As if any blueskin man could suit her. Or she him. She was as unlikely to make a match among the Higher Hundred as she was to wake up one morning and find her cobalt skin dyed alabaster. Cruel though he was, indifferent though he now appeared to be, she would love Jex Zanlan till she died, and that was the end of it.

But she had agreed to go to this stupid party, and so she may as well appear to advantage.

She allowed Sereva to dress her in a gown of embroidered white. She wore her grandmother’s triple rope of pearls, and pearl bracelets so wide and stiff that she found it hard to bend her wrists. They had arrayed themselves at Sereva’s house but stopped by Granmama’s to show themselves off to the old woman before they left for the party. Granmama, to Kit’s astonishment, appeared for a moment as if she might cry.

“You look like your mother,” Granmama said, fingering the stiff folds of the gown in an uncharacteristic moment of sentimentality. “White was her favorite color.”

“Sereva picked it out,” Kit said awkwardly.

“It’s just the right thing,” her grandmother said, nodding vigorously and seeming to toss aside the tears. “Perfect color for you. How are your shoes? Comfortable? You’ll want to dance, you know.”

Kit made a face. “So Sereva tells me. She’s made Bascom practice with me all week, but he’s much better than I am.”

“She has a natural grace,” Sereva interposed. “She’ll do fine.”

“And where’s Jayson?” Granmama wanted to know.

Sereva laughed. “He declined the enchantment of the evening, as he put it. I know he hates these sorts of things, so I let him stay home. Just this once.”

They took Sereva’s limousine to the house not six blocks away. The street was so thick with sleek automobiles that they could have walked in less time, though they would have ruined their elegant thin-soled shoes.

“Is there anybody here I should particularly know?” Kit asked. “So I don’t embarrass myself?”

“Well, the hostess of course, but she’ll be at the door. And her mother. I’ll introduce them to you. The others—you ought to recognize the family names of the Higher Hundred. Be nice to them.”

“I’ll be nice to everyone,” Kit replied. Thinking, To anyone who bothers to speak to me at all.

Inside, it was even worse than she could have imagined, a huge festive room crammed with people. Everything about the assembly seemed false to Kit—the proportions of the room, the colors of the flowers, the smiles, the voices. A congregation of hypocrites, she thought. Rich, smug, lethal hypocrites. She wished again she had not agreed to come.