Nevermore

Even over the crashing drums that joined in with the drone of bass guitar, Isobel could still hear the quiet rustling of her skirts.

A wide wooden door stood open before her. Inside, colored lights raged. Flashes of violet and red blinked and pulsed, flaring through a writhing throng of black-clad bodies. She slowed her run as she drew into the archway and took in the sea of masked faces. Against one wall a band, the source of the tortured music, played atop a makeshift stage. A boy dressed in a long black coat, his face painted like Death’s, screamed into a microphone. He dropped to his knees. The drummer and guitarist behind him thrashed out a violent rhythm while he reached toward his audience, begged them with anguished lyrics to pray for him.

Fighting against every instinct, Isobel drifted farther inward, deciding to try her best to keep back from the carnage that was the dance floor. She glanced up to see pockets of figures standing around a wooden gallery that rimmed the circumference of the room. Like decorative gargoyles and cemetery angels, they stood huddled close to the edges, elegant hands poised on the banisters. She caught a few stares, flinty gazes turning in her direction. She looked quickly away. A flash of black light caught her, turning the pink of her dress deep violet for a fleeting second. She wished that the light could have stayed, could have stained the fabric, hidden her.

She felt someone tap her on the shoulder, and she swung around. A tall boy with an unruly black Mohawk and tiny round sunglasses took her wrist without asking. Black lipstick coated his full lips. A spiked dog collar fastened with a padlock encircled his neck. She jerked away from him, realizing too late that it was her tag he was after and not an open vein.

Annoyed, he grabbed for her wrist again. Isobel let him check her tag this time, knowing better than to try and shout a coherent explanation for her very blond, very frilly presence over the deafening music. He flipped the tag over several times before actually reading it, as though to first confirm authenticity. Isobel stood her ground and watched his face as he took in the purple writing. His eyes flashed to hers, disbelieving. He looked as though he wanted to speak but he didn’t, maybe deciding it wasn’t worth the trouble to yell.

Isobel jerked her wrist back, remembering Gwen’s warning not to lose her tag. The point was that she had one. So what else did he want?

She took a step backward, but he shook his head. It didn’t seem as though he was ready to let her go. He crooked a finger at her to come closer, and this time it was her turn to shake her head. He scowled and turned to point at a nearby gathering.

The group he gestured to looked like a stately if not unusual funeral party. There were three young men, two of them with black umbrellas open and held aloft over the head of a girl, her golden-bronze arms coated in black lace sleeves, her thick dark hair piled atop her head beneath bands of silver, secured with large roses and long drapes of black ribbon. She looked like a queen, her full dress a deep bloodred, accented with black.

Lacy.

For a moment Isobel thought about bolting straight into the crowd, but then the other girl saw her and it was too late. Like a mouse paralyzed in the gaze of a cobra, Isobel stood frozen.

Lacy’s artfully painted eyes narrowed hard on her. She surveyed Isobel for a long moment, a sneer contorting the perfection of her ebony lips. By this time the other members of her party had turned to stare as well, lowering their goblets.

Isobel gulped. They were going to eat her alive.

She silently cursed Gwen for dressing her in baby-girl pink. Why couldn’t they have swapped? A little eyeliner, a dash of sullenness, and she could have slipped beneath the radar completely.

Apparently growing inpatient with her, Mohawk Man placed a large hand against her back and urged her forward, toward the group. Isobel, not knowing what else to do, went where she was pushed.

The guys with the umbrellas looked like they were in their twenties at least, each of them clad in top hats and long coats. The third had a more edgy look. He wore a leather jacket laced in chains, his hair spiky on one half of his head, shorn clean on the other. Lacy handed off her goblet to Mr. Mohawk and seized Isobel’s tag. Her dark eyes narrowed as she read, and when she looked up she stared past Isobel, searching the crowd behind them.

This was the last shred of evidence Isobel needed to know that Varen was present, that he’d been seen, and she wasted no time. She lashed out at Mohawk Man, jerking his arm, causing him to drop Lacy’s drink. It splattered on the floor, dark droplets flying onto the skirt of Lacy’s dress. She gasped in horror and let go of Isobel’s tag. Isobel, seizing her chance, broke away from the group, running headlong into the black throng. She plowed forward, pressing her way through the bodies, weaving between them. Her dress snagged on someone’s spiked bracelet, and she had to stop to free herself. She glanced behind her, then turned and spun in another direction. How would she ever find him? Was he down below, or above, somewhere on the gallery?