Not much use for gliding waltzes in Atramentous. Death was the only partner worth dancing with there.
Maud would be appalled to learn I had let all those years of lessons fester, but I had always hated balls. I had only ever gone so I could bail her out when the sycophants made her tired. But goddess, all the attention had been miserable.
As much as I picked on Boaz, we were warped mirrors of each other, always had been. All High Society boys had wanted to date me, and all High Society girls had wanted to befriend me. Not me, of course, but Maud’s ward. The daughter of her heart. The Woolworth heiress.
The Marchands were a fine High Society family, but I was no longer a Marchand. I was a Woolworth.
“Make no apologies for surviving.”
Maud had repeated that refrain the way some guardians told their wards bedtime stories. These days, in light of all I’d learned, I wondered what she’d really meant. There was a double meaning there, I was sure of it.
“I practiced with Amelie all morning.” A hint of smugness resurfaced. “I had to pay her thirty dollars, but it was worth it to impress you.”
“Thirty dollars?” I tsked. “That’s highway robbery.”
“Hey, I negotiated her down from fifty. I would have paid a hundred.”
“How very gallant of you.” Amelie must be rubbing her greedy little hands together with glee.
“Not really.” He whirled me away from him, until both our arms were fully extended, then stepped back into my space with purpose before we glided together again. “I owed her a hundred bucks for picking up some groceries for me the last time I was home. I forgot to pay her back, so it’s her money she’s bargaining with either way.”
I laughed out loud, and the bright sound lightened his expression. “You really are a terror. I’m not sure how holy you are, though.”
“You’ve called me that twice tonight.” This time when he trapped me against him, my back to his front, there was no wiggle room. The song had ended, and so had our dance. “Keep name-calling, and I’m going to think you don’t like me.”
“I like you just fine.” I reached up to ruffle his short hair into careless spikes. “Most of the time.”
His snort gusted warm air across my nape. “Do you carry a needle in your pocket to deflate the egos of all your dates, or am I special?”
“This was my first real date.” I kept an eye out for Cletus, a black smudge darker than the surrounding gloom, but I didn’t spot him again. “I came prepared for anything.”
“I don’t deserve so many of your firsts. You shouldn’t have saved yourself for me,” he murmured against my neck. “How can I live up to your expectations?”
“Who says I was saving myself for you?” Living in solitary confinement made romance a tad difficult.
“I’m not good at slow, Grier, and I suck at being gentle.” He plucked at my ear with his teeth. “You ought to kick me in the junk and run as far and as fast as you can from me.”
“I’ll reserve the right to junk-kick you.” I angled my head to the other side, inviting equal attention. “How about that?”
“Grier.”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t move.” Boaz unspooled me from his arms, tucking me behind his broad back.
“What’s wrong?” I fisted his shirt, imagining vampires bleeding from the shadows. I knew it had been too quiet. It was almost a relief that they had finally acted. Now maybe we could get some answers. “What do you see?”
“A wraith,” he growled.
“Oh, he’s mine.” I rested my forehead against his back until my pulse slowed. “Come say hi, Cletus.”
The wraith descended in a swirl of ethereal robes that leaked inky darkness into the surrounding night.
“Cletus?” Boaz halved his scowl between us when I stepped around him. “What do you mean it’s yours?”
Unlike with Amelie, I had to tell him the truth. The whole truth. He had been in the Grande Dame’s chambers at the Lyceum with me. He knew Linus had dispatched his wraith to Woolly and what it had done there.
“He’s my bodyguard.” That sounded more adult than babysitter, and the last thing I wanted was Boaz jockeying for the title. “He protects me whenever I leave the house.”
“This is Linus’s pet.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.” I flicked my hands at Cletus, and he fluttered away. “Linus gave him orders to guard me. He’ll raise the alarm if he can’t handle a situation on his own.”
“By raise the alarm, you mean zip back to his master’s side.”
“Well, he is the only one who can understand the wraith, so yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He kept an eye on the spot where Cletus had been seconds ago.
“To avoid this?” I would have thought that was obvious. “I was going to tell you, but I didn’t want to do it tonight.”
Wraiths and romance didn’t exactly go hand in hand.
“He’ll tell Linus everything we said and did, everywhere we went.” His fingers twitched like he wanted to scoop them through the air and sift Cletus from the night. “Doesn’t that bother you?”
“I don’t want a wraith or anyone else to shadow me, but Cletus is less intrusive than a sentinel would be. Even an Elite. As much as I want to pretend nothing has changed, we both know that’s not true. There are powerful people with a marked interest in me.” I placed my palm over his spine. “I’m trying to be smart about this, but I don’t want to be under house arrest for the rest of my life, and I won’t be able to defend myself for a while yet. This is a good compromise.” I scratched his back with my nails until his shoulders relaxed a fraction. “I want to be as free as I can be, for as long as I can be.”
“There’s got to be another way,” he murmured to himself.
“Do you want to go for a walk before we head home?” The music had ended, and I wasn’t in the mood for dancing, not while calculation gleamed in his eyes. “We could buy churros from Esteban.”
“Churros?” He blinked a couple of times, and his focus returned to me in a snap. “You’ve got room for more sweets?” He reached down and lifted the hem of my dress a fraction of an inch, just enough to make me gasp and dance out of range. “Where do you hide it all?”
“Linus says I…” I clamped down on my tongue, but it was too late.
The fabric slid from his fingers, along with his mischievous grin. “What does Linus say?”
“That I’ve lost a lot of weight,” I answered softly. “That I need calories.”
He grunted once and extended his arm. “For once, we’re in agreement.”
We set out for my favorite booth in River Street Market Place, hand in hand, and soon I was leading the charge toward the scents of fried dough and sugar.
Esteban loomed over his fryer when we stepped through the canvas flaps acting as his doorway, and his smile grew bigger than my head, his teeth as bright white as the wispy hairs floating above his scalp. Everything about Esteban was supersized. When he abandoned his station to hug one of his best customers, I couldn’t shake the feeling of a redwood tree bending to greet me. His arms were like trunks all on their own, and I disappeared into the forest of chest hairs peeking from his V-neck shirt.
“Bomboncita,” he boomed in my ear. “I haven’t seen you in weeks.” He held me away from him and pinched my arm. “What happened? You didn’t juice cleanse, did you?”
“I wasn’t well” was the most diplomatic response. “I’ve come for your help in regaining my curves.”
“That I can do.” He startled when he noticed Boaz standing behind me. “Are you with my little candy?”
Huh. I’d always wondered what bomboncita meant, but I’d never asked because it sounded delicious—like a bonbon—and I didn’t want to be proven wrong.
“I am.” Boaz shook hands with the giant. “We’ll take two of all her favorites.”
Esteban slapped Boaz on the back hard enough to wind him. “I like this guy.”
“Me too.” I patted him on the shoulder. “This is Boaz. He’s Amelie’s big brother.”
“How is nena?” He returned to his post and rescued newborn churros from their sizzling oil bath. “She never visits anymore.”