Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) by Carol Goodman Page A

winging away from the churning whirlpool.
    “We have to go back!” I cried, pounding Raven’s chest with my fists.
    “She’s gone.”
    “Molly, her name was Molly. I saw her life, saw what happened to her . . .” I poured out everything I had seen as we flew back over the city. Raven was silent, his arms tight around me. He didn’t speak until we lit down in the Montmorency Gardens, in the same bower we’d taken off from.
    He put me down on the bench and put his wings around me as I sobbed out the whole of Molly’s story for the third time. I would have started a fourth, but he stopped my mouth with a kiss. The warmth of his mouth on mine shocked me into silence. I shuddered all over, aware for the first time of how cold I was. His warmth poured into me. When he pulled away he touched a finger to my lips.
    “There,” he said. “You can stop now. You were with Molly in her last moment. She knows that her life was seen, her voice heard. You have borne witness. It’s what we do. You can let go now.”
    My whole body began to shake and he folded me back into his wings. When I stopped shaking I raised my head and looked at him. His face was wet—with my tears, I wondered, or his?
    “You saw, too?”
    “Yes,” he said grimly. “I was connected through you. I wish you hadn’t had to see . . .
those horrors
.”
    “But now that I have—now that
we
have—we can’t rest until we find the place where those girls are being kept.”
    “We’ll look. I’ll talk to Sirena and see if she found out anything more.”
    “Sirena. She’s . . .” I tried to think of a way of asking what she was to Raven, but only ended with “She was very brave.”
    “And reckless,” Raven said shaking his head. “She could have been trapped inside the Hellgate. I should go and make sure she’s all right.” He stood up and looked down at me. “Are
you
all right?”
    I looked down at my limp dress. The silk had been drenched in the water of the East River. I smelled awful. “Well,” I said, “it’s not exactly how I thought my first dance would go.”
    He laughed—a short bark. “Me neither. You still owe me another dance.”
    With a movement fleet as hummingbird wings, he brushed my cheek with his lips. Then he was gone, vanished into the darkness.
    I made my way through the gardens slowly, not sure if I was ready to join the bright lights and gaiety of the party after the horrors I had witnessed. How could I make light conversation and eat cucumber sandwiches after what I’d seen?
    You have to let me go
, Molly had said,
before I turn into a monster.
I had held that girl’s hand and given her some comfort. I hadn’t felt like a monster then. I had felt . . .
useful
. If that’s what being a Darkling meant, then I would gladly be a Darkling. But I hadn’t been able to save her. Sirena had. Perhaps I was no good as a Darkling. Perhaps I didn’t belong in either world.
    I slipped through a side door into a dim hallway lined with dark wood and carpeted with thick Oriental rugs. There was a gilt-framed mirror tucked into a velvet-upholstered niche. I peered into it and was shocked at what I saw there. My hair was standing on end, my costume wings were twisted and crumpled, my dress plastered to me and torn—and I smelled like a garbage heap. I could never go back into the ballroom. I’d have to sneak out the back door and find my way home.
    I heard a door opening behind me. I pressed myself into the niche to hide myself.
    Male voices—deep and throaty with amusement and content—billowed out of the room on a gust of smoke. This was where the men went to smoke their cigars and talk of matters deemed too coarse for female sensibilities. Through a scrim of smoke I made out the stout, prosperous shapes of three of my classmates’ fathers—Alfred Driscoll, president of the New York Bank; Wallace Rutherford, owner of the
New York Sun
; and George Montmorency, councilman and, many said, soon to be the next