Blade Bound

   The tall, lean, liveried driver walked around the car, raised two fingers to his strawberry blond hair. “Ladies, I’ll be your chauffeur for the evening.”

   “Hi, Brody,” said those of us from Cadogan House to the guard who’d also become our occasional transporter. He had solid moves behind the steering wheel.

   Lindsey’s gaze narrowed. “You weren’t on the list as driver. Are you playing hall monitor?”

   Brody held out his hands, and his expression looked innocent enough. “I’m just here to drive. I’m not a nark.”

   Lindsey stepped up to him, gave him her fiercest look. Which was actually pretty fierce. “If one word of what happens tonight gets back to anyone, I will know that word came from you.”

   “And that would be bad.”

   Lindsey’s eyes gleamed silver. “It would be the most possible badness. Did I mention Merit and I have been practicing with the throwing knives?”

   Brody swallowed visibly. “Are you good at it?”

   She smiled, showing fang. “Very.”

   Brody wasn’t the newbie he’d been before, and he didn’t look as fazed by Lindsey’s hazing as he once would have. But she still outranked him, so he nodded.

   “You’re the boss.”

   “Damn right,” she said with a cheeky grin, and gestured to the door. “Ladies, if you please, we can get this show on the road.”

   Since she was the boss, I maneuvered carefully on ice-pick heels from curb to car and climbed into the limo.

   Margot slid into the seat next to me. “Thanks for the invite. It’s nice to get out of the kitchen.”

   “How’s that going?” Margot refused to allow us to hire a caterer for the wedding, much to my mother’s chagrin. Since my mother’s pick would have resulted in shrimp foam at our wedding, I was fully behind Team Margot.

   “It’s going,” she said. “Total Bridezilla situation. ‘I don’t want shrimp foam. Don’t give me shrimp foam.’”

   “Can you blame me?”

   “I really can’t. And that’s why the mini Italian beef sliders will be a huge hit.” She gave me a good looking-over. “How are you feeling? Are you nervous?”

   I watched Lindsey through the window as she and Mallory talked very seriously about something. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Mallory checked her watch. Maybe the entertainment was running late.

   “About what Lindsey and Mallory have in store for tonight?” I asked, trying to read their lips. Turns out, I did not have that skill. I did recognize excitement on Lindsey’s face and worry on Mallory’s, but she hadn’t said anything to me about something bothering her. And now that I was looking, there were dark circles beneath her eyes. I’d have to ask her about that later; I hoped the wedding wasn’t the reason for it.

   “About the wedding,” Margot said with a laugh.

   I smiled, glanced back at her. “The marriage, no. The wedding, a little,” I admitted.

   She winked, patted my knee.

   “Where are we going?” I asked when Lindsey and Mallory settled along the back wall and Mallory began passing out champagne flutes.

   “To celebrate your last night of freedom!” Mallory said. “Now, stop asking questions and relax. Everything is in our hands.”

   “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

   • • •

   I’d spent the last month—when not patrolling the House or attending fittings—trying to figure out what Mallory and Lindsey were planning. I’d checked off all the stereotypical ideas—strippers, barhopping, rounds of half-drunk karaoke. None of those were me, and I didn’t think they were particularly us. But that left me stymied. Lindsey was plenty full of flirty bravado, Mallory of wicked creativity, and I was stuck in the middle between them, hoping my evening wouldn’t involve squealing, feather boas, and body shots.

   The alcoholic kind, anyway. I wouldn’t say no to a good, sweaty round of sparring.

   Brody drove north, the lake a shadow to our right, away from Hyde Park and toward downtown Chicago. It figured that we’d head toward the city’s center, which offered pretty much any activity a girl could want—from boat rides to museum tours to really good blues. So it didn’t give me a single clue.

   When Brody pulled the limo in front of a small slip of a building, I had to reassess. It was modern in design, with a tall, narrow window and offset door in flaming red. There were no signs, no names on the door, not even an address number.

   Intriguing. “What is this place?” I asked.

   “My half of the party,” Mallory said as we climbed out of the limo one by one—and then tugged our dresses back into place. “A little something for you and for me.”

   She walked to the door, pressed a small buzzer.

   After a moment, a thin woman with dark skin smiled out at us. “Merit party?” she asked with a smile.

   “Merit party,” Mallory agreed.

   “Welcome to Experience,” the woman said, and held the door open so we could walk inside.

   The door opened into a long, narrow room with gleaming wood floors and a long, dark table in the middle. The walls glowed pale amber behind crisscrossing pieces of the same wood, like they burned from the inside. Rectangular sconces hung above us at varying heights. Jazz played warmly in the background.

   There were women already in the room with champagne flutes in hand—including my sister, Charlotte.

   “Hey, baby sister!” Charlotte said, walking forward and embracing me. Like me, she had my father’s dark hair and pale blue eyes. She wore a sleeveless black dress with a flared skirt and patent flats with bows on the toes. She smelled like lilacs, the same perfume she’d worn since she was a teenager.