Page 29 of The Scarlet Ball

“That’s probably true enough. We must go make our excuses to Mrs. Gracen and a few others.”

We did, or at least I think we did. I only needed one glance at the crowd before I dropped my eyes to the floor. The faces of the guests were limned with some light that came from within them, making them seem like masks. Anything might live behind those masks, and I glimpsed something frantic dashing behind the eyes of Mrs. Teasdale of the Boston Teasdales, something armored and cold behind Mr. Andrew Brophy’s.

From the corner of my eye, above the crowd and beyond them, I could see moving shapes. I thought of ripped flags flapping in a killing storm, and I thought of torn banners from the ramparts of conquered cities. These were the demon lords, and the words ran like a rosary through my head: Don’t look at me, please do not look at me, I beg you, do not look at me.

Somehow, I paid my respects to the Gracens, and I stood quietly by when Mrs. Howard was stopped repeatedly on our way to the door, one matron or another who wanted to know if she was available for some talk or committee or other engagement. I waited by her side as they spoke, placid as a little cow, and in my head, I sang the filthiest songs I knew so I wouldn’t be tempted to scream at them all to go look in the garden, just go look in the garden.

A small eternity later, we were safe in the carriage, and Mrs. Howard settled in with the gravity of a hanging judge.

“All right. Now what in the name of God happened?”

By then I had my voice back, and I could stumble through it. There was not much to tell, but twice she had to brace me with fortifying sips from her little flask before I could go on. She frowned when I described stealing off with Sebastian, and that made me laugh because she didn’t even twitch when I came to what became of him. Instead, she only looked worried, twisting the tassel on her reticule between her fingers.

“Strange and stranger,” she mused to herself. “There has been no sign of the newcomer ’til now. I have not heard of anyone making any new contracts with the daughterless families, but perhaps I have not been listening as closely as I should have.”

So that was how they did it, I thought through the velvet cushioning of the drink. Even a demon lord could not materialize a name and a lineage out of nothing. They were adopted by contract into the families who hadn’t thrown a girl. No wonder she’d had so many sleepless nights over her books—there were apparently rules for the disposal of the boys, and the brawler at the White Ball had broken all of them. I choked back a laugh because how egalitarian of them, to sacrifice their sons as well as their daughters.

My teeth chattered like dice in a cup, and impatient, Mrs. Howard gave me a longer pull from her flask. It was my deepest drink yet, and I fell against the cushions of the carriage, staring between the parting of the carriage curtains at the city outside.

The city seen through the window was different than the city you walked, I thought. If I was walking, I would have been miserable, watching the carriages go past with a kind of dull animosity that anyone should be warm when I was so cold. At that moment, the carriage rumbled past a figure in shopgirl black carrying a hatbox before her. For a split second, I was sure I was looking at myself all those weeks ago, on her way to the Howards’ house, exhausted to the bone and unaware that it was all going to change.

I nearly shouted a warning to her, but then we rode under a streetlamp, and I could see her face.

That’s not me, I realized, and then I wondered how I was so sure.

“Close your eyes,” Mrs. Howard said. “Demoniac likes to live in the eyes. It’ll leave you sooner if you give it nothing to eat.”

I was strangely loath to do so. The city beyond the window seemed smudged to me, the signs blurred to illegibility, the windows we passed shuttered to hide the precious things inside. There were people passing in the streets and on the sidewalks, carriages drawing too close to ours and warded off with a crack of the driver’s whip, but they were muted as well, more the frayed suggestion of a city than the thing itself.

Everything felt thin in that moment, as if we were in some borderland neighborhood where one city flowed without interruption to the next. How had I been so blind that I thought cities were separate from one another? Of course they shared fruit markets and slaughter yards and swimming pools and theaters. Of course every city was every other city, one great and endlessly hungry mob pressing out in hamlets and suburbs until it had taken over the world.

If the carriage windows hadn’t been fused shut, I would have leaned out into the street, and I would ask all the people walking by, Have you seen Paris? It is my city, you see, and I have lost it.

I would just go to look for it, I promised myself, slouching back against the cushions. There was no harm in looking. I would be so fast, no one would ever know I was there at all. For a minute, I would be gone from this strange city, back in my own strange city. I would crawl into my past like a cocoon, stitching it up behind me.

Out the window, a pack of wild dogs roamed down the curb, heads and tails up, their shadows running along beside them and doubling their number. Twice I saw a human shadow rise from the rest, some small thin child carried along in a coat made of wolfhound or setter, and twice it sank down among the others. A moment later, they were gone, and we went on to the Howards’ house.

There was a footman there to take our coats, and as if she did not trust me on my own, Mrs. Howard marched me straight to the door of my room. Her hand was hard on my elbow, but I was grateful for it. The shadows of the house seemed particularly long that night, and sharp, but of course they would respect her. She ruled here.

She paused at the door, swinging me around so she could give my face a long and searching look. I could not say what she found there—could she see Alex and what we had done? Could she see how little I thought of him and how hard-won that was?—but finally she let me go.

“You cannot think I am pleased by your dalliance with Sebastian Rowe. As unfortunate as the matter is, we are lucky he will make you no trouble.”

“Lucky!” The word tasted unexpectedly like apple in my mouth.

“As I said. And I will not punish you, because it hardly seems as if you will feel it tonight, but I hope you have learned. There are consequences for all your actions. Tonight, you were lucky. You may not be so again.”

She left me, and I stumbled blindly into my room. I tried to slam the door behind me, but I shook so much that it took two tries to close it, and then I slid to my knees on the ground, leaning my forehead against the door as I whimpered softly.

There was the shush of a slipper against the carpet, and then a pair of soft hands on my shoulders, the smell of something sweet in the air.

“You should try to stand—”

“I will. I will. Only, Mielle, I do not think I should look at you.”

“All right. Will you close your eyes and let me help you stand?”

I thought I could do that, and she was as steady as an iron post as I leaned into her. I stood blind as she removed the Howards’ face from mine, and then as she stripped me down to the skin. She was a moving warmth that dressed me in a cool, crisp shift and brushed out my hair before loosely braiding it down my back, and I wished I was brave enough to look at her.