We Set the Dark on Fire (We Set the Dark on Fire, #1)(28)

Jasmín’s se?ora. Dani made a note of her dress—a dark red—and her hairstyle—a tasteful knot at the nape of her neck. She’d have to keep an eye on Se?ora Reyes and her daughter once Jasmín arrived. Whatever Sota had said of her, Dani knew better than to think a Primera would ever discuss something like this with a Segunda—even if the one in question happened to be her mama.

“Daniela was the top of her class at the Medio School for Girls,” Mateo said to their hostess. “Highest marks in every subject. Her headmatron said she’d never seen someone so determined in all her years of teaching.” Dani smiled at him, accepting the compliment, though she knew it was meant more for himself than her.

Once she’d been introduced around, Dani took her leave from her husband, approaching a pair of Primeras at the appetizer table to make some friendly small talk until the remaining guests arrived.

But she hadn’t made it halfway across the room when she heard it: that wind-chime voice so familiar from her first four years at school. The young Se?or Flores had arrived, Jasmín beside him, and Dani was no longer a guest at this party, but an enemy.

She’d only have to make sure no one knew it but her.

“Daniela!” Jasmín exclaimed the moment she spotted her. “Oh, Rodolfo, this is my old friend and roommate from school, the one I told you about!”

Dani smiled as warmly as was appropriate, greeting Jasmín with a kiss near her cheek and her husband with a deferential nod. “It’s lovely to see you,” she said when Rodolfo Flores had been swept away. “It’s only been a year, but it must seem like much longer to you.”

“A lifetime,” agreed Jasmín, who couldn’t have been aware that Dani was searching her for tension around the eyes, a falseness in her tone, anything to indicate she had something to hide. “But then again, it’s like no time at all. You haven’t changed a bit, Dani!”

“Neither have you,” she said with a smile, but she didn’t let her awareness falter. Did Jasmín’s eyes suspiciously dart toward her se?ora? Did she seem eager to end this conversation—perhaps sneak into an alcove for a secret confession?

“Well, I should say hello to the others,” said Jasmín, when the silence stretched a beat too long. “So glad we’ll be seeing more of each other. And congrats on the catch.” She winked in Mateo’s direction before squeezing Dani’s shoulder and winding into the crowd.

When Jasmín was gone, Dani realized her heart was racing, her palms sweating slightly against the slippery folds of her dress. Primera training had covered the repression and masking of emotion, but their exercises had never included a secret as big as this one.

She needed to get it together, and soon. They would be sitting down to dinner in a few minutes, and there would be eyes on her. Judging her worthiness to occupy the seat beside Mateo.

“Excuse me,” she asked a Primera whose name she’d uncharacteristically forgotten. “Can you point me toward a washroom?”

“Through there, second door on the right,” said the older girl, pointing, and Dani smiled in genuine gratitude, slipping into the hallway before she could be stopped again, opening the washroom door with fingers that trembled on the handle.

Get it together, Vargas, she told her reflection, the mirror set in a mosaic of glinting black stones and glittering tin pieces. Within the frame, Dani looked pale and frightened, moments from disappearing under the weight of all her lies.

Beneath it all was a moment captured in her memory like a photograph: Jasmín, the night of her graduation just over a year ago, dizzy with drink from the Segundas’ legendary last-night party. She’d been loose and smiling, drunk on her own triumph as much as the rose wine. On the window seat, the full moon making a halo of her hair, she’d tipped back her head and laughed. A child’s laugh. A simple, joyful sound.

This is it, she’d told Dani in a voice like silk and smoke. This is the moment my life begins.

And now Dani was going to try to take it all away from her.

The wine she’d had when she arrived tossed in her stomach like an angry sea. She couldn’t do this. What would spying on Jasmín really do for the children starving across the wall? This was Sota’s agenda, not hers. Did she even trust him to know what was right?

She would tell him he’d been mistaken. That Jasmín had never been alone with either woman. He wasn’t here himself; how would he ever know? If she wanted to make change, she would find her own way.

Taking a fortifying breath that expanded her lungs to the point of bursting, Dani smiled at herself once in the mirror, just to make sure it looked natural. She was back to herself. Stone and ice. In control.

Before she could fully open the door, however, Dani stopped. There were voices coming from the dimly lit hallway outside.

“What is this about?” asked a gruff voice.

A second voice. A whisper of wind chimes. One she recognized right away. “I’m sorry, but it can’t wait. Not anymore.”

“Make it quick, then,” snapped Se?ora Reyes, and Dani thought she could feel the air in the hallway thin as Jasmín steeled herself for what was next.

“I’m in trouble,” she said. “I need your help.”

Another pause. No answer from her se?ora.

Stop them, Dani beseeched the goddess of secrets and shadows. Move them into another room where I can’t follow.