“Give me that,” Carwyn demanded, taking a break from whispering, and he nodded toward my sword.
I snorted. “Give me a break.”
A brief look of anger crossed Carwyn’s face, and I braced myself in case he tried to seize the weapon. He did not. Instead he lifted his other hand, the one holding the champagne bottle, as we passed a flight of marble stairs. He hit the bottle sharply against one marble step, and it broke into jagged halves. He swung his new weapon from his hand, its glass teeth catching the light, and smiled.
“Guess it’s lucky boys from the Dark know how to improvise.”
There was no time to answer him or to question how effective his weapon might be. I certainly had no intention of giving up my own.
“You can’t see us,” I murmured, and Carwyn chanted with me.
“You can’t see us.”
We were almost at the door.
Someone knocked into me, heavily, and the light streaming from my rings died in my surprise. It was Jim Stryker, and there was blood on his white shirt. His eyes were so wide, they looked round, white showing all around the brown irises, and he looked like a terrified animal or a beseeching child.
He did not look at me. He looked at Carwyn, reaching out a hand, and said, “Ethan.”
He was Ethan’s cousin, and Ethan loved him.
Carwyn’s hand did not relax its grip on mine. Carwyn did not react in any way. I glanced at his face and found it cold and unmoved. He looked back at me, and not at Jim at all.
I ripped my eyes away from the doppelganger and back to Jim.
“Come on, quickly,” I said. “You need to come with—”
One of the party guests, a man with his suit jacket ripped off to reveal a rough knot of black and scarlet tied on his upper arm, turned and sank his knife savagely into Jim’s back. Jim never even saw him.
Jim coughed, a brief, startled burst of blood. His eyes did not leave Carwyn. He died looking so surprised, and so scared.
He fell forward onto his face, and my hands shook. For a moment, I could not move forward, and yet I could not let my hands drop the sword. I was not horrified enough, not humane enough, to try to help him. But I was not quite selfish enough to leave him. I stared down at Jim for a terrible, trembling moment.
“Come on,” Carwyn ordered under his breath, and he used his hold on my hand to tug me forward. He resumed his chant: “You can’t see us.”
I swallowed, lit my rings, and stepped over Jim’s body. Carwyn and I ran headlong through the door.
The door led to a flight of marble stairs. I could not lift my skirts, not when Carwyn would not let go of my hand and I could not let go of my sword. I ran up the stairs anyway. Carwyn ran with me, and above the rioting crowd it was cooler, moonlight filtering onto the marble under our feet.
When I reached the second floor, I ran down the corridor of the hotel. It was empty, but there was a long, thick streak of blood painted across the saffron-colored carpet, a red road that passed under a door that was not quite closed. I crushed the impulse to push the door open. I could not afford to alert anyone to my presence, I could not help anyone, and I did not want to see what was in that room.
I ran down the corridor instead, as if at the end of the bright stretch of carpet there would be a finish line.
Instead there were large glass double doors, and I rushed to them, rushed into them, and they opened under the impact of my body.
They led to a large balcony, the kind shaped like a huge china cup, attached to the wall. I ran outside, and the night air hit my hot face, the chill of the wind welcome, and I saw the elaborate gardens of the Plaza Hotel stretch before me. They were no longer lit by magic streamers; all I could see between the carefully tended hedges were shadows.
I could jump and use magic to save myself, but I did not know what waited below. And I had used so much magic already. I drew in my first deep breath since I had seen Jim die, a desperate draft of cool night air, and tried to think. The sans-merci were not only within the walls of the Light city but within the walls of a stronghold. They had killed countless numbers of our most powerful leaders already. I did not know how I could get out of this alive.
It was dark, dark as though it would never be bright again. This balcony should have been lit, but the only light was the pale, faltering rays coming from my own hands. I pulled my hand out of Carwyn’s. I tried to, at least, but he was still holding on.
“Let go!” I said, patience snapping like a rope forced to bear a hundred times more weight than it could. “Do you think it’s funny to touch me without my permission, when you know I don’t want you to? Does it make you feel good about yourself?”
Carwyn stared at me. “Nothing makes me feel good about myself.”