“No trouble at all,” I tell the woman in red now. But then I see I’m no longer dancing with her. I’m dancing with a man. Tall. Blond hair, blond beard, and muttonchops that don’t quite match his tawny face. Monocle over one gray eye.
“No trouble?” repeats this man. “Belle, I’m hurt.”
“I’m sorry, sir, do we know each other?” I ask Monocle Man. He looks very worried that I asked this question. But over the worry, he smiles.
“Your sister was a poor substitute. She couldn’t really compare to you.” And then he grips me tight and I see the man I just fucked through his disguise. The roses of his lips I killed. The scar I traced in the red light. “Belle, listen. I’m getting you out of here tonight, okay? Now just dance with me, follow me. Trust me, okay?”
Out of here? Why out of here? Why would I trust anyone who would lead me away from the exact place I need to be just now? When I’m looking for someone? Where I’m on a Precipice, no less? A Cusp?
“Now look,” Hud says. “The party goes on forever, see? So we’ll just make our way down that dark hall. Dancing like we’re doing right now. We’ve gone down that hall before. Where I didn’t kiss you because you weren’t following me, remember?”
I stare at the dark hall that gapes like a black hole. So unlike the dazzling party all around. “I don’t want to go down the dark hall. I want to be here. I’m on the Precipice, you see.”
“You’re on a precipice, all right.” And he sort of sneers. Envy. There’s envy in it, I see, which delights me but it also sobers me. I hold it close like saving knowledge. To hold it, I must stand very still. The dancing people around us are dancing more slowly now. The music around us seems to slow too, to quiet as if it has ears and wants to listen.
“See behind me on the stair?” Hud whispers. And then I notice the ones in black veils on the landing. The twins have been joined by a number of others, it seems, all dressed just like them. A small, murmuring cluster staring down. “Do you realize who those people are, Belle?”
I look up at their luminous faces, shining through their veils. How their silks fall like such dark water. How their pale eyes, cold and smiling, seem to know the name and shape of my every dream.
“Important people,” I whisper. “Very important to Mother and me.”
“Listen to me,” he says. “Please. You can’t have that third treatment. If you do, you’ll be lost, do you understand? Lost to me, lost to yourself. Completely. I won’t be able to save you.” He looks at me. Envy’s gone. His eyes are full of some other tender feeling. It could melt me away if I let it. If I let it, it could destroy me. The veiled ones are descending the stair. The music has quieted even more, pricked up its ears. Even the medusae in the tank seem to hover and wait. The dancing people are watching openly now.
“Who says I want you to save me, sir?” I whisper. I look right at him when I say it, right into his clear gray eyes, where his soul sits open. I feel something in him break. See it breaking on his beautiful, sadly scarred face.
“Excuse me,” says a voice right beside me. A woman all in black. Not a woman, a girl, she’s a girl-woman, really. Tall like a grown woman, tall as I am in my heels, but with a girl’s face. So beautiful, like a doll’s. One I might have clutched and loved, even as I envied and hated. Her blond corkscrew curls erupt from her perfect skull like a golden fountain. Her preternaturally pale eyes are full of smiling. Her alabaster face is the True Brightness. She puts my Glow to great shame. It is a Shadow Glow compared with hers. It takes our breath away, mine and Hud Hudson’s, though he’s still gripping my arms. She knows of her effects. They please her greatly. Yet she’s beaming at us both like the most innocent of innocents. “May I cut in,” she asks, and it is not a question. We couldn’t possibly say no to an innocent child, could we? say her eyes. We’re not monsters, after all.
But Hud Hudson is going to say no. “I’m sorry,” he says. “We’re still in the middle of—”
And just then, another hand takes mine and pulls me away.
“Belle,” says a voice.
And it’s funny what happens then. I hear no music anymore. I hear only this voice. I hear it at the very bottom of my brain stem. Like a leash, tugging me. And then I’m in the arms of this voice, saying my name, Belle, Belle, Belle. I can’t see his face because he’s holding me tight to his black-suited body, so that I’m locked in, stuck looking over his shoulder. We’re dancing away. I could say, Do I know you, sir? But I say nothing. It’s like his arms are a drug, making jelly of me. So familiar these arms are, like the voice. Taking me to a basement place, a shadow place I know so well. I might have known these arms since I was a child—did they hold me then? I think they did. I know their feel, like being plunged into cold water. I know their ocean scent. Did I long for them to hold me in the dark, though I was afraid? Impossible. This man is a stranger, isn’t he? No, says my brain stem. Not a stranger, this one. I let him spin me around and around the floor though it makes me dizzy, the drug of him.