Cec laughs. “Wouldn’t that be a sight.”
“The Maestro isn’t giving us an option, exactly, and, clearly, they only want to talk to Cec,” Bes explains. “This may be how we get the information we came for.”
Well, when he puts it like that.
Bes gets to his feet gracefully and holds out his hand. “Dance with me?”
Imagining his arms around me again, my heart betrays me with a stuttered beat and my body warms. It’s not that I don’t want to dance with Bes; I haven’t danced in ages and miss it fiercely. And, God help me, I’m desperate to feel his arms around me again. It’s the principle of the thing.
I eye him suspiciously and remain solidly in the booth. “You dance, Bes?”
He nods. “Fairly well.”
“As if he gave himself any choice but to be the best at it,” Cec grumbles, barely audible over the music.
I stare at Bes’s hand, still hesitating. I just can’t shake the feeling I shouldn’t relax my inhibitions, not even when Bes thinks it’ll help.
Remember, you’re someone else tonight.Someone else who wants to gather my own intel as well. About the God Men, yes, but Arturo too. If we got in with his password, then more of his friends must be here.
“Tell me how you know that the Maestro has the information you seek?” I demand. “Are they truly another one of Arturo’s acquaintances?”
Surprise flashes across his face. “Now is neither the time, nor the place, for this discussion.”
“Then you can forget dancing with me,” I tell him, getting to my feet. “I’ll find my own partner.”
Without waiting for a response, I make for the dance floor, allowing the teeming crowd to swallow me up.
Half the people around me are already partnered up, but the other half sway separately to the music, a few even tap-dancing. Smiles light up their expressions—one spreads across my own face.
Not long after I enter the crowd, a gentleman around Cec’s height approaches me. Dark hair slicked back, brown eyes soft and attentive, he takes my hand and kisses it.
“Buonasera, signora,” he bids me, his voice deep. I flutter my lashes at him.
Even while a part of me wants to glance back to see if Bes is watching.
“Buonasera, signore,” I reply, leaning into him.
Luckily for me, he doesn’t attempt to converse with me in Italian. Instead, he puts one hand around my waist and grasps my hand with the other. We instantly fall into the Peabody, which is merely a faster version of the Foxtrot. I wonder how he learned it, considering it’s an American dance. But I forget all of that as he starts to spin me, our feet moving in perfect rhythm together.
I can’t help it: I smile, my chest lightening. God, I needed this moment of freedom. Even though I’m here for a purpose, this place is intoxicating and it’s having an effect on me. One moment of intemperance couldn’t hurt—
Out of the corner of my eye, I recognize what I could swear to be blonde hair and a black dress. My feet instantly stop moving, panic clawing up my throat. I peer desperately into the crowd.It can’t be Ingrid. How the hell did she find us?
My dance partner places a hand on my arm. “Stai bene?”
I shake my head but no words come out.
Searching the crowd again, though, I can’t find her. Did I imagine it?
The man draws me close again, turning me away from the spot. My chest heaves.Imusthave imagined it.Still, my pulse hammers away inside my head, quieting the world around me. I lean in and let my feet do all the work, my mind spinning.
Before I realize what’s happening, the man’s hand slowly reaches past the sink ties of my jumpsuit to my lower back, directly over the Amulet of Amun—
“Scusami,” another, familiar voice says behind me.
I turn to find Bes watching me intently. Then, his attention shifts to my unwitting dance partner.
The strange man tightens his arm around my waist. I stiffen at the contact.
