He doesn’t explain, but I understand. My skin doesn’t feel like my own, as if my body doesn’t quite belong to me, and if I don’t own that, what do I have left? I try to swallow down my uneasiness. It must be like living at a higher altitude. My body will adjust. Xander takes my hand and bounds up the steps, half pulling me behind him. He pauses at the landing.

“Which way?” I ask. A hallway opens up on either side.

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll end up where we need to be no matter what. Everything is always shifting here. You’re always lost and never lost at the same time. You just walk and the magic takes you where you need to be. Which way do you want to go?” he asks.

Back out the front door, I think, but I head left instead into a wide hallway with wallpaper made from dried yellow rose petals. White doors with rose-shaped knockers appear every ten feet or so. I stop in front of one, turn the handle, and step inside, bent on testing Xander’s claim.

Another hallway opens up. This one is darker with purple-and-black diamond-patterned wallpaper and dark wood paneling rising halfway up the wall. Old black-and-white photos of magicians break up the pattern. I gawk at them as I walk across the gleaming onyx floor. I pause at a black door with a brass handle fashioned like a full, blooming rose. I twist it and push the door open.

A huge room sprawls before me. I step inside, and my boots sink into lush, green carpet. A cherrywood bed with a simple black bedspread helps fill the enormous space. Matching end tables frame it. The only decoration in the room is a massive painting of the ocean in the moonlight hanging above the bed. It almost blends with the dark blue walls.

“Do you like it?”

I move to the bay windows, past the two chairs and table set up there, to stare out at nothing but fog that doesn’t just sit and hug the ground; it swirls and dances like it’s performing for me.

“I need to go get settled,” he calls over his shoulder. “Your outfit is in the armoire.”

I pull it open and find green pants. Green.

“No way.” I turn, but he’s already gone.

CHAPTER 9

I’ve stepped into one of Gatsby’s parties.

No—Gatsby would faint with jealousy of what lies before me. This room teems with life and magic and possibility. It’s jarring compared to the emptiness I stepped into this morning, like I’m in a different world instead of just a different room. As if everyone here snapped their fingers and appeared, and I should clap for a trick well done.