Chapter 33
We heard nothing, and eventually, the others gave up on dancing and sat down.
March reluctantly admitted that we were better off talking to people when they came to our table, not shouted words while they danced around us.
I could have sworn that, before we stopped, he pulled me to him tightly one more time.
I could have sworn that when he did, I felt his hardness against my stomach clearly, and it did not help with my own situation between my legs.
He was dangerous, March. I only really noticed when we stopped dancing and sat down, but it was so easy to lose myself when he was close.
So easy to just let him take the lead and steer me wherever he wanted, for however long he pleased.
The way he held me, the way he looked at me, the way his fingertips slowly caressed my back every now and again, like he thought maybe I wouldn’t notice, but he needed to be touching me.
Dangerous.
The guests kept on coming, each drunker than the last. Wine was being served left and right, and more food had come out from under the table—appetizers, snacks, pastry.
We’d all sat down by then, and the sun was climbing higher and higher in the sky, and the music was louder, too, but we were alert.
All of us without needing to say a single word knew exactly what to do—listen and ask questions.
After all, the guests were drunk, careless with what they shared. That’s how we found out that they were the reason why the Backward Banquet had happened in the first place.
“So, I said-I said, Your Excellency!” A Diamond man stood by the edge of our table with two others at his sides, wearing hats and jackets and silver napkins in their pockets.
He slammed his fist to the table when he said this, and it sounded more like ‘Eshe-llency’ than anything else, but nobody commented.
“But we must—we simply must meet the Hands. Such brave girls and boys—never before had it happened, nor will it in our lifetime for Hands to unwin—oh, but we must-we must meet them!”
Yes, the man was very drunk, and he kept waving his glass around and slamming his fist to the edge of the table on occasion. Mimi and Russ continuously tried to ask him questions, but that’s all he said. That’s all he revealed.
Before they turned to leave, they looked at us one more time, touched these pins attached to their jackets and winked.
“Look—look what we have here!”
They whispered the words like they were suddenly afraid someone would hear, then they laughed. Waited for our reaction, like they expected us to know exactly what they meant. We didn’t, though.
The pins they were showing us were small, shaped like hammers I thought at first, but no. They looked more like axes, tiny things made of metal, all three identical, pinned on the same spot on their jackets.
“Ah, never mind,” said the guy on the right, waving us off like he was disappointed. Like he’d really hoped we would get whatever those pins were supposed to mean.
We kept staring after them confused, until they finally left.
Then came a group of four women with feathers in their hair, all red, all Hearts.
Then came two couples, Diamond and Spade—but it wasn’t until a single man happened to stumble close to our table that we finally found something out.
It was Helen who stood up when the man, belly bigger than all the rest of him, nearly fell right in front of us because he was too drunk to see where he was going.
She stood up and offered the man her chair, and then she produced another, possibly from a table nearby—everybody was up and dancing and going about at that point.
Helen sat to his left, while Levana was on his right, and the man thanked them about a hundred times, but it never once sounded like thanks. More like 10-Q, 10-Q, dee-rust Hanz.
“Tell us, sir. Where do you come from? Are you a Diamond?” Levana asked him, and he was all too eager to tell her about how his company manufactured key parts of the Sparetime harvesting process that was ongoing year-round for about three straight minutes.
“Tell us, sir. Have you watched the trials, then? Have you seen us play?” Helen asked, and the man was giddy from the attention.
“Why, yes! Yes, I have, since the very, very beginning!” he exclaimed, and when Seth poured more wine in his glass, he happily drank it in one gulp.
The girls looked at all of us for a second while he laughed to himself, and lastly they stopped on March.
There was no need for words. We all understood exactly what they were saying.
“Do it,” Russ said from across the table.
“Do it,” Mimi said from my other side.
“Do it,” said March with a nod.
The girls turned to the man again and put their hands over his chest. Red smoke slowly slipped from their fingers and disappeared into the fabric of his jacket.
They were using their magic on him, and I couldn’t find it in me to even consider it might be wrong. In fact, I almost wished I had their kind of magic so I could put all my efforts into it, too.
Hearts could manipulate emotions. Of course, the older the person, the stronger he was, and the more practice the more precise the magic, and the more minutes in one’s chronobank, the more powerful the effect.
But above all, magic respected magic, so if a person’s defense was strong enough, it wasn’t going to go through with whatever spell you wanted to cast.
Here, though, it wasn’t an issue at all.
The man, even if he were strong enough to keep himself safe from Heart magic sober, was too drunk right now to even realize what was happening.
Here, it didn’t matter that Helen and Levana were only eighteen—their magic was powerful enough because they had Life Clocks full of Sparetime to use.
Before the minute was over, the man was chuckling, melting there on the chair as the girls, and the rest of the Hands, asked him more and more questions, simple ones—about how he grew up, if he had pets, if he had children, what his favorite food was.
I was holding my glass with both hands as I watched, teeth gritted, eyes unblinking and on the thin lips of the man whose eyes were so red I doubted he could see anything anymore. But he could still talk. We didn’t understand half the things he said, but he understood the questions.
Levana said, “Tell us about us, Mr. Revin! Tell us, what do you think about the trials so far?”
“Exquisite!” the man shouted with a fist raised over his head, and it was almost funny how he sounded, how he nearly fell off the chair with the sudden movement.
But Helen put her hand over his shoulder and released more magic onto him, and he immediately calmed down.
“Yes, it was. This whole unwinning the games business is really something. So special,” she said with the sweetest smile as she batted her lashes at him.
“Special, special indeed. Time moving backward—what times, what times,” the man muttered, half his wine spilling down the corner of his mouth when he took a sip.
“The forward trials weren’t that special, I’m sure,” Levana then said, and all of us around the table moved as if we were of the same body, leaned closer, strained our ears…
“No. Not special at all,” the man said, half nodding, half shaking his head.
“There must have been something you liked in the forward trials, though, Mr. Revin,” Helena cooed. “C’mon, tell us what it was!”
“Or better yet, who was your favorite Hand then? Your secret will be safe with us, I promise,” Levana said.
“Yes, Mr. Revin, tell us,” said Seth from across him.
“We’d love to know,” said Russ, and we all hung onto the next moment while Mr. Revin looked from one to the other, smiling like all his dreams had come true.
“Oh dear, oh dear—what a pickle!” the man said. “I-I-I had no favorites, of course. You were all so brilliant, so brilliant!”
Something inside me clicked, like a lock turning, only there was no door to open.
Tell us, the others continued. Tell us who, we won’t be mad…
But the man finally blinked his eyes and straightened up in his seat, and he seemed to just now remember where he was and what he was doing.
Levana and Helen had no choice but to sit back on their own chairs, too, their smiles faltering.
“No favorites, indeed,” Mr. Revin said. “And I’m afraid I’ve overstayed my welcome, honorable Hands. I must take my leave so others may-may-may-may—” He burst out laughing. “May-may—may-k your acquaintance!” And he laughed some more.
“No, please, Mr. Revin, stay,” Helen said. “It’s a party, after all!”
“Parties, parties—so much for parties,” Mr. Revin said, and holding onto the edge of the table, he stood up.
All of us stood with him—he couldn’t leave now.
We were all thinking, trying to come up with a way to make him stay, make him say more, but…
“The last time you went to a party, you paid such a hefty price. I must say I felt oh, so sad…”
Everything came to a halt again.
“What party?” I asked, together with a few of the others.
But Mr. Revin was already trying to find his way around the chair—which was right behind him—so he didn’t hear it. “Time’s Temper, it was sad indeed—I almost cried. Such a hefty, hefty price…”
“What price?” Levana demanded.
“What price did we pay?” Helen said, stepping in front of him to block his way.
Mr. Revin stopped. Blinked. Looked back at the rest of us for a second, said, “Why, you paid with your—”
“Mr. Revin.”
The voice sent goose bumps popping up on every inch of my skin. I knew it, yet I had no idea whom it belonged to until I turned to find none other than the Red Queen standing just three feet away from our table, drink in hand, two armed soldiers at her back.
If my legs didn’t let go of me in those moments, they never would.
“Your-your Excellency!” Mr. Revin nearly fell on his face while bowing to the queen.
The others did the same, too. All the Hands were bowing their heads and curtsying in front of the queen, and I had no choice but to do the same, though it went against my every instinct.