Chapter 13 Darla
Darla
The car glides through wrought-iron gates taller than our house, tires whispering over a drive lit like a runway.
Lanterns blaze in perfect intervals, washing the manicured hedges in warm gold.
Ahead, the estate rises out of the night—columns and balconies, marble steps spilling down like a wedding train.
Every window glows. Music drifts on the air, water-silky and expensive.
The car comes to a smooth stop at the base of the steps. A valet in a crisp uniform and a simple blue mask opens my door before the engine is even silent. I note the color as I step out onto the cool flagstones as my father emerges from the other side, handing the keys over without a word.
His hand settles at the small of my back as we approach the steps. A courteous weight to any onlooker. A warning to me.
“Smile,” he says without moving his mouth. His own mask is stark white, porcelain and blank, a jarring contrast to the dark tuxedos around him. It makes his face look like a skull.
I arrange my face. The mask helps. A Venetian crimson, edged in delicate gold leaf, hides my eyes.
My father chose it himself, insisting the bold color was ‘festive.’ It feels less like a celebration and more like a warning.
My gown is liquid silver that clings like a well-behaved secret. I am an ornament hung for inspection.
Guests flow up the staircase in pairs and trios, masks gleaming.
But it’s the colors that I notice, a silent language I don’t speak.
The men’s masks are almost exclusively black or white—sharp onyx and blank porcelain.
In contrast, many of the women wear a startling uniform crimson.
I watch a man in a severe black mask lean close to the woman on his arm.
Her mask is the same blood-red. She doesn’t react to whatever he whispers, her posture as still and perfect as a doll’s.
A strange chill traces its way down my spine.
It’s a pattern, I realize. A code. And I’m suddenly, terrifyingly aware that my mask is crimson, and my father’s is white.
Perfume, champagne, polished wood; money has a scent, and it’s everywhere.
“Mayor Graves.” A man in a midnight tux bows slightly as we reach the top. His mask is black with a small feathered crest. “Welcome back.” His gaze flicks over me in a quick calculation and lands on my father again. “We’ve placed you near the fountain.”
“Perfect,” my father says. His hand doesn’t leave my spine.
We’re ushered into a ballroom that looks like it holds history in its teeth.
Frescoed ceiling. A chandelier so heavy it could murder a room.
The floor is a mirror of marble. Servers drift like ghosts with silver trays filled with champagne and canapés in the practiced invisibility of good help.
My eyes catch on their masks. Each one is the same plain, unassuming blue as the one the valet wore.
The pattern clicks into place with a cold, simple logic.
Blue, then, is the color of the staff—present but unseen, a separate class entirely.
I remind my lungs to function. Inhale. Exhale. Keep my shoulders tall, chin up, mouth soft: the posture of a daughter who belongs.
But something in the air is off. It’s too choreographed. Conversations rise and fall in the same rhythmic phrases, smiles held a half-second too long. People are watching each other like gamblers—eyes bright, hands still.
A violin quartet saws out a waltz. The tempo is languid and wrong for how fast my pulse runs.
We make a slow parade along the room’s edge.
Men turn toward my father with those politician smiles that show teeth and nothing else.
Women glance at me to assess my gown, posture, and pedigree.
The chandelier scatters light across my silver gown, making it look as if coins of gold and white slide over the fabric as I move.
“Champagne?” a server murmurs.
“Yes,” my father answers, taking two flutes and pressing one into my hand as if it is a prop. “Don’t drink it,” he adds softly.
He never likes me dulled. He likes me polished.
We pass a series of glass cases along a gallery wall.
Inside, velvet displays cradle necklaces, bracelets, watches.
Each bears a small card—Lot 3A, Lot 3B—followed by tidy lines of provenance, appraisal value, donor name.
A charity auction, then, I tell myself. A gala performance; a little glitter to soften the checks.
Relief pricks and recedes. The cards sit too neatly. The numbers march in an exacting hand: 1A–1F, 2A–2F, 3A–3F. Sets. Families. Groupings. Odd.
The music changes, making the crowd’s hum shift with it, a subtle lean toward anticipation.
A steward steps onto a low dais at the far end of the room.
It's just a shallow rise in the marble, framed by two towering arrangements of white lilies.
The mask has no design. The sound of his voice through the lapel mic is very smooth.
His voice has the warmth of an elevator.
“Friends,” he says, and the word slides around the room like oil. “Thank you for your continued generosity. We’ll begin our private selections momentarily. If you have not received your folio, please see your attendant.”
Private selections. Folio.
As if on cue, men at the perimeter raise slim booklets bound in ivory leather. My father has one already—of course he does. He doesn’t offer it to me. His thumb caresses the spine, as if the book is purring. He tucks it under his arm, the way you tuck a letter bomb.
He leans down, mouth angled toward my ear. “Don’t wander.”
Which means he wants to talk to someone I shouldn’t hear.
“Of course,” I say. My smile stays painted on.
He moves off into the current, pulled effortlessly into a cluster of men near a carved archway. A woman in red twines her hand through one of those men’s elbow; I catch the flash of a signet ring, a crest engraved so deep it looks like a wound.
I drift toward the fountain the steward mentioned—a circular pool framed by low marble, water jetting from the mouth of a stone swan. It hushes the edges of sound. The air is cooler here.
Across the courtyard beyond a set of open French doors, lanterns swing from magnolia trees. People move through the glow like moths. A different hum reaches me—lower, sparser. The conversations here are not social; they are transactional.
A hushed voice says, “Lot Four is delayed.”
Another, colder voice cuts in. “I don’t care. The buyer is getting impatient. Tell him she will be made ready for him after the final bell.”
Made ready. The phrase snags in my mind, cold and sharp. Ready for what? The words feel wrong, clinical, like they’re discussing livestock, not a person. A knot of unease tightens in my stomach.
I set my untouched champagne on the fountain’s lip and follow the sound.
The courtyard is arranged like a series of small theatres.
Pavilions of gauze and gold fringe section the lawn into discrete rooms. In each, a pair of chairs and a pedestal table wait, intimate and precise.
Attendants in black stand at the mouths of the pavilions, their faces hidden by the same simple blue masks as the staff inside, hands folded.
The rule is confirmed. Blue means you belong to the house, not the party.
Between the pavilions, on low platforms draped in ivory, people stand.
My stomach drops before my mind forms words. They stand perfectly still, like living mannequins. Each wears a neutral garment—a silk slip, a linen shift. And each wears a simple mask of the same startling crimson.
The same red as my mask. A cold dread, sharp and specific, blooms in my chest.
A woman in an elegant black mask pauses near one of them, head tilted, studying the line of a young man’s shoulders the way you’d admire a sculpture. Her companion, also in a black mask, murmurs something. She nods. The attendant in his blue mask marks a note in his booklet.
The code’s silent language is increasingly clear. Staff members wear blue, while items for sale are red. The buyers are clad in black.
My father’s mask is white. The thought is a splinter of ice in my mind. What does white mean?
I force air into my lungs. The night smells like lilies and candle wax and something under it—nerves, maybe. Fear has a scent, too.
Another platform. A girl with dark hair lifts her chin at nothing. Her mask is the same startling crimson, her hands loose at her sides. The placard reads Lot 5B. She sways almost imperceptibly, catching herself, and an attendant in his blue mask steps half a step closer. Guarding. Guiding. Owning.
I move faster. The pavilions multiply, each with its little stage. A man taps the brass bell at one; the chime is delicate and final. An attendant appears with a velvet folder. Numbers are written. Hands shake. Champagne glitters in flutes that remain perfectly level.
My hands are cold. I can’t feel my fingers.
This isn’t a charity sale. It’s a market.
I swallow against a rising tide in my throat. The mask is suddenly too tight across my cheekbones. As I reach up to adjust the ribbon, I catch sight of a mirror propped against a column. For a heartbeat I don’t recognize myself—a silver shape with a painted mouth and empty eyes. An object. A thing.
“Darla.” My father’s voice finds me from behind. It threads through noise and lodges between my ribs.
I turn. He looks the same as he always does—composed, precise, his mask an afterthought on a face that needs no disguise.
“You wandered,” he says mildly.
“I was looking for air.” I tilt my head toward the fountain. “It’s warm.”
He studies my face. He can always tell when I’m lying, but he likes it when I pretend to be good at it. It keeps the game neat.
“Come,” he says, offering his arm like a gentleman. “There’s someone you should speak with before the… formalities.”
The word lands like a stone dropping into black water.