Oh, I feel sick. But Evalyn quickly forgets this small run-in. She pouts and removes the necklace from her boxer’s scruff. She lifts it to her décolletage, hands poised at her cheekbones, eyebrows raised.
“Max, darling,” Evalyn coos at Blanck, her eyes already glassy slits from several quick sips of gin. She lifts the Hope Diamond to her throat and whirls her back toward Blanck. “Help me with this clasp, won’t you?”
Blanck’s beefy fingers fumble with the clasp at the base ofEvalyn’s updo. He is too proud to request his spectacles to see the clasp better, so he squints and grunts at it instead.
Blanck clasps the necklace at last. Evalyn whirls about and lifts the massive gem off her décolletage toward him. He bends forward to peer at it. I can practically feel Blanck’s hot, sticky breath fogging up the slick surface of the diamond.
“May I fondle your gem?” he says with a chuckle, and a greasy grin slides over his face.
Evalyn swallows uneasily but says, “Help yourself.”
There is a long, silent moment while everyone watches Blanck rub his stubby fingers over the blue-hued gem. He leans so close, he can likely see his reflection in it.
His greed, at this moment, is palpable.
It has a heartbeat.
It is a growling stomach.
A dry throat.
The screams of 146 lives lost in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire rise around me in a horrifying crescendo. I cringe. I am immediately hot, sweaty, short of breath. I grip the back of the chair next to me.
Blanck lays the gem back on Evalyn McLean’s chest, and the screams of women on fire fade. “So. Is it really cursed?”
Evalyn’s eyes gleam and her face tilts into an impish grin. “We’ll see.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I can’t stop futzing with the costume I’m wearing. It’s tight and hot and itchy.
She’s a hoot, our Stella.
All the shiny things and the jangling chains and the floofy skirts!
And that turban!
Spirit flashes an image of a circus clown at me, and I understand: I am an overdone caricature. I huff,Thanks. Spirit cackles, but I’m grateful to hear them tease me, if I’m being honest. They’ve done little more than admonish me this evening. And I’d cackle at me, too.
I spy Pax across the room again, and my heart feels as though it’s been pierced. He’s not supposed to be here, in this room, and he’s… changed clothes?! He’s now wearing a sharp-as-knives tuxedo and gloves. This isn’t the plan at all. I dismiss my first thought—which was more of a warm sensation washing over me at the sight of him in formal attire—and I cross to him quickly.
“Why did you change?” I whisper.
Pax turns to me. His face lifts in a half smile. But it’s not the half of his face that usually lifts when Pax grins. It’s his mirror image. And there’s a dimple there, in the opposite cheek.
“I haven’t changed,” he replies. His eyes scan me. “But for you I would.”
A thrill chases down my spine. This isn’t Pax. Everything about him: his green eyes, the stubble on his jaw, his energy—it’s all darker than Pax’s. More sinister. And that draw I feel toward Pax, the connection that is natural, organic, authentic: It’s not here. If anything, it’s the opposite, next to this young man.Repelled.
But I am most certainly intrigued.
This Pax look-alike raises an eyebrow at me. The green eyes don’t dance as Pax’s do. They… rage. “Are you a ballerina?”
I must look confused, because this not-Pax reaches over and gently lifts the hem of my skirts to show the ballet slippers I’m wearing.
“You’re en pointe,” he says, tilting his head. My stomach flutters at the look he gives, at the gesture of him lifting my skirts.
The skirts I’m wearing are quite full. He’d have to be very observant to have noticed a peek of a ballet slipper from beneath them.
