Chapter 7: The Ball

I turned the phone around and showed Luc.

He looked at the photo for a long second.

Then he looked up at the street, at the bare trees, at the parked cars along Beacon.

Nobody was there.

"He followed you," he said.

"He followed us."

"No. He followed you. He doesn't care where I go." He handed the phone back. "Don't walk home alone this week."

"Luc, it's Chase. He's not dangerous. He's just a baby."

"Babies grab people's arms in concourses?"

I didn't have an answer to that.

He walked me home every night that week. Even the nights he had to drive the Zamboni at eleven.

The Bayhill Hockey Ball was on the top floor of a hotel downtown.

The ballroom had chandeliers and a wall of windows over the harbor.

Kat did my hair. She pinned it up and pulled two pieces down and stood back with her hands on her hips.

"If Prentiss doesn't throw up, I want a refund."

The dress was hers. Dark green, long, slit to the knee.

"Green," I said. "Kat. That's their color."

"I know whose color it is."

Luc knocked at seven.

He was wearing a black suit that was almost a perfect fit and a dark green tie.

"Whose suit?" I said.

"My quiet roommate's dad's. Don't spill on me. It goes back Monday."

He looked at me in the green dress and didn't say anything for a while.

Kat cleared her throat behind me.

"Okay," Luc said finally. His voice came out rough. "Okay. Hi."

"Hi."

"You look like you're about to get me killed."

"That's the plan."

The ballroom went quiet when we walked in.

It wasn't my imagination.

The band kept playing, but the tables nearest the door stopped talking one by one.

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