Page 582 of Flirting with Darkness

Ghost used the toilet a last time before readying to leave the room.

After he finished, he grabbed the ivory-handled cane and headed for the door.

The servants blocked his way.

The message was clear.

No cane. No sword.

Ghost considered pressing the point, then decided against that too.

He leaned the cane against the wall near the door. Once he had, he held up his hands, one adorned with a sapphire ring, and the other a ruby.

Once the servants saw he held nothing in the way of a weapon, they slid out of his way.

Ghost refrained from reminding them this entire house was decorated with weapons of all kinds. Weapons Ghost could be handy with for the most part, thanks to his Traveler family members and especially his mother when he’d been young.

Living on the street only honed those skills.

It also turned them decisively darker, and more inventive.

But there was no point in stating the obvious. Clearly, what his father didn’t want was for Ghost to be carrying such a weapon on his person, within easy reach of his hands.

He descended the main staircase.

By then, guests had been arriving for more than an hour.

According to the servants, carriages were lined up to the front door all the way back to the second iron gate, the one separating the inner estate from the lands where most of the peasants lived and farmed. More carriages continued to arrive. The empty vehicles gradually filled the fields outside the courtyard, not far from the massive stables.

Ghost blended into the already impressive crowd.

He followed the lazy current of human flesh into the enormous ballroom at the end of the massive foyer that lived just beyond the castle’s double doors.

The iron chandeliers were ablaze with lit candles.

Flower arrangements covered the tables.

Several large ice sculptures of roaring and leaping lions stood in the center of the room, surrounded by champagne glasses, dishes of caviar, fish, bread. On another table, Ghost saw cream puffs, pieces of chocolate, custards, pies, cakes, fruit.

With massive fireplaces roaring on both sides of the room, it was warm enough inside to leave the glass doors open at the very back, even with the snow falling prettily outside. The massive fountain Ghost remembered from the castle’s plans, adorned with a leaping black lion, lived on the terrace just outside the glass doors.

Just inside, an even more enormous Christmas tree decorated in ornaments and candles stood to the right, at the far corner of the ballroom.

Presents and candies covered the decorative rug beneath the tree.

When Ghost first entered the room, a large number of couples already swayed and twirled over the ballroom floor near the open doors to the terrace.

Ten or so musicians played the newest Brahms piece,Hungarian Dances,which Ghost quite liked, and couples spun around to the lilting, haunting music like marionettes.

The women’s rich dresses and the mesmerizing music lent a kind of fairy air to the scene Ghost found himself drawn into, in spite of himself.

Within moments of wandering around, he felt as though everyone inside these walls had fallen under the same languid and soporific spell. After he’d been walking around for some time longer, gazing around at the extravagant dresses of the women and the dark suits of the men, he realized eyes were on him from all around the room.

That’s when he saw him.

Count Aslanov stood by one of the fireplaces, wearing no hat, his dark hair hanging down to the shoulders of a purple coat with a black shirt and vest under it. The vest was embroidered with purple thread that exactly matched the coat.

His dark blue eyes seemed to pierce the space between them, holding Ghost’s focus from what must be twenty yards away.

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