Page 30 of A Barista's Guide to Love & Larceny
The careful politeness dropped from Silva’s face. “I’m going to steal the formula from OneiroLabs,” she said, Dani’s efforts rewarded with a bold bronze in her mind. Whatever she was doing—using the colors in the other direction, to activate her power—it was working. “And I need you to help me. I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars if you agree.”
Dani was shocked into silence for a full minute, her jaw working up and down as she chewed on that. She had asked for the truth, but that didn’t mean it cushioned the blow.Hecate’s bones.Twenty-five thousand dollars? That was an outrageous amount of money, enough to pay for a whole semester at the Leap, even without her scholarship. With her scholarship, it would secure her spot here for an entire year.
Dani’s mouth instantly began to water. Her sophomore year paid away? The concept was so foreign it spoke another language. She could cut back on her hours at the café. She could quit playing la ruota. She could get her homework done on time. She could get some sleep. She could—
She could get expelled. Shewouldget expelled if they got caught, and she couldn’t see how they wouldn’t. Steal the formula from OneiroLabs?How?
She didn’t need to know. Dani shook her head, vaporizing her tempting fantasies. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Please,” Silva said, with unexpected desperation. “With Katya’s technical savvy, Oliver’s knowledge, your gift, and a few other pieces I haven’t put into place yet—we could do this. We could help not only Oliver but anyone else OneiroLabs has hurt.”
Tears sprang at the back of Dani’s eyes. Of course she wanted to help Oliver; she cared about them. But this—this was too much. She felt the pressure of Silva’s gaze, her throat closing, the carbon dioxide turning into poison in her lungs. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, then jumped up from the booth, tore through the curtain, and ran.
When Dani opened the door back at the apartment, McKenna rose from her makeup-laden vanity and said, “Finally! I have a few thoughts on your color palette for tonight and wanted to try some experiments on you. I—Dani? Why do you look like someone turned you into a frog and back?”
Dani collapsed onto McKenna’s bed and told her everything Silva had said, tears finally spilling down her cheeks.
“What am I supposed to do, Kenz?” she said. “I want to help, but if we get caught, I’m automatically expelled. And it’s a lot of money—like, alotof money—but that won’t matter if I get kicked out. I worked so hard to get here. But what if something bad happens to Oliver, and I could have prevented it?”
“Oh, Dani,” McKenna said. “You can’t think like that. What you saw at OneiroLabs sounded terrifying, and someone definitely needs to get to the bottom of what’s going on—but I find it hard to believe that’s something that could only happen if you were involved. You said Silva was sent here by some organization, right? If they’re willing to give a random college student that much money, surely they could pay an actual expert to come in and help.”
Dani hadn’t considered that. “Maybe you’re right,” she said, rubbing the tears from her eyes. She sat up, just now noticing thatMcKenna had raided both of their closets and hung about a dozen outfits around the room.
“Listen, babe,” McKenna said, “this is a really tough and shitty situation, and I want to help Oliver, too. But you don’t even know what Silva wants you to do. What if it all goes south, you get kicked out and so does she, and Oliver’s in the same spot they’re in now? I don’t know. I think Silva means well enough, but it’s a lot of responsibility to put on a teenager.”
That was definitely true.
“Do you still want to go to the party tonight?” McKenna asked. “It could take your mind off things.”
Dani hesitated. “I don’t know. I think so?” Kass’s smile appeared in her mind’s eye, and she felt the fist of tension in her diaphragm start to unclench. “But Kenz—” She swallowed. “I’ve never really been to a party before.”
A funny look came over McKenna’s face. Dani had seen it once before, on the night they’d drunk all that vodka, when Dani had asked about her mother. It had all come flooding out of McKenna then, how her mom had been actively sabotaging McKenna’s attempts to leave home, first hiding her acceptance letter from Fox’s Leap and then refusing to help her pay for it, but her father, from whom she’d inherited her fairy blood—and from whom her mother had long since been divorced—stepped in with a big enough check to cover McKenna’s tuition.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she now asked Dani, who nodded, afraid to break the spell. McKenna scooched closer, glanced around like she was checking to see if anyone was listening, then stage-whispered, “I’ve never been to a party either.”
“What?” Dani said. “Really?”
“Really. The kind of parties they had in my town were more like smoking in the back of someone’s pickup in the middle of acornfield. Not exactly the kind of event that occasioned a full face and a glamour.”
“But I thought—your dad never took you to any fairy balls?”
A shadow of melancholy darkened her friend’s hazel eyes. “He always promised to,” she said. “I used to spend summers and holidays at court when I was a kid, but, for some reason, that tapered off as I got older.”
Dani bit her lower lip. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
McKenna shrugged. “If nothing else, it made him feel guilty enough to pay for me to come here.”
“And thank Hecate for that,” Dani said emphatically. “Now we’re in this together.”
“Absolutely,” McKenna said, and she tossed her hair, her vulnerability solidifying into something much more familiar: the sparkling confidence she usually kept buttoned up around her like one of her fabulous coats. “We’re both party virgins. So what do you say? Are you in?”
“You know what,” Dani said, a small smile starting to kindle. “Yeah. I’m in. After all this, I think a party is just what the doctor ordered.”
Three hours later, she was showered, beautified, and doing her best to evict Silva and OneiroLabs from her brain space, at least for the rest of the evening. Instead, she succeeded in becoming extraordinarily jittery about the party and about seeing Kass again. Thank Hecate for McKenna, who had not only had the presence of mind to call a cab but had also done Dani’s hair and makeup, and wheedled Dani into borrowing one of her dresses. They had elected not to go the costume route—Dani thought Kass might appreciate if they didn’t—and so she was in a slinky spaghetti-strappy number hardly larger than a thumbnail, the color of a Norwegian mermaid’s tail. It was decidedly un-Dani in every way.
She was already regretting her moment of weakness as she attempted to slide across the back seat of the taxi without her dress riding up above sea level. She tugged the hem down to microscopic effect and buckled her seat belt. Her hair had been curled and teased into an impeccably messy half-updo, and her eye shadow, remarkably understated in its subtle silver sheen, made an exact match to the dress. The only concession she had won was her accessories: McKenna had failed to talk her out of a jean jacket or her trademark Docs, currently tied with cotton candy shoelaces.
Dani hadn’t hated what she’d seen in the mirror before they left—but she did hate the feeling of the sticky pleather seat against the underside of her exposed thighs.
