Page 12 of The Lies We Conjure
As I smooth my suit jacket and drop into the chair beside her, I feel the familiar heat of Ursula’s gaze on my profile. I meet Lavinia’s parted lips and wide eyes with the polite smile my grandmother expects.
“It’s seared into my temporal lobe.” I tap my temple for good measure. “Very memorable to have nearly had a skunk séance in my backyard. Went horribly with my grandmother’s choice of annuals that year.”
Went horribly with what came after.
I watch the memory soak into Lavinia’s mind, her full mouth quirking as if it isn’t sure if a frown or a grin is the appropriate answer.
“Are we retelling the skunk story?” Hex barges into our conversation, brandishing a half-eaten brioche roll, steaming and glistening with butter, from where he’s been relegated—the far end of the table. No doubt this is Winter’s doing. “I love the skunk story.”
“Oh, good,” Lavinia mumbles, snatching her water glass and touching it to her lips. “I’m infamous.”
“At Hegemony Manor, we’re all infamous,” Infinity assures Lavinia with a tip of their champagne, clinking Winter’s glass.
Ada lifts her own flute. “As we should be.”
“That skunk looked like roadkill. Bloody as hell,” Hex ruminates after downing the remainder of his bubbly. “I swear someone planted it to see what one of us would do with it. A little test for the kiddie set.”
“We’re not retelling the skunk story,” I announce tightly, Ursula’s astute gaze now burning a hole in the side of my face. Beside me, Lavinia is having a wordless conversation with Kaysa across the table, all dinner-plate eyes and delicately furrowed brows.
“Why not? Reanimating a skunk? It’s classic Blackgate.”
“Because it’s disgusting and we’re about to eat, Hex,” Winter snaps from her spot between Kaysa and Infinity. She reaches out to touch Lavinia’s wrist. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Lavinia assures her. Yet another polite aside from someone who used to relish in any chance to take offense and be absolutely ghastly about it.
Just then, the waiters arrive in a white-suited mob. We lose several moments to the delivery of our soup course—a delicate watermelon gazpacho studded with fragrant sprigs of mint. Ursula’s favorite.
When they’ve buzzed away, Winter leans into Kaysa, who, along with her sister, seems uneasy about the presence of non–High Family members. “Ursula takes care of the staff. You don’t have to speak in code. It’s fine.”
“It’s fine,” Kaysa parrots, very interested in her soup, raising a questioning brow. “What’s fine?”
“Seriously, you don’t have to play,” Winter assures her, fishing an unwelcome sprig of mint out of her soup with a swipe of her spoon. “We’re here to discuss Four Lines business.”
The Blackgates’ discomfort is palpable. We don’t know how careful they have to be, living abroad with the weight of their family’s legacy across an ocean. It’s probably not far enough, honestly.
Lavinia squints at Winter as if trying to read between the lines. “Okay. Sure. Thanks for reminding us about the staff.”
The sisters pointedly dig into their soup when Evander leansback in his chair, eyeing them both. “I, for one,” he begins, “think it would be quite useful to know how the American High Families are perceived over there.”
Again, the Blackgates exchange a look.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I assure them, though I’m not clear why I’m helping at all. “You didn’t come all this way to gossip about our European counterparts.”
Kaysa demurely dabs at her mouth with a corner of her cloth napkin, a lush green like the rest of the table treatment. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the Brits, it’s to have the utmost discretion.”
“This is true,” Lavinia adds, almost in a rush, a new blush creeping across the heights of her cheekbones. She clutches her water glass like a social life raft. “Mum doesn’t want us being the big-mouthed Americans.”
“A fact I’m sure our grandmother appreciates,” I answer. Ursula is now deep in conversation with the other elders, but one should always assume she’s paying attention. “Discretion is her favorite quality.”
“Oh?” Kaysa asks, leaning in, brandishing her spoon with a grin. “Is that why your cousin here won’t put me out of my misery and confirm that Hegemony Manor is haunted? Inquiring minds deserve to know.”
“It’s not haunted,” Evander barks out gruffly.
“So youclaim.But you can’t deny the general sense of malaise hovering over the building.” Kaysa waves a hand at the manor now, as if it’s a painting and not a nearly 150-year-old mansion. She waggles her eyebrows into her bangs and addresses the table at large. “And we all know what malaise means: specters, grays, ghosts—”
“There aren’t any ghosts,” Evander insists, and I’m quite amused that he’s entertaining this at all.
“I don’t know, man, you’ve got to admit there’s a whole Darth Vader vibe to the entire building,” Hex interjects from the table end, the first roll devoured, a second palmed in his hand like an apple. Irealize he’s a football player but that doesn’t excuse him from eating like a goddamn bear.
