Mai moved up to him, close enough to press against him but stopping just shy of that. She stood up on her tiptoes, half-draping her arms around his neck as she slid the mask onto his face. She leaned her face up, lips close to his, whispering as she tied the mask.
“A little death isn’t going to get in the way of that. In fact, if there is any place to go to forget such things, it is there. It’s not your dark apartment, all alone except for your brooding.”
Despite himself, the flirting was lifting Griffen’s spirits.
“You are just saying that because they won’t let you in without me,” he said.
“They are awfully nervous about party-crashing dragons. Besides it’s more fun to crash on the arm of the one man no one is going to argue with. Like going to a film premiere with the director.”
She closed the last half inch of distance and kissed him. The scales of the dress felt warm and almost alive under his hands. Her teeth pulled lightly at the bottom of his lip.
“Please?” she said, not quite letting him go.
“Welllll…” he said, drawing it out as much as he could.
It was amazing how quick one’s mood could change. With the right motivation.
“Besides, aren’t you dying to see if your little sister actually shows up with the dragon hunter?” Mai said. “Enemies dancing together in polite society, making small talk in a potentially hostile environment. Won’t it be fun to see them watch one another’s backs?”
“Somehow I knew you would know about that. And you’re right, damn it.”
Valerie had been worried about something; maybe George stepped on people’s feet literally as well as figuratively.
Mai grinned and slipped out of Griffen’s grip. For a moment, she looked like a child who had just gotten the present she wanted. She even took a little spin before taking one of Griffen’s hands in both of hers.
“Come on, then. If we leave now, we can be almost perfectly fashionably late,” Mai said.
Griffen let himself be drawn out the door, mostly because it was the first chance he had gotten to see the back of her dress. From the back of the collar down, laces crisscrossed over an exposed spine almost to her tailbone. Definitely not a traditional oriental element.
He half realized that he was beginning to look forward to the night.
The other half of him thought that getting his hopes up was probably very unwise.
Fifty-one
Griffen walked into the Conclave Masquerade, and was overwhelmed.
Before his eyes could register details, they were filled with a barrage of colors. As soon as he walked through the doors and into the massive ballroom, he could only stop and stare. Mai, attached at his elbow, picked up on his hesitation immediately. She shifted her posture, framing herself against the backlighting from the doors. A part of him realized what she was doing, that she was making it appear that the two were just pausing, making a more dramatic entrance. That part was thankful, the rest was just taking everything in.
First of all, it was hardly like walking into a ballroom at all. Oh, the features were there: grand chandeliers that looked expensive and impossible to clean, architecturally useless columns along the walls, a sea of marble that made up the dance floor. That was where the similarity stopped, though.
It was like stepping into a forest glade. An unnatural, moon-lit forest from someone’s dreams. Fog covered the ground, ankle thick, except for the dance floor. It didn’t move right, didn’t seem to follow the light breezes in the room. Instead, it rolled in shallow waves and thin tendrils that seemed to explore. Moving of their own volition. Every once in a while a small snake of fog would move across the dance floor, almost seeming to twist to avoid the dancers.
Tables rose like stones in the fog. Tablecloths of soft gray and green covered them, looking like moss and rocks. The tables were small, big enough only for three or four people, an obvious attempt to break up the cliques and groups that kept forming all throughout the conclave. The only exceptions were two long tables, one covered in dishes of food and a small wet bar, and the other against the far wall, set so that those sitting at it could see the whole room. Nameplates sat at each place, and Griffen bet that his name would be on one.
The walls had been decorated, changed, with twisting cords or material that might have been rope or might have been live vines. If vines came in pale purples and blues and the occasional scintillating gold. Trees seemed to grow out of the walls, trees of metal and crystal and glass that still somehow seemed alive. The light filtered through the various materials and sent hundreds of small reflections glittering over the walls and fog.
And the light itself came not just from the candles or the chandeliers. Balls of colored light, greens, blues, purples, seemed to dance in midair. These constantly moving orbs cast little in the way of true illumination but enhanced and changed the colors of everything around them. Griffen had no idea what made them, just as he could see no obvious source for the fog, but the combined effect was breathtaking… magical.
And all that before he started tracking the individual people.
Griffen was beginning to feel self-conscious, and decidedly underdressed. Some of the people in the crowd made Mai look almost drab. Costuming ranged from simple masks to elaborate, from modern horror to Victorian drag.
A woman Griffen hadn’t noticed before was dressed in a Carmen Miranda outfit, except that a straw stuck out of the pineapple hat. As he watched, she took off her hat, took a sip from the straw, and replaced it. She was chatting with a man in a cloak so large and black that Griffen couldn’t see his hands, much less his face. Nearby, three people dressed as trees talked, looking like the Forest of No Return at a cocktail party. Griffen idly wondered if Tammy would be using her shifting as a part of her costume, but doubted it after the ribbing she’d gotten.
Someone dressed up as a twelve-foot robot clomped through the fog toward the buffet table, and was followed by a woman dressed as a mechanic with a five-foot-long wrench. Three people dressed as Abe Lincoln, at least one of them female, sat together at one of the tables, engaged in a three-way thumb war. And, of course, a classic at any Halloween party, no matter how elaborate, one person standing near the wall, wearing a sheet with holes cut out for the eyes.
For the most part, he couldn’t tell who was who or, more important, what. Which meant that no one was bothering to group themselves together but mingled freely. Laughter mixed with music and talk. Griffen smiled and stepped forward, Mai falling into step with him perfectly. The doors shut behind him.
Perhaps it was the change in his attitude, or maybe the observational skills that were part of being a dragon. As he moved into the room proper, he began to see small details that, anywhere else, he might dismiss as fantastic costuming. Here he realized what he was seeing: the supernatural, letting its proverbial hair down.
A werewolf, more impressive than any he had seen on the silver screen, sat at one of the tables, its tail wagging in time with the music. A demon and angel danced together on the floor, and though their wings were fake, each was dancing about three inches above the fog. One of the first people Griffen actually recognized was one of the “lesser” shifters, who was dressed as a simple jester in red and yellow. Only his hands were on fire. No, his hands
Griffen saw Tail, dressed in full samurai gear except for the face mask. His face was normal, but over a dozen foxtails hung behind him, constantly moving. He chatted with the woman from the shape-shifting demonstration, and from the way she smiled, the relationship was building quickly. She wore an elaborate butterfly mask, high heels, and butterflies. Dozens of them, providing her little more coverage than most bikinis. They flapped gently, and every once in a while one would take off and fly to a different location on her body.
Griffen suspected the butterflies were her, just as the tails were, well, Tail’s. No one really seemed to be paying attention to any of this. It was just part of the atmosphere, accepted, normal. Griffen imagined for a moment what his life might have been like if he had known about dragons since he was a child. He could see just how much he would value a night like this.
He was finally realizing just why there was a traditional conclave at all.
Mai smiled at his side.
“Happy Halloween, lover,” Mai said.
“First time I’ve ever really appreciated the holiday,” Griffen said.
