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"You're staring," he says.

"You're wearing a mask that makes you look like an executioner."

"You picked it."

"I did. It's very good work."

He smiles. Six months ago I would have missed it entirely and now I can read that man like a barometer.

"Gage."

"Yeah."

"I think I'm falling in love with you."

He stops dancing.

Dead stop, in the middle of a ballroom, with forty people going around us.

"Don't do that," I say. "Everyone's looking."

"Say it again."

"No chance."

"Maren."

"Okay. I think I'm falling in love with you." My throat has gone tight and stupid. "And I want it on the record that I'm saying it tonight, before midnight, before anything else happens. I've decided now."

He puts his forehead against mine, which is the first time he’s ever done that to me in public, and his wolves and half a town all get to watch him do it.

"It only took you six months," he says. "I’m so happy to hear you say that."

The quartet keeps playing. We start dancing again, and for about forty seconds this is just a party.

Then the little girl in the nightgown stands near the edge of the dance floor.

I saw her this afternoon. She was in the middle of Bell Road and Gage's headlights went straight through her.

She's eight, maybe nine. Her feet aren't quite on the floor. The hem of the nightgown moves in air that isn't moving anywhere else in this room, and nobody near her sees her. A man in a wolf mask walks through her arm on his way to the cider.

She’s looking directly at me.

"Gage."

"What?"

"Don't turn around."

Of course he turns around.

"There's a girl," I say. "By the terrace doors. She's about nine."

His hand tightens on my back. "I don't see anybody."

I've known that for two seconds and I already hate it.

She lifts one hand and points at the floor. Not at me. At the floor, six feet to my left, at the black star in the parquet.