Dragons Luck

“Somehow I knew you would know about that. And you’re right, damn it.”

Valerie had been worried about something; maybe George stepped on people’s feet literally as well as figuratively.

Mai grinned and slipped out of Griffen’s grip. For a moment, she looked like a child who had just gotten the present she wanted. She even took a little spin before taking one of Griffen’s hands in both of hers.

“Come on, then. If we leave now, we can be almost perfectly fashionably late,” Mai said.

Griffen let himself be drawn out the door, mostly because it was the first chance he had gotten to see the back of her dress. From the back of the collar down, laces crisscrossed over an exposed spine almost to her tailbone. Definitely not a traditional oriental element.

He half realized that he was beginning to look forward to the night.

The other half of him thought that getting his hopes up was probably very unwise.

Fifty-one

Griffen walked into the Conclave Masquerade, and was overwhelmed.

Before his eyes could register details, they were filled with a barrage of colors. As soon as he walked through the doors and into the massive ballroom, he could only stop and stare. Mai, attached at his elbow, picked up on his hesitation immediately. She shifted her posture, framing herself against the backlighting from the doors. A part of him realized what she was doing, that she was making it appear that the two were just pausing, making a more dramatic entrance. That part was thankful, the rest was just taking everything in.

First of all, it was hardly like walking into a ballroom at all. Oh, the features were there: grand chandeliers that looked expensive and impossible to clean, architecturally useless columns along the walls, a sea of marble that made up the dance floor. That was where the similarity stopped, though.

It was like stepping into a forest glade. An unnatural, moon-lit forest from someone’s dreams. Fog covered the ground, ankle thick, except for the dance floor. It didn’t move right, didn’t seem to follow the light breezes in the room. Instead, it rolled in shallow waves and thin tendrils that seemed to explore. Moving of their own volition. Every once in a while a small snake of fog would move across the dance floor, almost seeming to twist to avoid the dancers.

Tables rose like stones in the fog. Tablecloths of soft gray and green covered them, looking like moss and rocks. The tables were small, big enough only for three or four people, an obvious attempt to break up the cliques and groups that kept forming all throughout the conclave. The only exceptions were two long tables, one covered in dishes of food and a small wet bar, and the other against the far wall, set so that those sitting at it could see the whole room. Nameplates sat at each place, and Griffen bet that his name would be on one.

The walls had been decorated, changed, with twisting cords or material that might have been rope or might have been live vines. If vines came in pale purples and blues and the occasional scintillating gold. Trees seemed to grow out of the walls, trees of metal and crystal and glass that still somehow seemed alive. The light filtered through the various materials and sent hundreds of small reflections glittering over the walls and fog.

And the light itself came not just from the candles or the chandeliers. Balls of colored light, greens, blues, purples, seemed to dance in midair. These constantly moving orbs cast little in the way of true illumination but enhanced and changed the colors of everything around them. Griffen had no idea what made them, just as he could see no obvious source for the fog, but the combined effect was breathtaking . . . magical.

And all that before he started tracking the individual people.

Griffen was beginning to feel self-conscious, and decidedly underdressed. Some of the people in the crowd made Mai look almost drab. Costuming ranged from simple masks to elaborate, from modern horror to Victorian drag.

A woman Griffen hadn’t noticed before was dressed in a Carmen Miranda outfit, except that a straw stuck out of the pineapple hat. As he watched, she took off her hat, took a sip from the straw, and replaced it. She was chatting with a man in a cloak so large and black that Griffen couldn’t see his hands, much less his face. Nearby, three people dressed as trees talked, looking like the Forest of No Return at a cocktail party. Griffen idly wondered if Tammy would be using her shifting as a part of her costume, but doubted it after the ribbing she’d gotten.