Passion

As soon as Anne-Marie shut the door behind her, Bill propelled himself out of the water, sending a cold spray of soapsuds across the room. He sailed over the armoire and came to rest on a small turquoise silk footstool. He pointed at Luce’s gown, at her wig, then at her gown again. “Ooh la la. Hot stuff.”

“You haven’t even seen my shoes.” She lifted the hem of her skirt to show off a pair of pointy-toed emerald- green heels inlaid with jade flowers. They matched the emerald-green lace that trimmed the bust of her dress and were easily the most amazing shoes she had ever seen, let alone slipped onto her feet.

“Oooh!” Bill squealed. “Very rococo.”

“So, I’m really doing this? I’m just going to go down there and pretend—”

“No pretending.” Bill shook his head. “Own it. Own that cleavage, girl, you know you want to.”

“Okay, I am pretending you didn’t say that.” Luce laugh-winced. “So I go downstairs and ‘own it’ or whatever. But what do I do when I find my past self? I don’t know anything about her. Do I just—”

“Take her hand,” Bill said cryptically. “She’ll be very touched by the gesture, I’m sure.”

Bill was hinting at something, clearly, but Luce didn’t understand. Then she remembered his words right before they dove through the last Announcer.

“Tell me about going three-D.”

“Aha.” Bill mimed leaning against an invisible wall in the air. His wings blurred as he fluttered in front of her. “You know how some things are just too out-of-this-world to be pinned down by dull old words? Like, for example, the way you swoon when Daniel comes in for a long kiss, or the feeling of heat that spreads through your body when his wings unfurl on a dark night—”

“Don’t.” Luce’s hand went to her heart involuntarily. There were no words that could ever do justice to what Daniel made her feel. Bill was making fun of her, but that didn’t mean she ached any less at being away from Daniel for so long.

“Same deal with three-D. You’ll just have to live it to understand it.”

As soon as Bill opened the door for Luce, the sounds of distant orchestra music and the polite murmuring of a large crowd flooded into the room. She felt something pulling her down there. Maybe it was Daniel. Maybe it was Lys.

Bill bowed in the air. “After you, Princess.”

She followed the noise down two broad, winding flights of golden stairs, the music getting louder with each step. As she swept through empty gallery after empty gallery, she began to smell the mouthwatering aromas of roasted quail and stewed apples and potatoes au gratin. And perfume—so much she could hardly inhale without coughing.

“Now aren’t you glad I made you take a bath?” Bill asked. “One less bottle of eau de reekette punching holes in l’ozone.”

Luce didn’t answer. She had entered a long hall of mirrors, and in front of her, a pair of women and a man were crossing toward the entrance of a main room. The women didn’t walk, they glided. Their yellow and blue gowns practically swished across the floor. The man walked between them, his ruffled white shirt dapper under his long silver jacket and his heels nearly as high as the ones on Luce’s shoes. All three of them wore wigs a full foot taller than the one on Luce’s own head, which felt enormous and weighed a ton. Watching them, Luce felt clumsy, the way her skirts swung from side to side as she walked.

They turned to look at her and all three pairs of eyes narrowed, as if they could tell instantly that she had not been bred to attend high-society balls.

“Ignore them,” Bill said. “There are snobs in every lifetime. In the end, they’ve got nothing on you.”

Luce nodded, falling behind the trio, who passed through a set of mirrored doorways into the ballroom. The ultimate ballroom. The ballroom to end all ballrooms.

Luce couldn’t help herself. She stopped in her tracks and whispered, “Wow.”

It was majestic: A dozen chandeliers hung low from the faraway ceiling, glittering with bright white candles. Where the walls weren’t made of mirrors, they were covered with gold. The parquet dance floor seemed to stretch on into the next city, and ringing the dance floor were long tables covered in white linen, laid with fine china place settings, platters of cakes and cookies, and great crystal goblets filled with ruby-colored wine. Thousands of white daffodils peeked out of hundreds of dark-red vases set upon the dozens of dining tables.

On the far side of the room, a line of exquisitely dressed young women was forming. There were about ten of them, standing together, whispering and laughing outside a great golden door.

Another crowd had gathered around an enormous crystal punch bowl near the orchestra. Luce helped herself to a glass.

“Excuse me?” she asked a pair of women next to her. Their artful gray curls formed twin towers on their heads. “What are those girls in line for?”

“Why, to please the king, of course.” One woman chuckled. “Those demoiselles are here to see if they might please him into marriage.”

Marriage? But they looked so young. All of a sudden Luce’s skin began to feel hot and itchy. Then it hit her: Lys is in that line.

Luce gulped and studied each of the young women. There she was, third in line, magnificently wrapped in a long black gown only slightly different from the one that Luce herself was wearing. Her shoulders were covered with a black velvet capelet, and her eyes never rose from the floor. She wasn’t laughing with the other girls. She looked as frustrated as Luce felt.

“Bill,” Luce whispered.

But the gargoyle flew right in front of her face and shushed her with a finger to his fat stone lips. “Only crazies talk to their invisible gargoyles,” he hissed, “and crazies don’t get invited to many balls. Now, hush.”

“But what about—”

“Hush.”

What about going 3-D?

Luce took a deep breath. The last instruction he had given her was to take Lys by the hand.…

She strode over, crossing the dance floor and bypassing the servants with their trays of foie gras and Chambord. She nearly plowed right into the girl behind Lys, who was trying to cut ahead of Lys in line by pretending to whisper something to a friend.

“Excuse me,” Luce said to Lys, whose eyes widened and whose lips parted and let a tiny confused sound escape her mouth.

But Luce couldn’t wait for Lys to react. She reached down and grabbed her by the hand. It fit into her own like a puzzle piece. She squeezed.

Luce’s stomach dropped as if she’d gone down the first hill of a roller coaster. Her skin began to vibrate, and a drowsy, gently rocking sensation came over her. She felt her eyelids flutter, but some instinct told her to keep holding fast to Lys’s hand.

She blinked, and Lys blinked, and then they both blinked at the same time—and on the other side of the blink, Luce could see herself in Lys’s eyes … and then could see Lys from her own eyes … and then—

She could see no one in front of her at all.

“Oh!” she cried out, and her voice sounded just as it always had. She looked down at her hands, which looked just as they always had. She reached up and felt her face, her hair, her wig, all of which felt the same as they had before. But something … something had shifted.

She lifted the hem of her dress and peeked down at her shoes.

They were magenta. With diamond-shaped high heels, and tied at the ankle with an elegant silver bow.

What had she done?

Then she realized what Bill had meant by “going three-D.”

She had literally stepped into Lys’s body.

Luce glanced around her, terrified. To her horror, all the other girls in line were motionless. In fact, everyone Luce looked at was frozen stiff. It was if the entire party had been put on Pause.

“See?” Bill’s voice came hotly in her ear. “No words for this, right?”

“What’s happening, Bill?” Her voice was rising.

“Right now, not a whole lot. I had to put the brakes on the party, lest you freak out. Once we’re straight on