Chapter 3
As soon as I walked into Club Meryton the next night, I covered my ears to protect them from the thumping bass.
It was going to be a long—but hopefully fruitful—night.
I let my eyes adjust to the floating candles bathing everything in reds, oranges, and yellows.
The dance floor took up most of the space, with a bar serving drinks and elixirs running along one wall.
Booths around the dance floor provided more privacy, and a few VIP rooms were scattered around.
With a sigh, I glanced over my shoulder toward my family. “Last chance to go home.”
“You wish, Lizzy.” Lydia stuck her tongue out from where she stood a few feet behind me. She ran a hand down her short, sequined red dress. It matched her bright lipstick and left little to the imagination, just like her personality. She constantly blurted out whatever popped into her head.
“No, I wish,” Mary muttered before breaking off from the group and plopping down at a table with jack-o’-lanterns, which might’ve been a strange decoration for a nightclub in any other town, but in Austen Heights it was par for the course.
Especially since the pumpkins whispered to each other, eerie little murmurs of unintelligible words that could only be heard over the pounding music if you held your face close.
Mary pulled a book out of one of my old purses and started reading by the light of her cell phone. As long as it was big enough for her to carry a book or two, she didn’t care about what bag she used.
Mom, who’d dragged Mary to the club with us, followed her to the table.
Even though I couldn’t hear what she was saying, from the way Mary’s shoulders hunched, it was probably another lecture on how she needed to be more sociable.
Mom had demanded to come with us tonight to “help us meet people,” as if having our mother at a club wouldn’t automatically kill our chances.
My mom. At a club. I couldn’t even think about it too hard, or I’d die from secondhand embarrassment.
Mom was bad enough, but somehow I’d ended up with the whole group.
I’d swung by Cupid’s Confections earlier, where Jane was helping out, to ask her to accompany me.
I’d wanted to recruit one sister, and instead, I’d gotten four—plus Mom.
My “this is for work” argument had fallen on deaf ears when Lydia insisted “she could go to the club whenever she wanted.” The problem was that she hadn’t wanted to go tonight until she overheard our plans.
I glanced at Lydia and Kitty. “Please don’t bother me while I’m working.”
“Relax, Lizzy. We’re not here for you. We’re here to meet people.” Lydia linked her arm through Kitty’s, her hazel eyes gleaming as she looked around. If only that made me feel any better.
I leaned closer so I could lower my voice and still be heard over the pulsing music. “You do know that no highborn fae is going to be interested in any of us, right?”
“You never know until you try.” Lydia winked at me, and the two disappeared into the swarm of bodies.
With how often Kitty followed her lead, sometimes it was hard to remember that Lydia was the youngest. At least until I remembered how often she got her way and how demanding she was.
Then it was all too easy to remember that she was the baby of the family.
“She’s right, Lizzy,” Jane said softly. “You need to stop judging people before you know them. The fae here tonight might be nothing like the ones we knew before.”
I snorted. “I doubt it.”
Jane shook her head. “Let’s go find your story.”
Pushing thoughts of my family from my mind and hoping they wouldn’t embarrass me tonight, I nodded.
“Yes, let’s.” I searched my clutch for the small vial I’d prepared last night.
I’d had to go back to the bakery again and explain to Mom why I needed some of her ingredients, but since she already knew about the highborn fae coming to town, it hadn’t been hard to convince her to let me brew a spectral gaze potion.
Even though the fae could recognize each other on sight, my sisters and I lacked that ability.
I needed this potion to help me identify those with magic in their blood in case anyone was hiding pointed ears.
Most of the time, the fae didn’t bother with glamours in Austen Heights since the Marked and Unmarked mingled freely.
Unlike the rest of the world, none of the Marked had to hide their true natures here because a forgetfulness spell covered the town limits, but a few still used glamours occasionally.
I took a sip, ignoring the bitter taste, and muttered the spell under my breath before passing the bottle to Jane.
Now the sweaty bodies in the middle of the room were more than a dark, writhing mass.
About half of them had faint silvery outlines, the potion reacting to the magic in their blood and identifying them as the Marked.
I adjusted my simple blue dress that fell to mid-thigh, and a light flashed overhead, turning it a bright electric blue for a moment. I had twisted my brown hair into an elegant but simple knot and chosen a dress that matched my eyes.
It was time to get to work.
“Do you see the man I told you about?” I scanned the room, whose usually sleek interior was decked out with Halloween decor. Fog that glowed in different colors covered the dance floor.
“What did he look like again?” Jane asked.
“He was…” I hesitated, not sure how to describe the annoyingly attractive stranger from the Portent even though I’d already told her all about it.
“Sexy?”
“Not what I was going to say.” But also not completely wrong.
“Dark and mysterious?”
I swatted her arm. “Someone capable of killing.”
“That’s not nearly as fun, and we’re not sure if you interpreted the Portent correctly. You know you’ve never trained your fae magic like you should have, and you tend to assume the worst about the fae.”
“It’s hard to argue with a corpse, Jane.” And after seeing the light in Easton’s veins flicker out, there was no doubt in my mind. Honestly, even without practicing my fae magic, how could I misunderstand? The guy was alive one minute, and the next, the fae hit him with some magic and he died.
“Is that Riley?” Jane tilted her long neck to our left, and a tendril of her golden hair from her high ponytail got stuck in her lipstick.
“Nice try, but I know he isn’t coming tonight.” I looked that way anyway to make sure it wasn’t the guy from my Portent, squinting to make out the man’s facial features against the backdrop of purple lights. His profile was too narrow and his chin too weak. “You know that’s not Riley.”
“I couldn’t resist.” Jane flashed a smile at me.
I shook my head at her teasing and returned to scanning the crowd. Jane wanted so badly for me to fall for someone that she was making up romance where there was none.
My gaze snagged on Lydia, who was flipping her hair in an obvious attempt to catch the attention of an attractive man sipping from a drink at the bar. He ignored her as studiously as she ignored the fact that he was ignoring her.
She seemed oblivious to the fact that we were practically at the bottom of the Marked social totem pole thanks to our status.
Then again, her ignorance was partially my fault.
After Jane and I had been mocked in school by some of the fae and witches for being “half-breeds,” I’d done my best to protect my little sisters from the truth of things.
While some of the Marked merely snubbed us, the Blackthorns, a highborn family that had moved to town for a few years, had taken it upon themselves to be extra cruel.
To them, we were abominations, and they never let us forget it.
Jane didn’t approve of violence, but I’d found that a few well-placed punches and threats of hexes did wonders.
It wasn’t possible to entirely hide reality from my sisters considering what Pastor Collins often said about witches at church, but the only ones who went regularly were Mary, who was actually devout, and Mom, who was still trying to ingratiate our family into “the right circles.”
I walked the room’s perimeter for several minutes, ducking under enchanted cobwebs clinging to the walls and weaving themselves into different shapes. Thankfully, the pounding music turned into something softer, and I listened in on conversations happening at the bar while facing the dancers.
Jane stuck close, her head bobbing to the music while her body swayed to the rhythm. She wasn’t one for being in the spotlight like Lydia, but the spotlight insisted on finding her regardless. Men turned their heads to stare at her, but she scanned the room, unaware of the looks she drew.
A man without a silvery outline stepped between us, so close that Jane bumped into his chest and had to take a few steps back.
“Hello, Jane.” His attention never left her as he smiled, but his teeth gleamed too much in the pulsing light, giving him an almost predatory air.
“Frederick.” Jane gave him a small smile in return, too polite to do anything else. Based on the way he leaned even closer, he was oblivious to the way it didn’t reach her eyes. He was always oblivious to anyone but himself.
I bit my lip and held myself back, trying to give Jane a chance to deal with him without my interference, even though at least three different hexes sat on the tip of my tongue.
“Fancy meeting you here alone.” Frederick prowled closer, his dark hair gaining blue shadows in the enchanted lights.
Jane backed up a step. “I’m not alone. I’m here with Lizzy.”
His gaze flicked to me. “So you are,” he said, grabbing her hand. “Still, I’m sure she won’t mind if I steal you away for a dance.”
“I’m busy at the moment, but maybe later.” Jane tried to pull her hand free, her gaze dropping to the floor.
My desire to cheer for her standing up for herself contrasted with the desire to scold her for the empty half-promise of ‘later’ she’d tacked on to soften her rejection.