“Except, you don’t know who I am.”
“But I know what you look like,” I answer back sweetly.
The camber of the boy’s eyes increases.
“Cadence! There you are.” Alma’s voice bounces against my eardrums, and then her hands wrap around my arm. “Who’s your new friend?”
“He’s not . . . my friend,” I grind out the last part. “He’s a new student. Apparently.”
She hums, or maybe she purrs. “And what’s your name, new student?”
“Slate.” He daintily picks up her hand and brings it to his mouth. “Slate Ardoin.” He doesn’t touch his lips to her knuckles, but his mouth comes close.
Slick. This guy is so slick.
For a second, I feel a little miffed that he didn’t greet me this way until I notice Alma’s bare pinky. “Give her back her ring.”
Alma’s gaze widens when she realizes Slate’s filched the pearl jewel, a homeschool graduation gift from her parents.
“How did you do that?” Instead of sounding peeved, she sounds amazed.
“Sleight of hand.” He opens his fingers with a flourish. Atop the black leather rests Alma’s white pearl.
She plucks it from his palm and slides it back onto her pinky. “Is that how you got your name?”
His good humor collapses. “No.” He closes his fingers slowly, the smooth leather whisper-hissing. “But it would make a hell of a better story.” Whatever annoyance gusted over him is gone, and although he isn’t back to being Mister Smiley-Eyes, he’s also no longer Mister Moody.
“So . . .” Alma leans in. “It’s tradition to kiss someone at the stroke of midnight.”
“It is, huh?” Slate asks, distracted by something behind me.
I turn to find Adrien chatting with Papa.
When I spin back around, Slate’s attention is back on Alma.
“For good luck,” she says.
A nerve ticks in his jaw, beneath the black stubble, and then his eyes bow with a smile that matches the one on his lips. “I’m starting to like this town and its fanciful traditions.”
Slick. Slick. Slick.
Alma snakes her arm around my waist. “Cadence, here, has no one to kiss.”
My heart skitters to a stop. “What?” She did not just toss me under the cauldron!
“It’ll get Adrien’s attention,” she murmurs inside my ear. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
As though the air isn’t thick enough with my embarrassment, the music stops, and the countdown begins.
Alma lets me go so suddenly I almost topple over. “I promised to show Romain how a real woman kisses.”
She winks at me as everyone begins to shout: “Seventeen, sixteen.” I’m going to kill her.
Fifteen.
Maybe put a real spider on her puny hat.
Fourteen.
She hates spiders.
Thirteen.
Or soap on her toothbrush.
Twelve.
“So, who’s this Adrien?”
I murder my best friend in my thoughts. “No one.”
Eleven.
All of his face is smiley. “Ex-boyfriend?”
Ten.
I look over my shoulder and see Charlotte skipping to Adrien’s side, and then I spot our town’s good doctor in her purple tutu-like frock prancing toward Papa in spite of her bad hip.
Nine.
Oh my God. Please tell me she’s not going to kiss him. Papa’s gone a bit pale. He probably doesn’t want Sylvie, who’s two decades his senior, anywhere near his mouth.
Eight.
I turn back around, and my gaze bangs into Slate, who’s staring at me like he’s a cat and I’m a new ball of yarn.
Four.
Where did seven, six, and five go? And when did his hand land on my hip?
Three.
He leans over.
Two.
Lower still.
When the crowd yells one, his mouth whispers across my cheek toward my earlobe. I feel the heat of his lips against the shell of my ear.
“If I relied on kisses for luck, I would never have made it off the streets alive.”
I’m so surprised by his confession, and the fact that he didn’t use the pretense of a tradition to kiss me, that I gape up at him.
He picks up my limp hand, bows his head, and brushes his mouth over my lace-cloaked knuckles. “Word of advice . . . make your own luck. It’ll last you longer.” And with that, he’s gone, slinking like a shadow through the embracing crowd.
When I shake off my daze, I remember the thin diamond bracelet with the emerald quatrefoil charm I clasped over my glove tonight. I’m already imagining it gone, which is probably the reason for how startled I feel when the white diamonds and green stones blink wildly back at me.
5
Slate
My lips are warm where they touched Cadence’s ear, and the fruity scent of her shampoo lingers in my nose. I could’ve kissed her. Hell, I think I would’ve enjoyed it. Immensely. She’s quick and shrewd, and her lips are like ripe cherries, but there’s an innocence in those blue eyes that made me hold off. I’m normally surrounded by girls with hard edges and harder hearts. Girls who thrive off of power games and greed. This one is different. A naiveté emanates from her. A kind of goodness.
I glance back. She’s still standing by the far wall surrounded by all of De Morel’s dead relatives immortalized in their precious frames. Her curly-headed friend has returned to her side, chugging champagne like it’s laced with rainbows. Side by side, they resemble before-and-after shots of Christmas morning—Cadence all wrapped up head to toe, and Curly-head completely exposed, ready to play with.
Cadence absently runs a hand over the wool hugging her waist. Yeah. I have a feeling there’s something amazing under that wrapper. Before leaving this dumpy, gray town, I might try to find out.
My cell phone vibrates in my coat pocket, and I turn away from the girls, ducking back into the foyer frosted with so many damn silver garlands I’m almost blinded. LITTLE BRO flashes on my screen.
I lift the phone to my ear, stepping closer to the wall to peer at a graphite drawing. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah. Just checking up on you. You didn’t text me when you got in.”
“Sorry, Maman.” The way the women are sketched reminds me of Gauguin. I check for a signature. Sure enough, at the edge of the aged vellum, Paul’s sketched his name.
Bingo.
Bastian sighs. “Are you drunk? Your voice is a whole octave lower than usual.”
“Nah. I’m almost sober.” But my tongue chooses that moment to stick to the roof of my mouth, and it comes out, “Um ummalst soba.”
“Shit, Slate. Don’t do anything stupid. You always do stupid stuff when you drink too much.”
“No, I don’t.” I turn away from the drawing and slip my gloved hand under my armpit despite the fact that Bastian can’t see a damn thing.
“So, what’s it like there?” Bastian’s chewing on something—it better not be my madeleines.
“Like a damn Harry Potter convention. They worship magic here, man.” I grab a salmon mousse thing from a passing waiter and pop it into my mouth. “The town looks like it just stepped out of the Middle Ages—all stone and cobbles and shit. And it’s cold as a witch’s tit. Fucking glacial.” Little Miss Cadence steps into my line of sight again. “But the view isn’t bad.”