The music closed in.
There was nothing for it but to forge ahead. I had seen her tight bright fire-alarm sweater, and it had left puffs and lint of its red fuzz streaked across my brain. I was picking them out through the crack she'd left in the side of my mind as I scanned the enormous living room: shrunk to closeness. Cramped from all the people packed in. I was sure I'd seen that gleam of red a second ago, in the aperture snapped shut between parting bodies crisscrossing, weaving, squeezing past and into and through each other. Now where! No where? No.
Ahead.
No! Her eyes were on the back of my head - I whirled - some dude. Looking at me "what?" Not her eyes. Impossible. My sense of her had never failed me.
She was watching, from somewhere.
Back, pushing as I turned in my original direction. There was a hot press of bodies. I had to fight for control and calm, to keep my direction and my head steady. She's ahead. Ahead, and to the side. Towards the dark wood of the positively arc-de-triumphal doorway into the library...
Whose house has a library in it any more? A whole room for books! Not even a piano in there, or a desk with a computer. Just rich upholstery and dull gold cushions, footstools and side tables. A room to read in.
I was pushing my way through. I had to find her fast, before -
- through! - squeezed past through from between the last two revelers, and -
the music. Suddenly blank. No sound from the other room at all. The paneled doors had slid to, silently, behind me. Her doing.
"Where are you, Jasilla?" My eyes scanned the dim room. No sign. Not a book out of place, for that matter. "Don't make me regret what's about to happen!"
"Oh, Hen - what the hell does that mean?" She stepped into the light and was visible - one of her tricks. She was grinning.
I looked her up and down, paumptuously. Tan patent leather boots to within an inch of the knee, toned legs, incendiary red tapered sweater, just long enough to serve as a miniskirt, loosely belted with a monstrosity of a belt - turquoise colored snakeskin with a chunky gold and turquoise buckle, draped from her well-shaped hips and rounded dancer's ass. She had on a scrap of a black jacket that barely qualified: halfway to midriff, with sleeves to mid-biceps over that fuzzy yet somehow diaphanous red sweater shifting as she moved, clinging to her beguiling torso.
As an outfit, it was a disaster - but somehow, she made it work. She had been turning this way and that to allow for a full inspection.
Then my eye caught a glimpse of my reflection in a full-length mirror between two bookshelves. Cowboy boots of a dull, leaden color, with a design worked into the leather like something eldritch. Black denim jeans of a tight but conservative cut, like a vain but respectable corporate shark from a top firm on a casual Friday. Rippling torso, barely contained by a ribbed charcoal long-sleeve crew-neck surmounted by a tasteful gold chain with ten runic amulets strung across it like some lord chancellor's badge of office. Sculpted jaw. Narrow goatee, cut in a way that looked great, despite anyone wearing a goatee at this point in time has got to be some kind of asshole. Piercing sea-gray eyes - which narrowed in approval, as I nodded and completed my self-inspection.
I turned those intense eyes on Jasilla, and held her gaze. "We are well-matched, are we not my love?"
"Some of us more than others, my love," she returned, with a raised eyebrow. "Have you guessed why I asked you to meet me here, then?"
"I didn't realize I was supposed to guess," I smirked. "But if I must, I must admit that some hope had kindled in my mind..."
Her eyes said, "...Yes...?"
"...that you had news for me."
"Indeed I do," she purred.
"And what is it?" I returned.
"Don't you want to guess?" she countered.
"Not unless I must." I said, through a thin smile.
"I'd really rather you guessed." she pouted, coyly.
"Well, alright then." I said. "I'll guess."
Her teeth gleamed expectantly between her wide-smiling lips. She's blonde, by the way. I forgot to mention that earlier. A sort of a red-tinged shimmering caramel gold - I don't know how important it is. Probably you figured it out anyway. "What is your guess, then?" she prompted.
"What do I get if I'm right?" I queried evilly, my hair jet-black.
"You get...first pick," she coolly replied, dreamily, with half-closed eyes.
"Then...they have returned?" I guessed, too shocked by the possibility, yet never really imagining it could be anything else.
"Indeed." She was drifting backward, settling back into a deep red leather love seat. "They have returned, and they want to know what you did with the grimoire."
"Oh."
I'd forgotten about that little detail. "Well, I guess we have a bit of strategizing to do, then."
"Indeed we have," she murmured.
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