Page 191 of The Next Lie

I place my hand on Nash’s sleeve.

Behind us, the men I am leaving outside watch like it costs them. It probably does. It costs me too.

I give one last lingering glance back at Shiloh, Ever, Deacon, then Cal.

“I’m coming back,” I say.

No one argues. No one’s expression softens. Nash opens the front door. Evening waits beyond it, warm and dark and full of teeth.

I walk into it anyway.

Delia—

I’m wearing green tonight. Shiloh picked it. Cal said I look like Mom.

I didn’t know what to do with that, so I did nothing, which is becoming my signature move whenever someone hands me a feeling too big to stab.

I’m babbling, because I’m scared of what might happen tonight. Not enough to stay home, but enough to wish you would warn me.

Can you please come and talk to me? Please…do…I don’t know. Something.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

DEACON

I stand inside Beauregard House wearing a black suit, an earpiece, and the wrong loyalty.

On paper, I am security.

That’s how Isabel Rosario wants her guests to see me. A familiar shadow near the receiving line. A man close enough to mean danger, distant enough not to interrupt the flow of champagne. People who know her understand what my presence means. People who do not assume I am another expensive piece of the room.

Both assumptions are useful to Isabel. Neither is true anymore.

I wasn’t wholly surprised when she told me to be here. I figured she’d want me to be here to act as witness to whatever she had planned for Reva. She’d want me to writhe in guilt and shame for what I couldn’t prevent, and then fear of the unknown before she acted upon whatever she had planned for me, next.

That’s not going to happen. I’ll play my part. I’ll act like her perfect soldier. I’ll make her question whether her suspicions are founded or unfounded, even.

And then I’ll fucking strike.

That’s the only way to win with someone like Isabel.

The ballroom is already filling. Old New Orleans draped in silk, lace, masks, money, and rot. Chandeliers burn above polished floors. Musicians play at the far end of the room. Women laugh behind jeweled half-masks while men lean close enough to hear secrets and pretend they are compliments. Waiters move through the crowd with silver trays. Everything smells of flowers, wax, expensive liquor, and blood that has not yet been spilled.

I watch the doors. I know when Reva arrives before I see her.

Nash comes through first, tall, dark, severe enough to make a funeral look casual. He wears a black mask that does nothing to soften him. He gives the room one look and dismisses most of it. Typical Blackwood arrogance. Useful tonight, though.

Then Reva steps beside him.

The green dress was a mistake. It’s too beautiful, too much of a target.

She looks alive, and she’s not supposed to be alive.

That is the danger of it. Against all this staged elegance, all this manufactured mystery, Reva looks like something real enough to ruin us all. Emerald satin. Gold mask. Dark hair pinned on one side with Ever’s little surveillance rose catching the light above her ear. Shiloh’s bracelet at her wrist. Nash’s hand at the small of her back.

Mine is not on her anywhere, a fact I dislike more than I should.

Her eyes move over the room, taking inventory. Exits. Faces. Distance. Threats. She is frightened. She is angry too, which helps. Anger keeps her chin up as she and Nash join the receiving line.