by Frankie Rose
******
I drew a deep breath as I stood on the steps of Gatti’s Charing Cross music hall. I was a child the last time I’d come here. There were always white-eyed musical Kaffirs at Gatti’s Under The Arches, as well as sword swallowers and shipwrecked sailors, but me and Jamie had loved the tightrope dancers and the performing animals best of all. Despite being a player’s theater, after a certain time of night the proprietors always pushed back the furniture, banishing their extraordinary performers to make way for dancing and music.
Now, faced with the familiar, half-remembered façade of the Villiers Street building, I suddenly suspected that this wasn’t such a good idea. But the sight of Jamie, happy and smiling, had scrambled my insides into a nervous mess. I had to do something to take my mind off my scattered thoughts. The box inside my head where I’d locked away all the guilt and pain and regret associated with Jamie’s death rattled ferociously, demanding attention, and I was too apprehensive to even acknowledge it. If I did, who knew what would happen. It wouldn’t be pretty, that was for sure.
Farley was an inch behind me, almost as close as my shadow. I could sense her willowy frame pressed at my back. As always when I was close to her, my heart stuttered in that awkward, ridiculous way.
She cleared her throat nervously. “I’m really not sure about this, Daniel.”
“Don’t be such a coward.” I looked back over my shoulder, seeing her staring up at me, her eyes wide and intimidated. The sight of her in that dress, her hair piled artistically up on her head with just a few stray strands resting gently against the porcelain skin of her neck, had done something terrible to me. I could barely breathe when I’d first seen her. Coming back here was always hard, but with Farley at my side it was almost even crueler. A reminder of a life, a perfect life, I could have had if things were different. If I hadn’t nearly died. If Farley had been born earlier. If the Quorum wasn’t watching my every step. A sharp frustration worked its way into my chest, and I shoved it aside, locked it out cold. It was no good dreaming in ifs.
“You can’t tell me you’ve never been dancing before.”
“Of course I have,” she grumbled, “but there aren’t any set steps. You just sort of… move.”
I hid the ghost of a smile, making sure I looked nonchalant when I faced her again. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you stand on my feet. You can just move with me.”
“My grandfather used to do that with me when I was a kid. I think I’m a little too big these days.”
There was a fixed, defiant look on her that made me want to reach down and take her face in my hands, kiss her for all her endearing stubbornness, but instead I kept my face neutral. “Suit yourself.”
I started up the steps towards Gatti’s. Soft strains of music filtered out into the dusky night air, bringing back all kinds of buried memories. I found myself startled by how vivid they were, despite them being a lifetime ago. Many lifetimes ago. The New York Ballet. Dancing with Cassie at the disused airdrome in Manchester when the news came that the war was over. Playing piano with Aldan back in the quarters when I was small, when I was still new at this life. A soft kind of sorrow nestled in my ribcage, aching a little.
“You don’t even look like you want to go dancing.” She looked at me, wringing a scrap of silk in her hands. I took it from her without thinking, noting the intricate f.s.h. at its edge. I hitched an eyebrow.
“What’s the S for?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but it stands for Sophia. After my great grandmother.”
“Hmm. Kinda makes your initials look like fish.”
“Shut up,” she growled. “I suppose your initials are D.T.M.”
“And what would that stand for exactly?”
“Daniel The Magnificent. I would have thought that was obvious.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop myself. I looked askance to find her giving me an astonished look. “Well, I am magnificent.”
“No. You’re a narcissist. And a megalomaniac.”
“You sound like my therapist.”
“You have a therapist?”
“What do you think?” I let the sarcasm ink my tone.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you.”
“Well, if only in the interests of clarity, I’ll tell you this: my initials are S.D.M.”
“Great,” she said, in a way that suggested she wanted me to think she couldn’t care less. I knew her better than she obviously thought I did, though. She was clearly itching to ask.
“Come on. Let’s go in,” I said, as if the matter were forgotten.
She let out a sharp, “Fine,” and followed on my heels as I approached the heavy, wooden doors ahead. A tall doorman stood at the door, dressed in a fine black suit with long coattails that reached the back of his knees. Delicate silver brocading ran down the front of his jacket, and he wore an expensive-looking velvet top hat along with pristine white gloves. His hands were folded in front of him. He didn’t acknowledge our existence as I skipped up the steps with Farley following reluctantly behind me.
“Isn’t he supposed to open the door for us?” she asked as I tugged it open. The sounds of the string quartet within grew louder and swelled out onto the deserted twilight of Villiers Street.
“Not if he doesn’t see us.”
“Oh. So some people can see us and some can’t?”
“That depends on Aldan. If he went to a certain place or interacted with certain people, then they will respond to you more than others. It’s all a matter of what the old man has stored up in his head.”
“So Aldan hasn’t been here?”
“He’s been here. Although not on this particular night. He probably never spoke to that particular doorman, either. Just saw him in passing.”
She fell silent for a moment while I inhaled, smelling things I hadn’t smelled in so very long. The luscious aroma of fresh, raw silk, lavender water perfume, jasmine, the chemical tang of the gas lamps that bordered the dance hall.
Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling like waterfalls of light, a gentle, warm light that couldn’t be had from electricity, and elegant women walked the room on the arms of their chaperones with fans in their gloved hands. The men were gathered in groups discussing politics in their finery, whilst others had already taken to the dance floor and were spinning ladies round like whirling tops, all laughing and dizzy.
“Wow,” Farley breathed. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to do that.”
A deep pang of longing rose in my throat. There was nothing more in the world that I wanted to do at that moment than make her laugh the way the other women were, carefree and abandoned.
“We’ll see.”
I grabbed her hand before she could protest and pulled her into the spinning tide of people, waltzing around the dance floor. We were swept up in the flow of movement, and the steps came back as if it hadn’t been more than a week since I danced a waltz. In truth, I preferred something with a little more energy, but right now this was perfect. My hand moved naturally to her waist, slim and narrow underneath my fingers, which I gripped lightly, afraid to really feel her. I held her hand in my other my one. She faltered for a moment before reaching up for my shoulder. She blushed furiously, something I was used to since she did it at least five times daily, but it still hit me every time, how delicate she could look on occasion. In between looking like she could murder me, or that she wished the ground would swallow her up, that was.
The blushing, aside from all her intelligence and stubbornness, was just one of the reasons I was so attracted to her. She couldn’t hide her emotions. Despite how unintentional it was, she was always inadvertently sharing something personal with me. That concept had almost destroyed me a couple of times already, almost had me forgetting everything that I’d promised the Quorum.
When she blushed like that, it seemed natural that I should bury my face into her beautiful hair and breathe her in. Seemed frighteningly simpl
e to run my fingertip across the fullness of her reddened lips. Seemed so easy to lose myself in the curious expression of her eyes—eyes that stared up at me now like I was the cruelest person on the planet.
“You must really hate me,” she said.
“Pardon me?”
“This is hardly my idea of dancing. I’m terrible at it.”
I swung her to the left to avoid another couple and gave her a cautious smile. “You’re better than you think. At least not terrible, anyway.” It was true. For every step I took, she followed naturally, moving with me and matching my pace. She was fluid, like a ballerina, elegant and beautiful, and she didn’t even know it.
“Whatever. You owe me.”
“Sounds fair. We can go dancing in some seedy nightclub tomorrow. Does that make you feel any better?”
She straightened up, giving me a begrudging look. “Yeah, actually. It does.”
The color in her cheeks deepened, and I swallowed down the urge again, the urge to grab her and press my lips to hers. To stand on the dance floor with the people surging around us, clutching hold of her, lost in a moment so fierce it felt the world might end. I drew in a sharp breath and blinked.
“What is it?” she asked. I was staring at her, and with the deadpan expression trained on my face, I probably looked quite odd. The music grew in pitch, swelling into a sweet climax that made my head spin. Her chest rose and fell quickly, as though she were out of breath, and yet we were barely moving now. Her lips were parted and I could feel the thread of her pulse growing stronger in her fingers that were intertwined with mine, matching my own racing heartbeat. Could she see it? Could she see what must be written on my face?
Panic shot through me, and I pushed back into the dance, startling her. She managed to step, too, but not quite far enough, and she stomped down on my foot. It was enough to unbalance her, and she stumbled into me. Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around her. For a second our bodies met. I could feel her heart beating against my chest, see the look of confusion in her eyes. Her hand somehow found its way to the back of my neck, probably where she reached to stop herself from falling, and the warmth of her bare skin against mine sent my pulse into overdrive.
“Well, well! Fancy meeting you two here!”
We sprang apart as if we’d been doused with a bucket of cold water. Farley brushed down the front of her dress in a manner so characteristic of the flustered women of this time that I almost forgot she wasn’t a Victorian lady. And me… I was pretty sure I looked like I was going to pass out.
Aldan stared at the two of us, pulling off an excellent impersonation of the cat who’d gotten the cream. But in his case it was champagne.
This was the old Aldan, the Aldan I met all those years ago, the Aldan who had changed me into what I was. His hair was short against his head, still grey, though. He wore full evening attire, a black suit with a blood-red necktie. The chain of his pocket watch glinted gold against the dark material of his waistcoat, and he wore a pristine white handkerchief in his breast pocket. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him wearing something other than a faded rock t-shirt.
Aldan’s eyes glittered. He took a deep swig of his champagne and gave us a broad, knowing smile. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Of course not,” Farley answered, quicker than I could. Her eyes flickered towards me, my skin burning under her gaze. I kept my own eyes fixed on Aldan.
“What brings you back here, old man?” My heart’s erratic pace had slowed, but now it was almost too slow. I felt dizzy, a sensation I hadn’t experienced in, well, longer than I could remember.
“Just checking in. I came to have a word with Farley. You don’t mind if I cut in?”
A beat of relief was about all I felt before I noticed something across the other side of the room that had my stomach knotting all over again. Freakin’ great. My eyes had to be playing tricks on me, but, no, when I looked back he was still standing there.
Kayden.
What the hell was Kayden doing here? And he wasn’t even glamored. Farley could look over any moment and see him standing there, staring me down like I was some kind of devil.
“By all means, old man. Be my guest.” I took a step back, indicating that Farley was all his, and started my way across the bustling room without looking back. If Aldan noticed the boy, he didn’t let on, but of course he must have known Kayden was there. It was one thing appearing in the hangar, but this was Aldan’s mind. People couldn’t just bust their way in without so much as a by your leave. Maybe the Quorum have finally found something, I thought, some loophole in the prophecy. But there was another, more worrying voice that whispered over the top of my blind hope, whispering that maybe they hadn’t found anything at all. That maybe it was time. I shuddered, pulling at my necktie. Kayden would just love delivering that news.
Studying his fingernails, he gave off the impression he would rather be somewhere else. He wore a tailored green button-down Oxford shirt over a pair of washed-out black jeans, both of which looked remarkably familiar. No one seemed to have noticed him where he had propped himself against the wall by the refreshment stand, even though he was completely out of place. He looked up at me as I approached, feigning surprise. White-blond hair fell into his face, all spun gold and sunlight. Kayden raked his hand through it, brushing it out of his eyes.
“Hey, bro,” he said in his lazy drawl.
I ignored his greeting. I was too busy trying to keep calm. “Kayden. Are you wearing my clothes?!”
