Chapter 7
The hallway before the ballroom was all glass. Not windows, but panels set into the dark wood, floor to ceiling, lit from inside so they threw everything back at you. I saw us first. The green of my dress caught the chandelier light and cut straight across the reflection, and behind us the lobby stretched out in a warm blur, and ahead the ballroom doors glowed gold.
I didn't mean to look. I was watching the floor, counting my steps so I wouldn't stumble. The carpet here was thicker, a deep navy with a faint pattern, and it swallowed sound. His hand was still around mine. Not pulling now. Just holding, like we had agreed to this. That was new since the middle of the lobby. I walked beside him instead of behind him, my elbow unlocked, my shoulders back because I told them to be.
Then the glass moved.
Not the glass itself. The reflection in it. Past our two figures, further down the hall, near where the double doors stood open and a man in a black vest checked names off a list. Another figure stood just inside that light, half-turned. Watching.
I stopped breathing for a second. I felt it happen, that small catch in my chest.
He was too far to make out clearly. Dark suit. Hands in pockets or maybe holding a drink. But his head was turned our way. Even in the reflection I could tell. The angle was wrong for anyone else. Everyone else in the hallway was moving past us toward the bar or the restrooms, faces blurred. This one wasn't moving at all.
I kept walking because my legs were still doing what his hand told them to do. The reflection kept walking too. My hair swung against my earrings and I saw the gold catch, and I saw his burgundy shirt beside me, a dark slash next to my green.
"Don't look straight at him," he said under his breath. His voice was low, barely louder than the carpet swallowing our steps. "Look at the glass. You see him?"
My fingers tightened without me telling them to. He felt it.
"That's him."
I nodded once. My mouth was dry. I tried to swallow.
"Smile," he said. Not unkind, but quick, like a cue. "Fix your face. You look scared. He hasn't seen you yet, not really. Right now you're just a shape in a green dress coming down a hall. Make it a good shape."
I didn't want to smile. I wanted to turn around and look at the revolving doors far behind us, but they weren't visible in this hallway. Only the glass and the gold light ahead.
In the panel closest to us, the image sharpened as we got nearer to the ballroom. The hallway lights were overhead spots, warm and direct, and they lit the surface of the glass so that what was behind it and what was reflected sat on top of each other. I could see through to an empty conference room on the other side, chairs stacked, and overlaid on that was our approach and his stillness.
He hadn't moved. That was what I kept noticing. He stood just at the edge of the ballroom doorway where the light spilled out, one shoulder against the frame like he was waiting for someone. His face in the reflection was a pale oval, featureless at that distance. He was looking down the hall, but not at my face. At the silhouette. At the color.
"He doesn't know it's you yet," I whispered. The words surprised me because I hadn't decided to say them.
"No," he said. "Not yet. The dress does its job at distance. That's why I picked it."
My stomach turned. I should have known that when he zipped it for me in the apartment and said you need something that shows up. I had thought he meant for the cameras. For the lobby. Not for this.
We were maybe thirty feet away now. The man with the list looked up and saw us and smiled a practiced smile. The figure behind him shifted his weight, and for a second the light caught his glasses or the shine of his forehead. Still not looking at my eyes. Still looking at the shape.
I realized I could still break this. If I dropped my chin, let my hair fall forward, turned my face to the glass instead of ahead, I would stay a silhouette a few seconds longer. If I smiled on command, lifted my chin, let the light hit my earrings, he would know.
His hand squeezed mine, once, light. Not a pull. A reminder.
"Composure," he said, so quietly I felt it more than heard it. "You wanted to walk beside me. Now walk like you mean it."
May you like
I breathed in. The air tasted like hotel flowers and lemon cleaner. I rolled my shoulders back again and let my eyes stay on the reflection, not on the real hallway ahead. In the glass, I watched the distant figure tilt his head slightly, as if trying to place the color, the walk, the pair coming toward him hand in hand.
He hadn't recognized me. Not yet. But he was watching. And we were still moving toward him, and the glass showed every step of it before it happened for real.
