Undercover Badge; Next Generation

Chapter thirty four

CHAPTER 34

Death emerged through the doors in the most glamorous fashion I'd ever seen it. If this was how the wealthy celebrated Halloween, the holiday provided more opportunity for designers than I'd ever thought.

"Perimeter check, one." Me left ear echoed. I was walking slowly, my left hand to the comm that belonged to the security. 

"Ballroom, clear." I said back. A moment later, Matthew's voice came back over mine. "Ballroom, check." He responded, clarifying that what I'd said was true.

It was eight o'clock. According to the front guards, almost the entire guest list had arrived, they were simply waiting on stragglers. Most of the guests were as brightly dressed as formal attire and gowns would allow and painted like sugar skulls, Mexican Day Of The Dead style. Some were plainly dead, ghostly looking and others were the most stylishly tousled and half decayed zombies and corpses I'd ever seen. Vampires and their victims with perfectly made up bloody bite-marks paraded with high collared capes and a few people were dressed up in attire reminiscent of the sixteen-hundreds; long poufy dresses and beehives and glorious wigs, men with breeches and tunics and boots. They all wore impressive broches and pins and dramatic jewels. Especially prominent were the seals. There was the odd streak of creativity here and there, much like the voodoo priest and Asian Goddess that had successfully snuck their way in.

I raised my right hand, paused to make sure it was the right hand, pressed it into my ear. "Has anyone seen them?" I asked.

Wellington answered. "Nope. Still checking." He was still chewing.

I cleared the ballroom's large open double doors, my perimeter check done. Matthew was walking toward me on the other side. We met perfectly at the doors and turned toward them, stepping across the threshold and nodding at the two guards that stood in the doorway.

The ballroom was decorated in black and red and silver, but most of its opulence was left unmarred. The cherry wood flooring and the gold and cream lined walls and the beautifully carved ceiling.

The long, elegant set of tables that were anchored on either side of the ballroom door provided ample seating and high society rested there among the red and black gossamer and silk tablecloths, gossiping about whatever high society had to say, an elegant bar to the left catered to by a member of the fanged variety in a waistcoat over a blood spattered white shirt, creating ghoulishly named drinks.

A heavily wooded doorframe opened up on the right of the room, called the Cigar Lounge which lead to a leather filled room of ambers and burgundies and mahoganies with an Obouros carved into the door frame. The Greek symbol of the snake was eating his own tail, in the figure of an infinity, had always creeped me out and tickled something in the back of my brain. I'd seen it before, somewhere.

In theory, the auction was to be held in the room by invite only. A single, outside security guard stood in front of the door. Fires in hearths on either side of the room roasted the space to a perfectly comfortable temperate, even though the space stayed lightly and almost imperceptibly cool, adding the ever so slight essence of wood smoke to the air.

I traced my fingers from the brim of my top-hat down across my lace veil and glanced at Matthew through the gauzy fabric. He was being what I knew of him- brooding and alert. Perfect for security.

He looked at me then and caught my hazel eyes with those chips of amber. He loves me, I whispered in my head. You wouldn't tell it by the way he quirked a brow under the red mask. I shook my head, answering his question. Now was not the time for love and frivolity.