Chapter 13
Thirteen
As Oliver led Emmy through the velvet-draped tables, she winced at his uniform, the surface shimmering and rolling like trapped
smoke. Even the guards now wore Clara’s enchanted fabric.
“Here we are.” Letting go of Emmy’s arm, he motioned toward Clara and Grace, who were huddled together at a table. The urge
to scream was strong and swift, but Emmy had no choice but to choke it down. She was to play cards with the three people who’d
conspired to ruin her life, and there was no getting out of it.
“Miss Fairchild!” Grace patted the seat beside her with surprising vigor. “I’m glad Ollie saved your poor feet from yet another
dance.”
A snicker burst from Clara, and Emmy waited for humiliation to scald her cheeks, but for once, they remained cool. In a way,
it was easier to face this version of Grace than the one who’d played the perfect hostess in front of her aunt. This Grace
had a sharpness to her smile upon seeing Emmy with her “Ollie.” Which meant that Emmy—or, rather, Winnie Fairchild—was getting
under her skin.
As an attendant helped Emmy into her chair, Clara pinched the pink folds of Emmy’s skirt. “You may be the only girl here not
wearing enchanted silk.”
Oliver groaned. “Can you drop the sales pitch for one night?”
“But Miss Fairchild didn’t get a chance to place an order!” Clara smoothed the silk of her own gown, where black and white
chess pieces danced across a chess board.
The wise course of action would be to buy a dress to study the conjury. Emmy tried to choke out the words, she truly did—but Clara was looking so smug. “I already own too many gowns.”
“You don’t feel dull, being the only girl here wearing ordinary fabric?”
“Not at all.” Smiling in their presence was becoming easier with every barb.
“And what is your gift?” Clara pressed. “Something with dirt, I’ve heard?”
“Leave her be.” Grace turned to Emmy, batting her lashes with an innocence she’d probably practiced in her mirror. “Do you
know stud poker?”
“I taught Miss Montgomery a few years back,” Oliver said. “I can teach you, too.”
Emmy and Grace had played countless times—but Grace must have feigned ignorance so Oliver could explain it to her. Winnie
could do the same.
Emmy smiled shyly at him. “I’d like that.”
As Emmy pretended to listen to Oliver explain the rules, Grace spoke quietly with Clara, occasionally reaching for the drink
her lady’s maid held for her, the same one who’d been crying behind the dress shop. The girl’s eyes met Emmy’s, but the maid
quickly looked away.
Wonderful; even the dealer’s suit was swirling with enchantment. With his face drawn from the strain of conjury, he threw
the cards in the air, shuffling them over their heads. He repeated the trick again, and Emmy could not help but feel awestruck
as the cards danced about.
As they returned to the dealer’s hands, he faltered, cards raining over them.
“Damnit!” Oliver jumped to his feet. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry, sir!” The dealer wiped his brow. “Normally I can do it for several minutes.”
“Well, you dumped cards all over the ladies! Now pick them up.”
Hands shaking, the dealer hurried to gather the cards, and Emmy sat on her hands to resist helping him.
“Room for a fifth?” Jack stood behind Emmy, his hand on the back of her chair, Nathaniel’s easy smile pinned to his princely
face.
As introductions were made, Emmy’s nerves settled just a smidge. Facing her enemies was far easier with an ally—and sometime
over the last month, Jack Fontaine had become her ally.
The dealer began distributing the cards—in his hands, the ordinary way—and Emmy sat taller. How she loved the anticipation
of stud poker, especially the first card, which each player received face down so only they could see it. The second card,
and eventually the other three, was dealt face up, for all to see.
“Your card is the lowest, Miss Fairchild,” Oliver said. “The first bet falls to you.”
Emmy cleared her throat. “Are there limits to how much we bet?”
“Oh, we don’t bet money,” Clara said, her eyes alight. “We play for masks.”
She motioned toward a black curtain strung beside the table. A series of macabre animal masks were pinned to it. A rabbit
with frighteningly large teeth. A Canadian goose with a razor-sharp beak. A pig with a snout so realistic, Emmy searched its
seams for blood.
“What do you say, Fontaine?” Oliver said. “Do you like games as much as Mistfield’s predecessors?”
“I like them plenty.” Jack’s voice remained casual, even amused. “But I don’t play them until I know the stakes.”
“They’re rather simple. The losers wear those masks.”
“Easy enough. I’m in.”
“And you, Miss Fairchild?” Clara turned that barbed smile on Emmy. “Or do you prefer your bets as boring as your dresses?”
“Clara,” Grace admonished, though the corner of her mouth quirked.
But Emmy didn’t mind Clara’s overt aggression. The dressmaker had revealed a weakness, one they could exploit: she was terribly proud.
“Well?” Oliver reclined in his chair. “What do you say?”
Grace waited for Emmy’s response. Clara, too, watched her patiently. Too patiently.
“What’s the catch?” Emmy asked.
Clara’s smile withered. “Why must there be a catch?”
“The masks are conjured,” Oliver explained. “Once they touch your skin, your face will take their form. Here, I’ll show you.
Milton?”
A young man in uniform stepped away from the line of waiting attendants.
“Pick one.” Oliver motioned toward the masks.
The attendant hesitated. “Will it be stuck on me forever?”
“Did I give you the impression this is optional?” Oliver snapped. “Mask. Now.”
With a trembling hand, the attendant reached for the goose mask. As soon as his fingers grazed it, feathers shot from his
cheeks, his eyes widened to inhuman black orbs, and his mouth stretched into a razor-sharp beak. He did not simply wear the
terrible mask; he became the mask, his bone structure altering as if it had always been avian.
Clara clapped exuberantly. “Oh, how I love your magic, Grace!”
Grace smiled demurely. At her side, her red-headed maid took a wary step backward.
Somehow, the mask had transformed the attendant’s face. But as far as Emmy knew, only she had the gift of transformation, though she’d never transformed a living thing without the relic.
Grace had bridged Emmy’s magic countless times.
With practice, she’d learned to infuse an object to make a particular transformation, like a jar that, when a pebble was placed inside, turned it into a button.
She could also imbue the object with the gift of transformation itself, wielding it as if it were her own—for a short while.
But Emmy’s conjury didn’t work on living things. Not without Rose’s relic.
Something deep inside Emmy—something dark, something bitter—snapped.
Grace didn’t make those masks with fragments of Emmy’s conjury she’d saved for herself. She used fragments of Papa’s.
“You can avoid the mask by folding,” Oliver explained with agonizing calm, as if his poor attendant were not whimpering through
a grotesque beak. “Or by winning.”
Emmy forced herself to breathe. “Very well.”
As the dealer dealt their third cards—a ten of hearts for Emmy—Grace leaned over to Oliver to whisper something. Emmy would
have rolled her eyes, but something glittered deep in Grace’s neckline. A coin of melded silver and gold, not at all on theme.
A relic. Circular, like Rose’s, only a little smaller.
Seeing Emmy staring, Grace tucked it beneath her neckline. “My father gave it to me.”
“The only thing that damn man gave you,” Clara mused. Seeing Grace’s look, she sighed. “Right, we’re not supposed to speak ill of the
dead.”
“Even if they deserve it,” Oliver muttered.
Emmy’s head spun. Had Grace received the relic when he died a few years back, hiding it from Emmy? Or had the Windsors kept
it until she became their protégé?
Even more unsettling: everyone else wore theirs proudly, yet Grace kept hers hidden.
Their fourth cards floated to them, and Emmy forced herself to focus. Oliver had a pair of kings, the strongest hand showing.
Emmy, meanwhile, was showing the eight, nine, and ten of hearts. Utterly useless with her downturned three of clubs, but as
far as anyone knew, she was chasing a straight flush.
The final cards fluttered to the table. The jack of hearts for Emmy. Nearly a straight flush on top—but worthless, given her downturned card.
“It takes a lot for me to fold, but those masks are downright horrifying.” Jack pushed back from the table.
“I rather like them,” Clara murmured as she peeked at her bottom card. The best hand she could possess was a high pair, and
even that could not beat Oliver’s kings. “I’m in.”
The pig mask was the worst of them all. Emmy would enjoy Clara wearing it.
Like Emmy, Grace’s four cards were of the same suit. A potential flush, but without the straight draw. “I’m in, too. What
about you, Miss Fairchild?”
No fidgeting. No rapid blinking like an innocent little doe. She had the flush. Or perhaps she’d gotten better at bluffing.
After all, she’d bluffed her way through a decade of friendship.
With that cursed club, Emmy’s hand was even more worthless than Clara’s. But she could not bring herself to fold. “I’m in,
too.”
Grace froze, her eyes widening ever so slightly.
Oliver chuckled. “Well, let’s flip them over, ladies.”
Clara, as expected, had nothing. For a self-appointed fashion expert, she laughed it off, as if wearing an animal’s face for
the rest of the evening was no bother at all.
Oliver showed two pair, just as Emmy expected. And Grace flourished her spade flush, a perfect match to her gown. Quite the coincidence.
Emmy was going to lose. Judging by the warning look Jack shot her, he knew it, too.
The relic’s power was cool against her sternum as Emmy flipped over her final card, transforming her useless three of clubs
to the queen of hearts. “Is this good?”
Grace’s pretty little smile rotted away.