Illuminate: A Gilded Wings Novel, Book One

by Aimee Agresti

  “Welcome to Alcatraz.” Lucian stepped onto the walkway.

  I took it all in, the visuals overloading my eyes, too much to process. “No one would ever try to escape this Alcatraz.” As we walked, the panels beneath us lit up.

  “That’s the idea.”

  We made our way to that island in the center, a beacon at the confluence of romance and danger beckoning to us. My pulse raced at the idea of being suspended above this water, amid this strange indoor wildlife, alone with Lucian. The area we were headed toward was caged in by bars—a more literal interpretation of Alcatraz than I had expected. Inside that encasement, however, a perfect scene awaited us: a floating dining room and lounge. A table had been set for dinner with lavish damask linens and gleaming china, all glowing in candlelight, and two velvet chairs that resembled thrones. In the area behind the table, a matching cushy chaise longue and chair and a mirrored side table made for a cozy sitting room. Certainly the most beautiful jail cell anyone could hope for. The encircling metal bars ran a good twelve feet up but didn’t come anywhere close to reaching the top. High above us, the ceiling sparkled like a night sky.

  As we reached the lock in the bars, Lucian fished from his jacket pocket an old-fashioned key ring the size of a bracelet with one comically long key dangling from it, and twirled it around one finger. He rattled the key into the lock and swung open the cage-like door for me.

  “Thank you.”

  He pulled it shut behind us and reached his arm through one of the slats to lock us in, then looped it back around and returned the key to his pocket.

  “Now we’ve officially locked away the rest of the world.”

  I liked the sound of that. The scar at my heart fluttered and burned. I touched the satin of my dress just above it.

  “But what happens if you drop the key in the water or something?”

  “Then we’re in trouble. We’ll be down here forever,” he said matter-of-factly. I looked at him, just a flash of nerves. He grinned, lightening. “Don’t worry. It’s all for show. This is actually open. There’s a switch so you can get locked out but never locked in.” He brushed past me to the sitting area. “Come ’ere.” He took a seat on the chair and opened a panel on the cylindrical side table, punching a few buttons. I sat down on the chaise, smoothing the dress over my lap. He flipped the panel down. “Watch this.”

  A low whoosh and rattle shook from inside the table. Within seconds, a glass dome shot up from the surface of the tabletop and split down the middle, opening like a jaw and then disappearing, leaving two wineglasses and a dark blue bottle.

  “Wow!”

  “Yeah, not bad, huh?” He poured from the label-less bottle and handed me the glass, now full with something effervescent and clear.

  “You’re not going to set fire to this or anything?” I wanted to find a nice way to ask what was in here.

  “It’s sparkling water.” He poured a glass for himself.

  “Oh.” I felt like an idiot now. “Exotic.”

  “Thought you’d like it.” He smirked and clinked my glass with his, then went on. “So generally people can order whatever they want in here. That’s the idea at least.” He stood from his chair and pulled me up, his hot hand gently tugging at mine, then slid back one of the chairs at the table for me to sit down. He pushed me in, scooting that huge chair and me effortlessly, then took his place across from me. “But I took the liberty of preparing a tasting menu of all the best dishes, because you shouldn’t have to choose among the best—you should just have all of the best. And I mean that, not just in terms of what nourishes a body but a soul too. It’s a way of life. But I’m getting away from my point. I hope you don’t mind that I ordered dinner.”

  “Not at all. I suppose I’m okay with that,” I said. What nourishes a soul, my mind turned that over.

  “I thought so.” He leaned down, clicking at something on his side of the table, and snapping something shut. Another whoosh swirled, this time from inside our dinner table. The silverware chimed together softly. Another dome shot up, erupting from the tabletop, encompassing the entire thing, save for an outer rim that included our place settings. The dome split away and retracted out of sight, and at least a dozen small plates the circumference of baseball caps now dotted the surface.

  “Whoa.”

  “That’s nothing. Check this out.” He hit another button on the panel on his side of the table and the lights in the moat around us lit up brighter and bluer, a rippling glow encasing us as it spouted from beneath the water. The star-like pinpricks speckling the ceiling intensified so it looked like a replica of something you might see at the Adler Planetarium downtown. I gazed above, finding Orion’s belt and Cassiopeia and Ursa Major. I noticed Lucian fiddling once more with that panel and music came on, something jaunty and swinging. “Are standards okay? Right now we only have Capone-era music.”

  “I guess that’ll have to do.” I smiled, dazzled by it all.

  “So that’s it for my tricks,” he said finally, slouching back in his chair.

  “That’s pretty good.”

  “Hopefully you’ll like this just as much . . .”

  He took me on a culinary tour of our table, pointing out what each dish was—mini ostrich cheeseburgers, rattlesnake ravioli, alligator soup—so many things I’d never even dreamed of trying. I was overwhelmed by the array of odd delicacies. In an effort to appear adventurous, I planned to try everything, even if, in some cases, it would require blocking out what animal it was.

  “This is like a trip to the zoo,” I said when he had finished describing it all. “I mean, in a tragic sort of way.”

  “A very quiet and still zoo, I suppose.” He laughed. “So, I guess, bon appétit?”

  “Bon appétit,” I confirmed.

  He sliced a bit of the dish nearest him—the venison—and I speared a pair of the rattlesnake ravioli right in front of me, but as I did, the table jerked and began rotating away from me. “Omigod,” I blurted out, as my ravioli and fork got whisked away clockwise toward Lucian. I looked over to see him suppressing a laugh.

  “Okay, that’s my last trick.” He raised his hands up in surrender.

  Hey!” The ravioli and fork had stopped in front of him. “Do I have any controls over here? You know, like a driver’s ed car with the two sets of brakes and steering wheels and everything?” I lifted the tablecloth on my side but found only a solid cube that was some sort of elevator shooting the food up and out to us.

  “No, I’m afraid I’m doing the driving.” He smiled. “I suppose you’ll be needing this back?” He waved my fork but instead of handing it over, he reached across the table for me to take a bite. “What’s the verdict?” he asked.

  “It’s good,” I said at last, as soon as I stopped chewing the tough meat. “Just like chicken.”

  “I think so too.” He chuckled. “So tell me, Haven,” he started, his eyes on me. “What do you most want?”

  I paused for a moment. “Um, well, I guess maybe it would be a good experiment for me to try the escargot next?”

  He smiled, a true, wide smile, rotating the table so the escargot landed in front of me, and continued: “Actually, I meant more in terms of, what do you want from life?”

  “Wow.” I set down my fork and looked at him and then away. “I definitely got that question wrong, didn’t I?”

  We both laughed in matching tones. I was still formulating an intelligent answer to redeem myself, when he jumped in.

  “Remember when I told you to make a wish on your birthday?”

  “Sure.”

  “So, what did you wish for?”

  I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to incriminate myself—that was, after all, the day I met him, and I had been pretty preoccupied calculating the odds of him ever being interested in me. So I answered simply, “I didn’t get around to formally wishing for anything. I kind of got distracted. And, I guess, sorta sick.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It’s okay. It was w
orth it, you know?” I felt myself easing into that warm wooziness that I’d experienced that night, after that fiery drink. I had no idea why since I’d only had water. Maybe this was just my natural state around Lucian. It would take no prying at all and I’d be confessing that I was madly in love with him, going anywhere he wanted to take me. I felt addicted to him.

  “What do you think of it here?” he asked. “Do you want to be in the Outfit?” He tossed it out, no big deal.

  “Like, hypothetically speaking or . . .” I could feel my eyes twinkling at him. I played with my fork, turning it over and over, absent-mindedly.

  “Hypothetically, for now.”

  “Well, everyone does, I suppose, don’t they?”

  “Yes. But do you?”

  “I don’t know.I mean, it never occurred to me it would be an option.”

  “Because I just joined pretty recently—”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing about this place. If you’re doing a good job, you rise in the ranks. And suddenly you’re at the center of the universe, you’re running the city, you know everyone, you have everything you could want—success, attention, everything. You matter. Some people are never going to reach the highest level, of course, but some people—” His eyes dug into mine, holding on for a silent second. “Some people get on this track and they’re unstoppable. And you’re one of those, Haven. Everyone knows it.”

  “Um, that’s good to hear.”

  “What would you give anything to have? What do you want most from your life? Right now? What would make you happy?”

  “I am happy.”

  “I know. But what would make a difference to you, to your life? If you could have anything, everything you wanted? Today, tomorrow, forever. What do you dream about?”

  I thought about it. Today and tomorrow were different than forever. Today, in this most immediate minute, I just wished for him. But I couldn’t tell him that, and I liked that we were having this kind of heavy philosophical talk, so I decided to go ahead and give him my more serious answer. “Well, I guess I want to do something important. I want to go to med school eventually and be a doctor. I’m not sure what kind but I guess, if I’m being honest . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I want to set the world on fire, you know? Cure cancer, save people, change people’s lives on a grand scale. I kind of feel like there are a lot of people who changed my life. I’ve had to rely on people so much, and if they hadn’t been good people I don’t know where I’d be now.”

  He sat back in his seat, studying me, looking for something in my eyes or under my skin, something within. Finally, he spoke, choosing his words slowly and carefully: “What if I could tell you I could give you all of that?” The words swirled in my head, blowing in like a summer breeze, too sweet and perfect. I didn’t understand. My skin felt fiery now. “And more. I could give you more.”

  “I’m not sure I—”

  He leaned forward, like he was about to let me in on a secret, whispering in his honey-coated voice.

  “Your life could be perfect and everything, everyone, you wanted could be yours.” He didn’t take his eyes from mine for even a second.

  “I guess my only question would be—”

  “Where do you sign?” He touched my hand.

  “Or, maybe, what’s the catch?” Nervous laughter slipped out.

  “There’s always a little fine print, I suppose. But aren’t some things worth it?”

  “I guess it depends.”

  “That’s not the answer I expected,” he said with a smile, as though he knew I would come around. “Think about it.”

  “Think about what?”

  “Think about what it would feel like to get everything you ever wanted.”

  “Okay.”

  “And think about how that could be worth whatever price you had to pay to get there.”

  I nodded.

  “You have no idea what could be ahead of you. What you’re capable of.” He said it with a reverence that surprised me, elevated me. “I don’t think you know how remarkable you are.”

  That last bit I wanted so badly to believe.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said sincerely. “And Haven . . . it’s true.”

  And with that, he leaned back in his chair again and surveyed what remained on the plates before us.

  We finished eating and with the push of a few buttons, dinner was cleared and a dessert smorgasbord appeared in its place. We spoke easily about the hotel, the gala opening, the change in atmosphere now that our Lexington world was populated with guests, and then dissected the mechanics of how our food got onto our table.

  “You really want to know?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Doesn’t it ruin some of the magic?”

  “I like to know how things work.”

  “It’s basically an elevator, with someone monitoring everything I type in. Come ’ere, I’ll show you.” He let me over to his side and allowed me to punch in the directions to remove our dessert, returning our table to a clean, blank damask-covered canvas.

  When it was time to go and I rose from my seat, I was lightheaded and unsteady. He took my arm in his so we could walk through the gate and along the bridge together.

  “Thanks. I think I must be in a food coma.”

  “Understandable.”

  “Maybe I should swim back.” I gestured to the water. “Wake myself up a bit.”

  “You’re welcome to, but it would be more wading than swimming. It’s only a foot or so deep. You didn’t hear it from me, though. It ruins the illusion.”

  “It’s all about the illusion. Life is all smoke and mirrors, isn’t it?”

  “So true.”

  We made our way to the elevator, the walkway lighting our path with each step, until finally we reached it and he hit the up button. As woozy as I was, I still felt the butterflies rise, knowing we were closing in on the end of our date. The doors opened and we stepped inside.

  “So obviously we have to do this again,” he offered.

  “Obviously.” I nodded in return, with a shy, expectant smile. And then, his eyes reeled me in and he took a few steps toward me, until his soft, warm lips delicately found mine, his hand lightly feeling for my fingers.

  But what was different? I couldn’t make sense of it, except that I was aware of it happening, this kiss. I wasn’t knocked out the way I had been the night before, when something else had taken over and I had cleaved to him involuntarily and he had grabbed me and there was frenzy, no thought, only pure feeling. This was more timid.

  The elevator stopped and he slipped away. My eyes opened just before the doors did.

  He led us out into the lobby through a back door behind the dining room.

  “So I guess this is good night then,” he said, leaning in and kissing me once more, quickly and too politely this time.

  “Good night.”

  With a wave, he walked away, hands in his pocket. I watched him go, staring after him longer than I should have, then fetched the camera from the gallery. I had work to do.

  18. We Mustn’t Underestimate Her

  The Vault was throbbing at its usual fever pitch by the time I got there. The lights emblazoned on the tunnel wall told me tonight was greed night. I wondered if that was a sign. Had I been greedy in my unfavorable analysis of that kiss? I had now received three kisses in two days. I was making up for lost time, to be sure, so maybe I should be less of a critic and more grateful to find my lips being put to good use at last.

  I snapped shots without thinking and found more eyes connecting with the camera than I expected. It seemed these revelers, decked out in their designer clothes, painted with their makeup and perfectly coifed, were already looking in my direction when I trained my lens on them. I wasn’t so much the fly on the wall tonight as I was a player thrust into the mix—not a role I was generally accustomed to. I guess it must’ve been the dress.
It could be nice to be watched. The collective power of those eyes could swirl around you, bubble up inside you, and, if you let it, convince you that you were worthy of it and that you were something to see. I wasn’t entirely sold yet, but I was getting there.

  But what I really didn’t expect was to find anyone going so far as to wave at me to get my attention. But as I circled the crowded dance floor, taking action shots of the sea of bodies swaying and spinning and shaking to the music, I spotted someone just on the outskirts, amid a handful of girls in black pants and an array of sparkly tops, signaling to me. I adjusted the camera’s focus on my gesturing subject and zoomed in to find a smiling familiar face: Dr. Michelle. I looked again to be sure, but, yes, I was right. She put her hand up to her mouth and looked to be yelling my name, though I couldn’t hear a thing over the ear-rattling beat of the music. I waved back. “Don’t go anywhere!” I tried to yell, though I couldn’t even begin to hear myself, and our view of each other kept getting blocked by dancers in the space between us.

  Snaking through the crowd, jostled by flailing arms and sloshed by the occasional drink, I finally reached Michelle. It occurred to me I had never seen her outside the hospital. She had on an aqua sequined halter-top, black pants, and a brighter pink lip-gloss than usual, her dark hair still tied back, but in a lower ponytail than she wore at work.

  “Hey, Haven!” She gave me a big hug. It was so comforting to see her that, for just a flash, I missed everyone, everything, even school. “This is the awesomest candy striper at the hospital,” she announced to the pack of girls, who smiled and waved while still dancing. “I was thinking of you when Katie said she wanted to come here—”