Page 131 of The Witch They Fear

The whiplash nearly makes me laugh.

Cool. Great. We're doing this.

I shove the blanket off my lap and stand, and the room tilts only a little, and I find my missing shoe under the coffee table where it has no business being.

"Right. The Revel. Mandatory fun. Memento mori. Can't wait to watch Leopold give another speech about how the dead really, deeply want us to drink wine and look hot."

"Calypso."

I turn at the bottom of the stairs.

He hasn't moved from the bookshelf. The sconce light catches his face, and for half a second he isn't a professor or a warden—just a man looking at someone he wishes he could keep.

"Be careful tonight," he says.

It isn't what he almost said. But it's what he's giving me, and his voice has gone rough at the edges, and I take it.

"I'm always careful," I lie.

"You're never careful."

"Okay, well I’ll try harder." I climb two stairs. "I have to go. I'm meeting Nellie—I need to run home first, I bet I look like a mess, and if I show up to her dorm like this she'll have a fit."

The corner of his mouth twitches.

My belly warms when I see it.

"Go," he says.

I go. Through the warded door, the magic humming once over my skin in recognition before it lets me pass—and I don't look back.

At some point, I will have to face all the feelings in my chest for Aamon–but not today.

Today is the Revel.

And I’m determined to have a good time.

∞∞∞

Caillot House smells like stagnant water and hairspray and somebody's curling iron set one degree too hot, and the second I come through the door of Nellie's suite four women look up and lose their minds.

"There she is." Nellie's across the room before I've got my shoes off, grabbing my good arm, holding me out at arm's length for the sweep. "You showered. Bless. You've also got bags under your eyes you could pack for a trip—where have you—you know what, don't tell me. Tell me later. Today, we're getting you ready."

"I don't need much," I say. "I have a black dress. I'll put on the black dress."

The room makes a collective sound like I've suggested attending in a trash bag.

"Absolutely not," Tess says from the floor, where she's surrounded by what appears to be the entire contents of three closets. "It's the Revel, Cal. It's the one night a year the noble houses let everybody into the good rooms specifically so they can look down on us in them. So you're going to walk in there looking like the thing they're scared of, and you're going to look expensive doing it."

"That's the spirit," Margo says mildly, not looking up from the row of little pots she's lining along the coffee table. Healing track, apparently, includes cosmetics. "Sit. I'm doing your face. You've got cheekbones people pay surgeons for—this'll be the easiest job I've had all week. We'll glow you up. Gently."

"Gently," I repeat.

"Clinically gently. I’m a pro."

Shandy's already holding something up against me—a length of fabric that drinks the lamplight and gives almost nothing back. Darker than black, somehow. The color the bayou goes at the dock at night when it's the new moon.

"This one," she says. Quiet. Certain, in the way I'm learning means I'm not really asking. "It wants to be yours tonight."