That sting again. Stop it, stop remembering her as human. It was all lies, goddammit. You know that. Stick to your job.
I scanned the room for Sofia and gingerly let my champagne soak into the apparently parched scrubland of my tongue; it had no taste at all, only texture, as if I had drunk a mouthful of tacks. Two mouthfuls later I was thirstier than before. I glared at it.
“Want some smoked salmon?”
The fourth sip exited my mouth in a fine mist; Johnny dodged it absentmindedly, and held up her plate.
“Come off it,” she said. “Like it’s so shocking to see me here, with my name all over the signs. What are you doing here? How did you get in? I didn’t put your name on the list.”
“Don’t just sneak up on people like that!”
“Uh-huh. Should I call security or what?”
I glanced around in automatic alarm. The security I had expected, her assistant Rutger, who first of all didn’t like me, and secondly was about twice as big as me on every axis, was nowhere to be seen. The two dark-suited people behind her were unfamiliar—stiffly alert, watching me with Rutger-caliber disdain.
She followed my gaze. “He’s back at the hotel. Wanted to review some data. You know Elizabeth and Wayne.”
I nodded as if I did. While I waited to see which of my various sphincters had either fused shut from shock or were on the verge of letting go, she complacently made a tiny burrito out of a pancake, some smoked salmon, a scoop of caviar, and pickled onion. “Here. Eat this.”
“Where did you get this?”
“Buffet at the back,” she said, expertly wrapping up another one. “Asked the caterers for it. Can’t stand that little-shit-on-sticks situation.”
I glared downwards. Her boyish, Gap-commercial haircut had been recently touched up; the ends seemed fresher, brassier, like fine wire. If she’d done her own makeup, she’d done a piss-poor job of it; the gold glitter on her eyes had escaped into her eyebrows and even her nose and chin. Under a weirdly short but long-sleeved sweater, her knee-length black dress was belted with a chain of Oreo-sized golden discs. It made me think of ancient Greece: a famous vase, maybe, or a picture in one of the kids’ books.
Her eyes, steadily meeting mine, were the same as ever: that sinister green, the green of a Disney villain’s eyes, if anything more yellow than I remembered. Sickly, even inhuman. Like an animal. I reached inside myself, felt for the old love, the new hate, and felt only revulsion, the instinctive recoiling from a monstrous stranger who had stolen a beloved face, a familiar voice, and now wore them proudly, showing them off to the horrified survivors.
“Okay, listen,” I said.
“Listening.” She took my champagne glass and drained it, then handed it to a passing server without looking.
Something warm slid through my arm and grasped my wrist, and this time I yelped out loud and jerked backwards into the wood panelling. The thing clung like a tentacle, but in the split second before I drew my fist back (good God: to do what, exactly?) I realized what was happening and tried to recover, picturing how it must have looked—the squawk, the sluggish flinch and twitch, the noise (had I imagined it?) as my head hit the wood. I hoped no one had been filming us.
Face hot, double-0 status revoked, I crooked my elbow where Sofia had taken it, and managed something that I hoped looked like a smile. She was a shimmering presence at my side, like a mirror, or those polished refractor things the ancient Greeks or whoever aimed at ships during wars to burn them up; I couldn’t look directly at her.
“Sofia!” Johnny said. “What a nice surprise! And holy shit, your earrings. And your dress!”
“Thank you! I just bought it this afternoon, especially for tonight!”
“Glgk,” I said.
Sofia went on, smoothly, “And thank you for being flexible about the guest list! Security is so important these days.”
“Yeah, can’t be too careful. Any sort of riff-raff might just wander in.”
To her credit, Sofia didn’t even glance at me. “I agree, you do not want questionable people at something like this.”
As they chatted, I slowly put it together: two Society members were supposed to have been here tonight, but couldn’t make it (I wondered if Sofia had pushed them into the ocean). Sofia had been sent unexpectedly at the last moment instead, but Louis had been unable to make it.
“Everyone was very insistent that the Society be represented tonight. It’s an historic event! And you were kind enough to ensure we got in. And of course,” she added, squeezing my arm, “I hope you do not mind that I used the other ticket for my love here, even though he is not with us! I was hoping we could get some photos while we are all dressed up.”
“Of course I don’t mind. Two surprises for the price of one. Oh, you should go pose with the armour!” Johnny pointed back at the alcove she’d been in. “The light is still set up, the photographers are paid all night, and you get the painting too. You’ll just have to wait for… who is that, is that the Princess of Monaco?”
“No, that’s her sister.”
“Doesn’t that make her a princess too?”
“Not after what happened last week.”
I wondered if this was death, if my soul was even now leaving my body, floating up into the ceiling, passing through it sadly into the sky (or, let’s be realistic, down into the Earth’s core to be incinerated). How was I supposed to figure out what Sofia was doing now? Louis wouldn’t care that I’d been set up somehow, or by who. He’d just kill me. If you could kill someone who was already dead, which…
Sofia surreptitiously pinched my wrist, producing a bolt of pain from my fingertips to my ear. “Sounds good,” I croaked.
“Well, you both look like a million bucks,” Johnny said, reaching out surreptitiously to tug up one side of my cummerbund. “You should totally get some nice pictures. Especially you, Nick; you’re always on the wrong side of the camera, you got all those photos of the kids and none of you. Your mom deserves at least one nice shot up there somewhere. Like, one.”
“Mmpt.”
“And maybe Sofia has a comb you can use?”
“Eckff.”
“I’ll see what can be done,” Sofia chuckled.
Belatedly—possibly because, as far as I could tell, I was dead—Sofia’s absolute conniving cleverness dawned on me. How else would you explain me being there? Her, you could explain. She wasn’t a Society member, but she was a representative all the same; in fact, Louis had always tried to keep her as far from their business as possible. She was just the eternal and permissible coworker’s kid, allowed at their events and parties since she had been little, the way the dealers and bartenders had fondly looked away when Mom used to bring me to her shifts at the casino.
I realized that I had been expecting, for at least a couple of minutes, to see something resembling irritation or jealousy on Johnny’s face, and then was annoyed at myself, and then was annoyed that I was annoyed. I tried to freeze my face into an expression of pleasant unsurprise.
Sofia announced, “Let’s go see if the photographer is free!”
But a moment after we wandered away, the smile dropped off her face with an audible thud. “What are you doing here, Nicholas?”
“Uh, having a panic attack.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned. “You can always trust boys to have the stupidest answer out of a choice of millions… I recommend you try again. And fast.”
“Are you about done? Jesus. Your dad sent me. Obviously.”
“What? Why?”
I blinked. Had I not said obviously? I was sure I had. “Because he was worried about you. Because he called campus, and they said you dropped out. Why do you think?”