The Cure for Dreaming(29)

I stiffened. “And do you love her?”

“No.” He shook his head and lowered his voice to a whisper behind the butler. “She’s another wild one. I’ve heard stories about her that would put both Nanette and Lucy Westenra to shame.”

“But—”

“I told you, Olivia”—he pressed his gloved fingers around mine with a squeeze—“I want you.”

I bit my lip, unsure how to respond.

We neared the swarming buzz of chattering guests that waited beyond the corner, and the scents of seafood and beer grew potent enough to taste the salt and the bubbles in the air. I gripped Percy’s arm.

He patted my hand. “Don’t be afraid. No one’s going to gobble you up.”

We rounded the corner.

My feet halted.

Percy was wrong. So utterly wrong.

Beneath a blinding crystal chandelier, around a lace-draped table, a dozen fanged young guests with ashen skin and lips like blue-black bruises chatted and gorged themselves on appetizers. I heard their voices as muffled nothingness, but I saw them—my word, how I saw them. With sterling silver forks, they scraped oysters from the half shells and devoured the mollusks’ slippery gray flesh with slurps and swallows and ripples down their long white throats. Tall, gilded steins sat in front of each boy, but they were filled with blood, not beer. The young men wore black tails and vests the colors of fine jewels; the girls sparkled in dark silk gowns and bright diamond necklaces, but even they were savages.

A bespectacled redheaded creature with long yellow teeth and piercing eyes lifted his head and spotted us standing there. “Percy, you old bore! You’re late.”

A sea of deathly faces turned our way. All I could hear was the hammering of my heart against my chest.

“Mr. Percy Acklen has arrived, Miss Eiderling,” said the butler, sounding bored. And then, as if in afterthought, he added, “And guest.” The servant turned on his heel and left the room with footsteps that mimicked the quickening of my breath.

I turned to leave as well.

“Where are you going?” Percy grabbed hold of my wrist.

“I can’t do this. They look like they want to murder me.” I lunged toward the room’s exit.

Percy tugged me back and pressed his mouth close to my ear. “This is embarrassing. Turn around and come back to the table.”

“I can’t.”

“Please. What’s wrong with you?” He scowled at me as if I were the monster in the room, his teeth so sharp. Fierce. Oh, God.

“No!” I gave a small cry and broke free of his grip, but then, with a sudden jolt, the world tipped upright. I leaned forward, regained my balance, and saw the room as a normal room, with more sound, fewer colors.

Fewer teeth.

The throng of faces at the table now belonged to a finely dressed assortment of regular young men and ladies who gaped as though they were encountering an escapee from the Oregon State Insane Asylum.

The girl at the head of the table breathed a curt laugh through her nostrils and scanned me from the top of my drooping hair to the toes of my three-year-old dress shoes. She had reddish-gold locks that rose at least a foot off the top of her head—an impressive soufflé!—and her dress was lined in black and cream stripes, with dizzying swirls on the curves of her bodice.

“Who is this, Percy?” she asked with a wrinkle of her small nose. “And what on earth is wrong with her?”

Percy cleared his throat and guided me toward her. “I’m sorry I was late. This is my guest, Olivia Mead.”

Two of the girls snickered. The other guests leaned forward and studied me with watchful eyes.

“Oh! You’re that hypnotized girl!” said a sunken-eyed blond fellow, raising his hand as if answering a question in a classroom. “The girl Henri Reverie stood upon at the beginning of the Halloween show. That was the funniest, bawdiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“That was the bawdiest thing you’ve ever seen, John?” asked the redheaded boy who had first spotted us. “Remind me to show you a certain deck of playing cards, my friend.”

“Don’t be crass, Teddy,” said Sadie. “Even though the presence of certain individuals might suggest otherwise”— she glanced at me again—“this is a lady’s supper party, not a North End saloon.”

Next to Teddy, a dark-haired girl—a scrawny, bulging-eyed thing—burst into a peal of high-pitched laughter. “You brought the dentist’s daughter, Percy? Why?”

“Yesss, why?” Sadie bared her bright white teeth. “Is this a joke, Percy? Did you somehow hear about my surprise guest?”

“What? No.” Percy let go of my hand. “What guest?”

Sadie turned her attention toward the opposite end of the table. “Henri Reverie.”

My heart dropped to my stomach. I craned my neck forward to better see where she was looking, and there he sat, down at the far end, his face turned toward his plate so I could only see a head of dark blond hair with a few uncombed tufts sticking up on top.

Henri Reverie.

Henry Rhodes.

“Before Monsieur Reverie leaves for his performance tonight”—Sadie shifted her sights back to me—“he agreed to dine with us and then to hypnotize me even more thoroughly than he hypnotized you, Ophelia.”