by Jaymin Eve
I stared at myself for a long minute. The mask twinkled, as did my dress, which was long and fitted, a slit all the way up one leg. It had a sparkly silver rose detail over the black underlay, and with three-quarter sleeves and a deep v-neck, I felt sexy and sophisticated.
Oh hell yes.
The mask itself was a detailed piece, with gems and what looked like real silver twisting through each section. It had wide butterfly wings on either side of my face and made my skin look darker and more exotic than it actually was.
“We should just wear these all the time,” I said, swishing the long dress around my legs.
“You look amazing,” Ilia gushed, her voice singsong. “Mysterious and sexy and I can’t tell your hair is purple, or your eyes are blue, or that you’re an Atlantean god. And while you’re always hot and bangable, you’re my best friend and that’s a no-go zone, but right now…”
I laughed. Ilia had admitted to me that she was mainly into dudes but that she wouldn’t say no to a sexual encounter with the right chick. She loved everything about women.
“You both look stunning and sexy,” I said, throwing the love right back. My best friends were beautiful women, and not just because of their looks.
As we left the room, joining the multiple other formal-dressed-and-mask-clad supes in the hall, I heard Larissa ask in a soft voice: “Do you think they’ll be there tonight?”
No one had to ask who they were. The three of us were still entangled in the world of the Atlantean Assholes … mainly in our minds, where we just couldn’t let them go. “They’ve been gone since parents’ day,” Ilia said shortly, “and no one seems to know where they went.”
The school had felt empty for the past few weeks they’d been gone. But I did love being able to sneak into their house and use the pool—silver linings and all that.
“I wish I didn’t miss him,” Larissa added. “I mean, we never made any promises, and he was always so hot and cold that I knew it was stupid to think of it as anything more than a casual thing, but … I can’t fucking forget him.”
I wanted to kick Rone’s ass. But he’d have to get in line behind the rest of them, because I wanted to kick all their asses. “I wish I had an answer for you,” I said, stepping around two magic users basically screwing right there in the stairwell. “But whatever happened to Asher, he’s spread it to the others, and we’re being left out for some reason.”
And time was not easing any pain.
However, I would die before I let any of them know they affected me still.
“Tonight,” I said with force, “we will drink and dance and have a shit-ton of fun, and not for one second will we think about any Atlanteans.”
Ilia cleared her throat and forced a smile. Calen had gotten to her too. I felt guilty for bringing my friends into their worlds. Now all of us were hurt. But my speech did at least rouse their fighting spirit.
“I’ll get the faerie wine,” Ilia said. “In three hours, none of us will remember our names, let alone theirs.”
It probably wasn’t smart to get that drunk. You know, since I was being hunted by gods and possibly Sonaris—though thankfully there had been no more incidents outside of a scare one night when I was sneaking a swim in the Atlantean pool. It was nothing more than a shadow, but I’d felt uneasy, so I’d gotten out of there.
Tonight I just needed to step outside my headspace and let off some steam, so I would throw caution to the wind. Louis had told me he’d be there as part of the new Academy security detail for events, and that made me feel a little better. At least if the gods gatecrashed it, we wouldn’t be alone.
The longer Asher and his friends were gone, the more restlessness grew in my gut. Like … I could feel something building, and I was just waiting for it to hit.
The only official Academy dance I’d made it to last year had been the first winter dance, held in the practical magic areas.
“Where’s this dance held?” I asked when we didn’t turn down that path.
Larissa smiled, the flash of red the only thing visible on the lower half of her face. Her mask was a full butterfly; the lower wings spanned down her cheeks and almost to the edge of her jaw. “Demi-fey Academy.”
“What?” I said, not sure if I’d heard that right. “I didn’t think the two schools interacted much.”
“They don’t,” she hurried to add, “but once a year we try and share a dance. I think with all the drama of last year, the dance was canceled, but this year it’s going ahead despite the continued … issues.”
Yeah, I was definitely partly—mostly—to blame for that.
We fell in with the bulk of the fancily dressed crowd, heading toward the back bridge that led to the demi-fey Academy. It meant passing by the Atlantean mansion, and I did my best not to look at it sitting there shrouded in darkness. Like it had been abandoned. “It’s a fair walk to the Academy,” I said as we crossed the bridge. “I’m surprised they’re okay with us all leaving during such a tense time.”
Larissa nodded. “Yeah, Dad has a plan for that, I believe.”
Princeps Jones was waiting just beyond the bridge, a huge group of supes gathering around him. We were pretty far back in the crowd, and at first I couldn’t figure out what was happening, but then the group moved slowly forward and I saw it clearly. Louis was there with a step-through.
“Hello, ladies,” Louis said when we stepped up for our turn. His eyes roamed across our masks and the slightest smile tipped up his lips. “Please don’t linger on the other side or you will risk being crushed by the next group.” His mask was small and black, barely hiding anything. Unlike our fairy-created one, his had no extra magic.
I had no idea if Louis knew who we were. It was exciting to think we might have tricked the most powerful sorcerer in the world. That meant I could truly be anonymous tonight and not worry about anyone’s perception of me.
That was really … freeing.
The three of us linked arms before the step-through, and when we emerged on the other side I sighed at how fairytale it all looked. “The mid-year theme is magic,” Larissa said. “I was so sad when you missed it last year.”
I was starting to think I needed to make more effort to get to these school events. Moving quickly from the step-through, we took our time looking around the dance floor. The room was huge, with the sense of being outside—the ceiling above was filled with what looked like a billion magically created twinkling stars.
They hung low, shining their silvery light everywhere, and I felt like if I just reached high enough I could take one of those sparkling spheres into my hand. The floor was white marble, polished to the point that even in the semi-darkness it shone. The space was huge, more than big enough to encompass both Academies, and I was not at all surprised when a few trolls strolled past, their faces not covered by masks and their bodies clad in woven, earth-colored clothing. Simple. Not formal. But perfectly suited to them. Or what I’d learned of them in class anyway.
The demi-fey were not as foreign to me as they used to be, and tonight I was going to get the full picture. Centaurs galloped past and I studied their horse bodies, then their top half. Their heads were not quite human in shape. More elongated in the face, and with wider-set eyes, but there was no denying their duality.
“Different to seeing them in books, right?” Ilia said, waving at a few of the demi-fey she knew. Most of them glared at her and she dropped her hand. “Right, they don’t know who I am.”
“You’ve worked with some of them?”
She nodded. “Yep. On more than one occasion I’ve had to track down some demi-fey.”
She fell silent when a green skinned demi-fey walked past. I was pretty sure it was a female, but her body was thin to the point of skeletal. Her face was covered in bumps and dark spots and she was horrifically ugly in an extremely interesting way. I wanted to keep staring at her, examining the foreign and yet magical creatures that walked among us.
“Hag,” Ilia and Larissa said together.
I looked closer now, because the demi-fey known as the “hag” was not one I’d spent much time learning about.
“They’re actually pretty cool,” Larissa told me. “Just wait until they get some wine into them, then you’ll see how they dance.”
Surrounding us now were trolls, gargoyles, pixies, golems, selkies in their human form, and a few other hags.
Before I could ask any questions, Ilia, ready for a drink, dragged us across the room to the long chrome-topped bar that spanned about a mile in total distance. Behind the bar were hundreds of creatures I had no names for. They were about three feet tall, with wings and bulbous stomachs. Most of them were hairy, even the ones that looked a little more female, and they had the biggest noses I’d ever seen.
“Leprechauns,” Ilia side-whispered to me. “They’re the luckiest of the demi-fey and are always at parties to keep the fortune smiling brightly on us.”
They didn’t look much like the human depiction of them, but they were wearing an awful lot of green, so some part of it was right.
“What can I get you three?” one said, her voice a scratchy sound that took me moments to decipher.
“Three fey wine, and three of the twilight cocktail,” Ilia said, then dropped some bills on the table.
The leprechaun hurried off to grab the drinks. “Always leave them a tip,” Ilia told me, never taking her eyes from the one making our drinks. “It’s extra lucky.”
Our drinks were back in about sixty seconds. We each grabbed a wine and cocktail before we evacuated the crowded bar. “Okay, you know the drill,” Ilia said, tipping her fey wine down in one gulp. I did the same and the warmth spread through me immediately, relaxing my limbs. Fey wine was potent, apparently even for demi-gods.
We sipped at our cocktails, which were also laced with the fey wine, and by the time they were done we were dancing closer to where the live music was playing. The band was different to the last dance. This time it was more like an orchestra, with multiple masked musicians playing slower ballads with haunting beats.
At some points, when they hit a particularly deep, thrumming note, my chest went tight and my throat filled to the point that I was trying desperately not to cry. “It’s so beautiful,” Larissa sobbed next to me, uncaring that tears ran down her cheeks.
Ilia sucked in a deep breath. “I’ve heard about these musicians. Emotives. Their trademark is to make you feel emotions to a degree that visibly affects you. Luckily, everyone is in the same boat.”
It was true. I could see supes crying all around us. Demi-fey too.
“This is not quite the escape I was thinking about,” I choked out, even though my body was swaying to the haunting melody.
“Give it a minute,” Ilia added, wiping at her cheeks.
Sure enough, not even a minute later the beat changed to a waltz. I blinked as a man appeared before me, tall with raven dark hair. He wore no mask, and I didn’t recognize him. “Would you like to dance?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. Anything to take my mind off … whatever the Emotives were doing to me. He led me out into the center, where only a few were dancing, but I was already drunk enough not to care about that. And that’s where my fun began.
We swirled around the dance floor, and despite the fact I’d never had a dance lesson and had no idea how to waltz, I kept up with him. My body moved and adapted like it was born to dance, the beat controlling my steps like it was a puppet master holding my strings. The dark-haired supe was a vampire, which surprised me because I didn’t get the cold energy vibe from him. When I told him as such, he shrugged.
“Yeah, I’m not very powerful, and I’ve learned to blend in. It’s a great adaptive survival instinct. I can exist no problem in the human world.”
That triggered something. “Ilia hunted you down, didn’t she?”
He looked surprised. “You know Ilia?” Right, I’m in disguise. When I shrugged, he continued. “Yeah, she hunted me down. Ilia is one persistent supernatural collection agent, let me tell you.”
I snorted. Yeah, I was well aware.
After the song ended, another supe stepped up and asked me to dance, and the vampire—whose name I did not know—bade me farewell.
My next dance partner was a shifter—bear apparently—he was much larger and rougher, throwing me around a little too much for my liking. Thankfully, he was replaced by a magic user, then a troll, then a gargoyle.
Eventually, out of breath but loving every second of this escape, I had to decline the next dance. “I need a drink,” I said loudly, “but catch me again soon and we’ll dance.”
The male nodded, a sly gleam in his eye, and I knew I’d have to be careful about what I said around that particular demi-fey. They could take your promises and force them to come true.
Larissa joined me, her hair slightly disheveled as she grinned with real happiness. “This is fun,” she said, throwing her head back.
“Yep, but I need a drink right now.”
“Same!”
We ended up at the bar, and I ordered three rounds again, because Ilia would be pissed if we didn’t get her something. We dropped a few notes for the leprechaun, and I turned to find a group of hags nearby doing the robot. Hilarious. Almost like interpretive dance crossed with charades.
“Here ye ladies go,” the leprechaun said, sliding our drinks across and taking his tip.
Grabbing one, I downed it back, and Ilia ran up just as I finished my second cocktail.
“I’ve practically burned off the first lot,” she moaned, inhaling her drinks. “But it’s the best dance floor I’ve been on for a long time.”
“It has been a lot of fun,” I said, slightly surprised. I’d wanted to escape, but I hadn’t expected to enjoy it so much. “There’s been no shortage of dance partners.”
The girls nodded, and then the music changed again, a heavier, moody beat that once again settled into my soul and shook loose all the emotions. The crowd murmured, and like they had been waiting for that sort of musical entrance, the Atlanteans were there.
“Shit,” I cursed.
Meanwhile, my heart was flip-flopping because no matter what, no matter how angry I was with them, I worried when they were gone for extended times. I missed their energy and presence in the school. Even bloody Connor had disappeared, off doing whatever messed-up shit sociopaths do.
Atlanteans needed other Atlanteans. It was something I’d learned from my time researching in the library with Mab. We needed the energy of our people or the city of Atlantis or we were at risk of our own energy fading.
Gods were similar in some ways. In fact, on rare occasions, without worship, gods had been known to fade. They literally needed love to survive.
“Look what the muthafucking cat dragged in,” Ilia said, her words a little slurry. “Of course those bastards would show up here to ruin our night.”
Larissa snorted. “Joke’s on them, because they won’t even know us with these masks.”
I straightened. For a moment I’d forgotten that. “Our night is not ruined,” I said in a rush before I dragged my best friends back on the dance floor.
Asher was not going to occupy one more thought for the rest of the night, even if he was clad in a perfectly fitted black tuxedo, his dark hair tousled attractively, and the dark mask—very similar to Louis’s—resting on his face giving him a dangerous, handsome, asshole vibe.
Doesn’t matter. I don’t need him.
I don’t need any of them.
33
“Would you like to dance?” For a second I froze, my eyes squeezing tightly shut at the familiar voice. I’d managed to avoid Asher and the guys for twenty minutes after their arrival, but apparently my luck had run out.
With a deep breath for courage, I reminded myself that he didn’t know who I was. “Uh, sure,” I said, keeping my voice low so he wouldn’t recognize it. Just act natural. One dance and then you can escape.
Asher’s golden hand was held out to me
, and I braced myself for the moment we touched. The zap of energy between us was stronger than I’d ever felt, and it was only because I’d been expecting it that I didn’t cry out when he wrapped his long fingers around mine, tugging me out onto the main dance floor. If he felt the spark as well, he didn’t show it, which was good. I might be disguised, but it was harder to hide the way our energies responded to each other.
Like one huge conspiracy that I couldn’t escape, the music changed again to something slow and melodic, a song of love. Or even a … a lost love. A thread of longing wound through the notes, and it was probably going to take every ounce of my strength and composure to get through this dance.
“You look beautiful,” he said softly, and fuck if my traitorous heart didn’t ache at hearing those words from him again. I didn’t need it though. I was stronger than one man’s compliments to me. Not to mention, they weren’t even meant for me.
Okay, that pissed me off.
“Thank you,” I said shortly, hoping he’d shut up and we could make it through the next three minutes.
I couldn’t see much around his eyes, but it almost looked like the skin tightened there at my short reply. Thankfully, he didn’t speak again, but he did tighten his hold on me, pulling me firmly against his body. Duck… Yep, not autocorrect, I was literally trying to focus on ducks. Squawky little fuckers. Always ganging up and shitting everywhere. Fucking hate ducks. Don’t deserve to share the water with the other amazing animals in it.
Ducks attacked me when I was a child and I’d held a lifelong grudge against them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to distract me from Asher.
His hand started to slowly stroke across my spine, and everything inside me tightened. I felt a desperate need to wrap my legs around him and feel his hardness pressed against my center. It had been far too fucking long without sex, and while it had been the last thing on my mind when Asher died, he was back and I had no real excuse for continuing to deny myself orgasms. Even by my own hand.
