Page 46 of The Scarlet Ball

The wolf was as black as an ink spill, and when he saw me, he ran out a red, red tongue in delight. It lolled between his white teeth as if he were a dog, and I clenched my fists, wishing I had my bag with the stone in it.

Without thinking, I took a step back. Another moment, and I would have spun on the ball of my foot and fled, but when the wolf leaned forward so eagerly, I knew that he would love nothing better. I imagined that lanky weight flying through the air, striking me in the back and bearing me to the ground. For all that he looked winter-starved, there was nothing stiff or furtive about his movements, nothing pained. He kept his eyes trained on me as if I were the only thing in the world. From his throat came a low, interested growl.

He wants to see if you will run, something whispered in my head. He wants to see what a grand game it would be chasing you.

I drew a long breath between my teeth, staring the wolf in the eye before I thought to wonder if I should. Plenty of people see a direct stare as a threat—I didn’t know why a wolf should be any different. Once I had locked gazes with him, however, I could not look away.

Sister Michel at the convent told us doubt was deadly. It would ambush us in our weakest moments, drag us down to fiery Hell if we allowed it; therefore we were to banish doubt as completely as we could. I drowned my doubt in anger, and when I could barely feel doubt or cold, I stepped forward.

The wolf’s head came up, cocked to one side as if he were a dog after all. I instinctively looked for a rock to throw, and then I cast the thought away because that was doubt, and in truth, I had none. I did not need a stone to deal with this.

I stalked toward the wolf, who stood stock-still. Up close he was a gangling creature, large of course, but long-legged and narrow through the chest. His head came up when I was close enough to lunge for, and his ears tipped forward when I kept coming.

“That’s enough,” I said, stopping less than a yard short of him, and I repeated it when he only looked at me.

“That’s enough. Stop this at once. What in the world do you think you are doing? Did you think this would please me? Did you think this would gain you favor?”

My voice sounded loud to me in the silence, but not loud enough to drown out all the thoughts that kept trying to sneak in, that I was wrong, that this was some trick from one of the other girls, possibly even Martha deciding she’d rather like to be the only dancer at the Scarlet Ball after all, or perhaps that I had gone mad, and I was seeing a forest and a wolf where there was only a park and a wild dog.

“Come on. Speak. Tell me what was in your mind that you chose to do this. Tell me why you have gone to all this trouble, and now you just stare at me like a potato does. What are you thinking? Are you thinking at all?”

I was wrong. I was wrong, and in a moment, this thing, wolf or dog, would leap up, tear my throat out and—no, that was doubt, and doubt was deadly.

“What are you playing at? Stop it. Stop it. I’m not going to play your stupid games, I’m not going to dance just because you were in a mood to ask. Stop it right now, or—”

I didn’t have a brick in my bag, so instead I drew back my fist. I learned to punch at the first brothel I worked at from girls who knew how. Jeanne Ferrand used to work tits out at the girl fights in Marseilles, and she told me: fingers curled tight, thumb on the outside, wrist straight, wind up back past your ear, and don’t punch at, punch through.

I sent my fist flying toward the wolf’s head, and before it landed, Sebastian caught my wrist as easily as a girl might catch a firefly, a fascinated expression on his face.

“You know what I am,” he said. I tore my hand from his grasp. I could feel a faint pressure where his bare fingers had closed on my gloved wrist, and I shook my hand to get it off.

“Of course I do. What wolf lives in Central Park?”

“You know who I am, and you still tried to strike me.”

“You were in my way,” I retorted, ignoring the wonder in his voice.

In daylight, he looked almost normal. Still handsome, like they all were, even-featured, clean-shaven, with the kind of dark brows girls have to draw in with charcoal. If there was any strangeness to him, it was in the way he looked at me. You could call it desire or greed, but it wasn’t either of those things, not really, not once you got to the place where it rooted and took sustenance.

It was the nature of his fascination that made him alien. It wasn’t sex or novelty that drew him in. If he liked my looks, which after all weren’t really mine at all, it was only because they were a part of me. Instead it was like he wished he could take me apart, hair from skin from flesh from muscle from bone, and lay me out flat so he could see all of me at once. Even as that grisly thought flashed through my head, I knew there would be no satisfaction for him in it.

“It will never be enough for you, will it?” It was an accusation.

“Why should it be? What else is there but more?”

“More of me.”

I knew what that meant. I thought of Mr. Howard stepping toward the mob with that smile on his face. I thought of Mrs. Howard sitting in her beautiful house, knowing that the wildfire would eventually need to be fed.

I didn’t move away when he came close. His eyes, which had only been his eyes for a short while, reflected my own face back at me, too small to see details, and he didn’t touch me at all as he leaned in.

“All of you,” he murmured, his breath warm against my lips. It set an ache deep inside me that could obliterate thought, sense, and restraint.

I jerked my head away, taking a single step back. He tensed, I knew, to go after me if I ran, but when I didn’t, he settled back on his heels. That was something I needed to remember. If I ran, he’d chase, and there would never be an exception to that rule.

So, don’t run. Never run.

This time, I was the one who leaned close, and Sebastian stayed still. If he leaned forward the least little bit, his mouth would be on mine, and what happened after that—