“Thank you for coming, Lady Rose.” She touches my elbow. “My husband does not believe in your talents, but I do.”
Aye, Stella, that’s my sister! I died in the fire, too. Worked right alongside those seamstresses. ’Twas a great job.
Until it wasn’t.
My stomach turns at this male voice. Her brother. Baby powder has wormed its way into the creases under Bertha’s eyes, and I see, up close, how weary she looks. Perhaps I was wrong before, thinking that destroying whole families is the best revenge. Her brother, my sister, died alongside each other. She’s collateral damage in this plan of ours.
It’s not too late to call this off, is it? Leave all the stuff we’ve already lifted in a pile and escape?
It’s not.
Call it off, Stella.
“Ah, but it does feel good to entertain again,” she says, inhaling the scents around us: roast beef and perfume and musty furs. “How I’ve missed being seen in a positive light, as employers and philanthropists. Where is allthatcoverage? The pesky press, ignoring all of our good deeds.”
Hmmph. Nope. Calling off nothing.
Bertha Blanck’s eyes light up. “Yes, best to leave the past in the past, I say.”
I need air. I cross to one of the two-story windows, and I am dwarfed by its size. Far below, in the park across the street next to city hall and the post office, Reverend Jenkins and his zealots have set up camp, next to an army of paparazzi. Theymust’ve found this party through our pal Hedda Hopper, too. It makes me dizzy, seeing them so tiny, eleven stories below. Like a swarm of stinging red ants. The zealots carry signs and ring bells and clang pots, and if I watch them closely enough, I can almost hear their chants:Sorcery! Necromancy! Black magic!
I can’t believe they’re here, tonight. Like the darkest part of my own conscience, telling me how evil I am.
This is a grave mistake, Stella.
I thought you promised to abandon me, I say to Spirit. But Spirit is relentless.
You need to turn around right now. Walk away.
There is still time.
We WILL abandon you, my love. We will.
My anxiousness spins into anger. I look at my face reflected in the sheen of the dark glass window: My eyes are hollowed out, my skin warped with the waves of the glass. I grit my teeth.
Stop it, I snarl at Spirit.I am at my breaking point. YOU are the reason Reverend Jenkins and his ilk hate me, why they threaten violence without even knowing me. YOU are the reason why I begged Daisy to take that shirtwaist factory job.
And then I do it. I say to my Team of Light:YOU are the reason she is dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
My nerves are getting the better of me, so I scan the room in an effort to ground myself; this penthouse looks different here, in person, than in the blueprints. It’s far more lavish and overwrought than I could’ve imagined. The back half of the penthouse has two stories, but this party is confined to the three great rooms in the front, all of which stretch twenty feet high. The private elevator empties into an echoing marble-and-mirror entrance hall. In it, a large bar cabinet is filled with dozens of cut crystal decanters. This crowd plans on getting very, very drunk.
Off the left of the foyer is a massive dining hall, where clusters of tall tables dot the perimeter, near the twenty-foot windows. A fire is lit in the gigantic fireplace at the far end of the room, and its mantel is adorned with a massive, one-story-high gilded mirror. Three crystal chandeliers, each the size of a cable car, glisten overhead. A long, mahogany table glides down the center of the room.
If the dining hall is pink spun sugar, then the parlor is fine brandy. Directly off the right of the foyer, a parlor is stuffed with soft leather finishings and fifteen-foot potted palms. Its footprint is the mirror image of the dining room across the hall. There is a fireplace with a large mirror adorning its mantel, and a grandfather clock whose bells chime every quarter hour.And the bookshelves! Every inch of wall space is covered with leather tomes. The large windows overlook lower Manhattan, adorned with twenty-foot-long silk damask draperies. And outside these windows, the shadowy Woolworth Building climbs into the sky with steel fingers.
This is the room from the painting. My heart pangs with an odd sense of nostalgia, as though I’ve been here before. I wish I could see Pax right now. I’m feeling wildly adrift and nervous as hell, and I could use the sense of calm I get when his eyes lock with mine.
No, I scold myself. I’ve made it this far on my own. The last few weeks do not change that. Too, I feel more and more certain I’ve made a mistake with that kiss. He’s been cold, his aura gray and spiky, ever since. I won’t waste my energy on pining for him tonight.
Despite that decision, I feel eyes on me, and I turn, and my heart blooms. Pax. He leans in the doorway leading into the kitchen, at the back left of the foyer. That tilt of his, with his arms crossed over his chest and his hair flopping adorably to the side, steals my breath away. He wears his trim black catering uniform from Bellissimo Cibo, and pinned above his heart is a bright red carnation. It’s stunning, this fist of a flower, like seeing someone’s angered heart outside their body.
But as has been the case lately, an odd energy vibrates off him, like small staticky shocks. His eyes skitter over mine, making no connection. We are, of course, not supposed to know each other, but this? Odd. Something is definitely off. Perhaps he’s shutting me out now, so it’ll be easier for him to disappear after this party.
The women of this party, like women everywhere, take noteof Pax. Their eyes slide in his direction, they flutter their eyelashes when his green gaze connects with theirs. Pax is as stunning as a bolt of lightning illuminating a night sky, and I am both amused and disturbed by all these women, so blatantly willing to be scorched by a stray bolt.
I suppose I am among those willing to get burnt.
