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For a fleeting ine it: the brocade curtains in decaying fla fro fuck Washington

Gansey said, "Ready for the next round?"

The evening would never end

But Adaer ale He wasn’t sure it hadn’t actually been cha The party had beco lareed platters, reen and red The painted trees of the ceiling bent low overhead Ada was real but him and Gansey

Before them was a woman who had just spoken with Gansey’s ht Gansey had either just conversed with hisbetween the dark-clad partygoers It was an elaborate political play where his h everyone recalled seeing her, no one could actually locate her at the moment of recollection

"You have," the worown so much since the last time I’ve seen you YouGansey’s age, she hesitated Adam knew that she had sensed that otherness to his friend: that sense that Gansey was both young and old, that he’d only just arrived, or he’d always been

She was saved by a glance at Adahteen?"

"Seventeen, ma’am," Gansey said warmly And he was, as soon as he’d said it Of course he was seventeen, and nothing else So like relief passed over the woman’s face

Adam felt the press of the candied tree branches overhead; to his right, he caught a half-iold-framed mirror and startled For aNo, no, it’s not happening Not here, not now

A second glance revealed a clearer ie Yet

"Did I read in the paper that you’re still looking for those croels?" the wo," Gansey said, speaking loudly to be heard over the violin (there were three of them, actually; the last man had infors wavered as if the sound ca frohtedly She’d hed, too, as if he had, and any aardness that ht have arisen iftly averted

Adam made a note of that

And now, finally, there was Mrs Gansey, loo at the corner of his vision like a materialized dream Like Gansey himself, she was intrinsically beautiful in the way that only soht that an entire party should be thrown in her honor She was a worthy queen for the evening

"Gloria," Mrs Gansey said to the woman "I love that necklace You of course remember my son, Dick?"

"Of course," Gloria said "He is so very tall You e soon?"

Both women turned for his answer Violins shrilled up the scale

"Well, it--" And then, all at once, Gansey faltered It was not quite a full stop Just a failure to slide sh for Adaht I saw soht his eye There was a question there, unspoken Gansey’s return gaze was co Adam could do about it Adaet to Gansey as well How he hated them

"Oh, I do see someone I must leave you," Gansey said, impeccably polite "I’in, this is hts about travelers’ rights Have you thought about travelers’ rights lately?"

Adam tried to remember the last tihts He was pretty sure the entire discussion had taken place over a lukewar to do with the body scannersthe brain cells of frequent flyers But now that he’d seen Gansey at work, he knew Gansey would spool that out into a political epidein replied, dazzled by Gansey’s Ganseyness "We usually take Ben’s Cessna these days But I would like to hear about it"

When she turned to Adam, Gansey vanished into the crowd

For aHe was not Gansey, he did not dazzle, he was a pretender with a flute of false chane in his slender hand in She looked back at hih her eyelashes

With a jolt, he realized that he inti there in his iht-shouldered and clean, he had pulled off whatever strange alchemy Gansey performed For perhaps the first ti power

He tried to conjure up theHiscolass, the knowledge that this was the future, if he speared it

he was in a forest, whispers pursued him

Not here

He said, "Can I refill your drink first?"

Mrs Elgin’s face lass

Don’t you know? Adam wondered He, at least, could still smell diesel fuel on his hands Don’t you knohat I a to notice they were being fooled

Ada in a hallucination of ghostly guests alongside the real ones

Because this is Aglionby, he thought, desperately trying to ground hilionby in the real world This is how you use that education you’ve worked so hard for This is how you get out

Suddenly, an electric buzz groaned through the roolasses paused as the lahts went out entirely