Page 34 of The Black Table
“Yeah? I know how to use it, too.” He pivots to Elena, cocks his head. “You wanna go?”
“Kai.Stop.” Lanz barges in from Kai’s other side, grabbing his wrist with surprising ease. “Just stop.”
“What?” Kai says, trying and failing to shrug him off. “I’m just coming to the aid of adamselindistress.”
His words are loose, sloppy. Behind him, Callahan looms, thick arms crossed, as Lanz’s grip flexes with the effort to keep Kai’s hand immobile. And all around us, the crowd is gettinglouder and louder, murmurs into the occasional shout, the heat of more and more eyes burning into my skin.
“Let me go,” Kai says, yanking away from Lanz again. “Let me?—”
“Drop it.”
That voice.
Clear as glass, cold as ice.
Kingston.
He cuts through the crowd effortlessly, people simplypartingfor him to cross, mouths falling open and eyes goggling in astonishment, and I catch snatches of words:
Is that…
…but henever…
…can’t believe, holy shit…
Claire lets out a frightenedmeepsound. Elena cowers, but not without a glance at Lanz. Lanz, for his part, is impassive—blue eyes trained on the middle distance—as is Callahan just behind him. Kai is sneering, flings the chunk of glass to the ground with a fainttink tinksound.
But Kingston…
Kingston is looking at me.
Standing at attention, arms crossed, his golden eyes steady, focused.
And I have never, ever wished to be invisible more than right now.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
I shake my head. Noncommittal.Can’t speak. I swallow the rasp in my throat and try again.
“Fine,” I say. “I’m fine.”
“Liar,” someone mutters. It’s Morgan, threading her way to the front from the same direction Kingston just came from.
But Kingston seems satisfied with my answer.
He breaks his gaze away. Sweeps a look around the room.Something—disgust? Disappointment?—curls in his top lip. The most emotion I’ve ever seen from him.
He straightens his posture.
“Get out,” he cries. “Everyone. Party’s over. Go home.”
Murmurs of disappointment, even a light groan of protest, but everyone obeys, and frighteningly quickly. Claire rushes to Elena’s side, handing her a purse and staring fury at me as they leave through the main double doors, and the tides of humanity sweep out person by person, no one’s eyes ever leaving me.
Finally, finally, it’s empty. Just silence. I look for them—for Kai, Lanz and Callahan, Kingston—but they’re already shadows in the doorframe.
And I…
I’m…
