Page 66
“I’ve had a long life. Gone to many parties.”
“You can’t be much older than me, Marcella. And I don’t believe for a second you’ve been through something like this before.”
“Don’t you worry about me.” I soften. “But if you like, I’ll make sure you’re with Lyle, or even Evan, if they’re present and available.”
“But what about the after-party? It doesn’t even say where it is. Or when. What if I lose you in the house with all those people?” I move toward her, but she stiffens. “I’m serious, Marcella. We need a solid plan, not like with Dean Shea’s office.”
I’ve always done better without. “The house isn’t too large—you’ll be close enough to find me if you need me, and I certainly won’t go off to the after-party without you. Why don’t we reconvene in that horrid little hallway outside the dean’s study, sometime following cocktails? When we’re there we can set a time.”
She doesn’t look convinced, rubbing her arms and looking past me to the door. “I guess.”
“You just need to listen, lamb. You’ll be safe.”
We leave her room and I wait patiently as I can as she locks the door, checks twice. The Uber is waiting for us downstairs already, and as we get into the black SUV, Lacie grabs my hand. Her fingertips are cold from the short walk from Craven to the campus drive, her heart thrumming faster than usual. It sends a crackle of electricity through my skin, how easily she reaches for me, how close to danger she puts herself without even realizing it.
“The last time I went to the dean’s house was the night Arjun went missing,” she whispers. “What if something bad happens again?”
“We’re going to try to stop it.” I cup her face in a hand, smile gently down at her.
“But if we can’t? What if more people…” Lacie turns away and looks out the window, the snow-frosted suburbs slipping by in an icy haze of frozen colonial clapboard and slick Victorian gables.
I wish I could solve this for her. More people will die. People always die. I’m the one killing them, often. I sigh, tucking my hands together. “Let us hope we find the culprit tonight.”
When we pull up to the dean’s house, it is much changed from the last time I saw it.
The entire property, including its sizeable lawn, is covered in a gargantuan circus tent of sorts; the exterior appears to be a normal rental, white and plasticky, but inside it’s as dark as a black hole. I see some candles flickering, namely toward the front door of the dean’s house itself, but the tent extends the footprint darkly, dramatically, over the street and side streets.
Lacie flicks her eyes to mine. “I suppose you see why I was worried, now.”
“Why didn’t you mention this to me? Didn’t you go last year?” Frustration heats my words, my throat. Now it will be hard to keep track of her, and this little plan—if we could even call it that—is veering dangerously close to going off the rails.
Lacie pulls me into the line, nodding at people she knows with a vague kind of smile on her face. “I didn’t realize, truly. As I said, I’ve heard it changes every time. Maybe it has to do with…” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “… the murders?”
Frowning, I cast my vision toward the house. From here, I can see the side of it, the back door triangulated by a square of dead, frosty grass. There’s a man in a full suit and a chimpanzee mask lugging a suitcase, probably delivering more booze.
The line straightens as we approach the dean’s house, and for a moment I think we’ll go inside. Instead, an attendant checks our names against the list outside of the front door and hands us twin wrapped packages, then gives me a silvery wristband for the after-party.
“What are these?” I ask him. He looks down at me from behind a joker’s mask, the unnatural smile twisting and eerie.
“Take a wild guess,” he says, snide, his voice a Bostonian brogue. “Not allowed inside unless you wear them.”
Lacie and I shred our packages as we stand to the side, the pale gold paper falling to the ground. My mask is a fox’s head while Lacie’s is a kitten’s, and both are eerily lifelike. They have real fur and glass eyes. But while hers has a cute little smiling mouth, mine has exposed teeth, needle-sharp and bared inside the fox’s long snout. They have our names on the back—this has all been cruelly, mercilessly calculated.
“Are you sure this is only meant to be Classics? It seems like the whole school is here.” The din presses past us, charging beneath the wide arms of the tent to make merry.
“It must be all the alumni. Decades of them.” She sounds uncertain. “Do you think it’s strange to invite so many people who aren’t students?”
“I guess that’s better cover. Also explains all the old men.”
As we talk, we move slowly under the front tent. Inside, deep red velvet swaths loop from the ceiling, fires roaring in two of the corners. The temperature dials up quickly, frosty air forgotten as toes and fingers thaw and mugs of spiked apple cider are passed around by masked waiters. The covered area seems to go on forever, a riot of heartbeats and string music from an unseen quartet. Lacie clings to my arm, the wide glass eyes of her kitten mask staring sightlessly ahead.
“How will you get inside?” she asks, her voice soft but frantic.
The air tastes sweet with charged energy. Men whoop and guffaw over rank cigar smoke, women titter together in gaggles of pearls and sparkling gems. Alive, alive, alive. “I’m not sure we need to get inside the house anymore.” The words come out of my mouth strangely distant and slow.
“But isn’t that the point of all this?”
There’s an opportunity here for me. My body sings with it.
