Page 76 of Capitol Matters

“It’s hardly ruined.” Maximus turned to the white-aproned servers who had begun to gather. “Get this cleaned up, and we can all carry on with the evening.”

The waitstaff set to work, some wielding mops and rags while others swept up wet shards of glass. As the mess minimized, so did the number of onlookers. Even Grimm, who I knew had more to say, took his leave and sat at the table Maximus, Holland, and I would soon occupy. There he would have his chance to finish whatever insult he’d been working on when Maximus interrupted.

I didn’t budge until one of the workers bumped a mophead into my foot. When I backstepped out of the way, I found Holland lingering, as well.

“Why did you do that?” Her gaze swept over the puddled champagne before meeting mine.

“Who said I did?” I fired back so abruptly that she recoiled.

“Mister Thatcher seemed certain.”

I hummed acknowledgment but didn’t speak. My shoes squished as I turned toward the crowd. The Old Fashioned waited where I’d left it on the table. I needed it now more than ever but was unwilling to brave the company of Maximus and Thatcher again so soon.

Holland broke into motion and joined me, going so far as to forcibly loop her arm through mine. “What is going on with you?” she leaned in to ask. “Not just tonight. In general. You’re either the strangest person I’ve ever met, or you’re keeping things from me.”

“Mind magic is a hell of a thing,Holly.” The nickname still felt wrong rolling off my tongue. “Sometimes you think a thing, and it happens. I thought it would be funny if Tobin looked as much like a wet blanket as he actually is.” Pulling her through a gap in the crowd, I grumbled bitterly, “Did you know he trashed my car?”

She stopped midstride. “What? I didn’t hear anything about that.”

“Because I didn’t say anything.” I bounced my shoulders. “But there you go. That’s what I get for stuffing my feelings.”

I needed to salvage this night. Take advantage of whatever precious minutes I had with Holland as a buffer between me and the last two victims on my list. Neither of whom I’d spotted yet.

My gaze coasted past the table I’d been assigned. New arrivals had joined Maximus and Thatcher. One was an absurdly tall man with a port-wine stain on his left cheek. As usual, I didn’t know his name, only the moniker I’d assigned him: Daddy Longlegs, for hisheight. Even I wasn’t tasteless enough to poke fun at someone’s birthmark.

Why would Maximus choose to sit with someone who disagreed with his political platform? Did he hope to sway them to his side in the final inning? Or was he lobbing the man to me like a fastball right down the middle?

Ten minutes later, I’dfaked my way through so much laughter my cheeks hurt. That was all these people did: laugh and smile. Which made me certain they despised each other.

The empty chair between Holland and me was labeled with Preston’s name. Jacoby Thatcher occupied the seat on my other side, making these the worst seating arrangements they could have conceived. Thankfully, Thatcher had kept mum since his earlier outburst, making even less of an effort to engage in conversation than I did.

I’d expected the talk to be mostly political since Holland informed me that was the purpose of this gala, but I found it to be quite the opposite.

Daddy Longlegs was on his third deep-sea fishing story when I leaned over to Holland and asked, “Have these things always been this boring?”

She smiled without looking up from the stack of index cards she’d been flippingthrough. “That’s why we used to sneak out,” she whispered.

“Any chance of that now?” I waggled my glass, all but licked clean. “I could use a refill.”

“Speech.” Holland flapped the cue cards emphatically.

“Right.”

I didn’t know what I would have done if she’d said yes. I couldn’t leave while my target sat across the table, throwing back shrimp skewers between long-winded descriptions of his sailboat, theAqua-holic. I could only hope his sense of humor would survive the next week of storage unit hell.

As long as I was stuck in this holding pattern, so were my aspirations of nabbing the additional victim. My ambitious evening of dual abductions had been reduced to a one-off. It was like I got dressed up for nothing.

Suddenly, Maximus stood. Right in the middle of Daddy Longlegs’s graphic retelling of being gored by a swordfish. This part of the story had some promise, so of course it would be what got interrupted.

“Holl?” Maximus prompted his daughter, who’d been too engrossed in her cram session to notice him rising.

She sprung up, clutching the notecards in one hand while smoothing her dress with the other. As she bent, several cards slipped from her grasp, fluttering through the air like falling leaves. She flushed and swore, and the sound of her cursing almost broke my concentration as I telekinetically caught and gathered the cue cards, then tucked them back into her stack. Her smile in response was weary but genuine.

Her father offered his arm and she took it, letting him whisk her away toward the stage. The crowd picked up on the cue before the Lyles climbed the steps onto the raised platform. People hurried to their seats and fell into respectful silence as Maximus crossed the stage and stepped behind themicrophone.

He wore a black and white tuxedo like all the other men, a color scheme that carried through in his salt and pepper hair. His stern demeanor commanded attention, but not nearly as well as his magic. Waves of empathic power washed over the audience—myself included—like a not-so-subtle endorsement for the words coming out of his mouth.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the past few weeks have been rife with uncertainty and fear,” he began. “We have been faced with unprecedented challenges and risen above them. I, for one, am proud of our resilience as a city, as a society, and as a species.”

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