Pretties

"Valentino 317."

Valentino 317

"Wait a second," Zane said. He pulled off her interface ring and then his own, and led her deeper into the pleasure garden. "Better lose these," he said. "Don't want them following."

"Oh, right." Tally remembered ugly days, how easy it was to trick the dorm minders. "The wardens last night— they said they were going to keep an eye on me."

Zane chuckled. "They're always keeping an eye on me."

He threaded the rings onto two tall reeds, which bowed under the weight of the metal bands. "The wind will move them every now and then," he explained. "That way, it won't look like we took them off."

"But won't it look weird? Us staying in one place for so long?"

"It is a pleasure garden." Zane laughed. "I've spent my share of time in here."

A nasty ping went through Tally, but she didn't let it show. "What about finding them again?"

"I know this place. Quit worrying."

"Oh. Sorry."

He turned to her and laughed. "Nothing to be sorry for. This is the best breakfast I've had in ages."

They left the rings and headed down toward the river and Valentino Mansion, Tally wondering what they would discover in Room 317. In most mansions, each room had its own name — Tally's room in Komachi was called Etcetera; Shay's was Bluesky — but Valentino was so old that the rooms had numbers. Valentinos always made a big deal out of stuff like that, sticking to the ancient traditions of their crumbling home.

"Tricky place to hide it," Zane said as they approached the sprawling mansion. "Easier to keep secrets where the walls don't talk."

"That's probably why they hacked a Valentino bash and not one in some other mansion," Tally said.

"Except I had to go and screw everything up," Zane said.

Tally looked at him. "You?"

"We started off down in the stone mansion, but when we couldn't find you guys anywhere, I said we should go up into the new party spire so the smart walls would find you."

"We had the same idea," Tally said.

Zane shook his head. "Yeah, well, if we'd all stayed down in Valentino, the Specials wouldn't have spotted Croy so fast. He would have had time to talk to you."

"So they can listen through the walls?"

"Yeah." Zane gri

Tally nodded, thinking it through. The city interface brought you pings, answered your questions, reminded you of appointments, even turned the lights on and off in your room. If Special Circumstances wanted to watch you, they'd know everything you did and half of what you were thinking. She remembered talking to Croy up in the spire, her interface ring on her finger, the walls catching every word…"Do they watch everybody?"

"No, they couldn't, and most people aren't worth watching. But some of us get special treatment. As in Special Circumstances."

Tally swore. The Specials had shown up so quickly last night. She'd only had a few minutes with Croy, as if they'd been waiting close by. Maybe they'd already spotted that the party had been hacked. Or maybe they were never very far away from Tally Youngblood…

She looked into the trees. Shadows shifted in the wind, and she imagined gray shapes flitting among them. "I don't think last night was because of you, Zane. It was my fault."

"How do you mean?"

"It's always my fault."

"That's bogus, Tally," Zane said softly. "There's nothing wrong with being special."

His voice trailed off as they passed through the main arch of Valentino Mansion. Within the cool stone walls, it was as silent as a tomb.

"The party was still going when we left," Zane whispered. "They probably all just went to bed."

Tally nodded. There weren't even any maintenance robots at work yet. Bits of torn costumes littered the hallways. Spilled drinks filled the air with a sickly sweet perfume, and the floor was sticky underfoot. The glamour of the party had been stripped away like bubbliness turned into a hangover.

Her finger felt naked without an interface ring, bringing back memories of sneaking across the river as an ugly, the terror of being caught. But fear kept her bubbly her senses sharp enough to hear stray party rubbish shifting in the drafty corridors, to separate the raisiny scent of spilled champagne from the stale funk of beer. Besides their own footsteps, the mansion was silent.

"Whoever lives in 317 is going to be asleep," Tally whispered.

"Then we'll wake them up," Zane said softly, eyes flashing in the semidarkness.

The ground-floor rooms were all numbered in the one hundreds, so they looked for a way up. New elevators had been added to the mansion at some point, but without interface rings, the doors wouldn't open for them. A set of stone stairs brought Tally and Zane to the third floor, across from 301. The numbers counted up as they walked down the hall, odds on one side and evens on the other. Zane squeezed her hand when they reached 315.

But the next room was numbered 319.

They retraced their steps, checking the other side of the hall, but found only doors numbered 316, 318, and 320. Searching the rest of the floor, they found more 320s and the 330s, odd and even, but no Valentino 317.

"This is a bubbly puzzle," Zane said, chuckling to himself.

Tally sighed. "Maybe it was all a joke."

"You think the New Smokies would hack a citywide invitation, sneak across the river, and crash a party just to waste our time?"

"Probably not," Tally admitted, but she felt something in her starting to fade. She found herself wondering if this whole expedition was kind of lame, looking for some big secret that uglies had left behind. Sneaking around in someone else's mansion was pretty bogus, after all. "You think breakfast is still warm?" she asked.

"Tally …" Zane turned his intense gaze on her. With trembling hands, he pushed her hair behind her ears. "Stay with me."

"I'm right here," she said.

He drew closer, until his lips almost brushed hers. "I mean, stay bubbly."

Tally kissed him, and with the pressure of his lips the world sharpened again. She pushed the hunger out of her mind and said, "Okay. What about the elevator?"

"Which one?"

She led him back to the space between Valentino 315 and 319. The long expanse of stone wall was interrupted by an elevator door.

"There used to be a room here," she said.

"But they got rid of it when they put in the elevator." Zane laughed. "Lazy pretties. Can't climb two flights of stairs."

"So maybe 317 is the elevator now."

"Well, that's bogus," Zane said. "We can't make it come without our rings."

"We could wait around until someone else calls the elevator, and slip in."

Zane looked up and down the empty hallway, piled with plastic cups and torn paper decorations. "Hours from now," he said, sighing. "When we won't be bubbly anymore."

"Yeah. Not bubbly." A layer of fuzziness was starting to sink across Tally's vision again, and her stomach growled in a food-missing way, which called up the mental image of a warm chocolate muffin. She shook her head to clear it, visualizing a Special Circumstances uniform instead. Last night the sight of gray silk had focused her mind, had propelled her after Croy and into the fire stairwell. The whole thing had been a test to see how well her brain was working. Maybe this was another test. A bubbly puzzle, as Zane had said.