We all glance at one another, silently confirming the unfortunate reality that Brendan is being appointed. I remember Ash telling me that Jag took over as head of the Family when he was only a teenager, and that everything went sideways from there. I can’t imagine that power will look any better on Brendan.
“Of course this appointment comes with a heavy heart after the untimely passing of his stepfather,” Jag says, like it’s a great tragedy. “But as I always say, one must not lose oneself in sorrow at a time like this, but rely on logic and strategy….”
People around the room nod and Jag clocks their agreement.
“Strategic planning to apprehend the perpetrator of this unforgivable attack, who we believe further insulted our Family by removing a lion from its rightful habitat,” Jag says, and the crowd hangs on his every word.
I look at Ash to see if he’s thinking what I’m thinking, that my dad intentionally provoked Jag with the zoo prank because he knew Jag wouldn’t let it pass without saying something.
“Whoever the criminal is, I assure you that he will be not only eliminated, but made an example of,” Jag continues. “We are employing all available resources. And in addition to our own skilled trackers, we’ve contracted the Ferryman in this sensitive matter.”
There are approving murmurs throughout the room. While this is information I already have, it somehow sounds more ominous coming from Jag.
Jag waits for the crowd. “And I am pleased to report that the updates have been most promising. In fact”—he pauses for effect—“we may very well have the culprit in hand before the end of the evening.”
Surprise ripples through the room and I find myself frozen. The masked Strategia begin to whisper to one another.
Aarya looks at me with worry in her eyes. If Aarya’s worried, it means that wasn’t Jag’s bravado—my dad is in real and immediate danger.
“Now,” Jag says, “let’s not spend any more time on this unpleasantness. This is, after all, a celebration.” He lifts his champagne glass. “To my grandson, Brendan.”
“To Brendan,” the crowd echoes, and Jag returns to his seat.
I glance at Ash, my pulse racing, but he’s not looking at me, he’s looking at the crowd. The band once again starts playing and the room explodes with excited conversation.
“November,” Aarya says with insistence, and I turn toward her. “Now. You need to find that message from your father now.” She nods in the direction of the door. Hawk stands inside it, scouring the party guests like he’s looking for something. And I’m willing to bet the something he’s looking for is me.
My breath comes fast and my mind spins, making it harder to concentrate. I scan the decorations again, searching for anything that might spark recognition. But they appear as uniform as they did a few minutes ago. I want to cry out of frustration. Everywhere I look is a dead end. The crowd thins a bit behind us, and Aarya pushes us farther into the center of the room and away from Hawk.
“November,” Aarya says again with emphasis.
“I know,” I say, matching her urgency, trying to clear my thoughts of panic.
“Well, whether you know or not, we need to get out of here,” she says.
“Enough, Aarya. You’re not helping,” Ash says.
“Helping? I’m trying to keep us alive,” Aarya says.
“Don’t focus on the room, focus on what you know,” Ines says, and I turn to her. “You told us you used to make party decorations with your father, no? What exactly did you do?”
I consider Ines’s question, forcing myself not to look at the surrounding threats. “We built them from scratch. We’d go to the art supply store and a hardware store and spend a good couple of weeks during the summer constructing them,” I say.
“Let’s start with that. Most of these decorations aren’t handmade,” Ines says, and I realize she’s right. “Arguably nothing in this room was crafted except the centerpieces on the tables.”
Ash nods his agreement. “And in those centerpieces, the most handcrafted item is the branch with the pinecones—the tips were painted white and they had to be glued onto the branch,” he offers, and before he even finishes speaking, I’m looking at the centerpieces, hopeful.
“So, okay, sentimental pinecones,” Aarya says with urgency, telling me we’re just about out of time. “Let’s start looking.”
We weave in and out of the tables, subtly inspecting the pinecones in each vase as we go. But each table has decorations like the one before it—one branch, four pinecones, and no message. My stomach twists and my chest tightens. My eyes flit nervously to Hawk. If we’re wrong about these pinecones, there’s no time to make a second guess.
Once again the band stops, only this time it’s Rose who stands. “If everyone will please take their seats, the serving staff will bring in dinner,” she says, and her delivery is cold, lacking the charisma that came so easily to her father. “Your invitation included your seating assignment. However, if you are unsure which table number is yours, please consult the gentleman at the entrance.” She gestures toward Hawk. “Enjoy.”
“Oh, shit,” I say, and we all share a look. We are about to become blaringly obvious the moment people sit down.
“If we’re lucky there will be openings at one or more of the tables,” Ash says, and I can hear the apology in his voice. “But getting into them without being noticed is unlikely. I’m sorry, November, it’s time for us to go.”
I fight back panic. “The Ferryman is closing in on my dad—tonight. There’s no way I can leave when we’re this close.”
“Finding the message isn’t worth being killed,” Ash says when I don’t move.
I hesitate for a moment longer, searching for any argument that we should stay. But as much as I hate it, I know Ash is right—there’s no finding my dad if Jag gets ahold of us.
Aarya eyes Hawk. “We’re not getting back through that door, not without creating a scene.”
“We’ll have to risk the bathrooms,” Ash says, and Ines nods her agreement, but I don’t ask them what they mean because all my concentration is still on the pinecones.
Aarya leads the way to the door with the WC sign above it and the large security guard. We pass tables twenty-two and twenty-three, which I scour with unabashed hope. But like all the other centerpieces, there is nothing unique about the pinecones. I feel like screaming, I’m so mad at myself, at my dad, and at the situation in general.
Every step we take toward the door feels like a failure.
“November,” Ash says when I lag by a step.
“Fifty tables, Ash, and we only looked at fifteen of them,” I say. “Why on earth would my dad leave us that many tables to search? He could have at least left me the table number in the last clue.” And as soon as I say it, I stop walking and look up at Ash with new determination. “Ash, when was the date of that historic ball from Logan’s sign? The Bal des Ardents.” My words are fast.
Ash stops, too, and his eyebrows momentarily dip. “The year was 1393.” He pauses. “I want to say January?”
“We will never exit this room,” Aarya says, like maybe we don’t understand the gravity of getting caught, “if we don’t walk toward the door.”
“Ines, what was the date of Bal des Ardents?” Ash says, ignoring Aarya.
“January twenty-eighth, 1393,” Ines replies, and recognition of the missing clue sparks in her eyes.
“So table twenty-eight,” Ash says.
“Or table one,” I say, “for January,” and as the words leave my mouth, I realize my mistake. “Go. I’ll catch up.”
I turn, immediately walking toward the tables, not asking them to come with me—with more than half the crowd seated, it’s a risk I don’t expect them to take.
If one is for January, then eleven is for November.
But as I near the tables, it occu
rs to me that I can’t inspect the pinecones in front of the dinner crowd. And I don’t have a plan for taking the pinecone branch out of the arrangement. I’m going to look like a complete nutter or like I’m up to something. I press my nails into my palm. Think, November, this is your only shot.
I’m so focused on getting to table eleven that I accidentally bump into a Strategia woman holding a glass of champagne, almost knocking it out of her hand.
“Pardon,” I say in my best imitation of a proper Layla, and I wobble my step as I move away from her. “I think I’ve had a few too many glasses myself,” I say with a smile, quickly explaining away my un-Strategia-like clumsiness.
“That’s quite all right,” she says, like she doesn’t mean it, and before she can scrutinize me too closely, I turn and zigzag through the tables.
And it occurs to me, if that woman will accept a claim of drunkenness, maybe others will, too. After all, this is a celebration and there appear to be copious amounts of alcohol. I stop abruptly in front of table eleven, which is already three-quarters full.
“Good ol’ table twenty-one,” I say, hiccupping and plopping sloppily down in a chair that has a woman’s scarf on it.
The man next to me frowns disapprovingly. “This is table eleven,” he says. “And you’re in my wife’s seat.”
“Oh my goodness gracious,” I say, ignoring him. “Have you ever seen such a lovely centerpiece?” I flick a decorative branch with my pointer finger. “It’s just”—another hiccup escapes in what I consider a damn good impression of myself drinking whisky—“beaufitul, beautitul, feautibul.”
“Please do forgive us,” Ash’s voice says behind me, and I lean back, nearly falling out of my chair. I grab the table for support. “We went to the bar a little too early this evening,” he says, taking my arm to help me stand.
I wobble and swipe the branch with the pinecones. “You’re not getting away from me that easily, gorgeous,” I say to the branch, and pause as though it’s speaking back to me. “No! You flirt!” I pause again. “Oh, all right, but only one…,” and then I press the pinecone into the man’s cheek and make a kissing sound. His face looks so shocked that I don’t need to concoct a laugh. The one that erupts from my mouth is real.
Ash immediately escorts me away, shooting an apologetic look over his shoulder, and I make a show of stumbling as I hug my pinecone branch. I resist looking up at Brendan or back at Hawk. Each step we take through the tables feels like it could be our last.
A few people take note of us, and I hiccup as I pass, leaning my weight on Ash as we go. Just let us get out of this room. Twenty more feet and we’re in the clear. As we reach the end of the tables, I get a good look at Aarya and Ines. They haven’t left, but they are standing awfully close to the exit.
As we approach, I realize Aarya isn’t looking at us but past us and across the room, and I can tell by her expression that she doesn’t like what she sees.
“Hawk’s looking this way,” she says, and it takes all my self-control not to make a run for it.
Instead, we walk at a reasonable pace to the door, me wobbling and laughing.
“I’m correct in assuming this is the way to the loo?” Ines says to the guard as though she owned the place, and the confidence in her voice surprises me.
He nods, examining each one of us and pausing when he gets to me and the branch I’m clutching. He tilts his head, unsure, like he might tell me to leave it behind. My heart pounds against my ribs and I do the only thing I can think of in that moment. I lick it. I lick the branch from bottom to top, because even children know that no one wants to touch something someone else licked.
The guard narrows his eyes and Ash steadies me as I wobble.
“Are you going to open the door?” Aarya says, impatient, daring the guard to object. “Or are you merely decorative, in which case, step aside.”
The guard grumbles under his breath at Aarya’s rudeness, but her challenge works and he opens the door.
Ines nods a thank-you and Ash helps me out of the room. The minute the door closes behind us, we pause for a fraction of a second to examine the empty hall ending in two doors. There are no turns leading back to the lobby, no windows to climb out of; there is no way out.
I look at Ash, my eyes widening. “Please tell me we didn’t just trap ourselves.”
But he’s not looking at me, he’s walking and so are the others. “Not sure yet.”
I grip the branch a bit tighter, as though I were protecting it from an unseen threat, and follow them to the end of the hall.
Aarya opens the door to the women’s room and Ines and I follow her. She quickly bends down, checking underneath the stalls, and opens the door again, beckoning Ash in. He locks it behind him.
He looks at the bathroom like he’s planning a battle. “No windows.”
“Not a one,” Aarya says. “And despite my applause-worthy work with that guard, I’d say we have about ten minutes before he comes back here looking for us.”
I scan the room, my eyes falling on a vent near the ceiling. “Don’t commercial buildings have huge heating and cooling vents? Could we maybe—”
“That only works in the movies,” Aarya says.
“While some HVACs might be large enough to fit us, if we attempted to crawl through it, we would make an untold amount of noise,” Ash explains.
“So what exactly are we—” I start, but stop as I realize they’re now staring up. I would stammer about how we’re not actually going to climb through the ceiling, but of course we are. It makes more sense than any other route right now. And suddenly I’m reminded of something Professor Basurto said during my first tree-climbing class. There’s my favorite use of trees—evasion. They are the perfect escape route because they offer unpredictable terrain. While this isn’t a tree, it follows the same basic principle of evasion by using the things around you in unusual ways.
Ash carries over a fancy garbage can that has a small hole in the top and a wide lip. He climbs on top of it and pushes aside one of the ceiling tiles.
He sticks his head up into the ceiling. “It’s wide enough,” he says, and the moment he says so, Aarya and Ines start unzipping their dresses.
“Unless you want your skirt to get caught on some wiring and potentially plummet through the ceiling, I suggest you change now,” Aarya says, and I don’t waste a moment.
Ash pulls off his black-and-gold cape and tosses it into the ceiling with a light thud, climbing up after it. I yank my skirt over my head, and as it hits the floor, Aarya scoops it up, climbs onto the garbage can, and hands all three of our dresses and masks up to Ash. I can hear them hit the bathroom ceiling in various places as he throws them, which I suppose makes more sense than trying to drag them behind us.
I readjust my sweatshirt, placing my phone in my pocket and checking my boot dagger. Ines glances nervously at the door and it occurs to me that it’s not only the guard we have to worry about, it’s the other Strategia.
Aarya pulls herself up into the ceiling and Ash pops his head down. “Ines, you next, since November is the tallest.”
The idea of being the last one in the bathroom hits me like a jolt of electricity. Ines quickly climbs the garbage can and I look over my shoulder at the door like it might bite me. She reaches out to take the pinecone branch and I reluctantly hand it over.
“Replace the garbage can in its original position,” Ash says, speaking quickly, and the instant Ines’s legs lift off it I pull it back by the wall.
“Now unlock the door and check the hall,” Ash continues, and the urgency in his voice tells me he dislikes me being the last one in the bathroom more than I do. “If all is clear, leave it unlocked and come over to me.” Ash positions himself so that his arms hang down into the room. “With a good jump, I should be able to pull you—” Ash stops talking and gives me a sharp look.
Women’s voices spill into the outside hallway, and there’s the muffled sound of a door closing behind them.
“Leave it locked,” Ash says.
“Don’t you dare leave it locked,” Aarya snaps back.
“Now, November, jump now,” Ash says in a commanding whisper, but I’m already running for the bathroom door.
Aarya’s right. Ash is trying to protect me, but if I leave it locked, the women will instantly know something’s wrong, and the guards will be after us in a minute, completely ruining our head start. I turn the lock and sprint toward Ash, launching myself into the air and grabbing his arms above his elbows.
He pulls me hard, sliding me into the narrow space along a metal beam so fast that I scrape my stomach. I yank my legs up, lightly kicking a ceiling tile, before finding a beam to brace myself on. The door cracks and Aarya slides the missing ceiling tile back into place, dropping it the last half inch so slowly that I hold my breath. And we all fall into complete silence. Ash continues to hold one of my hands as I balance on my stomach on the thin support beam. He pulls out his phone and uses the faint glow from the screen to show me the structure of the dropped ceiling.
The metal beams form a grid of two-foot squares, and there are only a handful of inches of clearance above my head, making the only option for forward motion an army crawl on my stomach. To my far left is a wide metal tube used for heating and cooling that is probably the reason we have as much space as we do. And there are tangles of wires running alongside it.
Ash points forward in the soft glow of his phone, which to my relief has us moving away from the ballroom and not over it. Aarya gives him a thumbs-up and we slowly and methodically crawl in the direction of Ash’s dim phone screen.
My elbows and knees press into the metal as we scooch along and I’m certain we’re all going to have bruises tomorrow. We move as fast as we can while still remaining silent, and I look over at Ines, who is carrying the pinecone branch in her teeth. We’re only a short distance along when Ash holds up his hand, telling us to pause. He lifts the corner of a tile and peers beneath it for a split second. He points to his right, slightly changing our direction, and we follow along behind him.
Hunting November Page 27
