Page 139 of The Scarlet Veil

With that, she seizes my hand and drags me down the corridor.

Focusing on that bundle of nerves in my chest, I slip through the veil to find Mila, who drifts alongside us with an impish grin. “Anything unusual yet?” I ask her as a distraction.

“The enchantment doesn’t break until midnight,” she repliessweetly. “Or did you mean my brother?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“What is it?” Odessa peers back at me, eyes narrowing through her mask. “Is it Mila? Has she seen anything?”

If a ghost can skip, Mila does so now, clapping her hands and practically cackling with glee. “I’ve never seen Michal so agitated—he nearly bit off Pasha’s head when the idiot suggested waiting outside your room. He and Ivan are going to join you in the ballroom instead. Youdolook lovely tonight, Célie,” she adds, her voice a bit wistful. “Vampires tend to covet lovely things.”

Warmth spreads through my cheeks at the compliment, but I push it aside. I push thoughts ofMichalaside. “Never as lovely as you.”

“The sentiment,” Odessa says as Mila beams, “it chokes me.”

Truthfully, both of them look almost surreal tonight—too beautiful to exist—and I feel as if I’m floating through a dream. The castle, too, seems different with music, with soft, disembodied voices and flickering candlelight in every corridor. No less eerie, of course, because the shadows and cobwebs andsentienceremain, but somehow all the more mysterious. Like I might take a wrong turn and end up somewhere else entirely—dropped into La Fôret des Yeux on a snowy, moonlit night, perhaps, or trapped in a nightmare disguised as a room.

The impression only intensifies when we step into the ballroom, and I gasp, severing the connection with Mila and falling back through the veil. Vampires of every shape, size, and color crawl through the enormous room, not only on the onyx dance floor but also up the gilded walls, upon the veryceiling. My mouth falls open as my head falls back to stare at them. “I wouldn’t dothat if I were you,” Odessa murmurs, closing my jaw with a gloved finger and readjusting the capelet around my throat. “No need to poke the dragon, so to speak.”

I hardly hear her.

Across the room, Pasha and Ivan cut toward us through the crowd with determined expressions. A stringed quartet plays a plaintive song atop the dais behind them, and the couples overhead waltz between the chandeliers with uncanny grace and beauty. The candles cast their pallid skin in golden light. A thousand more tapers surround the dais, the musicians, the long and elegant tables along the edges of the room. Crystal-cut goblets of blood rise in pyramids upon each one. Odessa follows my gaze, her own gleaming brighter than usual. Exhilarated. “We spike them with champagne. I arrangedactualchampagne for you, however, if you’d like to partake.”

I shake my head, overwhelmed. “No, thank you.”

She prods me toward the tables anyway, skirting around a patch of enormous pumpkins carved with narrowed, wicked eyes. More tapers still flicker from within their depths, and what look likerealskeletons lounge among them, some dangling from above. Someone has dressed the bones in wide velvet hats with feather plumes, in the lavish robes of priests and Pharisees. One even wears the ivory crepe gown and golden tiara of a queen. With an odd plunging sensation, I remember the skull outside of Monsieur Marc’s shop.

Hello again, Father Roland. You’re looking well.

I look away quickly to find Odessa perusing the goblets of blood, selecting one, and sipping delicately. “Ah... melusine. Even cold, their blood is my very favorite.”

A trio of vampires join us at the table to choose their owngoblets. Jewels drip from their throats, and they stare balefully at me behind their glittering masks. One has dressed in the fur cloak of a loup garou—his sleeves dripping lace—while his two companions have painted themselves as sculptures. Their entire bodies gleam with golden paint.

They’re also naked.

“What does blood taste like to you?” I ask Odessa abruptly. Pasha and Ivan materialize behind us, rigid and imposing, and the trio of vampires cast one more disdainful look in my direction before gliding away.

“Hmm.” Odessa purses her lips, considering, and takes another sip. “I suppose it tastes the same to me as it does to you, except, of course, that the nerves in my tongue receive it differently. It nourishes my body, and thus, my body comes to crave it. The metallic taste is still there, yet it doesn’t repulse me as it does you. And the salt—it becomes addictive. The blood of a melusine boasts a particular vigor, probably from their time spent in the seawater of L’Eau Melancolique.” She tips the goblet in my direction. “Would you like to try it?”

“No.” Repressing a shudder, I look past her toward another vampire dressed as a bleeding rose. Behind them waltzes a couple masquerading as ancient forest gods. One of them even wears the enormous stag horns of the Woodwose. “I think spiked blood might be stronger than the champagne itself, and we’re supposed to be looking for the Necromancer.” Despite my best efforts, the words hold a subtle rebuke.

“Actually,” she corrects me in a miffed voice, “we’resupposedto be blending in with the revelry. We can’t do that if you continue gaping at everyone like a codfish.”

“I do not look like a codfish.”

She waves an errant hand, ignoring me. “Furthermore, we’ll be able to smell him when he arrives. Blood witches possess a very distinctive scent because of their magic.”

I bite my lip and glance around the room. “Forgive me, Odessa, but you mistookmefor a blood witch when we first met. Their scent can’t bethatdistinct, or I wouldn’t be here at all.” Above the music, the clock in the belfry booms half past eleven. When I jerk at the sound, nearly upsetting Odessa’s goblet, she lifts it to her lips with a smirk. “Shouldn’t Michal be here by now?” I ask defensively. “Whereishe?”

“Michal arrives at midnight.” Dimitri strolls up beside us, grinning, and a rather tall and pretty young woman clutches his arm. They’ve dressed as flora and fauna for the occasion; he wears the fur pelt and elongated mask of a gray wolf, while her petal-pink gown floats airily around her ankles. Real vines and flower buds adorn her mask. Though I cannot see much of her golden-brown face, she seems to be... human. “This is Margot Janvier,” he tells me proudly, and the young woman offers a tentative smile in response. “She owns le fleuriste in the Old City.” He squeezes her elbow. “Margot, this is Mademoiselle Célie Tremblay, our guest of honor for the evening.”

“Bonsoir, Mademoiselle Tremblay,” she says softly.

I return her smile with one of my own, trying not to betray my disbelief.Thisis Dimitri’s florist? A human woman? Surely evenheknows how irresponsible it was to bring her tonight, to fixate upon her at all. My stomach curdles at the thought of her beautiful silk mask ending up in his room. I force myself to curtsy regardless. “It’s lovely to meet you, Mademoiselle Janvier. Your costume isstunning—are those viola and crocus blooms?”

“You know your botanicals.” Margot’s smile widens in approval, and she lifts her free hand to the delicate flowers on her face. “And please... call me Margot.”

The song ends on a drawn-out note of yearning, and when the next piece starts, the two bid us goodbye, Dimitri leading Margot to the dance floor. I watch them go anxiously for several seconds before turning to Odessa. “Does Margot know about his bloodlust?”

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