Illuminate (7 page)

“Really?” I said as he suited me up, looping it into my jeans.

“It’s fierce,” he assured me.

On him, yes, but on me, it didn’t quite pack the same fashionable ferocity. “I feel like this is one of those tags: ‘If lost please return to . . .’”

“Well, you told me not to abandon you, didn’t you?” He laughed back, taking great pleasure that this wasn’t quite my style. “Love it.”

When the time came to get Lance, I hovered while Dante poked him in the arm, getting in a few good jabs before he woke with a start, arms flailing, and rolled right out of bed landing at our feet. We tried to stifle our giggles, but couldn’t.

“Rise and shine, time to party,” Dante said.

Lance sat up and rubbed his eyes then his elbow; it looked like he had landed on his funny bone. He laughed too.

“Thanks. Kind of. Ow,” he said, bending and extending his arm.

Much more low-maintenance than Dante or me, Lance was ready in a flash—he literally rolled out of bed and was set to go. Dante had decked himself out in a pink plaid button-down and his best jeans, the slim dark indigo pair he saved for special occasions. The three of us found our way to that elevator just beyond the lobby, descending in silence, imagining what we might find.

Even before the elevator doors opened, the music hit us, traveling up the elevator cables and into our car, pulsing. When the jaws did finally part, we were deposited before that imposing steel door. Coming in as we had from the hotel, we had the advantage of no line—most club-goers were forced to queue up in the alleyway outside (among Dumpsters and the occasional rat—not a pretty place; we had seen it that afternoon and were told the line could snake all the way down the side of the building) and then were led inside to another elevator taking them to this point.

This second elevator opened now, disgorging a handful of revelers—three high-heeled, short-skirted women and a pair of blazer-bedecked, open-collared men, all flirting with one another, whispering in one another’s ears, complimenting one another’s clothes for the sake of giving that guy an excuse to touch the sequins on her dress, or that girl a reason to run her hand along his lapel or undo another button on his shirt. Dante, Lance, and I all traded glances. We got a few looks ourselves, but no one bothered to say anything. The group was granted passage through the checkpoint and into the main event—music crashing out at us as the doors opened and the club swiftly swallowed them.

I could feel the music regulating my heartbeat, forcing it to settle on a new rhythm, something syncopated that my body had trouble keeping up with. My lungs seemed to forget how to take in air, remembering too late and then scrambling for it with a gasp. A blond woman, who had handed us our tote bags earlier today, stood at the door, clipboard in hand, along with another perfect male Outfit specimen by her side. Before today, I hadn’t known that people like this existed outside of movie screens and magazine pages. It took so much less to be special at school. I now felt that if I were forced back into a room with the classmates who had seemed so perfect, I would no longer be nearly as intimidated. These people here were absolutely otherworldly.

“Hi there. Dante, and my fellow interns,” he started to introduce us. The woman’s smoky, black-smudged eyes showed no trace of understanding. But she and the man—as chiseled as Lucian, but a hollow brunette version—just nodded at us, looking not quite at us but rather
through
us. Dante was unconcerned; his eyes bulged at something else: “Wow, man, nice kicks!” He pointed to the man’s shoes, a shiny black patent leather–looking sneaker, which looked completely unremarkable to me. “Those are totally the limited edition Palindromes, right? Only fifty in existence?!” He crouched down to get a closer look. “Whoa.” The man nodded again, but said nothing. Dante pointed toward the door. “So it’s cool if we check the place out?” The woman didn’t say a word but the man grabbed hold of a steering-wheel-size dial at the center of the black-painted steel door and pulled it open for us. “Thanks, man,” Dante said. We all exchanged jubilant looks, quietly shocked that this was so easy. We were in! I smiled shyly at the man as I passed.

Absorbed into a narrow tube-like corridor of more black-painted steel, we walked slowly toward the riot of flashing lights ahead. Bodies gyrated in the distance. Music wrapped itself around us, flowing into our pores.

“Wow, so many people out on a school night,” I said, but my voice came out wispy soft. My companions, whether they heard me or not, were both too captivated to form a response anyway. As we neared the arched end of the walkway, the curved mouth that would lead us out into the club itself, a black light spun, sending its beam speeding around the whole hallway, lighting up scribbles on the walls. Finally, it landed on a patch of the wall to our right. In a luscious script that looked like cake icing, this four-foot-long swatch had been painted with the word
Lust,
which glowed iridescent and alive.

“Nice,” Dante said, pointing at it.

Aurelia had explained on our tour that the seven deadly sins were on a shuffle here, and each night a different one would be celebrated. She said it was about branding—a gimmick people would go for, an excuse to serve expensive, signature drinks.

“That’s definitely the best of the seven,” I said. What did I know, really? But lust is surely more fun to think about than sloth or gluttony. I bet it was lust night often here. Lust was probably good for business.

The light went out as fast as it had flared up and within a few steps we emptied out into the expanse of the club. It was like landing on another planet. For a moment, we were rooted in place, taking it all in as the action swam and spun around us in all directions. The place was easily the same sprawling size of the ballroom but without any of the stuffy formality. Down here, it looked like a cavern and gave the impression of something wildly, alluringly primitive, carved out by nature, yet all with the surface of shiny black licorice. Everything, floor to ceiling, was bathed in this oozing black, but given an infusion of shimmer by the undulating lights in a palette of reds and oranges that danced off everyone’s skin and reflected a distinctly devilish, sinister glow. The walls bulged out, lumpy as though riddled with rock formations. A smoky dance area, packed tight with bodies, was cordoned off toward the back. Behind it, a flame roared, running floor to ceiling like a waterfall. From here it looked to be a screen projecting this giant fire, but who could tell?

Horseshoed around the dance floor were layers of seating and places for cozying up and carousing. Oil-black stalagmites reached up in huge, menacing cones from the floor. Some were carved hollow, with crushed-velvet-cushioned benches inside for couples to rest their weary feet after dancing or to find other ways to set pulses racing. Stalactites in an array of lengths and widths and girths dangled like giant daggers and slim-fingered claws from the ceiling. Tables and banquettes along the outer periphery were recessed back into the walls and aglow in ruby-hued light.

But all of this was nothing compared to the detonated dynamite at the center of the room. A circular platform, raised at least ten feet up with a waist-high wall, had been perched atop another of these rock formation–like structures, and was large enough to seat nearly two dozen with its own nook of a bar and room in the center for dancing. The area teemed with Outfit members. You could just watch them for hours, dancing, drinking, draping themselves on each other. And if that wasn’t enough to capture the crowd’s collective attention, there was this, which I saw only
after
noticing the Outfit members: a low flame burned around the entire circumference.

“This is probably what hell looks like. Like, in a good way,” Dante said finally, when we had been silent for longer than I realized. The three of us were standing there like we were waiting to get picked for teams in gym.

“Yeah, not a bad place to visit,” I said.

“But would you want to live there?” Lance offered.

“Depends on how the night goes,” I said.

Dante elbowed me. “This from the girl who didn’t want to go out at all.”

“I know, I know.” I shook my head. I was all talk.

“So . . . what now?” Lance said, hands plunged in his pockets, like this was just another day at work.

“I know,” Dante said, a hint of trouble ringing his voice. I peeled my eyes from the whirlwind swirling around us and looked at him, following his line of vision.

“No, Dan, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

He was staring straight at the platform with the Outfit.

5. Welcome to the Ring of Fire

Let’s just try to go up there,” Dante said. Not waiting for an answer, he took off, a bullet straight to the heart of the room. Lance had taken off his glasses, wiping the lenses on his Cubs shirt, and could only squint in the direction of Dante’s destination.

“Shall we?” I asked him.

Lance shrugged and smiled.

Waves of revelers, drinks in their hands, coursed around me as I darted between them, in and out, almost jogging to catch up to Dante. I looked over my shoulder and caught sight of Lance, glasses back on now, his head peeking out over most everyone else’s. He kept his own easy pace, looking around, taking it all in. Dante was already halfway up a spiral staircase hidden amid the rocky mass leading to the platform.

“Hey!” I called up from the bottom.

“What’re you waiting for? Get up here!” he called back, his grin wide and his perfect white teeth gleaming pink in the light.

I climbed the coiled steps and grabbed for his arm when I got close enough, halting his ascent. He looked back at me with impatient eyes.

“I know you think I’m no fun, but seriously, do you think we’re allowed up there?”

“Only one way to tell.” He beamed. “C’mon, where’s your sense of adventure? Honestly, Haven, the worst thing that happens, they say no.” He continued upward and I let go of him.

He was right; I was making too big a deal of this. We had already gotten into the club, after all, so it didn’t seem anyone was too concerned about our presence here. I followed him twisting up and up and up. I spotted Lance just below; he hooked my eye with a quick smile.

Steps away from the top, I saw Dante already seated on the black crushed-velvet bench that ran along the rim of the circle. The Outfit members we’d seen earlier danced in the center and gazed out onto the dance floor, making eye contact with some of the partygoers. Dante waved me over, patting at the sliver of an empty seat between him and a table stocked with all manner of partially drained bottles.

“Looks like we’re in,” I said.

“Nerds’ night out!” He thrust both arms in the air, cheering. Then stopped abruptly, resuming his party pose, slouching back on the cushy bench.

“Right, because the important thing now is to play it cool and look like we belong,” I joked.

“It goes without saying.”

“So how’d you get us in?”

“I asked and they just gave me that look.” He did it now, the vacant stare over my shoulder. I let a quick laugh escape and glanced around to be sure no one noticed. No one was looking at us at all.

Lance appeared at the top of the steps. Since we were hemmed in by the table beside me and a gaggle of the long-limbed Outfit girls beside Dante, he found a seat across the circle from us.

“We need some props,” Dante said. “Switch with me, I’m going to familiarize myself with the bar.” He got up and I shifted over to his seat.

“Um, I don’t think we should—”

“Relax, I’ll keep the cocktails strictly virgin for you. Hey, Lance!” he called out through the sea of milling Outfit members. Dante made a motion with his empty hand, like he was drinking something, then pointed back at Lance. “Anything?”

I shielded my face behind my hand, on reflex, as though this small action could hide me. I thought the idea was to not draw too much attention to ourselves. I had the feeling that Aurelia would find out about anything that happened tonight. Drinking was probably not the best idea.

“Sure, thanks. Surprise me,” Lance called back. He leaned back into his seat, content to watch the electric current travel between all of these figures around us.

Dante, bobbing his head to the music, looked like he was doing an experiment in AP Chemistry—holding up his glass as he poured in each new liquid, touching his fingers to his lips, deep in thought, deciding what to add next. I had to laugh watching him: he didn’t really know what he was doing. This just wasn’t something we ever did. We had decided early on that we didn’t want to be those kids who got wasted and sloppy on weekends, and then we had really sealed our fate by getting elected co-presidents of the Students Against Destructive Decisions chapter at school. So that was that. I had had no more than a few sips of alcohol in my entire life.

Recipe complete, Dante weaved between the beautiful people to deliver to Lance his concoction, a tall glass brimming with an amber liquid. He nodded in appreciation and Dante crossed back toward me. “You’re next!” He pointed, making pistols out of his hands.

Across the way, I spied Lance’s taste test. He tossed back his head, taking his first gulp, then spit it right back in the glass. He made a face and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He caught me looking and shook his head at me. I chuckled to myself. Dante, who missed the response to his bartending skills, parked himself on the other side of the table and began mixing some more. Another amber-colored libation took form, and he allowed himself a healthy guzzle. He looked at me, rolling his eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking. When in Rome, okay? Let’s have some fun for a change. No one here knows us, it’s amazing! Reinvention, baby!”

I put my hands up, surrendering. “I didn’t say anything.”

A song with a throbbing Tommy-gun beat cranked up and everyone who was standing in our area began swaying, moving. Dante hopped up from his seat, drink in hand, and took to the dance floor, in his own world now. I was on my own. I watched the bodies around him. Some of the men had rolled up their sleeves, while those in jackets had taken them off, revealing muscles that were perfectly formed and rock solid. The girls looked so at ease, dancing in the highest heels I’d ever seen. I studied everything: the cut of their dresses, the way they parted their hair, the length of their eyelashes. A girl twirled, finishing her move with her back to me. She wore a one-shoulder plum dress that came to a screeching halt midway down her thigh. She swung her glossy auburn locks and I caught a glimpse of her bare shoulder: it seemed to be looking back at me. Branded there was a tattoo of an open eye so vivid I thought it might blink. The iris was black with a white pupil and a pentagram inside it, and it was fringed with lashes of orange and red, resembling a burning flame. It looked oddly familiar. And then, a glance at the crowd before me showed me why: I spotted another tattoo on the bicep of one of the guys, peeking out just below his sleeve; and one on the ankle of a blond woman with miles of wavy hair.