Chapter 14 #2
“Tia Mendez and Cora Lyte,” Tia replies, somehow managing to sound both casual and assured over the music.
I think the girl’s eyes widen at my name, but I’m probably just being paranoid. She checks us off on an actual handwritten list—me and guest—and gestures to a wooden box lined in velvet. “Phones, please. You’ll get them back when you leave.”
“We heard about that rule,” Tia says. “We didn’t bring them.”
Her eyes narrow as they skim over us, then she simply nods. Either we look trustworthy, or they have folks planted around the party looking for phone crashers. My money’s on the latter.
“I hope you have an illuminating evening,” the girl says, stepping aside with a smile. “You’ll find the buffet in the dining room, and there are appetizers and bar stations in every room, so just help yourself.”
I want to ask her who here can tell me why I was invited, but she’s already turned her attention to the couple behind us. I glance at Tia, who shrugs, then takes my arm and hurries us through the door and into…
Well, into wow. Just plain I-get-it now wow.
The foyer alone would be enough to impress royalty.
It’s two stories of dark wood and stained glass, lit entirely by candles—dozens of them, maybe hundreds, clustered on every surface and tucked into iron sconces along the walls.
The air smells like beeswax and something herbal I can’t place, and the effect is a strange, golden warmth that makes the whole space feel like it exists slightly outside of normal time.
To our left, through a set of wide archways, the cavernous main room is packed.
The band is on an elevated stage, and they’re actually good—not a campus cover band but something tighter and rhythmic, the kind of sound that practically insists you move with the music.
As if to prove the point, dozens upon dozens of students fill the dance floor and spill into every corner, but still move with the beat.
Waiters in bowties weave through the crowd in time with the music, artfully balancing trays of cocktails and appetizers.
A low atmospheric haze softens everything in the room, just enough to make it feel like a dream. Considering the note that came with the invitation, I can’t help but wonder if that’s the point.
Tia leans close and whispers, “Wow,” and I have to nod. Granted, I grew up without money and had the world’s most boring social life, but even I can tell this party is seriously over the top.
A girl near the archway catches my eye—she’s holding a cocktail that glows faintly blue, laughing with her head thrown back like she’s modeling for a perfume ad.
For that matter, everyone here looks like they got dressed by someone in the Wardrobe Department.
Compared to the last party I attended—a kegger where someone threw up in a potted plant before 10 p.m.—this is another planet.
I mean, seriously. Whoever’s behind Whitehall’s parties should be majoring in advertising, because every single detail is calibrated to make you feel like you’ve stepped into somewhere secret and rare. And the obnoxious part is that it’s working.
I glance around the foyer itself, where clusters of students stand with drinks, talking in voices just low enough to feel conspiratorial.
A few I recognize from campus—a junior from my Lit seminar, one of the upperclassmen Tia pointed out during orientation week—but most are strangers.
And scattered among the college crowd are people who are clearly not students.
Older and more polished with the kind of easy grace that suggests the goings-on in the ballroom are just stuff and nonsense as they move in small groups into a much more sedate sitting room.
“Night and day,” Tia says, her attention also on the sitting room. No lights flash in there, and no one is dancing. Instead, it’s a quiet gathering of about two dozen folks engaged in intense conversations over those shimmering cocktails.
The room has a soft, dreamy quality, and I wonder why in hell anyone would think to have the raucous college party at the same time as what looks like it could be a social gathering from one of the historical romance novels I used to consume like candy.
“Weird,” Tia says, which pretty much sums up my thoughts. “I’m guessing you were invited by the boring crowd.”
I press my hand over my heart. “I’m wounded. You’ve seriously wounded me.”
She pauses long enough to look me up and down. “Reassessing,” she says, then shakes her head and sighs. “Nope. Definitely the boring side.”
“Damn. I gotta work on my party girl vibe.”
She smirks, and we ease toward the Boring Side’s buffet. A thin man who looks to be in his mid-sixties approaches wearing a black vest, a bow tie, and a subservient manner. Either a waiter or a valet, I’m guessing. “Ms. Lyte, Ms. Mendez, would you care for refreshments?”
Tia and I share a glance that screams Do we have nametags on? If the waiter notices, he doesn’t show it. Just continues his spiel.
“We have traditional party beverages in the West Ballroom,” he says with a nod to what I now think of as the Party Side.
“Or perhaps you would prefer the Whitehall signature cocktail?” He indicates a nearby table topped with those iridescent blue cocktails.
“It’s more suited to your…sophisticated palates. ”
“I’m not that sophisticated,” I say quickly. Because getting tipsy on mysterious glowing drinks after all the warnings about Whitehall? Really not part of my plan.
He dips his head in acknowledgement, then gestures toward the Party Side. “You’ll find beer and wine across the Great Hall. And, of course, the waitstaff is circulating.” He nods toward a lean man carrying a tray, apparently to confirm that we understand the term waitstaff.
“Do enjoy yourselves. And when you’re ready to join the more exclusive gathering, simply ask for Ms. Valdris. She’ll escort you upstairs.”
With that cryptic comment, he disappears back into the growing crowd mingling in this huge foyer.
“Want to check out the band before we go all exclusive?” Tia asks. “We can use cocktail napkins for earplugs.”
I shake my head. “Let’s get this over with. If I chicken out now, I’ll never work up the courage again.”
We make our way farther into the Boring Side, and I immediately notice things I’d missed before, like the small silver pins shaped like a closed eye that at least half the people in the room are wearing.
A membership pin, maybe? A fair guess, I think, since the pin people are moving through the crowd with purpose, engaging some guests in intense conversation while other guests stand awkwardly alone.
“They’re recruiting,” I whisper to Tia.
“You said Whitehall’s not a frat house.”
“Yeah, but it’s all about dreams. I told you who the Oneiroi are, right? In mythology, I mean. And even the pin is like someone asleep.”
Tia’s face lights up. “Girl, this could be amazing. What if they’re all about people like you? What if they know how to help you?”
It’s possible, and I feel a swell of hope in my chest. Time to ask where we can find Ms. Valdris.
I’m just about to interrupt a conversation about lucid dreams between a scarecrow-thin man and an extremely voluptuous woman when the girl from the door bounces up to my elbow. “Oh,” I say. “Hi. Um, can you tell me who Ms. Valdris is?”
She flashes a cover model smile, then giggles. “That would be me. Ready?”
The music from across the foyer pounds through the walls, a constant reminder of the normal college experience I’m about to leave behind. But I nod anyway, then take Tia’s hand. “She comes, too, or I go home,” I say, cutting off our escort before she can speak.
I stand tense, primed for an argument, but she just smiles sweetly.
“Sure thing,” she says. “This way.”
With our fingers twined, Tia and I follow her back into the grand foyer, then move through the crowd until we reach the base of a sweeping staircase that could have been transported from Gone with the Wind.
As we climb to the third floor, the music fades to a distant throb and the crowd thins to nothing.
Valdris leads us down a hallway lined with oil paintings of stern-looking men and women in antiquated clothing. “Former Oneiroi,” she says, as if responding to a question.
“These guys were all Greek gods?”
She giggles again. “Don’t be silly. The society is focused on dreams and dreaming. We study dreams. Their meanings, their mechanisms, their possibilities. Most of all, we prepare for what’s coming.”
Before I can ask what she means by that, we stop at a set of double doors.
She knocks once, then pushes them open to reveal a circular room that must be inside one of the turrets.
Curved bookshelves line the walls, interrupted only by tall, narrow windows that offer glimpses of the moonlit campus below.
Above the shelves, strange silver symbols decorate the walls, some faded and others seeming to pulse, as if this room has a heartbeat.
Nine people sit in leather chairs around a circular table, and all of them wear the closed-eye pin.
They’d been talking, but the moment Valdris opens the door, their conversations die mid-sentence, and their attention turns to the man at the farthest arc of the circle.
A man sitting essentially alone, unlike the others who are settled into groups of four, leaving a gap at the foot of the table where, I’m guessing, they expect me to sit.
“Ah, here she is.” The man stands up, his hands extended as if welcoming me to a holiday party.
He looks to be in his mid-forties, handsome in a polished way, with chestnut hair dappled with a hint of copper and eyes so dark they look black in the dim lighting.
Something about him tugs at my memory, like I should know him, but I can’t place where I might have seen him before.
“Cora Lyte,” he says, his voice warm and welcoming. “We’re so pleased you accepted our invitation.” His gaze shifts to Tia. “And you brought a friend. So glad you could join us, Ms. Mendez.”