Page 5

I’m staring at a stranger’s mouth across a nightclub, and I’ve been holding my breath.

He looks up.

I should look away. I don’t, and neither does he. He holds my eyes from forty feet across the room, and he takes his time about it. His gaze moves over my face, slowly, down to my mouth, and back up. I feel it everywhere it goes.

My skin is too warm. My glass is sweating in my hand, and I’m suddenly aware of the exact place where my dress ends above my knee.

A woman in a black dress with an earpiece touches his elbow and leans in to speak to him. He holds my eyes for one more second before he turns away to listen to her.

I let out my breath.

The woman in the emerald dress is at a high-top on the main aisle, a few yards toward the front from where I’m sitting, laughing with three friends. She turns her back on her table to hug someone who has just arrived, and the man in the charcoal suit standing beside her table checks over his left shoulder, then his right.

I noticed him a few minutes ago without thinking about it. He’s been standing there too long without a drink of his own.

His hand passes over her glass. A tiny vial flashes between his fingers, and he tips it. Then it’s back in his pocket, and he’s drifting a few steps back toward the corridor as if he’s waiting for a friend.

I’m off my stool before I’ve decided to move.

“Hey!” The music swallows it. Two men carrying drinks step into the aisle in front of me, and I have to shove past them. “Don’t drink that!”

She turns back to her table and picks up her glass.

“Stop!”

She hears me that time. She looks over, confused, with the glass already at her lips, and swallows.

I get to her a second later and knock it out of her hand. It shatters on the floor, splashing ice and pink liquid across my boots.

“What the hell?” one of her friends says.

“He put something in her drink.” I turn and point at the man in the charcoal suit, who has backed up another step toward the corridor.

“I only had a sip,” the woman says. Then she touches her throat. Her lips are going pale. She looks at me, and her confusion turns to fear.

Her knees buckle. I get my arms under hers and lower her to the floor in the aisle, away from the broken glass, and one of her friends drops down beside us and takes her head in her lap.

“Help!” I shout toward the bar. “We need help over here!”

A man in a black staff shirt is already pushing through the crowd toward us with a bag in his hand.

Then pain shoots through my right palm.

It’s like grabbing a pan straight out of the oven. I gasp and turn my hand over. Thin silver lines are spreading under my skin, branching from the center of my palm toward my fingers and glowing faintly.

Above us, the room lights up.

Silver light races along the brass in the arches, the crown molding, the seams of the floorboards. It lights up symbols carved into the brick and wood that I didn’t notice when I walked in, angles and curves I don’t have names for, blazing one after another down the length of the room. It flashes off every glass, every bottle, the mirror behind the bar.

The music stops in the middle of a beat.

“Wards,” the bartender in the black vest says, sharp and low.

Some of the people around me look at the walls and each other in confusion. More of them don’t. They simply freeze. Apparently they know something I haven’t figured out yet, but judging by their faces, I’m not sure I want to. Near the red door, the man with the horns has backed against the wall. Security is coming through the crowd from the front and from the bar.

The man in the staff shirt drops to his knees beside the woman and rolls her onto her side. He puts two fingers against her throat and speaks quietly to the friend holding her head. I don’t know what any of this means. My hand is on fire.

Behind me, the man in the charcoal suit makes a choked sound.