The golem, directed by a few faculty members, split the hall into two sections: the dance floor and the seating area. The phantom instruments were joined by a couple horns and drums and tumbled into an eerie waltz.

Jacob and Camilla found Blake and Grace, and together they took the floor.

"Follow my lead," Camilla said.

She led Jacob by the hand, dragging him out onto the floor. A dozen couples already spun and twirled, among them Archie/Claire and Victor/Maria. Most attendees were still finishing up their food or in the sitting area getting ready to dance.

Jacob's nerves flared. From the sitting area you could pretty much see the entire dance floor, and each couple in it. He watched Archie and Claire two-step back and forth, Archie twirling her, swooping her back on one foot like something straight out of a musical.

"Camilla," Jacob hissed. "I don't know the steps!"

"I'm gonna teach you," she said.

Jacob's shoes clattered against the hardwood. Camilla turned and clasped his hand in hers and held it out at arm's length. She clasped his other hand near their hips. He was very close to her. He caught her sweet perfume. He had an urge to look away, but where to? Instead he just stared and got lost in her face.

"Pay attention!" She hissed. "Cast perception, but not strength."

"Really?"

"It'll make it easier to learn. Trust me."

He cast perception, but if it was supposed to focus him on the steps, it failed miserably. The hall, the people, the music and even the very idea that they were at the gala fell away.

Her heart-shaped faced, framed by dark ringlets of her hair, and the tanned slope of her neck and upper chest seemed to fill his entire vision. He could count every little freckle on her cheeks, observe the slope of her cheekbones as she smiled in slow motion. Her eyes were dark chocolate wells that devoured him. Her lips were a perfect, pursed rosebud, and he found himself wondering without any of his usual apprehension what they would feel like. He'd known that Camilla was pretty—duh—but she wasn't. No, she was beautiful. Perfectly beautiful. His gaze drifted lower, drawn naturally down. Tendons and slender muscles rippled in her neck, her collarbone cast gentle shadows into the hollows of her shoulders. Lower still, her-

"...acob!"

"Jacob!" Camilla hissed.

She must have cast perception too because her voice suddenly matched his.

"Match my steps for now," she said.

And he did.

She called everything out in a whisper a moment before they did it. A moment in real time was good for a long bout of processing and imagining in augmented time. He stepped with her, left, right, spin, back, right, left, etc, etc.

She explained how to twirl her and he did, his mind racing, checking and double checking that his slow-motion body was moving correctly. He twirled her, and caught her as she dropped.

A few songs in he dropped the perception and managed without it reasonably well. It was shocking how quickly he retained what he'd learned. After a time he couldn't fathom, they paused and headed back to the sitting area for a break and a drink. Blake and Grace were at one of the tables with a couple people Jacob didn't know.

"How are you guys?" Blake asked as they sat down.

"Great!" Jacob said. "You?"

"A little tired now, but I'll revive." Blake turned and indicated a shockingly lean, caramel skinned older girl sitting at the table near them next to a boy built like a brick-shithouse. "Payton! This is Jacob. Jacob, Payton. She's on the Split team. That's Georgie." He indicated Payton's large date.

"Nice to meet you." Jacob shook Georgie's hand, hesitated, then offered to shake Payton's as well. He still was a little unsure about shaking hands with girls.

Payton grinned and heartily returned the shake. "We watched you in the tournament. You were so good! Blake told us that you don't come from a magical family."

"Yep," Jacob said.

"So sick. So do we, though neither of us did anywhere nearly as good as you in the tournament," Payton uttered a throaty laugh. "I think we were still trying to figure out which end of the spectrum was which."

"Still are," Georgie grunted. Those were the only two words he said the whole night.

Payton laughed again and slapped his arm. "Stop that."

They watched the next dance, and just as Jacob was about to ask Camilla if she wanted to dance again, Archie materialized out of thin air.

Archie bowed. "Camilla, can I have this next dance?"

Jacob stiffened. Fuck no.

Camilla smiled a glittering smile and raised her hand. "Yes."

Archie took her hand, lofted it, and led her to the dance floor.

Jacob watched them go. Of course Archie wanted a dance with her. It was fine. Camilla said it was fine. So it was fine.

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It wasn't fine.

"I want to kill him," Jacob muttered to Blake.

Blake was also watching the pair elope to the dance floor. "That's natural."

"Really?"

"I mean, he's dancing with your date."

Yeah, he was.

Jacob told himself that Archie and Camilla had known each other since they were kids, that they were tight friends, but instead of making it better it just made it worse. He stood up and looked around, an angry little idea forming in his head.

Claire stood off to one side, talking with another older girl, her silver dress catching the swirling light. Jacob strode right over to her.

"Claire," he said.

She turned and smiled at him. "Hi!"

"Can I have this next dance?"

Her eyes lit up and her hand went to her mouth. Her nails were painted a silver that matched her dress.

"Yes!" She said.

Jacob took her hand. It was soft and smooth. On an impulse, he lifted it up, bent down, and pressed his lips to the back of her palm. She giggled. Take that, Archie. Her perfume was suddenly all in his nostrils. He took her hand and led her to the dance floor.

He faced her and clasped her hands and they started dancing. Her face was very close to his and she was smiling playfully.

"I didn't know you were so beautiful," Jacob said before he could stop himself.

He didn't know or care if it was corny or sounded stupid or if he was being an ass and just trying to get at Archie or Camilla or both of them.

Claire tsked, but her smile brightened. "Now, now, Jacob. You have a date."

"Maybe I wish you were my date." Now that he'd started, he couldn't stop. The words just kept coming, a little electric thrill shooting through him each time.

Claire mock-gasped.

"I'd fight Archie for you," he said.

"Don't say that."

"I beat him once, I can beat him again."

"Ooh, you're so big and strong," she mocked.

"You're worth it," he said.

"Now you're just saying things," she said.

He shrugged.

----------------------------------------

Camilla let Archie lead her to the dance floor. She knew what he was doing, the sly dog. The phantom chamber orchestra had started into a somewhat limited rendition of "On the Hills of Manchuria." The first song they had ever danced to.

Archie took her hands in his and they stepped back and forth in silence, staring into each other's eyes. There was no teaching, no hesitating. They knew the pace and they knew the personal subtleties in how the other danced.

The melancholic French Horns filled Camilla's ears and she was transported back to that autumn night in Vienna what would have been, God, eight years ago, at her first society gala.

Her father had helped her put on a little gown and a tiara. She had looked at herself in the mirror and thought she looked like a Disney princess, but had wished that the gown had been pink and not silver, so she could look more like Rapunzel.

He had squatted down beside her and told her all the things that still echoed in her mind. "Never let them see your doubt. Never let them see you tremble. Never show them a weakness, at all costs." He'd checked her knowledge of the rules, the etiquette, her manners, all things they'd been practicing for weeks now.

Then the gala. A forest of legs and gowns, pungent scents, and flashes of faces far above her. Abrasive laughter. Her father had been instantly preoccupied by a bunch of older men and women, and she had been left to drift through the crowds alone, humming along to the swelling music. Then big faces bending down to her level and asking her all sorts of questions, breathing stinky, alcoholic breath. She answered primly, curtly, curtsying lightly as she introduced herself as she'd been told.

People seemed to be fascinated with her simply because she existed. Tons of wrinkly older men and women. They asked her about herself, about her father. There were so many big people, big faces, so many tricky questions. She wanted to go home. This place stunk and she didn't like all the old people. She searched the crowds, but she couldn't find her father.

Just when she was about to slump down on the floor and cry, not caring that she would get her dress dirty, just wanting to go home, she saw him.

He maneuvered through the crowds easily. His face was like a beacon in the sea of suits and dresses. Handsome, smooth, his hair well combed, his little suit flawless, his demeanour affluent. He looked like a child model for a luxury brand. He was taller than her, but on her level amidst the forest of legs and gowns. He strode right up to her purposefully, chest puffed out in kiddy mimicry of the adults.

His big, almost babyish cobalt blue eyes flashed with concern. He reached out his hand to her.

She looked at it hanging palm up in the air between them, then back up at those big eyes, in confusion.

"Will you dance with me?" The boy asked.

"I don't know how to dance," she said. Her father had taught her some but she wasn't very good, and she didn't want to embarrass herself.

"That's okay. I will teach you," he stated.

She reached out and took his hand. He took it in his smooth palm and held it delicately, as if it were the the most precious flower in the whole world.

"My name's Archie," he said, looking deep into her eyes. "What's yours?"

She looked away and smiled shyly. "Camilla."

"That's a beautiful name," he said. "Follow me."

He led her to the dance floor, and taught her how to get in the correct pose.

The same pose they were in right now. His hands were bigger, rougher. His eyes had lost their boyish size, but they gazed out at her from within his statuesque face with that same brilliant cobalt light. His chin and jaw had lost their childhood smoothness, now rough even right after he shaved. He was much taller than her now, and his confidence seemed to have been tempered, cooled from hot steel into something unbreakable.

"I always thought I would dance with you at this gala," Archie said, as if he too had been remembering that untouchable night. "You know I love you."

That little girl would have shied away, maybe even run away with her face in her hands, but she just lifted her chin higher and gazed into his eyes.

"I know, Archie." There was pain deep down in those beautiful eyes. Pain that hurt her to her core to know that she was causing it in someone who genuinely cared for her so deeply.

He might have said other things. He might have asked her why she didn't love him back, or why she didn't show it, or how she could pick Jacob over him, or how she could do this to him. But he didn't. That wasn't who he was. That wasn't the type of man he was.

And even if he did ask, how could she answer when she didn't know herself? It might have been that he was like a brother to her. It might have been that to her he represented the core of magical society, of these galas, the Councils, the world she had grown up in, and that she still wanted to experience life outside that world. It might have been the idea of a serious relationship, like the one she knew he wanted, and the things two people in a serious relationship would do with each other that terrified her. It might have been that he just simply wasn't the right type of man for her. And all of those things were true, but it was more than them, more complicated than words, and she was very grateful he didn't force her to say anything, and she could just pretend in silence that they were children again and for a few moments that his face was the only thing in the world.

And then the dance ended, the temporary utopia diminished, their momentary paradise lost. She looked into his eyes again and knew that if whatever they'd had between them still lived, it had cracked.

Archie had had girlfriends this past year. He'd probably loved them and had made love to them and had done all those other vulgar, carnal things. Things she knew she wouldn't be able to bring herself to do. She was losing him. After tonight she'd have lost him. She knew that, and yet, for the first time ever, she was okay with it. He'd moved on, moved past her. She'd made him move on. And that was okay.