Heartless

Heartless - Chapter Three

HEARTLESS

CHAPTER THREE

When the elevator doors slid open smoothly in front of Luna and I, we saw that the party had already started. A low murmur of voices filled the already crowded room along with the chink of champagne glasses, a slow, graceful tune playing in the background.

We stepped out into the room, joining the crowd of elegantly dressed people that filled it. It was a sea of glamour – shining jewels, shimmering dresses, perfectly fitted suits that were probably worth more money than I owned. I hated it.

“I can’t believe we’re here,” I muttered to Luna, tugging on my own dress. It was a horrible, shiny mauve thing that clung to the top of my body like a second skin and then fanned out ridiculously, making it both impractical and ludicrous. I looked similar to all the other women around me, but I felt like an utter fake.

I was a fake. I’d come here pretending like I owned thousands of these dresses and paid for them without a sweat, just like I did every time I came to one of these parties. In reality, the dress was one of the many that I owned that had once belonged to one of my more unfortunate supernatural victims, a vampire who’d liked to find her prey at parties. It’d been a task to wash off the blood.

“It was your choice to come,” Luna replied smoothly, taking two flutes of champagne off a passing waiter’s tray and extending one towards me.

There were bags under her eyes, which makeup couldn’t even conceal, but she still wore a smile. We’d visited a few more buildings after we’d found our first guess abandoned and even kept watch over a few at night, but we’d still had no luck. I was itching for the night to be over so we could investigate our newest suspicion. Maybe we could find a vampire in the room and tail him home. My mind was already spinning with plans.

I bluntly ignored her offer. “Just because I chose to come, doesn’t mean that I want to,” I sighed. “I could think of a thousand and one things that I’d rather be doing than this.”

Luna shrugged at my rejection of the glass and quickly downed both flutes, earning her a few reproachful glares. She smiled slightly, as if she was amused by it all. “You need to stay friendly with Joseph,” she said quietly, wary of all the people around us. More than one of them would be trying to listen in, and some would have the power to do so easily. “He’s the best access you have to the supernaturals and you know it perfectly well.”

“I was hoping that I could just occasionally pop in to see him whenever I needed to coerce information out of him,” I hissed into her ear. “You never mentioned anything about actually dating him.”

 “Oh, just shut up and look like you’re enjoying yourself,” Luna replied calmly.

“I wish that I could,” I muttered, my teeth clenched in a strained, half-crazed smile.

All around us were New York’s most elite, and not just the humans. There were vampires, werewolves, shape shifters and elementals, all milling around the room. The special thing about Joseph Lloyd’s parties was that they were attended by almost everyone. He had contacts in both the supernatural and human world, and was powerful in both.

His one fatal flaw, though he did not know it just yet, was me – Anne Forbes, his girlfriend of two months, who had conned her way into his life without him suspecting anything, purely so she could gain access to the supernatural world. It had been overly easy to do so, actually. Luna, who’d known Joseph, had introduced us, and I’d played the part of oblivious human to a tee. Within a few minutes of knowing him I’d already arranged our next date, got his number and address, and secured myself an invitation to his next party. With Luna’s help, he stayed totally clueless to the whole thing. To him I was just another ornament, pretty but useless, on his arm. As far as he knew, I had no idea about him being a powerful shape shifter or about the less than normal people he was always inviting to his parties.