Pretties

'To rescue her,' he said, then trained his golden eyes on her again. 'Was that really it?'

Tally nodded carefully, last night's champagne spinning her head. Or maybe tonight's. She looked at the empty glass in her hand and wondered how many she'd had.

'It was just a thing I had to do.' As she said the words, Tally knew that they sounded bogus.

'A special circumstance?' Zane asked, his smile wry.

Tally's eyebrows lifted. She wondered what tricks Zane had pulled back when he was an ugly. He didn't tell that many stories himself. Though he wasn't that much older than her, Zane never seemed to have to prove that he was a real Crim, he just was.

Even with his lips thinned by costume surge, he was beautiful. His face had been sculpted into more extreme shapes than most, as if the doctors had wanted to push the Pretty Committee's specs to the limit. His cheekbones were as sharp as arrowheads underneath his flesh, and his eyebrows arched absurdly high when he was amused. Tally saw with sudden clarity that if any of his features were shifted a few millimeters he would look terrible, and yet at the same time it was impossible to imagine that he had ever been an ugly 'Did you ever go to the Rusty Ruins?' she asked. 'Back when you were…young?'

'Almost every night, last winter.'

'In winter?'

'I love the ruins covered with snow,' he said. 'It makes the edges softer, adding mega-Helens to the view.'

'Oh.' Tally remembered traveling across the wild in early autumn, how cold it had been. 'Sounds totally… freezing.'

'I could never get anyone else to come with me.' His eyes narrowed. 'When you talk about the ruins, you never mention meeting anyone there.'

'Meeting someone?' Tally closed her eyes, finding herself suddenly balance-missing. She leaned against the balcony rail and took a deep breath.

'Yeah,' he said. 'Did you ever?'

The empty champagne glass slipped from her hand and tumbled into the blackness.

'Look out below,' Zane murmured, a smile on his lips.

A tinkling crash rose up from the darkness, surprised laughter spreading from it like ripples from a stone in water. It sounded a thousand kilometers away.

Tally took in more breaths of the cold night air, trying to regain her composure. Her stomach was doing flip- flops. It was so shaming to be like this, about to throw breakfast after a few lousy glasses of champagne.

'It's okay, Tally,' Zane whispered. 'Just let yourself be bubbly.'

Tally realized how bogus that was, having to be told to stay bubbly. But even through his costume surge, Zane's gaze had softened, as if he really did want her to relax.

She turned away from the drop into emptiness, gripping the guardrail with both hands behind her. Shay and Peris were also out on the balcony now; she was surrounded by all her new Crim friends, protected and part of the group. But they were watching her carefully too. Maybe everyone was expecting something special from her tonight.

'I never saw anyone out there,' Tally said. 'Someone was supposed to come, but never did.'

She didn't hear Zane's response.

The lurker had appeared again — across the crowded spire, standing still and staring straight at her. The mask's flashing eyes seemed to acknowledge her gaze for a moment, then the figure turned and slipped among the white coats of the costumed Pretty Committee, disappearing behind their giant facegraphs of every major pretty type. And even though Tally realized it was a bogus thing to do, she pushed away from Zane and through the crowd, because there was no way she could pull herself together tonight until she found out who this person was, Crim or Special or random new pretty. She had to know why someone was throwing Special Circumstances in her face.

Tally dodged between white coats and bounced like a pinball through a clique all dressed in fat-suits, their softly padded bellies spinning her in circles. She bowled over most of a hockey team, who wobbled on their slippy hoverskates like littlies. Glimpses of gray silk teased Tally from just ahead as she ran, but the crowd was thick and in frantic motion, and by the time she reached the central column of the spire, the figure had disappeared.

Glancing at the lights above the elevator door, she saw that it was on its way up, not down. The fake Special was still around, somewhere in the spire.

Then Tally noticed the door to the emergency stairs, bright red and plastered with warnings that an alarm would sound if you opened it. She looked around again — still no gray figure. Whoever it was had to have escaped down the stairs. Alarms could be switched off; she'd pulled that trick herself a million times as an ugly.

Tally reached out toward the door, her hand shaking. If a siren started blaring, everyone would be staring at her and whispering as the wardens arrived and evacuated the tower. It would be a really bubbly end to her career as a Crim.

Some Crim, she thought. She'd be a pretty bogus criminal if she couldn't set off an alarm every once in a while.

She pushed the door open. It didn't make a sound.

Tally stepped into the stairwell. The door closed behind her, muffling the tumult of the party. In the sudden quiet, she could feel her heart pounding in her chest and hear her own breath, still ragged from the chase. The beat of the music seemed to leak under the door, making the concrete floor shudder.

The figure sat on the stairs, a few steps up. 'You made it.' It was a boy's voice, indistinct behind the mask.

'Made it where? This party?'

'No, Tally. Through the door.'

'It wasn't exactly locked.' She tried to stare her way through the jeweled eyes of the mask. 'Who are you?'

'You don't recognize me?' He sounded genuinely puzzled, as if he were an old friend, someone who wore a mask all the time. 'What do I look like?'

Tally swallowed and said softly, 'Special Circumstances.'

'Good. You remember.' Tally could hear the smile in his voice. He was talking slowly and carefully, as if she were some kind of idiot.

'Of course I remember. Are you one of them? Do I know you?' Tally couldn't recall any individual Specials; in her memory, their faces all ran together into one cruel and pretty blur.

'Why don't you take a look?' The figure didn't move to take off his mask. 'Go ahead, Tally.'

Suddenly, she realized what was going on here. Recognizing what the costume meant, chasing him across the party, braving the alarmed door — all of it had been a test. Some kind of recruitment. He was sitting there wondering if she would dare pull off his mask.

Tally was sick of tests. 'Just stay away from me,' she said.

'Tally—' 'I don't want to work for Special Circumstances. I just want to live here in New Pretty Town.'

'I'm not—' 'Leave me alone!' she shouted, clenching her fists. The cry echoed off the concrete walls, leaving a moment of silence, as if it had surprised them both. The music from the party drifted through the stairwell, muffled and timid.

Finally, a sigh came through the mask, and he held up a crude leather pouch. 'I have something for you. If you're ready for it. Do you want it, Tally?'

'I don't want anything from …' Tally's voice trailed off. Soft shuffling sounds came from below them. Not the party. Someone was coming up the stairs.

The two of them moved at the same time, peering over the handrail down the narrow stairwell shaft. A long way down, Tally saw flashes of gray silk and hands grasping the rails, half a dozen people climbing the stairs incredibly fast, their footsteps barely audible over the muffled music.

'See you later,' the figure said, standing.

Tally blinked. He pushed her aside, spooked by the sight of real Specials. So who was he? Before his fingers reached the doorknob, Tally snatched the mask from his face.

He was an ugly. A real ugly.

His face was nothing like the costumed fatties done up for the bash, with their big noses or squinty eyes. It