Waldman leaves us to hunt down a lemon peel, and I take the opportunity to give the room another good look. Aside from about the half-dozen or so of us girls here, we’re alone. It’s somehow a little sad, seeing us all together like this. I wonder how many girls applied, and then even more so; didn’t make it through the first round of the trials. I should have paid better attention.
One female face is nowhere to be seen. Normally, I wouldn’t notice, but when there’s so few of us … it can’t be helped.
I glance around. “I was expecting to see Professor Davies here.”
Waldman reappears at the drink cart, seemingly out of nowhere. I jump, and Erin nearly drops the very expensive-looking vase she was admiring on the table.
“Oh, I only invited students,” Waldman says, reaching over to scoot the vase safely out of Erin’s reach.
The girl next to me smirks again as she takes a sip from her glass. The other girls are involved in their own conversation, leaning over the arms of their chairs; cheeks flushed and long-stemmed glasses in hand. Seems like they only came for the alcohol.
After a great deal of shaking ice in a container, Waldman brings me a small glass full of pink liquid with a lemon slice perched on the rim.
“Have you two met Luiza?” she asks, indicating the girl next to us as she hands Erin her soda.
I turn to look at the girl, and she offers me a hand. “Luiza de la Cruz,” she says.
“Avery Black.”
Her eyebrows raise. “Black,” she repeats, thoughtfully, tucking a strand of short hair behind one ear. She’s got to be an upperclassmen—third year, probably around twenty. She looks like a girl who’s gotten a couple hunts behind her already.
“Black,” I reply firmly. “Yes. And before you ask, yes, it’s the Blacks.”
She smirks, takes another sip of her drink, and leans around me to shake Erin’s hand. “And you?”
“Erin Singer.”
“Singer.”
Erin frowns. “Y-yes.”
“Now that’s a name I’ve never heard,” she says. Luiza crosses her legs and tugs the hem of her skirt over her knee. She’s wearing a tight-fitting, sleeveless red dress and matching pumps.
Even sitting, her legs look a mile long. Her makeup has been applied with a steady, experienced hand; the wings on her eyeliner are perfectly even and her lips somehow look naturally bright red, even though I know that’s her lipstick.
If she wasn’t a hunter of things that go bump in the night, she could be a model. A model with broad, deceptively muscular shoulders and reflexes like a cobra ready to strike, apparent from the way she reaches out with lightning speed to catch that same vase when Erin nearly upsets it a second time as she sets down her soda.
“I don’t know of any Singers,” Luiza says, still looking at Erin like she’s about to gobble her up in one bite.
“You must not listen to a lot of music,” I say dismissively, and I take a sip of my drink. It’s way too sweet. Maybe I’m more of a whiskey girl.
Erin giggles beside me, and I glance at her.
“You’re funny,” Luiza tells me. Her gaze shifts to me over the rim of her glass.
I don’t reply. Waldman goes back to another armchair and picks up her drink.
“Luiza’s in her third year here at Saint M. She started when she was seventeen. Top of her class.”
“Maybe not top. You’re too kind, Eve.” Luiza gives Waldman a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
Waldman smiles delightedly back. The moment Luiza grows distracted by the other girls and gets up from the seat, Waldman swoops in to take her place beside me. She glances over at her other girls almost conspiratorially before she turns back to whisper at me.
“Avery,” Waldman says quietly. “Do you mind coming with me for a moment? I have something I want to show you.”
I glance uncertainly at Erin, but s
he’s busy looking under the drink cart for a straw.