But it was. At first she wondered how Colin would know it was him. Then she remembered Colin’s obsession with the gossip-vids. He watched them every night with a bowl of popcorn while snickering at the screen. Of course he would also recognize Dade even wearing a mask.
“I really think it is.” Colin turned to her, his eyes nearly bugging out of his head. “Do you think he’s the Ghost?”
“No,” she said, immediately dismissing the idea as insane. “More like he thought it’d be amusing to wear the mask as a joke.”
“That’s true,” Colin conceded. “He does love to play tricks on the paparazzi. Still, how can you be sure?”
“Trust me, there’s no way he could be the Ghost. He’s too sweet.”
“Too sweet?” Colin blinked repeatedly, making him look like he was experiencing an aneurysm. “Are you kidding me? Is that your siskin? The one you were playing kissy-face with? You didn’t mention that you’d gone insane.”
Arden’s heart rate was already exceptionally high, but the reference to Dade as “hers” made her heart give a great thump in her chest. Excitement. This was excitement. It was a feeling almost foreign to her, as there wasn’t much in her life to be excited about. She was usually consumed by work and revenge.
It was nice. Okay, perhaps she could admit that it was more than nice, actually. Something she could get used to if given the opportunity. Even though she knew that having something that brought her joy only meant weakness.
“I wasn’t playing kissy-face with him,” she said. “We talked, is all. He’s only a boy. You’re acting like he’s royalty.”
“He is royalty,” Colin choked. “It’s not enough to moon over a sky boy—you had to pick someone from the Croix family?”
She found herself moving toward the stairs that would lead her below.
“I thought you weren’t going to dance,” Colin said, stepping after her but stopping at the top rung.
“I changed my mind.”
“Are you going to congratulate him on his engagement?” Colin yelled after her, over the music.
She stopped dead, several steps down the stairs, then turned back, her breath frozen in her chest. “What did you say?”
“When you were cutting each other and making lovey eyes, or whatever the hell you were doing,” Colin said, looking like an avenging angel, his hands on his hips, “did he happen to mention his fiancée?”
The words swirled around her, but they had no meaning.
“It has been all over the visicast for the last few months,” Colin said. “The analysts talk about nothing but the consolidation of their families. How this would potentially affect the Solizen power structure. This shouldn’t be news to you.”
Her mouth worked, but no sound came out. Not that she knew what to say anyway.
“You really should pay more attention if you’re going to have a psychotic crush,” Colin said. Turning to contemplate Dade, he tilted his head. “I can see the attraction. I wouldn’t mind climbing that.”
“You need to back off.” Her warning was flat.
Colin stared at her now, his jaw slack. “Wow, you really like him. Not just ‘get in his pants, my hormones are raging,’ but ‘like him, like him.’”
She rolled her eyes. “Eloquent.”
“Don’t pursue this,” Colin said. “This is going to end badly, I can promise you that.”
He was right. If Dade did have a fiancée, Arden had absolutely no business seeking him out. Added to that, the nervousness she’d felt all night had begun to erode her confidence. She faced down men with phasers on a weekly basis, stole shipments of drugs, dealt to addicts, killed people when necessary, and yet thinking about approaching this boy had her second-guessing herself.
Ridiculous.
There had been something between them. She couldn’t have imagined that.
“I don’t want you to get your heart broken,” Colin said.
“My heart has nothing to do with this.”
Colin gave her a disbelieving look, before he started down the stairs after her. “I’m going to dance with Uri and Mariah. I don’t need to watch while you make poor life choices. Just remember, I warned you.”
“Play interference for me?” She didn’t want to attract Uri’s and Mariah’s attention, especially if it could get back to Niall.
“Afraid they’ll kill Dade and splatter blood on your pretty dress?”
“More like I don’t want to deal with it.” They reached the bottom of the stairs, and she turned to keep him from leaving. “Do it for me?”
“You’ll have to tell them eventually.”
Arden shook her head. “Only if I see him again.”
That wasn’t going to happen. This was a one-off. Well, a two-off. There was no way to pretend otherwise, even in her head. For some reason she couldn’t explain, she had to know if it had been real: him or her reaction to him, her feelings—the confusion made her question herself, and she didn’t like that.
She circled the room so that she could approach him from behind, just in case he’d shown up with friends. Her path took her through the dance floor. The intensity from the sweaty bodies felt more potent here. People reached out, touching her arm. She had no idea who they were, but she knew what they wanted.
Arden slipped the last of the Shine disks out, making several quick transactions without slowing down. A slip of the hand, a swipe of her palm-sized wand-scanner, a lingering brush of a hand against her, silently asking her to stay and share in the party. But she dealt with them like she always had, fast and detached. Wanting to minimize her exposure to the lure of escape. She had finished that task, at least, if Niall asked.
She made sure to avoid Uri, Mariah, and also Colin, who winked at her when she slipped past. Arden hid herself in the shadows where the dance lights failed to penetrate. She waited on the outskirts of the dance floor, observing Dade’s movements as she had done earlier that day.
He didn’t dance, a solid statue in the midst of the undulating hedonism that moved around him. That alone made him stand out, made him more alluring than if he’d taken part in the promise of their bodies. He drew looks of awe from the crowd. Many recognized him, either thinking he was the Ghost or perhaps sensing his real identity. Either way, they kept a healthy distance. Dade never looked in any one direction for more than a few seconds. He was clearly searching for someone. If Arden found out who, perhaps it would answer her questions as to why he’d stumbled in here.
Dade began to walk through the crowd, never wavering from his intended direction and assuming that people would move. And they did, parting for him unconsciously.
She followed. Curiosity, lust, and excitement all mixed together.
He stopped in the middle of the dance floor. Dancers writhed around him. He remained still, poised like a hunter. As if he expected his prey to dart out in front of him.