Lies and Prophecy (33 page)

Her smile faded. “The ball, remember?”

Shit. I'd told her I would go. “Liesel, I can't.”

Now the smile vanished entirely. “You promised you would.”

“I know. But—I just can't do it. I've got too much on my mind.” How could I dance, knowing what I did about Julian? “I found a book that I think might say something useful about—” The sentence died abruptly when I saw my roommate.

Liesel was trying for expressionless, but failing miserably. Tears glinted in the corners of her eyes, and just as I noticed them a surge of emotion hit me, then cut off with a jolt.

Misery. A sensation of being at the bottom of a pit, looking up at a circle of light, so small, and so far away. A feeling of terrible weight, of being under fire, of desperately wanting everyone and everything to shut up and go away. A scream, building up inside, kept in only by a will whose strength was crumbling fast.

It hit me like a hammer blow, then vanished, locked back inside as if it had never been. But it was still there, and now I knew it.

I whispered an oath under my breath.

Her mouth wavered. I crossed the room in three steps and reached her just as she broke.

Liesel hugged me around the middle, so hard I almost couldn't breathe. And she cried. Cried her eyes out, soaking my sweater, and I found myself patting her head awkwardly and feeling as though the world had just flipped upside down. This wasn't the way things were supposed to go. I wasn't the one who comforted Liesel.
She
always comforted
me.

Of course she did. She was an empath. And we knew that, all of us, and so we leaned on her, looked to her for calming words and rock-solid stability. We used Liesel to keep ourselves sane. It was what she wanted; helping others made her happy. But I hadn't stopped to think what a burden that put on her. I just piled more and more stress on her head, telling her about my dreams, about my worries, about everything. And she took it, not complaining, not saying anything … but no one, not even Liesel, could take on that kind of strain and not collapse.

“Gods,” I whispered, stroking her hair. “Lord and Lady—I'm so sorry. I didn't think.”

My empathic skills were nothing next to hers, but I tried anyway to wrap her in a feeling of comfort and support. I thought about my newfound determination, the confidence that we
could
do something to take care of ourselves, and tried to share that with her. It wasn't easy. Liesel had given up any attempt to maintain shields, and her terror threatened to swamp me under. I closed my eyes and concentrated, and while it wasn't perfect, it seemed to help. After a while Liesel's crying came to and end, and then she let me go.

I fetched her a glass of water and waited as she drank it down. When the last drop was gone, she said in a hoarse voice, “
Please
go to the ball.”

My reaction to that was still incredulity, but I made myself think past it. She wouldn't ask if it didn't matter to her.

Finally I figured it out. “You need me … to be normal. Or at least pretend.”

“I need to be around other people,” she whispered. “People who don't know what's going on. People whose biggest worry is the astrology test they have next week.”

“Can't you go by yourself?”

Her shields were still gone, and I felt her fear as though she'd tossed a bucket of cold water over my face. “If they show up there—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Grayson never comes to the ball. Neither does Julian.”

That left Robert and me. And Robert's antics the other day ruled him out as an escort.

I didn't want to go, but Liesel needed me to. After all the stress I'd put her under, I owed her this.

“Okay,” I said. “You, uh—said you found a costume?”

My agreement worked wonders on her. Liesel opened her eyes and got to her feet, heading for the bedroom. I followed more slowly. She met me in the doorway with a bundle of fabric in her hands. “Here.”

I took the bundle as she shoved it at me and shook it out. Cream-colored silk fell to the floor in luxurious folds, a shimmering curtain of elegantly tailored gown.

Despite my resolution to cooperate, the words slipped out. “You have got to be kidding.”

Liesel managed an unsteady grin. “Ceridwen just got this. And when she found out the costume was for you, nothing else would do.”

“I am
not
going to wear it.”

“Oh, but you are.” She was
laughing
at me! I was glad to see her regaining her composure, but not at my expense. Not like this. “You look too much like Christine Rendal not to.”

I tried to hand the dress back, but Liesel wouldn't take it. “We both have dark hair. Some resemblance.”

“You want to try and convince Ceridwen to give you something else? Good luck.”

“I don't care how much I look like Christine Rendal; I don't care how much money
Descent
ended up grossing. I am
not
going to the Department of Telepathic Sciences' Annual Masked Ball dressed as Persephone. Especially not when Persephone's dress covers less of my chest than your average bra.”

“You'll look good in it, Kim.” Liesel took the dress now, but only to measure it against me. “And it'll fit you perfectly. Come on; where's your sense of adventure?”

“In the closet, cowering in shame.”

“It's not
that
revealing.”

“Yes it is.” I backed away from the dress and fled to the dubious safety of the common room. “There's to be something else I can wear. Don't you have anything?” Liesel, grinning, blocked my attempt to dodge past her. She held out the dress invitingly. “I told you, I'm not wearing it!”

Five minutes later, I tugged uncertainly at the bodice encasing me rather closer than a glove. “It's not sitting right. The neckline's riding lower than it ought to.”

“No, it's riding
right
where it ought to.” Liesel straightened my skirts and stepped back. She nodded approvingly. “If we do your hair right, we'll barely need the glamour. You do look an awful lot like Rendal.”

I reluctantly faced my reflection in the mirror. The apparition that looked back wasn't me. I never wore things like this, deep-skirted dresses with bodices whose necklines wanted to migrate to my navel. And it was about as Greek as I was. Persephone ought to have worn a chiton or something—not this costume Lady Godiva would have blushed to wear.

The silk
was
gorgeous, I had to grant. The seamstress knew what she was doing; the skirt hung in soft folds from the bodice, which fit rather better than I wanted it to. Either Ceridwen had gotten it tailored to herself—we were pretty much the same size—or I resembled her favorite actress from the neck down, too.

Why couldn't I have resembled someone who dressed decently?

“Sit here.” Liesel led me to a chair. I had to pay attention to how I sat, lest the skirts foul me up. They actually weren't as bad as I had feared; I could still move in them, and surprisingly well. They did require minding, though.

Liesel's hands were busy in my hair, twisting it up into the pseudo-Greek style Persephone wore in the movie. I still sensed the darkness inside her, but this was helping. She could pretend, if only for a little while, that the Unseelie didn't exist. “What are you dressing as?” I asked her, still bitter over my own forced costume.

“Cinderella. Pre-fairy godmother. The dress isn't right, but it's close enough to pass with a glamour.”

“Why do you get to be virginal and modest?”

“You're virginal too—at least until Hades gets hold of you.” I sensed her smiling wickedly behind me.

“I think you're enjoying this far too much.”

A quiet laugh. “My dear friend, I haven't even
begun
to enjoy it. Just wait until we get to the ball.”

~

The glamour was my one saving grace. Its weak telepathic suggestion kept people from properly seeing my face unless they tried to. And that wouldn't be in the spirit of the ball. Instead, looking at me would give them an impression of who I was supposed to be.

Until midnight. And I hoped I would find a way to slip out before then.

The hall was a swirl of brilliant color. Although the ball was hosted by my department, some of the people in telekinetic sciences lent us a hand with the decorations each year. Globes of witchlight lit the room, and under their glow, everything took on a surreal, vibrant edge. I wondered if this was what the Otherworld looked like.

Stuart Hall was an amazing place even without the special lighting. Its architect had been on crack; the style resembled Gothic more than any other, but even that was a tenuous match. Its vaulting space, marked out by columns and arches, usually hosted activities fairs and such, but events like this were what it had been built for. Gods only knew why a university campus would need it. Some wealthy donor had paid for it, and the administration didn't argue.

Fantastical carvings ornamented the piers of the columns, standing out in strange patterns of bold light and angular shadow. Costumed people moved among these like ghosts of the imagination, dressed in fashions they would never consider in broad daylight. I wasn't the only one there out of my usual habits. In theory the costumes could be drawn from any source, but in practice they came primarily from history and legend, or pop culture based on them. Stuart Hall seemed to command such behavior. The vulgar present was not permitted through its massive oaken doors.

On the way there from Wolfstone I did my best to project an attitude of pleased excitement. Liesel's calm was fragile, I could tell, and she needed me to pretend I was all right. Keeping an eye out for the Unseelie without seeming to do so nearly drove me out of my skull, though.

But then we got to Stuart Hall, and suddenly I found myself cringing with very mundane dread.

I fought the urge to slouch as Liesel and I wove our way into the crowd. Even hidden behind the glamour, I felt horribly exposed; I wasn't used to breezes crossing those parts of my flesh. But cowering would mar the dress's lines and weaken the effect of the glamour. So I steeled myself and straightened my spine, consciously trying to imitate the fluid grace with which Christine Rendal had moved in the movie.

It seemed to work. People congratulated me on my costume without any hint of mirth. I was fairly certain they didn't recognize me, which meant the glamour was holding. It was certainly more effective than the traditional mask would have been—especially given that Persephone hadn't
had
a mask.

On second thought, maybe that was a lack. If we hadn't been using glamours, I wouldn't have been stuck in this damn dress.

Queen Elizabeth I, surrounded by her skirts, nodded gravely at me; I made a curtsy to her. A few moments later I passed Odin. With my luck, some guy out there was dressed as Hades, and then I'd be in for it.

Liesel plastered a smile on her face and made sour comments about the two other Cinderellas, one of whom was relying heavily upon the suggestion of her glamour; her dress was suitably ballgown-ish, but there the resemblance ended. “If only Carnivale hadn't been sold out of everything good,” she said with a sigh. “I could have been something interesting. Boadicea maybe, or Lucrezia Borgia.”

“It's all right,” I said. “We'll plan next year's costumes early, do something really dramatic. Some kind of paired thing.”

Neither of us wanted to voice the unspoken question: would this all still be here, so normal, next year?

We split up and circulated, chatting with various specific targets in an attempt to guess who they were. In a while we'd meet to compare notes and make our predictions. The familiar ritual brought some happiness to Liesel, so I was glad to cooperate.

I extricated myself from a conversation with Cleopatra and took a turn around the room to look for my next target. The Egyptian queen was almost certainly Maria Chiaro, the department's undergraduate coordinator. I had a private guess that the Shiva I was currently searching for would prove to be Fitzgerald, but I had to speak to him to be certain.

A hand clamped down on my silk-covered arm and pulled me into the shadow of a pillar.

My own hand dove for my athame, but it was strapped to my thigh and damnably hard to get at in this gown.
Idiot!
I was gathering myself to attack without it when the figure who had accosted me hissed, “Do not.”

I stayed frozen, my back to the pillar.

The shadow confused things, but the glamour told me the man in front of me was supposed to be Arawn. My mind lashed out in a very specific attack, to punch through the effect and discover his true identity.

It held.

My blood went even colder. Costume glamours weren't supposed to hold up to that, and even a stronger one should have broken under my strike. The list of people who would could cast a glamour that strong was very short indeed.

Arawn—the Welsh god of the Otherworld. Was that somebody's idea of a joke?

“Come,” he whispered. “I must give you a warning.”

“Not until you show me who you are,” I snapped, resisting his attempt to pull me along.

He growled low in his throat and stepped sideways, into the light. My jaw fell open. It was Falcon, plain as day. He hadn't even disguised himself, aside from the glamour's suggestion of a name; he just pretended his Otherworldliness was part of the effect. He pulled me unresisting through the room without trying to hide, and people
complimented
him on his costume. I couldn't decide whether to tear his head off or admire his gall. This room was probably the only place on campus he could get away with looking like himself in full view of everyone.

Once we passed the outer doors, he drew me off to the side, away from the few people coming and going.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I snarled at him, venting my nerves.

“I have to warn you. I could not risk waiting, and so I disguised myself in the manner you are using. Is it wrong?”