This is Blanck, I realize. He looks like he could blend in, but the rest of the world is soft, and Blanck is too sharp, too sleek, too shiny. Dangerous.
Spirit isnotoffering me anything I can use. Just signs of danger. My stomach roils.
I snap back to the here and now. Blanck sputters on about hosting this party in his own home. “We’d rather do this in a hotel, of course. But with the waiters’ strike going on, that’s impossible. Damn labor unions.”
My fingernails dig into the palms of my hands.
Kiyoko approaches him with the teacup. “Are you sure I can’t interest you in a nice cup of tea?”
I plead silently,Take it. We really need him to drink that silly tea, now that we don’t have the advantage of scoping out the items in his apartment.
Blanck grunts. “No. I appreciate the hustle, ladies, but onehuckster is more than enough for my party,” he says, and he smacks Clarice on her rear end. “And I’ve only includedherbecause Doyle insisted.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he means. Blanck chortles as he squeezes Clarice tightly around the waist. I see her stiffen, her smile tighten.
She’s doing this for us. Well, for Pax, perhaps. But she’s disgusted by Blanck, too.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t be hosting this gathering at all, were it up to me. My wife, she…” He pauses here. He doesn’t seem like the type of man who measures his words often. “She feels this event is necessary to maintain our standing.”
Ah, yes. She wants to save face after all her husband’s bad publicity. Pax has said that members of high society will do anything maintain their status. We’ll be destroying her as well.
Something about that idea—destroying someone so thoroughly that the pain is felt throughout an entire family, perhaps even for generations—makes an odd tang of power seethe through me. It’s the same pain Blanck himself has foisted upon me.
To my great surprise, Spirit whispers at that moment:
Romeo.
And it offers me an image of a small dog. A Scottish terrier.
I clear my tight throat. “Did you have a dog named Romeo?” I ask Blanck.
He blinks. A small grin lifts one side of his mouth. How is it that sometimes the very worst people have a soft spot for animals? “Yes. I did.”
I listen, and Spirit gives me another detail.
“And when you’d call him inside, you’d shout, ‘Romeo,Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’ Your mother enjoyed that quite a lot.”
Blanck’s whole demeanor shifts. His posture loosens, and his face softens. “Yes.”
I can’t continue. I can’t watch him become human before me. I will lose my nerve for our plan. My eyesight grows shadowy at the edges with the magnetized pull of the Dark Trio. My eardrums scream, like I’m under leagues of seawater in the Dark Legion’s presence. Of course they are here, now. My blood freezes, my insides turn to ice. I start to fall…
And then I feel it. A spider, crawling on the skin of my leg. Then another, on the nape of my neck. I look at my hands, my arms. I am covered in hundreds—thousands?—of huge, hairy spiders. They crawl over my clothing, they creep underneath it… I am paralyzed by this illusion. I cannot scream and jump and lose our shot at getting into this party. I cannot sweep them free from my skin. Max Blank would think me mad. Iammad. I squeeze my eyes and will this hallucination togo away.
Kiyoko lays a hand on my shoulder. It anchors me to this moment, the here and now. “Romeo, yes!” Her voice sounds tinny, far away. “What a scamp! He would steal your father’s pipe and gnaw it if it wasn’t properly stored.”
Blanck inhales sharply, steeling himself against these gentle memories. “Parlor readings, you say?” he asks Clarice. “They’re popular?”
“Hedda Hopper will positively eat it up.” Clarice offers a coy smile and laces her arm in the crook of his elbow. “Would I lead you any other way?”
Blanck squints at me. “I want you to really play it up, then.The ridiculous shirts and the jewelry and the turban and all that. Dress like a full-on fortune teller, right?”
“Yes, of course. That’s all part of what we offer.” It is now.
He’s already walking away. “Arrive at five p.m. sharp to set up. Not early, not late. Five p.m. The party begins at six. You’ll be paid at the end of the evening.”
His instructions make it clear: We’ll have one hour to prep for our shenanigans. Will it be enough time?
Just as he’s walking out the door, Clarice punches Blanck abruptly in the sternum, knocking the breath out of him. She snaps her fingers with one hand and grips his chin tightly with the claws of her other.
“Eyes up here,” she barks. Blanck is so startled, he obeys.
