Pretties

"Give it?"

"A hundred milli-Helens? Five hundred? Maybe a whole Helen?"

Tally took a steadying breath, looking down at the dark river. "I'd give it none. It's Uglyville, after all."

Zane chuckled. "Now, Tally-wa, there's no reason to be nasty about our ugly little brothers and sisters. It's not their fault they aren't as pretty as you." He pushed a stray lock of Tally's hair back around her ear.

"Not them, the place. Uglyville is a prison." The words felt wrong in her mouth, too serious for a bash.

But Zane didn't seem to mind. "You escaped, didn't you?" He stroked the sweater's strange fibers, like the rest of them kept doing. "Was the Smoke any better?"

Tally wondered if he wanted a real answer. She was nervous about saying something bogus. If Zane thought Tally was missing, vetoes would rain down no matter what Shay and Peris had promised.

She looked up into his eyes. They were a shimmering metallic gold, reflecting the fireworks like tiny mirrors, and something behind them seemed to pull at Tally. Not just the usual pretty magic, but something that felt serious, as if the bash around them had disappeared. Zane always listened raptly to her Smoke stories. He'd heard them all by now, but maybe there was something more he wanted to know.

"I left the night before my sixteenth birthday," she said. "So I wasn't exactly escaping Uglyville."

"That's right." Zane released her from his gaze and looked out across the river. "You were ru

"I was following Shay. I had to stay ugly to find her."

"To rescue her," he said, then trained his golden eyes on her again. "Was that really it?"

Tally nodded carefully, last night's champagne spi

"It was just a thing I had to do." As she said the words, Tally knew that they sounded bogus.

"A special circumstance?" Zane asked, his smile wry.

Tally's eyebrows lifted. She wondered what tricks Zane had pulled back when he was an ugly. He didn't tell that many stories himself. Though he wasn't that much older than her, Zane never seemed to have to prove that he was a real Crim, he just was.

Even with his lips thi

"Almost every night, last winter."

"In winter?"

"I love the ruins covered with snow," he said. "It makes the edges softer, adding mega-Helens to the view."

"Oh." Tally remembered traveling across the wild in early autumn, how cold it had been. "Sounds totally…freezing."

"I could never get anyone else to come with me." His eyes narrowed. "When you talk about the ruins, you never mention meeting anyone there."

"Meeting someone?" Tally closed her eyes, finding herself suddenly balance-missing. She leaned against the balcony rail and took a deep breath.

"Yeah," he said. "Did you ever?"

The empty champagne glass slipped from her hand and tumbled into the blackness.

"Look out below," Zane murmured, a smile on his lips.

A tinkling crash rose up from the darkness, surprised laughter spreading from it like ripples from a stone in water. It sounded a thousand kilometers away.

Tally took in more breaths of the cold night air, trying to regain her composure. Her stomach was doing flip-flops. It was so shaming to be like this, about to throw breakfast after a few lousy glasses of champagne.

"It's okay, Tally," Zane whispered. "Just let yourself be bubbly."

Tally realized how bogus that was, having to be told to stay bubbly. But even through his costume surge, Zane's gaze had softened, as if he really did want her to relax.

She turned away from the drop into emptiness, gripping the guardrail with both hands behind her. Shay and Peris were also out on the balcony now; she was surrounded by all her new Crim friends, protected and part of the group. But they were watching her carefully too. Maybe everyone was expecting something special from her tonight.

"I never saw anyone out there," Tally said. "Someone was supposed to come, but never did."

She didn't hear Zane's response.

The lurker had appeared again — across the crowded spire, standing still and staring straight at her. The mask's flashing eyes seemed to acknowledge her gaze for a moment, then the figure turned and slipped among the white coats of the costumed Pretty Committee, disappearing behind their giant facegraphs of every major pretty type. And even though Tally realized it was a bogus thing to do, she pushed away from Zane and through the crowd, because there was no way she could pull herself together tonight until she found out who this person was, Crim or Special or random new pretty. She had to know why someone was throwing Special Circumstances in her face.

Tally dodged between white coats and bounced like a pinball through a clique all dressed in fat-suits, their softly padded bellies spi

Glancing at the lights above the elevator door, she saw that it was on its way up, not down. The fake Special was still around, somewhere in the spire.

Then Tally noticed the door to the emergency stairs, bright red and plastered with warnings that an alarm would sound if you opened it. She looked around again — still no gray figure. Whoever it was had to have escaped down the stairs. Alarms could be switched off; she'd pulled that trick herself a million times as an ugly.

Tally reached out toward the door, her hand shaking. If a siren started blaring, everyone would be staring at her and whispering as the wardens arrived and evacuated the tower. It would be a really bubbly end to her career as a Crim.

Some Crim, she thought. She'd be a pretty bogus criminal if she couldn't set off an alarm every once in a while.

She pushed the door open. It didn't make a sound.

Tally stepped into the stairwell. The door closed behind her, muffling the tumult of the party. In the sudden quiet, she could feel her heart pounding in her chest and hear her own breath, still ragged from the chase. The beat of the music seemed to leak under the door, making the concrete floor shudder.

The figure sat on the stairs, a few steps up. "You made it." It was a boy's voice, indistinct behind the mask.

"Made it where? This party?"

"No, Tally. Through the door."

"It wasn't exactly locked." She tried to stare her way through the jeweled eyes of the mask. "Who are you?"

"You don't recognize me?" He sounded genuinely puzzled, as if he were an old friend, someone who wore a mask all the time. "What do I look like?"

Tally swallowed and said softly, "Special Circumstances."