“Wel­come one, wel­come all,” the man said, his voice on­ly slight­ly muf­fled by the mask. “As the mas­ter of cer­emonies for this year's Lega­cy it is my hon­or, my priv­ilege, to in­vite each and ev­ery one of you in­to the in­ner sanc­tum.” There was a siz­zle of an­tic­ipa­tion felt even by me, al­though I had no idea what was go­ing on. The mas­ter raised one fin­ger in warn­ing. “But re­mem­ber, what you see here . . . what you do here . . . who you touch here . . . who you screw here ...”

Know­ing laugh­ter all around.

“All will re­main here,” he said. "For this is the Lega­cy, my

221

friends. You are the cho­sen. So make your peace now with whomev­er you wor­ship, and nev­er . . . look . . . back."

With that, the mas­ter stepped aside and ev­ery­one moved to the doors at once as if an emer­gen­cy evac­ua­tion had been called.

“What's in there?” I asked Whit­tak­er as he tugged at my hand. Af­ter that speech, I was feel­ing more than a lit­tle wary.

“You'll see,” Whit­tak­er said with a mis­chievous smile.

His grip on my hand tight­ened as we neared the dou­ble doors and I won­dered, for the first time, if I might have got­ten my­self in over my head.

222

DANCE, DANCE

Walk­ing through the doors was like go­ing through the look­ing glass. A tremen­dous ball­room had been draped from ceil­ing to floor with swags of red, black, pink, and pur­ple vel­vet and chif­fon. Ropes of sparkling mir­rors dan­gled ev­ery­where, catch­ing the strobe lights and send­ing prisms over the hun­dreds of masked faces. Ac­ro­bats hung from cloth ropes tied to the ceil­ing, twirling and whirling over our heads, their bare­ly clad bod­ies paint­ed in swirls of col­or. In the cen­ter of the room, most of the par­ty­go­ers were al­ready start­ing to dance to the deaf­en­ing beat be­ing laid down by a DJ in the far cor­ner. On a cir­cu­lar stage next to him, a small or­ches­tra played a fren­zied song, their mu­sic in­ter­twin­ing with the beat to form some se­ri­ous­ly eerie, ex­ot­ic, al­most fran­tic mu­sic. Gor­geous wom­en in elab­orate cos­tumes cir­cu­lat­ed around the room, of­fer­ing drinks and ush­er­ing peo­ple be­hind cur­tained-?off ar­eas.

My head spun. There was too much go­ing on around me. Too much may­hem, too much ac­tiv­ity. Just too much.

“Reed!”

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Ki­ran ap­peared out of nowhere and grabbed my hand. “Come dance!” she shout­ed.

I looked at Whit­tak­er, who waved me off. “Go!”

“I'll find you!” I said. At the mo­ment he seemed like the one and on­ly sol­id thing in my life.

“Or I'll find you,” he promised.

Then, for the hun­dredth time that night, I let Ki­ran drag me away. We passed by a large open­ing like a coat-?check

room, where a tall wom­an dressed like an an­gel was hand­ing out gifts of var­ious sizes, wrapped in white pa­per. A pack of girls took their gifts and rushed off to an al­cove with them.

“What are they do­ing?” I asked.

“The white gift. The Lega­cy's an­swer to fa­vors,” Ki­ran said over her shoul­der. “Noth­ing worth less than a thou­sand.”

“A thou­sand dol­lars?” I said, gap­ing.

“Yeah, but you still nev­er get what you want,” Ki­ran shout­ed. “The swap par­ty hap­pens lat­er.”

Un­be­liev­able. This par­ty was un­be­liev­able. Who knew there was this much wealth in the world?

Fi­nal­ly, Ki­ran some­how found Noelle, Dash, Ar­iana, Tay­lor, and Gage on the dance floor and dove right in, twirling me around once be­fore let­ting me go and leav­ing me to my own de­vices. I had nev­er been much of a dancer and for a mo­ment I was self- con­scious, un­til I re­al­ly took a look around me and saw how ev­ery­one else was do­ing. Suf­fice it to say, there wasn't re­al­ly any­one to im­press. I closed my eyes, lift­ed my arms, and let my­self go.

224

Cathar­tic. That was the on­ly word to ex­press the feel­ing. The longer I danced, the more all I had been through, all I an­tic­ipat­ed go­ing through, fad­ed in­to the back­ground. The mu­sic was so loud it seemed as if it was com­ing out of my bones, through my pores, re­ver­ber­at­ing from my own body and crowd­ing out ev­ery­thing else.

This was per­fec­tion. Yes, per­fec­tion. In­su­lat­ed in the cen­ter of the dance floor. In­su­lat­ed from Whit­tak­er and those al­coves and what­ev­er might be go­ing on with­in them. In­su­lat­ed from Natasha and her threats, from Con­stance and her ac­cu­sa­tions, from Thomas and his be­tray­al and the wor­ry that sur­round­ed ev­ery thought of him. This was my com­fort zone. If I could just stay here among my friends for the rest of the night, I would be fine.

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