11. The Dance Beneath Watching Eyes
Chapter eleven
The Dance Beneath Watching Eyes
Fate
Iarrive at the Everwilde Gallery wearing a dress the color of spilled merlot and the expression of a woman who has absolutely not spent the last twenty minutes in her car debating whether faking food poisoning would be socially acceptable.
For the record, it would not.
Mostly because after Lilissa and Rafe, no one in this town is allowed to casually invoke poisoning for at least six fiscal quarters.
So here I am.
Public event. Bright lights. Champagne flutes. Soft music. A hundred people pretending the town anniversary celebration is not being held under the shadow of two attacks on matched couples, one terrifying headline, and the charming possibility that love itself has developed a body count.
I step through the gallery doors and immediately regret having bones.
“Smile,” Mina murmurs beside me.
“I am smiling.”
“You look like you’re baring your teeth at a tax summons.”
“That is my smile.”
“It is not the one we discussed.”
She loops her arm through mine before I can bolt. She looks perfect, of course, in a midnight-blue dress and silver earrings shaped like tiny crescent moons. I look like I am being escorted into battle by my better-dressed parole officer.
The Everwilde Gallery glows around us, all honeyed light, exposed brick, polished floors, crystal chandeliers, and soft quartet music. Servers drift through the crowd with champagne, tiny crab cakes, and things balanced on spoons that I refuse to trust on principle.
Paintings line every wall. Beautiful paintings. Old paintings. Portraits of founding families, harbor storms, moonlit forests, ceremonial dances, lovers beneath red-thread lanterns, and one deeply unsettling still life of pears that appears to know my secrets.
I hate the pears immediately.
“Do not make eye contact with the fruit,” I whisper.
Mina follows my gaze. “That pear is judging everyone.”
“Thank you.”
“But tonight we are not starting a feud with produce.”
Across the room, Alistair Hawthorne stands beside Anneliese Waldman beneath a massive painting of Everwilde Bay at moonrise.
He wears a black suit with vampire elegance and mayoral composure, both of which probably require permits.
Anneliese is in silver silk that compliments her short black bob, her face serene in the way of women who know exactly where all the bodies are buried and have alphabetized the map.
They are hosting with flawless grace. The town could be sinking into the sea, and Alistair would still know where to stand so the lighting favored his cheekbones. Anneliese seems to be following in his footsteps. Who would imagine she was once a hermit!
“Fate,” Alistair says when we approach, voice warm enough for the room and cool enough for me to notice. “You came.”
“I considered sending a cardboard cutout,” I say. “But Mina reminded me that my two-dimensional self falls a little flat.”
“Well, I’m glad you came I much prefer the 3D version,” Anneliese says, and kisses the air beside my cheek.
She smells like violets, old paper, and expensive danger.
I lower my voice. “How are Lilissa and Rafe?”
“Stable,” Alistair says. “Weak. Angry. Very much themselves.”
My chest loosens by a fraction.
“Rafe attempted to leave his hospital bed,” Anneliese adds. “Lilissa threatened to drown him in a bedpan if he tore his stitches.”
“They’re healing, then,” Mina says.
Anneliese’s mouth curves. “Passionately.”
Good.
Alive is good. Alive and threatening each other with medical equipment is better.
Before I can ask more, a ripple moves through the crowd near the gallery entrance.
Not magic.
Politics.
State Senator Mallory sweeps in wearing flashy cufflinks, a Rolex and the expression of a man who considers public concern an accessory. Two aides trail behind him. One looks exhausted. The other looks like he has never experienced joy without a press release.
Alistair’s smile does not change. That is how I know he wants to bite someone's throat.
“Mayor Hawthorne,” Mallory says, extending both hands. “Such a beautiful evening. Such a resilient town.”
Resilient.
There it is.
The word politicians use when they mean, How fortunate that tragedy photographs well.
Mallory turns to the room, already performing for anyone within earshot. “Everwilde has always been a symbol of romance and unity. We cannot let fear define it.”
I nearly choke on air.
Fear is currently sitting on my shoulder filing its nails.
Mina leans close. “Do not say the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing forming on your face.”
“My face is private.”
“Your face is a billboard with emotional subtitles.”
She is not wrong.
The senator continues speaking to Alistair in a low, public-private tone designed to be overheard by exactly the right people. Increased oversight. Public safety concerns. Tourism impact. State resources. Accountability.
Pressure campaign, wrapped in reflective gold.
Around us, guests pretend not to listen while listening with the intensity of cats near a refrigerator. Witches in velvet. Shifters in tailored suits. Vampires with antique cufflinks. Humans with no idea their champagne is warded against glamour exposure and minor hex spillover.
Matched couples stand everywhere.
Too many.
Many of them mine.
A wolf and his human husband near the sculpture alcove. A witch with her selkie wife by the harbor painting. Two elderly vampires holding hands beneath a portrait of the old lighthouse. Couples I matched. Couples I helped. Couples whose names sit on the private list hidden in my cottage.
My magic itches.
I want to cast protection over the entire room. Over every linked hand, every soft glance, every quiet lean toward beloved warmth.
Instead, I accept a champagne flute from a passing server and do not drink it.
Personal growth. Or paranoia.
The paintings watch.
That sounds melodramatic, which is deeply unfair because I am normally the most qualified person in any room to recognize melodrama. But the sensation crawls across the back of my neck with tiny, careful feet.
I glance toward the nearest portrait. A woman in a dark green gown stares out from a gilded frame, one hand resting on a book, her painted eyes lowered toward the crowd. I know paint cannot breathe.
I know this.
Still, for one impossible second, I feel her attention shift.
Not at me.
Through me.
My skin goes cold beneath the merlot silk.
The gallery noise blurs. Laughter, strings, glass chiming, Senator Mallory’s polished concern, Alistair’s beautiful lies. All of it folds into a low murmur beneath something older.
A whisper from the walls.
Mina’s hand tightens on my arm. “Fate?”
I force air into my lungs.
“I’m fine.”
Her eyes narrow.
“Yes, I know,” I add. “We retired the phrase. I am emotionally functional adjacent.”
“That is not better.”
“No, but it is more specific.”
Across the room, Anneliese looks at me.
Not casually. Or socially. More like she felt something too.
The portrait behind her, the moonlit bay painting, seems to darken at the edges. Just a shadow. Just light shifting under chandelier glow.
Probably.
The hairs on my arms rise.
I turn slowly, taking in the polished guests, the perfect masks, the couples, the paintings, the senator smiling while applying pressure with every syllable.
And beneath it all, the undeniable sensation of attention settling over my shoulders.
I feel watched before anyone looks at me.
So I sparkle.
Aggressively.
Sparkling is very different from thriving. Thriving is organic. Sparkling is defensive. Sparkling says, Please enjoy this decorative personality while I quietly calculate exits, threats, and whether the portrait of the pear still looks smug.
It does.
I move through the gallery with Mina at my side, champagne flute untouched in one hand, smile polished to a socially acceptable shine.
I compliment dresses. I admire jewelry. I tell Mrs. Henley her new moonstone brooch is “luminous,” which is true and also much better than saying, Your aura looks like it has been chewing gravel.
A matched couple stops us near the sculpture alcove.
Elian, a wolf shifter with gentle eyes, has one hand at the small of his human husband’s back.
They are both smiling too widely, which means they have read the headline, heard the rumors, and are pretending not to be afraid because fear at public events is rude unless there are speeches.
“Fate,” Elian says. “We wanted to check on you.”
On me.
Ridiculous.
They are the ones standing beneath a painting that may or may not be breathing, holding hands in a town where paired lovers have become targets, and they want to check on me.
My chest hurts.
“I am emotionally functional adjacent,” I say.
Elian’s husband blinks. “That sounds…specific.”
“I’m trying to be more honest without alarming the furniture.”
They laugh, softly. Nervously.
I want to throw a ward over them so hard my fingers twitch.
Instead, I touch Elian’s sleeve. Casual. Friendly. Absolutely not a tiny protection charm layered into the cuff seam with the subtlety of a woman committing magical vandalism at a civic function.
Mina’s eyes flick down. She sees.
Of course she does.
She does not stop me.
That is how I know she is scared too.
We move on.
Everywhere I look, there are couples. A witch and a vampire near a seascape. Two selkies sharing crab cakes and terrible judgment. An elderly human man leaning into his fae wife’s shoulder beneath a portrait of Everwilde’s first lighthouse keeper.
I want to protect all of them.
I cannot.
That is an unacceptable sentence, and yet here we are. In a room full of Anneliese’s enchanted artwork.
The quartet shifts into a waltz. Champagne bubbles. Mallory’s voice carries from the center of the room, discussing “public trust” with the soft violence of a velvet-wrapped brick.
Then the room changes. Not dramatically. No thunder. No chandelier flicker. No sudden gasp from the pears. Just a subtle alteration in attention.
My skin identifies the cause before my eyes do.
Dorian arrives.