by Sarah Cross
“Hi, Mira,” he said warmly. “I’m glad you could make it.”
There was nothing strained in his smile, nothing fake about the kindness in his eyes.
She was shocked.
It was as if they’d never argued. Mira had been nervous that Freddie would hate her … but maybe, once he’d had some time to think about it, he’d realized that she hadn’t meant to hurt him. That their relationship was just as frustrating and confusing to her as it was to him. For whatever reason, he was giving her another chance. And she was grateful. She met his smile with one of her own.
“Knight, stop flaunting your body,” Blue said. “Mira’s going to start thinking of you as a piece of meat.”
“Mira can think whatever she wants about me,” Freddie said, tugging the shirt over his head. “I consider it an honor that she thinks of me at all.”
Blue laughed. “You’re such a kiss ass.”
“I am not!” Freddie insisted, sounding hurt.
“Freddie’s just being inhumanly nice,” Jewel said, coming up behind them and laying her hand on Freddie’s shoulder. “As is his way. Hey, Mira. Sorry to interrupt, but I need Blue to get changed. We go on in ten minutes.”
“Fine,” Blue said, sighing like this was the most unreasonable interruption in the world. Jewel patted him lightly on his spikes.
“Thanks, Blue-noxious.”
“Mira, I’m about to be naked,” Blue said as he whipped off his belt and tossed it on the floor. “So watch out. Well, in my underwear.”
“I’ve seen you in your bathing suit,” Mira said. “It’s the same thing.”
“It is not the same thing,” Blue said. “When it’s accompanied by seventies porn music, it’s an X-rated strip show.” Blue yanked off his shirt. “Freddie, you’re kind of slow on the uptake. eine kleine porn music, please.”
Freddie scrunched his forehead in distaste. “I don’t want to plug my guitar in just so I can play some bow-chicka-wow-wow accompaniment to your strip show.”
Mira laughed. “Bow-chicka-what was that, Freddie?”
“Bow-chicka …” Freddie flushed as he realized she was teasing him.
Blue kicked off his scrubby jeans, then proceeded to pull on the newer, neater, rock-starrier clothes that Jewel had brought over: jeans that had been distressed by the manufacturer instead of by real wear, and a black T-shirt printed with a silver heart bound in barbed wire.
Mira tried to convince herself that seeing Blue in boxers was just like seeing him in his bathing suit. But … it was different, more intimate. She’d wrestled with him; she knew what his body felt like, knew the hard feel of his muscles when he fought her playfully, when he laughed … when he almost kissed her. It was impossible to look at him and not see all of that. Impossible to look at him and not feel like he was hers.
But he isn’t. And he can’t be.
She swallowed, ashamed of herself, and turned away. She let her gaze drift across the room, like Rafe’s jelly-bean harem was really fascinating.
Freddie came to her rescue. “Are you staying after the show, Mira? Will we see you later?”
“I think so,” she said. “Unless the agony of listening to you guys drives me away.” When Freddie did his sad puppy face, she grinned and swatted his arm. “Just kidding. Of course I’m staying. I need someone to walk me home.”
“That would be me,” Blue said. “Just meet us back here after the show. Or wait by the door if you get kicked out early for brawling.”
“That’s probably what will happen,” Mira said.
“I figured,” Blue said. “Just don’t run off, okay?” He was buckling his belt, but he looked up at her very seriously. “Make sure I see you.”
“I will,” she said. “Go ahead and get ready. I’ll see you guys later! Don’t screw up!”
She hurried out of the greenroom to join the audience, feeling lighter than she had in days.
The club was as dark as a pit, an abyss with a single spotlight. Stage lights illuminated the band, but only faintly. Most of the glow was on Jewel, who glistened with sweat, glittering like the gems that fell from her lips: sharp and raw and gorgeous.
The music was violent, explosive—like it wanted to make people bleed, or inspire them to break things. The crowd writhed to Rafe’s snarly bass line, smashed into each other, screamed along. And when the song ended, and Jewel dropped to her knees and let a stream of pearls spill from her mouth to the stage, the audience shrieked with pleasure, hands scrabbling to claim a handful of the pearls that had touched her lips.
Magic was what they came for.
Mira felt light-headed, dizzy from the noise, overwhelmed by the crowd. She didn’t want to be nicked by a sharp piece of jewelry or a safety pin—on the odd chance it would trigger sleep. She needed to find Delilah, and find out about her curse. This not knowing was no good.
Elbows out for protection, Mira pushed through the crowd: past girls in red capes, girls who smelled of the sea; past boys with vine tattoos and ash-smeared fireplace princesses. She shoved past one body only to be confronted with another. She practically had to swim through them to escape.
Once she’d broken free, she rubbed her hands over her bare arms. Still perfectly intact.
At the edge of the room, Wills and Caspian Knight leaned against the wall with the air of college guys back in town for a high school dance. Viv was with them, rhinestone stars sparkling in her black hair. They beckoned her over, but Mira declined. She had a mission she wouldn’t be swayed from. A darker destination.
She had secrets to uncover.
The corridor leading to the rear of the club was crammed with overaccessorized girls and guys flicking lighters in the dark. She turned at a fork in the path and picked her way down an unlit hall—one none of the club kids dared venture into—until she reached Delilah’s office. A strip of acid green light showed under the door.
Mira knocked. Her ears were ringing from the music; her breaths came with effort and she was shaking. In a moment, she’d know what to be afraid of. She’d know what could hurt her most.
Delilah’s ogre henchman opened the door, his gray face wrinkling at the sudden onslaught of noise, then gripped her shoulder and hauled her inside. The scent of garlic and boiled meat rose from his pores. Mira held her breath and tugged free, but she could still feel the pressure of his palm as she moved away, as if his hand were clamped on her skin.
With the door shut, the office was surprisingly quiet. The bass thumped despite the soundproofing, but it was low enough that she could hear the ogre’s breathing, could hear Delilah’s long black nails scraping papers off her desk.
Delilah glanced up, her eyes gleaming a pale gold like ginger ale.
“Mirabelle Lively,” she said. “You came seeking your trigger. And I have it, as promised.” With a smile, the fairy drew a slender gauze bundle from a drawer, about the size of a small cocoon, hanging from a silver chain. “Come closer.”
“Don’t be frightened,” the fairy said. “There will be no accidents here.”
Tentatively, her ears still ringing, Mira approached her. Delilah held the bundled pendant by its chain, her long fingers unwinding the gauze wrapping until a razor blade shined in the greenish light. A hole had been punched through the blade, and the chain threaded through it, to turn the razor blade into a necklace.
Mira let out a gasp. This tiny thing. This everyday object. All she had to do was press the tip of her finger to the sharp edge.
One drop of blood. One bite of pain.
And that would be it.
“Your predecessors are many,” Delilah mused, letting the razor blade sway at the end of the chain. “Talia, who fell victim to a splinter of flax and slept, even as a king claimed her, and only awoke when her children were born. la belle au bois dormant, who pricked her finger on a spindle and slept for one hundred years, until her prince arrived to rouse her. Brünnhilde the Valkyrie, sent into slumber by a prick from a sleep-thorn, and trapped within a ring of fire until she
was freed by a fearless mortal. Briar Rose, plunged into enchanted sleep by the spindle, but awakened by true love’s kiss.
“And now you join them, Mirabelle. Just one prick of a razor blade,” the fairy continued, “and you’ll succumb to an enchanted slumber for however long it takes your prince to find you. Assuming he still wants to find you,” she added with a thin smile. “Men are fickle. Never fear, the curses will keep making princes. I’m sure that in the next hundred years, one of them will release you. But better to be safe. Don’t you think?”
Mira nodded. So she would avoid razors—she’d been doing that anyway; they fell on her godmothers’ do-not-touch list, along with nearly everything normal people used: scissors, earrings, matches.
Her godmothers hadn’t left anything to chance. They’d forbidden so many things it had never occurred to her to single out one of their prohibitions and question it. No one forbidden activity had seemed so tempting that she’d be driven mad if she didn’t try it just once.
Her godmothers had underestimated only one of her desires: to see her parents. It had been the one rule she’d been desperate—or maybe destined—to break.
Delilah rewrapped the razor blade, dulling the sharp edge with layers of gauze, until it was as harmless as the cotton that covered it. Delilah ran it across the flesh of her own wrist to demonstrate. “There. Perfectly safe. It’s yours to do with as you wish.”
“I don’t want it,” Mira said, taken aback.
Delilah held her gaze. Her pale gold eyes flickered like candle flames. “But it belongs to you. How can you refuse it?”
Without asking permission, the fairy draped the chain around Mira’s neck.
The gauze-wrapped razor blade settled against her chest.
Its presence made her heart beat faster, as if the blade would somehow escape its bindings—and seal her fate.
“Now that you know your trigger, you can keep yourself safe,” Delilah said. “It’s the secrets that hurt us most.”
The metal felt cold against Mira’s chest—though she knew she was imagining it. There was nothing to feel. Just the innocuous softness of the gauze. It was her imagination, her old talent for daydreams, working against her now.
“You never know what people are hiding—that’s the problem. Once you know, you can find a way to deal with anything. But so long as you’re kept ignorant, the situation is hopeless. Poor thing.” Delilah clucked her tongue. “That’s been your lot since you arrived, hasn’t it? Everyone hinting at secrets, talking over your head—that must be miserable. You’re so strong to have endured it. But you have practice, I suppose—having the truth hidden from you. It probably doesn’t even bother you anymore.” She pursed her lips, lemon-sour. “Poor thing.”
Heat was rising at the back of Mira’s neck, creeping up her cheeks like a stain. She didn’t like the way Delilah was looking at her, full of pity, as if she were a child content to go on knowing nothing.
“It does bother me,” she said. “For your information.”
“Nonsense,” Delilah said. “If it did, you’d have done something about it. All the answers are within your reach. You just have to look for them. Don’t you know the first thing about fairy tales, Mirabelle? No one”—the fairy leaned in, her breath smelling of green apples—“is going to spoon-feed you the answers. A curse is as much about courage as it is about growth. They’re one and the same.”
“I have looked. I’ve asked Blue about our marks. I’ve asked Layla about our roles; she showed me the book that explains them. But there are certain things no one is allowed to tell me, because it’s part of the curse, which you should know—”
Delilah held up a hand to silence her. “You already have the key to answer all your questions about the Valentines. And I’m not being mysterious when I say that. You have the actual, physical key, Mirabelle. If you desire answers, you simply have to open the door.”
Mira knew Felix had secrets. A past that was too painful for him to talk about, flaws he didn’t want to reveal. And she’d accepted that. She hadn’t liked it—she wanted to know him inside and out—but she’d backed down, because that was what he wanted. Because she was happy—and she wanted him to be happy, too.
But how long could they last if she didn’t really know him?
Maybe he was afraid she’d change her mind if she knew his secrets, if he let her down. And it was true that she wanted him to be perfect. She didn’t want to believe he was dangerous. Whatever Blue and his friends said about Felix, it wasn’t true when he was with her.
And yet …
He’d never told her the truth. Never warned her what a Romantic could do, though it was within his power to tell her. And she had to admit … that her willingness to overlook the danger didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Mira had spent her whole life daydreaming things into being, existing in a fantasy world to escape a reality she found painful. But there was a real world she wanted to be a part of now. And if she were ever going to belong, she needed to see every side of it. The good and the bad.
The safe parts … and the dangerous parts.
In the main arena of the club, Curses & Kisses was playing harder than ever. The stage was littered with gems. Jewel’s husky-sweet voice had gone almost hoarse. Blue pounded away at his drums like he wanted to break them.
Too impatient to be controlled by the flow of the crowd, Mira shoved through with fresh determination, until she reached the vacant greenroom. Blue’s street clothes lay in a jumble on the floor. She rifled through his pockets until she found his wallet, and the passkey he’d stolen from her—and she reclaimed it. Curled her fingers around the plastic card like it was her lifeline.
Felix had written in a note to her:
All I ask is that you stay out of my other room (suite 3013). I keep some private things there that must not be disturbed.
And she’d obeyed. She was a good girl, used to being told don’t do this, don’t touch that.
But following the rules, sweeping questions under the rug, and pretending everything was fine didn’t get you anywhere. You had to be bold. Bold, but not too bold, she thought. There was a balance.
There was one thing Felix had denied her. One prohibition he’d set down—which made it something to fixate on and wonder about.
What was so secret about suite 3013?
He’d said it was private. That he wanted it left alone.
And if he’d told her about it … he’d told her for a reason.
Maybe, like the razor blade, the prohibition was for her own good.
Or maybe, like her godmothers’ forbidding her to visit Beau Rivage, it was keeping her from learning something she desperately needed to know.
You couldn’t hide from bad things and pretend they didn’t exist—that left you with a dream world, and dream worlds eventually crumbled. You had to face the truth. And then decide what you wanted.
Perfume and fancy clothes were wonderful. But she needed more than that.
This last broken rule, she decided … would be her birthday gift to herself.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MIRA LEFT THE CLUB AFTER MIDNIGHT, while Curses & Kisses was still playing. Boys in wolf fur–lined jackets loitered outside, the tips of their cigarettes glowing like fireflies. Trails of smoke made her cough; the humidity made her skin feel liquid. She ran in her red-rose high heels, clacking through the streets, too fast and frantic to care what lurked in the shadows around her. Nothing could be worse than the uncertainty, the shadows that lurked in her heart.
By the time she reached the Dream, sweat ran down her sides, her thighs, her throat. Her feet were throbbing because she’d been running in boutique heels, not dance heels. These shoes weren’t meant for action; they were meant for someone who stood still and looked pretty. Someone who fell asleep and dreamed.
But Mira refused to be trapped in a daydream. It was time to face the raw things. Not her fantasy of Felix—the best parts of him, the parts he wanted her to see—but all of
him.
He didn’t have to be perfect. Life didn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful.
It just had to be real.
The Dream was buzzing with life—the dinging of slot machines, the cheering at the craps tables, dealers slapping down cards with practiced speed, cocktail waitresses parting the crowd. It was a party, an all-night, glittering party.
Felix would be in the pit, supervising, checking in with and charming VIPs. Nights weren’t time for quiet work, or whatever went on in suite 3013. She could be in and out in ten minutes, see what there was to see, and if she didn’t like it—if Felix was as bad, as dangerous as everyone seemed to think—she could disappear and never come back. If all was well, she’d slip out, and Felix would never know.
Her heart pounded painfully as she stepped up to the suite elevators and pushed the call button, watching her reflection in the polished metal doors until they split apart and took her image with them.
Mira had the elevator to herself. The air-conditioning had dried the sweat on her skin but not her dress, and the damp chiffon felt slick and dirty. Soft music played as she rose to the thirtieth floor, where she stepped out into a corridor that was an exact copy of every other corridor in the hotel. Except this floor was empty. Dead silent, no people—it might as well have been a ghost town.
Following the signs, Mira hurried all the way to the end of the hall, where she found suite 3013. The door was plain, marked only with a gold placard engraved with the room number. It was tucked away near the fire exit, in about the most unpleasant place in the entire hall.
Taking one last look around her, Mira slid the passkey into the lock, waited for the green light to flicker and signal open, then turned the lever and stepped into the forbidden room.
In the dark, suite 3013 smelled like Felix’s cologne. It smelled icy, like frigid air.
And it smelled like roses.
It was the roses that gave Mira the courage to turn on the light. Because that was his theme for her birthday: roses for Sleeping Beauty. Maybe he’d kept her away from this room because he’d been planning a surprise here—for just the two of them.
