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I followed her up. It would have been rude not to, and also I couldn’t have looked anywhere else if I’d tried. The satin moved over her hips on every step, and the slit kept opening on a long, strong, bare leg.
“Ages,” she said over her shoulder, “are the one thing you may say out loud. Nobody up here is under twenty-five. Tom’s list is very strict. And if anyone, anywhere, says the word cinders, everything stops. No sulking, no questions.”
“Cinders. Got it.”
The upstairs corridor was lit by candles in jam jars. Every door had a ribbon knotted on its handle.
“Blue is the library,” she said, strolling. “Quiet. Somebody reading and hoping to be interrupted. Purple is the old billiard room. Seven or eight people at the moment, and the baize has seen things. Black is mine.” She glanced back at me through those silver whiskers. “And the red one, right at the end, is spoken for. She tied it herself. She’s waiting for somebody.”
“Who?”
“That,” she said, “is the point of the masks.”
A door halfway along opened. Gold ribbon. A man in a silver wolf mask and a woman in a white swan mask stood there in the glow, holding hands. The woman smiled at me, slow and deliberate, and crooked one finger.
The cat woman stopped beside me, close enough that I smelled jasmine and warm skin.
“Well, highwayman? They asked first. But I’m standing right here.”