There was a restless murmuring at this. The kind of slaves that got taken to balls of this sort were not usually the kind that were forbidden to interact with strangers. But just then there was a sort of flurry at the side of the room, eventually pressing toward the opposite side where Damon and Elena were.
"What is it?" Elena asked, the dance and the key both forgotten.
"Who is it, I'd ask, rather," Damon replied. "And I'd answer: our hostess, Lady Bloddeuwedd herself."
Elena found herself crowding behind other people to get a glimpse of this most extraordinary creature. But when she actually saw the girl standing alone in the doorway to the ballroom, she gasped.
She was made out of flowers... Elena remembered. What would a girl made out of flowers look like?
She would have skin like the faintest blush of pink on an apple blossom, Elena thought, staring unashamedly. Her cheeks would be slightly deeper pink, like a dawn-colored rose. Her eyes, enormous in her delicate, perfect face, would be the color of larkspur, with heavy feathery black lashes that would make them droop half-shut, as if she walked always half in a dream. And she would have yellow hair as pale as primroses, falling down almost to the floor, wound in braids that were themselves incorporated into thicker braids until the whole mass was brought together just above her delicate ankles.
Her lips would be as red as poppies, half-open and inviting. And she would give off a scent that was like a bouquet of all the first blossoms of spring. She would walk as if swaying in the breeze.
Elena could only remember standing, gazing after this vision like the dozens of other guests around her. Just one more second to drink in such loveliness, her mind begged.
"But what was she wearing?" Elena heard herself say aloud. She could not remember either a stunning dress or a glimpse of lustrous apple-blossom skin through the many braids.
"Some sort of gown. It was made out of what else? Flowers," Damon put in wryly. "She was wearing a dress made of every kind of flower I've ever seen. I don't understand how they stayed put - maybe they were silk and sewn together." He was the only one who didn't seem dazzled by this vision.
"I wonder if she would talk to us - just a few words," Elena said. She was longing to hear the delicate, magical girl's voice.
"I doubt it," a man in the crowd answered her. "She doesn't talk much - at least until midnight. Say! It's you! How're you feeling?"
"Very well, thank you," Elena replied politely, and then quickly stepped back. She recognized the speaker as one of the young men who had forced their cards on Damon at the end of the Godfather's ceremony, the night of her Discipline.
Now she just wanted to get away unobtrusively. But there were too many of the men, and it was clear that they were not about to let her and Damon go.
"This is the girl I told you about. She goes into a trance and no matter how she's marked; she doesn't feel a thing - "
" - blood running down her sides like water and she never flinched - "
"They're a professional act. They go on the road...."
Elena was just about to say, coolly, that Bloddeuwedd had strictly forbidden this kind of barbarism at her party, when she heard one of the young vampires saying, "Don't you know, I was the one who persuaded Lady Bloddeuwedd to ask you to this get-together. I told her about your act and she was most interested to see it."
Well, scratch one excuse, Elena thought. But at least be nice to these young men. They might be helpful somehow later.
"I'm afraid I can't do it tonight," she said, quietly, so that they would be quiet themselves. "I'll apologize to Lady Bloddeuwedd directly, of course. But it just isn't possible."
"Yes, it is." Damon's voice, just behind her, astounded her. "It's quite possible - given that someone finds my amulet."
Damon! What are you saying?
Hush! What I have to.
"Unfortunately, about three and a half weeks ago I lost a very important amulet. It looks like this." He brought out the half of the fox key and let them all take a good look at it.
"Is that what you used to do the trick?" someone asked, but Damon was far too clever for that.
"No, many people saw me do the act just a week or so ago without it. This is a personal amulet, but with part of it missing, I simply don't feel like doing magic."
"It looks like a little fox. You're not a kitsune?" someone - too clever for their own good, Elena thought - asked next.
"It may look like that to you. It's actually an arrow. An arrow with two green stones at the arrowhead. It's a - masculine charm."
A female voice somewhere in the crowd said: "I shouldn't think you need any more masculine charm than you have right now!" and there was laughter.
Chapter 35
"Nevertheless" - Damon's eyes took on a steely glint - "without the amulet my assistant and I will not perform."
"But - with it you will? I say, are you saying that you lost your amulet here?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. Just around the time the party arrangements were being set up." Damon flashed a beautiful, haunting smile at the young vampires and then turned it off suddenly. "I had no idea I would have your help, and I was trying to find a way to get an invitation. So I took a look around to see how the place would be laid out."
"Don't tell me it was before the grass was rolled," someone said apprehensively.
"Unfortunately, yes. And I was given a psychic message, which told me that the k - the amulet is buried somewhere here."
There was a chorus of groans from the crowd.
Then there were individual voices raised, pointing out the difficulties: the rock-hardness of the rolled grass, the many ballrooms with their many floral arrangements in soil, the kitchen garden and flower gardens (which we haven't even seen yet, Elena thought.)