Chapter Thirty-Five
I can’t stop futzing with the costume I’m wearing. It’s tight and hot and itchy.
She’s a hoot, our Stella.
All the shiny things and the jangling chains and the floofy skirts!
And that turban!
Spirit flashes an image of a circus clown at me, and I understand: I am an overdone caricature. I huff, Thanks. Spirit cackles, but I’m grateful to hear them tease me, if I’m being honest. They’ve done little more than admonish me this evening. And I’d cackle at me, too.
I spy Pax across the room again, and my heart feels as though it’s been pierced.
He’s not supposed to be here, in this room, and he’s…
changed clothes?! He’s now wearing a sharp-as-knives tuxedo and gloves.
This isn’t the plan at all. I dismiss my first thought—which was more of a warm sensation washing over me at the sight of him in formal attire—and I cross to him quickly.
“Why did you change?” I whisper.
Pax turns to me. His face lifts in a half smile. But it’s not the half of his face that usually lifts when Pax grins. It’s his mirror image. And there’s a dimple there, in the opposite cheek.
“I haven’t changed,” he replies. His eyes scan me. “But for you I would.”
A thrill chases down my spine. This isn’t Pax.
Everything about him: his green eyes, the stubble on his jaw, his energy—it’s all darker than Pax’s.
More sinister. And that draw I feel toward Pax, the connection that is natural, organic, authentic: It’s not here.
If anything, it’s the opposite, next to this young man. Repelled.
But I am most certainly intrigued.
This Pax look-alike raises an eyebrow at me. The green eyes don’t dance as Pax’s do. They… rage. “Are you a ballerina?”
I must look confused, because this not-Pax reaches over and gently lifts the hem of my skirts to show the ballet slippers I’m wearing.
“You’re en pointe,” he says, tilting his head. My stomach flutters at the look he gives, at the gesture of him lifting my skirts.
The skirts I’m wearing are quite full. He’d have to be very observant to have noticed a peek of a ballet slipper from beneath them.
Or, he has a gift of some sort, too.
Spirit flashes me a horrifying image: a doll with huge black stitches crisscrossing her mouth, lips crudely sewn shut. I understand the message. I should say no more to this person. This Pax look-alike.
“I—I’m sorry,” I stumble. “I thought you were someone else.”
I back away, but I can’t take my eyes off him. It’s not Pax, is it? What’s going on?
Silence from the Other Side.
The gentleman’s grin curls deeper. “Alas. I’m not who you think I am.”
His eyes scrape over my skin. He growls, “But I do wish I could be who you need.”
I shake my head, oversized hoop earrings swaying, and I’m so confused. I step on the hem of my too-long skirt and almost trip into the table, overflowing with food.
A balding man with wire spectacles and an ill-fitting suit approaches me. He is small and troll-like, with a large nose and ears. No smile. A cloud of arrogance hovers over him like cheap cologne.
The not-Pax gentleman curls around a column and disappears, and his shadows follow.
Spirit flashes a scene in my mind: me, running through a field of wildflowers. A picture of innocence. It’s a strong, clear message: This where you can walk away, Stella. After this, there is no turning back.
I squint to clear the image. “Hello.”
He doesn’t return my greeting. He extends a hand, as if in a handshake.
I take his palm.
“For you,” he grunts, and slips me a small glass vial.
I slide it into one of my many pockets without hesitation. He doesn’t stop walking. He passes by me and past—
Blanck.
Max Blanck saw this exchange.
Terror shoots down my spine.
Blanck strides toward us, eyes narrowed. “You two know each other?”
The man, thankfully, spins on his heel and returns. He smirks, as if the idea of us having met previously is absurd. “No.”
Blanck lifts his chin at my fist, curled around the vial in my pocket. I pray I don’t crush it. “What did Steuer give you?”
Ah, so this is Matthew Steuer. Blanck’s attorney.
I honestly can’t answer that question. I didn’t get a good look at what exactly he handed me.
Matthew Steuer takes a glass of champagne off a passing tray. “The name of a departed loved one. She is the fortune teller, is she not?”
I remove the vial, hold it up. I roll it between my thumb and forefinger. It contains a single grain of rice with the tiniest of etchings on it. Blanck harrumphs.
Steuer shrugs causally. “No one can see those tiny markings on that rice. I figure if she’s worth her salt as a clairvoyant, she’ll be able to tell me something about the name I had written on it.” He gestures to the craftsman etching grains of rice across the room as party favors.
“Ethel,” I spit out without thinking. “Your grandmother. She was… lovely.” Spirit is providing me no such information. I am reverting to showmanship here.
Steuer chokes out a laugh. “Lovely? She most certainly was not. You are diplomatic, no?”
Blanck squints at the grain of rice, shrugs, and leaves us be.
Before Steuer can walk away, I whisper, “Why are you helping us?”
Steuer drains the champagne in his flute in one swallow. He says quietly into the empty glass, “If you ever had to defend a client like Max Blanck, you’d know why.” He doesn’t look my way before he folds into the crowd.
I exhale. Shake the grain of rice in the glass vial. It makes a small, rattling sound, but to me, the sound is thunderous. Or perhaps, that’s my pounding heart.
This is the single grain of rice that will tip the scale.