Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(110)

She tipped her head back and smiled at him. Sometimes talking to him was like talking to Ty, she thought. She found herself making jokes she thought were obvious and then realizing they weren’t obvious at all unless you understood the subtle codes of social interaction. She didn’t know how she’d learned them, just that she had, and Ty still struggled with them, and so, it seemed, did Mark.

Trying to look at the world through Ty’s eyes, Julian had said once, was like looking into a kaleidoscope, shaking it up, and then looking again. You saw all the same glimmering crystals, just in a different formation.

“The Wild Hunt was freedom,” Mark said. “And freedom is necessary.”

In Mark’s eyes Emma could see a wilderness of stars and treetops, the fierce shine of glaciers, all the glittering detritus of the roof of the world.

It made her think of riding that motorcycle over the ocean. Of the freedom to be wild and untrammeled. Of the ache she felt in her soul sometimes to be connected to nothing, answerable to nothing, bound by nothing.

“Mark—” she began.

Mark’s expression changed; he was looking past her suddenly, his hand tightening on hers. Emma glanced where he was looking but saw only the cloakroom. A bored-looking coat-check girl perched on the counter, smoking a cigarette out of a silver holder.

“Mark?” Emma turned back to him, but he was already moving away from her, vaulting over the counter of the coat-check station—much to the bored girl’s amusement—and vanishing. Emma was about to follow him when Cristina and Julian swung into her line of sight, blocking her.

“Mark ran off,” Emma announced.

“Yeah, he’s not exactly a team player yet,” said Julian. He was ruffled from dancing, his cheeks flushed. Cristina didn’t have a hair out of place. “Look, I’ll go after him, and you two dance—”

“If I might cut in?” A tall young man appeared in front of them. He looked like he was probably about twenty-five, nattily dressed in a herringbone suit and matching fedora. His hair was bleached blond and he wore expensive-looking shoes with red soles that flashed fire as he walked. A gaudy pink cocktail ring glittered on his middle finger. His gaze was fixed on Cristina. “Would you like to dance?”

“If you don’t mind,” Julian said, his voice easy, polite, reaching to put a hand on Cristina’s arm. “My girlfriend and I, we’re . . .”

The man’s friendly expression changed—infinitesimally, but Emma could see it, a tautness behind his eyes that made Julian’s words trail off. “And if you don’t mind,” he said, “I think you may have failed to notice I’m a Blue.” He tapped his pocket, where an invitation that matched the one they’d found in Ava’s purse was folded—matched it, except for being a pale shade of blue. He rolled his eyes at their puzzled expressions. “Newbies,” he muttered, and there was an undercurrent of something unpleasant—almost scornful—in his dark eyes.

“Of course.” Cristina shot a quick look at Julian and Emma, and then turned back to the stranger with a smile. “We’re so sorry to have misunderstood.”

Julian’s face was grim as Cristina headed onto the dance floor with the man who’d called himself a Blue. Emma sympathized. She comforted herself with the knowledge that if he tried anything on the dance floor, Cristina would fillet him with her butterfly knife.

“We’d better dance too,” said Julian. “Looks like it’s the only way not to be noticed.”

We’ve already been noticed, Emma thought. It was true: Though no fuss had been made over their arrival, plenty of people in the crowd were casting them sideways glances. There were quite a few of the Followers who looked entirely human—and indeed, Emma wasn’t totally clear on their policy regarding mundanes—but as newcomers, she imagined they were still objects of attention. Certainly the behavior of the clarinetist had indicated as much.

She took Julian’s hand and they moved into the outside of the crowd, toward the end of the room, where the shadows were deeper. “Half faeries, ifrits, weres,” Emma murmured, taking Julian’s other hand so that they faced each other. He looked more ruffled than he had before, his cheeks flushed. She couldn’t blame him for being unsettled. In most crowds, their runes, if discovered, would mean nothing. She had the feeling this crowd was different. “Why are they all here?”

“It isn’t easy, having the Sight, if you don’t know others who do,” Julian said in a low voice. “You see things nobody else sees. You can’t talk about it because no one will understand. You have to keep secrets, and secrets—they break you apart. Cut you open. Make you vulnerable.”

The low timbre of his voice shuddered down through Emma’s bones. There was something in it that frightened her. Something that reminded her of the glaciers in Mark’s eyes, distant and lonely.

“Jules,” she said.

Muttering something like “never mind,” he spun her away, then pulled her back toward him. Years of practicing fighting together made them an almost perfect dancing team, she realized with surprise. They could predict each other’s movements, glide with each other’s bodies. She could tell which way Julian would step by the cadence of his breath and the faint tightening of his fingers around hers.

Julian’s dark curls were wildly tousled, and when he drew her near him, she could smell the clove spice of his cologne, the faint scent of paint underneath.