Page 19 of Gilded Wicked Mirrors
Quinn loosened a breath. “But that’s the problem. I can’t access my emotions.”
Jane smiled kindly. “Yes, you can. In the four years I’ve mentored you, I’ve seen you connect with your emotions on numerous occasions. You can do it. You just don’twantto.”
Fuck, Jane was right. She saw into the depths of Quinn’s soul. And that was terrifying because Quinn didn’t want to feel. She couldn’t afford to.
“If it helps, pretend to be a different person with a different past,” Jane said. “Sometimes, letting go can be the very thing you need.”
Quinn sighed and fiddled with her fingernails, watching the dancing. Could she let herself go? Was it possible?
Jane pulled a small box from her pocket behind the bustle of her dress. “I got you a present.” It was a bracelet with a single charm on it. A gold ballet pointe shoe with a heart inside. But not a cute heart that a schoolgirl would dot her I’s with, a human heart—the organ—cradled in a pointe shoe. To anyone else, it would have been utterly ridiculous and creepy, but to Quinn, it was perfect. She said the last bit aloud.
“I know your ballet is your dream, but I also know, deep down, you love carving up dead bodies. You love being smarter than everyone else, and there is a world in which you can have both of your passions.” Jane rubbed a wrinkle in her skirt.
“They aren’t both my passions.”
“Sure, sure.” Jane nodded, but it was clear she didn’t believe her. “One day—” Jane cut herself off, her eyes focusing on someone in the crowd. “I have to go . . . There’s a meeting . . .” Jane jumped down from her perch and misjudged the distance, stumbling and falling. Before anyone could help her, she sprang back up and disappeared into the crowd.
Quinn tried to follow her disappearing form, but an explosion of fire came from the ceiling, and out of it appeared a woman in a deep red costume. The feathers started from her bodice and traveled up her chest, finishing at her throat like a choker necklace. The dress had a deep V-neck that exposed the skin to her belly button, and the skirt was shaped like a tutu. The dancer floated down from the ceiling like a falling star.
Constance.
Her toes touched the floor, and she balanced fully on pointe. At the precise moment she touched, the ground and the air lit up with golden fire.
Quinn squinted, and on closer look, the fire was thousands of glowing butterflies flying and dancing in time with Constance as she performed the Sable Swan variation mixed with cancan and seductress moves. The butterflies moved and morphed into shapes in the sky as Constance moved.
Quinn looked up to share her excitement about the dance with Giselle but discovered that she’d left. She was so absorbed in testing her invention that she had wandered off taking pictures and was entirely across the room.
Quinn was alone with her thoughts. Never a good thing. So she stared down at her necklace, clutched it, and remembered her Mirror-Rite.
A frisson of anxiety gathered in her core and crystallized.
The only way to keep her mind from unwanted emotions was to do something, whether it be work, a puzzle, or dance. Something, anything would do. She decided to find Emrys and get this over with.
Through the crowd, she spotted Jevon’s blond hair. He stood, his shoulders slightly slumped with a frown on his face, holding two refreshments and surrounded by a group of fawning girls—far too polite to excuse himself and find freedom.
He needed to be rescued.
But Quinn would have to do that later. She made it three steps before she froze in her tracks. Behind her, in one of the curtained-off alcoves, an argument was brewing between familiar voices. She turned on her heel and tiptoed to the purple curtain blocking the room.
Perhaps she had fantastic luck because the object of her search simply fell into her lap.
Slowly, Quinn opened a curtain leading to a hall with a set of four little alcoves—designed for midnight assignations. The voices came from the farthest one on the left, so she tiptoed up to it, placed a steady finger on the fabric, and moved it oh-so-slightly enough to give her a view.
It was the meeting Jane had run off to.
Emrys spoke in dark tones and boxed Jane in. He was with two other men. A tree-like man, tall and slight of frame, in a pinstriped, immaculately tailored suit and square-rimmed glasses that framed his face. On his russet-brown skin behind his left ear rested a gang tattoo of a mask with a snake coiling through the eyehole.
A Les Fantômes tattoo.
The second man was spun in a suit of midnight black that matched his hair. He was also tall and conventionally attractive, but his eyes were a haunting deep brown-nearly-black with silver rings around his irises.
“You have to tell me where it is,” Emrys Avalon said fiercely to Jane, nearly shaking her. “We need to know. It’s life and death.”
“I can’t tell you.” Jane folded her arms and stood her ground.
The man with silver-ringed eyes cocked his head. “But you do know where it is?”
It? What could be so important that both Emrys and this manwere threatening Jane? The hairs on Quinn’s arms rose.Jane, what have you gotten yourself into?
