Free Let Me Go by Chelsea Cain Page A

river. Their last names were on buildings downtown, on wings at the museum; they served on boards and went through acrimonious divorces. She hadn’t seen so many of them in one place since she’d covered the opera one year when she’d worked at the Herald .
    She probably knew other people there, too, but who could tell with all the masks? Portland was a small city, and if you knew anyone at all, chances were you knew some of the people they knew. It was the kind of town where you could show up at a party thinking you’d know no one, and end up seeing five of your closest friends and a few people you’d been hoping never to see again.
    It was kind of a relief to be wearing a mask. She didn’t have to pretend to know anyone. She didn’t have to make small talk. She was anonymous.
    Susan took a tartine from a painted lady and huddled next to one of the propane outdoor heaters that were stationed throughout the yard. Her elbow was getting stiff from holding the mask in place. She still hadn’t seen Leo. She’d texted him four more times since she’d gotten to the party, and he had yet to respond.
    She took another tartine from a passing tray, stuffed it in her mouth, and negotiated sideways past an approaching group of laughing couples. It was still early, but everyone seemed a little drunk already. The paths were clotted with slow-moving guests, too caught up in the ambience or their own conversation to remember if they had a destination. The masks with feathers shed, and the feathers floated in the air like maple keys and colored the path with splashes of black and purple and green. Susan darted past the other guests, beads of gravel crunching under her feet. She navigated around everyone expertly, pivoting and dodging and skittering, occasionally offering an apologetic shrug or a half-swallowed “Excuse me.” She pretended she was trying to get somewhere, to find someone; that she was late. She pretended she was hurrying along a subway platform. All the while, she kept the mask in place, her elbow crooked at a ninety-degree angle, the wand in her fist. She zigged and zagged down the crowded path, past another bar, behind the Charlie Chaplin movie, and down some slate stairs that led to a pool. The pool was a dark green luminous rectangle carved into a stone patio that opened onto the river. LED orbs the size of softballs floated on the pool’s surface, pulsing through a rainbow of colors. The stairs were lit with discreet accent lights, and lampposts stood sentry around the pool and lake embankment, but the landscaping around the patio was dark.
    Susan took the stairs two at a time and ran across the stone pool deck to where the paving stones gave way to a wall of trees. She stopped short as she glanced up at one of the bronze lampposts. Squatted on top of the lamp, wings outstretched, was a grinning bronze gargoyle. The cognac-like glow of the lamp’s antiqued glass gave the gargoyle’s eyes a mad gleam. Susan stepped off the patio and backed against the trees into the darkness. She was alone. She could hear the lake lapping against the shore, and, farther away, up the hill, the sounds of music and laughter. Across a half mile of black water, she could see the lights of other houses, just visible through the conifers that surrounded the lake. The night sky was high and hard, like even the stars wanted to keep their distance. Gargoyles squatted on lampposts all around her, like a murder of crows.
    It was cold by the lake, and Susan’s skin hummed from the chill. A few fall leaves, caught in the wind, scratched along the patio, and then finally flitted into the pool and were still. Susan lowered her mask and pressed herself against a tree trunk, hoping it would hide her silhouette.
    She kept her eyes on the stairs.
    Sure enough, he came.
    He had been following her through the party, always at the edges of her peripheral vision. Someone else might not have noticed.