July 20th, 2025
Hugo Hollands, Age 24
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The car stopped at the mouth of the drive, and I thought, for a moment, that the place might not end. The house—no, the estate—rose out of trimmed hedges and fountains that bled light instead of water. Columns stood like sentinels, pale and enormous, their surfaces breathing with the last warmth of the sun. The windows were already lit from within, gold upon gold, the kind of glow that belonged to people who never knew darkness.
Marble stairs led upward in perfect symmetry, lined with urns and orchids whose scent clung to the air like a memory of wealth. A butler in a dove-gray suit opened my door. I caught the smell of polished floors and wine before my shoes even touched the ground.
Inside, the sound was delicate—strings tuning in another room, heels on marble, laughter dressed in silk. Even the air felt rehearsed. A woman in black approached with a tray of masks: lacquered, feathered, each one sculpted into a different kind of deceit. She held one toward me, ivory with a faint shimmer, light as paper.
When I put it on, the world changed texture. The eyeholes narrowed the light, turned every color deliberate.
They showed me to a room meant for performers—a chamber dressed in velvet and mirrors, faintly smelling of powder and lilies. A single chair waited near the vanity, beside a pitcher of water already sweating onto the tablecloth. My reflection stared back, half-covered, uncertain whether it belonged here.
I sat, listening to the murmur of distant music swelling and ebbing like a tide beneath the floorboards. Every sound felt magnified: the pulse in my throat, the faint squeak of leather when I adjusted my gloves.
That was when Eddie came in—no knock, just a push of the door and the smell of cigarette smoke following him. "Hey," he said, tone caught between amusement and warning. "They're getting ready for the guest entrance. Some woman—Stephanie, I think—told me to tell you that you're supposed to start on the top of the stairs. You'll stand there, do your first trick while they all gather below. Her words were 'make it fancy and don't trip.'" He grinned. "That last part's mine. But you get the idea. I'll come get you when it's time."
He reached for a mask from the dresser, turning it in his hands. "By the way, these people look terrifying. All money and no faces. Put yours on before they see you breathing." And before I could answer, he was gone—his footsteps fading into the polished hush of the corridor.
The silence after him was unbearable.
I stared at myself again. The mask lay beside my hand, its blank expression patient. Somewhere inside the house, the first note of a cello rose and lingered.
My stomach tightened. The nerves were sharper than they'd been at Morrison. This wasn't a hotel crowd or a rooftop charity; this was a world that ate artists for sport. I knew I had to be more than I'd been before. More fire. More control. More of whatever Corvian had made of me.
But how much of it was mine?
The thought slid in like a whisper from nowhere. Maybe I should've asked him for more power—just a little more—to make sure I didn't fail. I imagined him then, standing in the corner of this room, eyes unreadable, mouth curving in that faint suggestion of knowing everything I hadn't said.
"Make it fancy and don't trip," Eddie had said. The words kept echoing, almost mocking.
I pressed my palms together, felt the tremor beneath the gloves, and wondered what would happen if I tried something new tonight—something beyond the tricks, beyond the rehearsed illusion. Something that might finally make him look at me again the way he did that night on the rooftop, when the flames had turned to butterflies and the world had fallen silent.
The cello note swelled. A door opened somewhere, distant applause rising like the breath of a storm. And I stood, mask in hand, ready to step into their light.
The mirror did not lie tonight. It never had. It showed me what I had become—an imitation of grace, sharpened to the edge of beauty. My hair, black as ink, fell in deliberate disarray across my brow, soft enough to look accidental, shaped enough to betray intent. The collar of my jacket brushed the hollow of my throat, its embroidery catching the low amber light like threads of bruised silver. The pendant lay still against my skin, blue stone gleaming like something alive, its color too deep to be glass.
My eyes looked different. They always did before a performance. The pupils smaller, the irises almost crystalline. They carried that feverish light—the kind that comes before fire.
I reached for the small silver ring, rolling it between my fingers until it warmed. The metal pressed back with a familiarity that steadied me, a whisper of old rituals and old pain. I slid it through my lip, the soft click as it locked into place echoing faintly in the quiet room. That sound, always that small defiance of flesh and will, had become the beginning of every act.
The mask waited beside the vanity. Ivory, trimmed with black filigree, its edges glinting like a blade. I lifted it, felt its weightless coolness settle over my skin, and for a moment I couldn't tell where I ended. The world shrank to two narrow eyes and the steady pull of breath behind silk.
A knock. Three times, precise.
I turned the handle.
Outside stood two men and a woman—each dressed in the house's colors, their faces composed, their posture almost reverent. Without a word, they gestured for me to follow. We walked through corridors lit by chandeliers that breathed gold across marble. Every footstep was swallowed by the carpet; even the air seemed to hold its breath. Somewhere ahead, laughter moved like wind over glass.
Then the stairway appeared—grand, curved, leading down into the flood of candlelight and music below. The hall was full. Hundreds of masked faces turned toward the sound of the orchestra, unaware that they were being prepared for me.
"Here," one of the men whispered. "Wait for the cue."
But I didn't wait.
I stepped forward until the first glint of the chandelier touched me. The moment the light found my mask, conversations thinned, as if the air itself paused. I raised my hand, palm open, fingers relaxed.
The trick began small—a single card, somewhere below among the guests, slipping from a man's pocket. I could feel it, the pulse of it, the heartbeat of matter. The card floated upward, invisible at first, weaving through champagne mist and chatter, then bursting suddenly into view. Gasps followed it like prayer.
Another joined it, then another, until a flurry of cards spun above the crowd like white birds trapped in a current. They spiraled upward, catching the gold light, turning, cutting, dissolving. My fingers barely moved, yet they obeyed, rising toward me in slow devotion.
Then the air changed.
I twisted my wrist. The cards froze mid-flight, the entire hall holding its breath. For one long second, nothing moved. And then, with a soft hiss, the edges of the cards began to darken—not burn, not curl, but ink themselves black, as if shadow were crawling up their veins. One by one, they formed a perfect circle in the air above the staircase, their surfaces gleaming like mirrors.
The reflection that stared back wasn't the guests. It was them—each card reflecting their faces not as they were, but as they would look without masks. The illusion was merciless. Truth flashed and vanished—like a blade shown only to prove it exists. Every hidden twitch of disdain, every bored grimace, every wrinkle of age that vanity had tried to erase—laid bare in a single glimpse.
A ripple of whispers spread through the hall. Someone dropped a glass.
I brought my hands together slowly. The circle shattered—cards scattering into white ash that dissolved before they reached the ground. The light returned to normal. Music hesitated, then found its rhythm again, but too late; the spell had already taken them.
Their eyes were on me now. All of them.
I bowed my head just enough to let the chandelier catch the blue of the pendant against my throat.
The applause felt like weather—arriving, passing, already on its way to somewhere else. I let it move through me without catching any of it, the way you let a wave break over your chest and call it cleansing. Stobbs had said, Be unsurprised. I held to that: the face that isn't moved, the hand that looks empty when it isn't, the heart that applauds last.
And behind the mask, I smiled.
She appeared like a shard of light— a woman in a gown of silver gauze, her mask shaped like a swan's face gilded at the edges. The train of her dress followed her like spilled water. Her voice lifted through the hall, bright and practiced.
"Now that we have everyone's attention," she declared, her tone joyous and commanding, "welcome to the annual Swanson gathering—the night we all wait for."
The audience responded in laughter and applause, the kind that filled the air without ever touching sincerity. Then she turned to me, her chin angled slightly as she dipped her head. A silent cue.
I inclined mine in return. The second act had begun.
I opened my palm, showing it empty. Slowly, I let my fingers part. The chandeliers above began to tremble—not in light, but in shape. Each crystal elongated, rippled, as if the glass were turning liquid under unseen heat. The room exhaled.
Gasps. A few laughs of disbelief.
The chandelier's reflection spread across the marble floor, widening, swallowing the tiles, until the floor seemed to soften, melt, become water catching the light from above. The guests stepped back instinctively, skirts brushing suits, hands touching shoulders. Their movements stirred the illusion further, rippling their reflections until they seemed to stand on a trembling pool.
I lifted my hand higher. From the mirrored surface of that false lake rose columns of glass, twisting upward like vines made of rain and light. They bent toward one another, weaving arches that joined overhead. For a moment, the hall became a cathedral of liquid crystal—every breath echoing softly inside its hollow brightness.
Someone whispered, "How—" Another, "Is this real?"
It was. And it wasn't.
I moved my other hand, and the arches fractured into shards that hovered midair, catching the golden glow from the sconces, each piece holding a reflection of something wrong—a guest looking older, another gone entirely, one whose reflection turned to black smoke. They didn't notice. They only stared, hypnotized.
The shards rotated, slow, graceful, circling the room in widening rings. They began to hum with quiet resonance, a chord too low for the orchestra to mimic, and I felt it through my ribs—a sound that existed more in the body than the ear. The air grew heavy. Every guest seemed suspended in it, faces lifted toward the shimmer.
Then, with a flick of my wrist, I closed my hand.
The entire illusion imploded—light folding in on itself, leaving nothing but the trembling of glasses on tables and the sound of breath rushing back into lungs. The marble floor was solid again. The chandeliers hung still. Everything exactly as it had been.
The guests erupted in applause this time, unrestrained and awed. A few even stood. Laughter broke through, thin but genuine.
I exhaled slowly behind the mask. The pendant at my throat pulsed with warmth, as though something unseen approved.
The woman in silver clapped her hands, smiling at me with a practiced gleam of gratitude. "Marvelous," she said, her voice still for the crowd but her eyes fixed on me. "Our magician of the night."
I bowed, once, shallow and precise.
Then I stepped backward, my shoes whispering against the marble. The applause followed me down the corridor as I disappeared behind the columns, into the cool hush beyond the hall.
The echo of it lingered—like light still flickering behind the eyelids long after the flame has gone.
They led me toward another stairway, narrower than the first, veiled behind marble arches and a curtain of hanging orchids. The sound of the crowd grew closer, that polite symphony of laughter and glass, strings and candlelight. When I stepped into view, no one stared—they glanced, nodded, smiled the way people smile at someone who has briefly belonged to their wonder.
A waiter passed by with a silver tray, and I took a glass. The champagne hissed lightly, golden bubbles rising like tiny prayers. I raised it, nodded back at the passing compliments, a murmured thank you slipping from my lips here and there, barely audible above the chatter.
The hall gleamed. The ceiling curved like the inside of a pearl, catching reflections from the crystal chandeliers. I searched the crowd for Corvian's silhouette, the unmistakable stillness he carried, but he was nowhere—no trace of his shadow, no sign of Eddie either. Only laughter, perfume, and too many strangers wearing borrowed faces.
I turned, still scanning, and collided with someone.
The liquid trembled in my glass but didn't spill.
He turned around slowly.
The first thing I saw was the white of his hair—soft, gleaming like powdered frost under the lights. His face was painted with strokes of crimson that trailed from his eyes to his cheeks, a theatrical sadness shaped with precision. His lips were scarlet, his eyes pale amber, almost gold, bright enough to make you forget every other color in the room. He wore black satin that caught the light in folds and valleys, the fabric stitched with quiet extravagance. Around his throat, the ribbon of his costume tied in a bow as if sealing a secret.
He smiled. The red at his mouth curved into warmth. "Oh," he said, his tone playful but not cruel. "Is this another magic trick of yours?"
I blinked, words tumbling over each other. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to—I wasn't looking. I had my head elsewhere. I'm sorry."
"Well," he said, voice dipping into something softer, "if I were you, I'd have my head everywhere too. What you did up there was extraordinary." His gaze lingered, not like admiration, but curiosity dressed as affection. "What's your name?"
My throat tightened. Corvian's warning flickered through my mind—never give your name freely. Names were ownership. Debt. Power.
So I smiled behind the mask and said, "Whatever you want to call me."
He tilted his head, amused, eyes glimmering under the chandelier. "Oh, I see. But I can't call you anything, can I? I don't know you enough to give you a name." He paused, studying me the way one might study a flame. "Though I have a feeling we can fix that. Maybe by the end of the night, I'll have one for you. What do you say?"
I hesitated. He looked like he had stepped out of another world—one where laughter was a ritual and sorrow was decoration. The kind of man who belonged to dreams, not the kind who haunted them. His presence felt warm, almost safe, like the candlelight around him obeyed him without question.
I nodded once, uncertain. "Sure. And what do I call you?"
"Kent," he said. "Call me Kent with a K."
That pulled a laugh out of me before I could stop it. "Okay, Kent with a K."
The K felt like a key turned in a lock I hadn't noticed.
"Good." He smiled again, the red of his lips breaking the pale of his face like a painted wound. "Are you looking for someone?"
"Yeah," I said. "My manager and my friend. They were here a minute ago, but I can't find them."
"Oh, I can help," he said easily, glancing around. "We can walk and see. There isn't much else to do till they call us for food. Though I heard there's supposed to be something special later." He leaned in conspiratorially, lowering his voice. "You'll stay until the end, won't you?"
"I have another performance," I admitted before I could catch myself.
He stepped closer, the air between us shifting. His voice dropped to a whisper, warm and near my ear. "You weren't supposed to tell me that," he said, almost laughing. "That was meant to be a surprise. But don't worry." His breath brushed the side of my cheek, light as silk. "I won't tell anyone a thing."
He drew back slowly, his expression calm again—charming, untouched, a man who carried secrets the way others carried names.
And for a moment, under the chandelier's fractured light, I couldn't tell if I'd just met another guest or another ghost that had slipped inside the masquerade.
We walked side by side through the long marble corridor, our reflections slipping beside us in the mirror panels that lined the walls. Every chandelier we passed bloomed and wilted again in the glass, as if the house itself were breathing light. Kent moved easily, a gloved hand holding the stem of his wine glass as though it were part of him. His stride was unhurried, deliberate, as if he owned the air between steps.
"So," he said at last, glancing toward me through the feathered curve of his mask, "you have these powers—to make all that happen. The illusions, or whatever they are. I'll assume it's optical, though I have my doubts. What you did up there—" he smiled, almost lazily—"wasn't the sort of thing you learn by repetition."
"I guess you could say that," I answered. "Or you couldn't. I'm not confirming or denying anything."
He laughed—a soft, silvery laugh that drew a few curious looks from nearby guests. "Oh, don't worry about that. I pretty much know how it goes around here."
I sipped from my glass, watching the bubbles climb and vanish. "It's unsettling," I said quietly. "No one here knows who anyone is. We're all dressed in masks, smiling, pretending. For all I know, you could be someone I'm not supposed to even speak to."
"Trust me," he said, voice light as silk, "I'm exactly the person you're supposed to be talking to. I'm a very good person, by the way. You don't need to worry about that. And I told you I'd keep your secret."
"Yeah," I said, "but this feels beyond secrets."
He looked amused by that. "You're very dramatic, aren't you?" Then, leaning closer, "Have you met Patrick Swanson?"
"No."
"Oh, he's peculiar. Rose from nowhere, you know—like one of those myths about self-made men. Though no one really rises without help, do they?" Kent tilted his glass, studying the swirl of liquid. "He had someone who opened the gates for him. Then came the house, the business, the fortune, the wife—beautiful, but not his match. I doubt they even share the same air anymore."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I'm bored," he said simply. His tone was unguarded, almost boyish. "I need to talk."
"You didn't come here with anyone?"
"Oh, I'm sure I did. There are people here who call themselves my friends. But this kind of party doesn't encourage remembering names. That's the point—you come here to be no one. To be free."
"Free of what?"
He smiled, looking ahead toward the tall windows that opened onto the gardens. "Free of prejudice, free of judgment, free of being held accountable for anything at all." He tapped his finger lightly against his glass. "You can think it, want it, even almost say it, and nothing matters. I could say—oh, no, that one's off the table. And that—no, that too." He grinned, the red of his lips catching the light. "Too bad. But there are still things you can let slide, if you know what I mean."
"I don't," I said.
Kent stopped walking, turned his head toward me, eyes bright behind the paint. "You're tiring," he said fondly, as if speaking to a child who'd asked too many questions. "Come on. Let's go somewhere quieter."
"Why would we do that? I need to stay close in case someone calls for me."
He tilted his head, the tassels of his hat brushing the side of his jaw. "Maybe they won't," he said. "Maybe your friends already left. Maybe your manager found better company. Who knows?"
The way he said it was not cruel—just too casual, too certain. It lingered in the air like perfume that had turned bitter, something expensive beginning to rot.
Kent led the way, glass in hand, his laughter spilling like perfume in the dim corridors. We turned past a velvet curtain drawn halfway, and the sound of the party faded behind us—muffled laughter, strings, the delicate clash of glass against glass—until it was all replaced by something quieter, heavier.
The room we stepped into was steeped in gold and shadow. The walls were draped in fabric that caught the light like aged honey, and the chandeliers hung low, their crystals bleeding warm brilliance over everything they touched. A portrait of a woman dominated one wall—her neck long, her hair coiled in a sculpted braid, eyes soft and haunting. The varnish made her seem half alive, like she might turn her head at any moment to look at us. Another portrait watched from the side, pale and solemn, her painted gaze cutting through the amber light.
The sofas were deep, velvet crushed from years of hands and bodies, their tones rich as caramel and bronze. Between them sat a small ottoman patterned in green and gold thread. The air smelled faintly of wax and old books, tinged with something floral that had long ago wilted.
Kent threw himself down on one of the couches, reclining into it like a man made for opulence. His gloved hand gestured lazily toward me. "So," he said, smiling with that untroubled calm of his, "you've been touched by the devil?"
I froze. "What?"
He tilted his head, still smiling. "Don't look at me like that. I meant it figuratively. You know, what you did out there wasn't something normal. That's the devil's work, isn't it?"
My jaw tightened. "I haven't been touched by anything," I said sharply. "What the fuck are you even talking about?"
Kent lifted both hands in surrender, the glass tilting slightly in his fingers. "Take it easy. I didn't mean it in a bad way. But come on—what you did out there, that wasn't just sleight of hand. It was alive." His eyes flicked toward the chandelier, catching the light. "People here notice things. You think they don't, but they do."
"What?" My voice rose before I could stop it. "Listen, Kent, I've not been touched by anything, okay? I told you that. And I don't appreciate you spreading bullshit right now." My pulse had quickened; I could feel it in my throat. "God, this is so—"
"So annoying?" Kent finished for me, tone still warm, patient, almost playful. "Take it easy. I'm not going to punish you for speaking like that. I just wanted to know." He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees, eyes narrowing with faint curiosity. "What it feels like to be inhabited by a devil."
I stared at him, incredulous. "I'm not inhabited by anything. Stop saying that weird shit."
He laughed softly, and with that same lazy grace, he patted the space beside him. "All right, all right. Come here. Sit down next to me, please." His voice gentled. "Calm down, all right? I won't talk about devils anymore."
I didn't move.
He smiled again, slower this time, coaxing. "You're talented. Naturally, I mean it. Born with it. I shouldn't have said that other thing. I'm sorry." He patted the cushion again, his eyes glinting under the chandelier. "Come on. Sit. Let's calm the room down."
The light above us flickered, brushing his face with a soft gold that made the red around his eyes look deeper, like something burning low behind glass. I swallowed the bitterness on my tongue, unsure if it was anger or fear—or the sick, slow realization that whatever this man was, he already knew too much.