LUCY
"Absolutely fucking not!" Amara snaps before I can even finish the excuse I have spent the last thirty seconds constructing in my head.
"You can do all that later. You can do that tomorrow. Tonight, girl, we party… and not even you can stop it!"
I open my mouth to further insist on the seriousness of the faux personal project our professor had supposedly assigned for tomorrow morning, but Vera beats me to it.
"You know I'm all for academic excellence, Lucy, but I think Professor Basten will understand if you tell him tonight is your birthday and ask for the leniency of an extra day."
I watch my escape crumble in real time. Harlen seals its fate with a firm, decisive nod—because of course he agrees. The man would nod along if Amara declared the sky neon yellow.
"But—"
"But, but, but…" Amara singsongs, already brushing past me into the apartment, heading toward my bedroom to retrieve my purse.
I almost call her back—then I remember the phantom is gone. I exhale slowly, crossing my arms over my chest as the woman's words replay in my head like a skipping record.
Stay at home for a week.
A full week isn't realistic. But tonight—I lick my lower lip, turning it over—tonight might be okay. One night. Then from tomorrow, I can stay in, make up some excuse, find a way to—
"What are you thinking about? You have that crease right there," Harlen says, tapping the center of his own brows. "You only get it when you're worried."
"She's probably thinking, for the hundredth time, why she agreed to come out with us," Vera says, her smile warm and unbothered. "But you don't have to worry, Lucy. It's your day. You're allowed to enjoy it."
She adds a playful wink. "We'll make sure of it. You're welcome… that's what friends do."
I snort softly. My eyes catch Amara as she reappears, emerald-green purse in hand, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
"Alright, let's go before Lucy finds another excuse."
She tosses the purse to me. I catch it, clutch it, and stand there for one long moment, a war raging quietly behind my ribs.
Phantoms don't deliver messages for sport. They don't appear in bedrooms out of thin air just to make conversation. Whatever danger she was warning me about is real. It has to be.
But I need tonight. I need to feel like a normal girl celebrating a birthday with friends who love her, just for a few hours.
"Lucy!" Amara's voice carries the specific edge that means the discussion is over.
I whisper a small, shapeless prayer to whoever might be listening, straighten my shoulders, smooth my dress, and take one last breath.
Then I follow my friends out the door.
———
The club is a living, breathing thing.
The air is thick—expensive perfume, sweat, spilled gin—and lights in shades of violet and electric blue cut through the haze, sweeping across a sea of moving bodies.
On the raised platforms, pole dancers move with a fluid, hypnotic grace. At the far end of the room, half-swallowed by shadow, the local elite occupy leather booths, their faces unreadable in the dark. In the center, the rest of the crowd is a beautiful, chaotic blur of dancing and drinking and blatant flirtation.
I clink my glass against my friends' for the second time and down what Harlen promised was strong alcohol. It burns on the way down, though less savagely than the first shot, and a slow warmth blooms through my belly like something uncurling.
I decide I don't mind it at all.
Amara orders a third round before I've fully processed the second.
"Do you think it's a good idea to get high already?" Vera asks, watching the bartender with a skeptical eye.
"Of course! How else are we going to enjoy the night?"
I laugh—a high, loose sound that tells me exactly where I'm headed—and realize I suddenly, desperately want to dance.
"Let's take to the floor!"
Even my tongue feels lighter than usual.
Harlen mutters something under his breath, watching me with the expression of a man who already knows this is going to be a long night. "She has a light brain."
I scrunch my face at him, hating that he's right. It seems I'm weak in every possible way—and apparently that includes alcohol tolerance. But I grab his hand anyway and drag him toward the dance floor while the girls laugh behind us.
"Lucy…" His voice is low and a little strained as I move against him, my fingers trailing over his arm, his chest, the line of his neck—teasing touches, light as shadows.
I laugh when he catches my hands with a quiet growl.
"Maybe this way, you can get Amara's attention?" I murmur, leaning up toward his ear. "I don't think she's laughing anymore. Don't look."
Harlen swallows. His brow lifts slowly.
I give him one small confirming nod.
He releases my hands, slides his own around my waist, and pulls me in.
I turn, pressing my back against him, feeling the warmth of his chest behind me, safe enough to let go a little.
I don't mind the stares beginning to collect around us. I'm somewhere else, somewhere in the rhythm, in the music, in a dance I know from years of practicing it with—
Doyle.
I shove the name back down where it belongs and drop low, knees bending, body moving through the beat.
When I hear whistles and Harlen muttering "God help me" like a man at the end of his rope, I laugh and dance a step away from him before things get complicated.
And then I feel it.
Not the general awareness of being watched— that's been there all night, and I'm used to it. This is different. Sharper. The hairs on the back of my neck rise, one by one, and the phantom's warning floods back into my mind with startling clarity.
My breath catches. I stumble off the dance floor toward my friends, scanning the room without trying to look like I'm scanning the room.
"Girl! You didn't tell us you had moves like that!" Amara says when I reach them.
Her voice is slightly off-pitch, but I barely register the small victory for Harlen. My eyes are still moving across the room. Bodies, lights, booths, shadows. Nothing obviously wrong. Nothing I can point to.
But the feeling stays. Settled and certain and cold.
"I'm coming, guys… I just need some fresh air." I keep my voice even, or as even as I can manage.
Amara and Vera exchange a glance, the particular one that means they've clocked something but are choosing, generously, to let it go. They nod. I touch their arms gently and begin threading my way through the press of bodies toward the front door.
Front door. Not the back. The front, where there are people and lights and open street, and where I will stand in the crowd and breathe and talk myself down from whatever this feeling is.
I just need a moment.
Just a moment, and then I'll be fine.