two years, mostly because the red Zappia grocery cart had been replaced by a neat black truck with a closed cab and I could no longer wave to him from the study window. I’d driven past the store with Mr. Locke once or twice and caught blurred glimpses of Samuel out back, unloading flour sacks from a truck bed and staring out at the lake with a distant, dreaming expression. I’d wondered if he still subscribed to The Argosy, or if he’d abandoned such childish fancies.
Now he looked clear and sharp, as if he’d come fully into focus in a camera lens. His skin was still that golden-dark color mysteriously known as olive; his eyes were still black and bright as polished shale.
They were fixed now on the blond gentleman in a flat, unblinking stare, beneath eyebrows raised in faux-polite inquiry. There was something unsettling about that stare, something so blatantly unservile that the man took a half step backward. He stared at Samuel with an expression of upper-class offense that generally sent servants scurrying to make amends.
But Samuel didn’t move. A fey gleam lit in his eye, as if he were rather hoping the young man would attempt to chastise him. I couldn’t help noticing the way Samuel’s shoulders pressed against the seams of his starched suit coat, the wiry look of his wrist holding the heavy tray; beside him, the blond man looked as pale and squashy as unrisen dough.
He spun away, thin lips curled, and skittered back to the protection of his peers.
Samuel turned smoothly toward me, lifting a shimmery golden glass. “For the birthday girl, perhaps?” His expression was perfectly bland.
He remembered my birthday. My dress suddenly felt itchy and hot. “Thank you. For, uh, rescuing me.”
“Oh, I wasn’t rescuing you, Miss Scaller. I was saving that poor boy from a dangerous animal.” He ducked his head at Bad, who was still watching the retreating man with his hackles raised and his lips curling back over his teeth.
“Ah.” Silence. I wished I were a thousand miles away. I wished I were a yellow-haired girl named something like Anna or Elizabeth who laughed like a clockwork bird and always knew just what to say.
The corners of Samuel’s eyes crimped. He folded my fingers around the stem of the champagne flute, his hands dry and summer-warm. “It might help,” he said, and vanished back into the crowd.
I downed the champagne so quickly my nose fizzed with it. I raided several more silver trays as I made my way through the parlor, and by the time I reached the smoking room I was placing my feet very precisely and trying not to notice the way colors sloshed and oozed at the edges of my vision. My dark veil, that invisible Thing that had curled around me all day, seemed to flicker and warp.
I took a breath outside the door. “Ready, Bad?” He dog-sighed at me.
My first impression was that the room had shrunk considerably since I’d last seen it, but then, I’d never seen it crammed with a dozen men wearing crowns of bluish smoke and conversing in low rumbles. I recognized this as one of those important, exclusive meetings that I’d never been permitted to attend: those boozy late-night congregations of men where the real decisions were made. I ought to have felt pleased or honored; instead, I tasted something bitter in the back of my throat.
Bad sneezed at the cigar-and-leather reek, and Mr. Locke turned toward us. “You made it, dear girl. Come, take a seat.” He gestured to a high-backed armchair in the rough center of the room, around which the men of the Archaeological Society were ranged as if posing for a portrait-painting. There was Havemeyer, and the ferrety Mr. Ilvane, and others I recognized from previous parties and visits: a red-lipped woman with a black ribbon around her throat; a youngish man with a hungry smile; a white-haired man with long, curling nails. There was something secretive about them, like predators stalking through tall grass.
I perched on the armchair, feeling hunted.
Mr. Locke’s hand landed on my shoulder for the second time that evening. “We’ve asked you here tonight for a little announcement. After much careful thought and discussion, my colleagues and I would like to offer you something rather rare and much sought-after. It’s quite unorthodox, but we feel it is warranted by your, ah, unique situation. January”—a dramatic pause—“we’d like to offer you formal membership in the Society.”
I blinked at him. Was this my birthday gift? I wondered if I ought to be pleased. I wondered if Mr. Locke had known how, as a girl, I’d dreamed of joining his silly society and trotting around the world having adventures, collecting rare and valuable objects. I wondered if my father had ever wanted to join.
That bitter taste returned, and something else that burned ember-hot on my tongue. I swallowed it back. “Thank you, sir.”
Mr. Locke’s hand knocked me twice in hearty congratulations. He launched into another speech about the formal induction process and certain rituals and oaths that must be made before the Founder—see that capital F like a saluting soldier—but I wasn’t listening. The burning in my mouth was growing stronger, scalding my tongue, and my invisible veil was crumbling to ash and char around me. The room around me seemed to pulse with heat.
“Thank you,” I interrupted. My voice was flat, almost toneless; I listened to it with detached fascination. “But I’m afraid I must decline your invitation.”
Silence.
A silver-eyed voice in my head was hissing at me—be a good girl, mind your place—but it was drowned out by the alcohol thudding in my blood. “I mean, why should I want to join your Society, really? A bunch of fussy old aristocrats who pay braver and better men to go out and steal things for you. And should one of them disappear you don’t even pretend to mourn him. You just carry on—as if nothing—as if he didn’t matter—” I broke off, panting.
You don’t really realize how many small sounds a house makes—the tocking of the grandfather clock, the sighing of the summer breeze against the windowpanes, the moaning of floor joists beneath a hundred pairs of expensive shoes—until you’ve stunned a room into absolute silence. I clutched Bad’s collar as if he were the one in need of restraint.
Mr. Locke’s hand tightened on my shoulder and his munificent smile became something gritted and painful-looking. “Apologize,” he breathed at me.
My jaw locked. A part of me—Mr. Locke’s good girl, the girl who never complained, who minded her place and smiled and smiled and smiled—wanted to fling myself at his feet and beg for forgiveness. But most of me would rather have died.
