Spread out before me is a softly lit lounge filled with dark wood and rococo tables, plush sofas and velvet drapes. The walls are decorated in voluptuous damask prints, and the floor is thickly carpeted. Booths and round bistro tables fill the edges and heavily adorned crystal chandeliers hang from the low ceiling.
The large yet cosy room is thrumming with people reclining on velvet sofas, perched on tall, slim bar stools, leaning against low-lit bookshelves. It’s dark, so it’s hard to make out specific details but one thing is clear: the dress code isscant.
I’ve never seen so much bare leg and shoulder in one space in my life. I try not to stare but it’s hard not to when there’s nowhere else to look. Bare skin in every direction. I lift my gaze in the hope I might meet a friendly eye or two, but as the vision sharpens and details come into view, I freeze.
“What the?—”
Even Dante’s hand pressing into my coat is ineffective. My sneaker-clad feet are rooted in the soft carpet. Air evacuates my lungs and my heart pounds.
Almost every guest in the room is wearing amask. Decadent, jeweled, heavily embellished masks.
“Whatisthis place?” I whisper.
It feels like I’ve just arrived in Renaissance Italy having taken a detour through the Prohibition era. Opulent, scandalous, teetering on the edge of debauched.
Dante’s solemn voice bends to my ear. “This way, Miss McAllister.”
My palm finds its way to my chest. “I, um…”
“It isn’t polite to stare,” he says, bluntly.
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake off the visuals.
“God. Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I?—”
“Follow me.”
I anchor my gaze to his back and follow him through the room. Thankfully, his beefy form blocks my view of pretty much everything, which is helpful.
We weave through low, round tables and the smell of cigars lingers in pockets. I thought smoking indoors was banned.
I pass a man seated on a red leather club chair, laughing, with a bronze sculpted mask covering half his face and a fat cigar between his teeth.
To my left is a small bar with every single spirit I could imagine stacked to the ceiling behind it. The unmasked bartender is dressed in a tuxedo with slicked back hair and he’s laughing with a couple seated on bar stools the other side.
I follow Dante through another door placed discreetly in a far corner of the lounge. The music becomes a soft bass when it closes and I look up to find someone else waiting for me.
“This is Vivienne Laurent, our Head of House,” Dante says, air kissing a tall slim woman wearing an expensive-lookingblack dress and sleek bob to match, on both cheeks. “Vivienne, this is Pfeiffer McAllister.”
Like Dante and the bartender, she isn’t wearing a mask, so I notice her reaction instantly. Her green eyes sweep over me in a quick second. Then her lips thin almost imperceptibly and her nostrils flare.
“Miss McAllister. Come with me.”
Her instruction is clipped—so brief I almost miss the viciousness beneath. But not completely.
My nerves fire up another notch as she leads me into a small room. I have an irrational but definite feeling she dislikes me, which is troublesome for a perpetual people pleaser like me. I was already feeling nervous and untethered on arrival—now, I fear it’s gone nuclear.
I look around the room to distract my thoughts from my trembling spine. There are lockers one side—not the kind you’d find at school or at the gym, but pristine floor-standing ones so shiny they look like they’ve been painted with glossy red nail lacquer—and a rail of clothes on the other.
I watch uneasily as Vivienne flicks deftly through the rail of clothes, glances once over her shoulder at me, then pulls out a slinky black number and hangs it over an ornate hook. Her eyes flash at me once as she slides past and she barks another instruction.
“Get changed. I’ll wait outside.”
My eyes drift over the thin fabric. This is going to show every curve and bump. It’s too revealing. I turn around to object but the door closes with a sharp click and she’s gone. I doubt she’d come back if I called—her demeanour doesn’t exactly scream ‘warmth.’
With trembling fingers, I remove my coat and hang it over the back of a chair. My sneakers, shirt and jeans follow. Then I step into the black satin and pull it up my body.
It’s so light and soft it feels like I’m sheathing my body in ten denier cashmere. To say I’m covering myself would be anexaggeration though. The hem of the dress comes halfway up my thighs and the neckline darts toward my belly button, revealing my dingy gray hospital bra.
