She didn't hear Zane's response.
The lurker had appeared again — across the crowded spire, standing still and staring straight at her. The mask's flashing eyes seemed to acknowledge her gaze for a moment, then the figure turned and slipped among the white coats of the costumed Pretty Committee, disappearing behind their giant facegraphs of every major pretty type. And even though Tally realized it was a bogus thing to do, she pushed away from Zane and through the crowd, because there was no way she could pull herself together tonight until she found out who this person was, Crim or Special or random new pretty. She had to know why someone was throwing Special Circumstances in her face.
Tally dodged between white coats and bounced like a pinball through a clique all dressed in fat-suits, their softly padded bellies spinning her in circles. She bowled over most of a hockey team, who wobbled on their slippy hoverskates like littlies. Glimpses of gray silk teased Tally from just ahead as she ran, but the crowd was thick and in frantic motion, and by the time she reached the central column of the spire, the figure had disappeared.
Glancing at the lights above the elevator door, she saw that it was on its way up, not down. The fake Special was still around, somewhere in the spire.
Then Tally noticed the door to the emergency stairs, bright red and plastered with warnings that an alarm would sound if you opened it. She looked around again — still no gray figure. Whoever it was had to have escaped down the stairs. Alarms could be switched off; she'd pulled that trick herself a million times as an ugly.
Tally reached out toward the door, her hand shaking. If a siren started blaring, everyone would be staring at her and whispering as the wardens arrived and evacuated the tower. It would be a really bubbly end to her career as a Crim.
Some Crim, she thought. She'd be a pretty bogus criminal if she couldn't set off an alarm every once in a while.
She pushed the door open. It didn't make a sound.
Tally stepped into the stairwell. The door closed behind her, muffling the tumult of the party. In the sudden quiet, she could feel her heart pounding in her chest and hear her own breath, still ragged from the chase. The beat of the music seemed to leak under the door, making the concrete floor shudder.
The figure sat on the stairs, a few steps up. "You made it." It was a boy's voice, indistinct behind the mask.
"Made it where? This party?"
"No, Tally. Through the door."
"It wasn't exactly locked." She tried to stare her way through the jeweled eyes of the mask. "Who are you?"
"You don't recognize me?" He sounded genuinely puzzled, as if he were an old friend, someone who wore a mask all the time. "What do I look like?"
Tally swallowed and said softly, "Special Circumstances."
"Good. You remember." Tally could hear the smile in his voice. He was talking slowly and carefully, as if she were some kind of idiot.
"Of course I remember. Are you one of them? Do I know you?" Tally couldn't recall any individual Specials; in her memory, their faces all ran together into one cruel and pretty blur.
"Why don't you take a look?" The figure didn't move to take off his mask. "Go ahead, Tally."
Suddenly, she realized what was going on here. Recognizing what the costume meant, chasing him across the party, braving the alarmed door — all of it had been a test. Some kind of recruitment. He was sitting there wondering if she would dare pull off his mask.
Tally was sick of tests. "Just stay away from me," she said.
"Tally—" "I don't want to work for Special Circumstances. I just want to live here in New Pretty Town."
"I'm not—" "Leave me alone!" she shouted, clenching her fists. The cry echoed off the concrete walls, leaving a moment of silence, as if it had surprised them both. The music from the party drifted through the stairwell, muffled and timid.
Finally, a sigh came through the mask, and he held up a crude leather pouch. "I have something for you. If you're ready for it. Do you want it, Tally?"
"I don't want anything from …" Tally's voice trailed off. Soft shuffling sounds came from below them. Not the party. Someone was coming up the stairs.
The two of them moved at the same time, peering over the handrail down the narrow stairwell shaft. A long way down, Tally saw flashes of gray silk and hands grasping the rails, half a dozen people climbing the stairs incredibly fast, their footsteps barely audible over the muffled music.
"See you later," the figure said, standing.
Tally blinked. He pushed her aside, spooked by the sight of real Specials. So who was he? Before his fingers reached the doorknob, Tally snatched the mask from his face.
He was an ugly. A real ugly.
His face was nothing like the costumed fatties done up for the bash, with their big noses or squinty eyes. It wasn't just exaggerated features that made him different; it was everything, as if he were made of some utterly different substance. In those seconds, Tally's pretty-perfect eyesight caught every gaping pore, the random tangles in his hair, the crude imbalance of his disjointed face. Her skin crawled at his imperfections, the tufts of teenage beard, his unsurged teeth, the eruptions on his forehead screaming out disease. She wanted to pull away to put distance between herself and his unlucky unclean, unhealthy ugliness.
But somehow she knew his name…
"Croy?" she said.
"Later, Tally," Croy said, snatching back his mask. He yanked open the door, and the noise of the party rushed into the stairwell as he darted through, the gray silk of his costume disappearing into the crowd.
Tally just stood there as the door swung closed again, too stunned to move. Like her old sweater, she'd remembered ugliness all wrong: Cray's face was much worse than her mental image of the Smokies. His crooked smile, his dull eyes, the way his sweating skin carried angry red marks where the mask had pressed against it…
But then the door slammed itself shut, and among the echoes Tally heard the footsteps still climbing toward her, real Specials on their way up, and for the first time all day, a clear thought went through her head.
Run.
She pulled open the door and plunged into the crowd.
The elevator was just spilling open, and Tally stumbled into a clique of Naturals plastered with brittle leaves, walking last days of autumn who shed yellows and reds as she shoved through them. She managed to keep her footing— the floor was sticky with spilled champagne — and caught another glimpse of the gray silk.
Croy was headed toward the balcony and the Crims.
She tore after him. Tally didn't want anyone lurking her, panicking her at parties, tangling her memories when she needed to be bubbly. She had to catch Croy and tell him never to follow her again.
This wasn't Uglyville or the Smoke — he had no right to be here. He had no business stepping out of her ugly past.
And there was another reason she was running: the Specials. It had only taken a glimpse of them to put every cell in her body on high alert. Their inhuman speed repelled her, like watching a cockroach skitter across a plate. Croy's movements might have seemed unusual, his Smokey confidence standing out in a party full of new pretties, but the Specials were another species altogether.
Tally burst out onto the balcony just in time to see Croy leap up onto the rail, waving his arms for a precarious moment. Then he got his balance, bent his knees, and pushed off into the night.
She ran to the spot and leaned over. Croy was tumbling downward out of sight, his form swallowed by the darkness below. After a sickening moment he reappeared, head over heels, gray silk catching the light of fireworks as he hover-bounced toward the river.
Zane stood beside her, looking down. "Hmm, the invitation didn't say 'bungee jackets required,'" he murmured. "Who was that, Tally?"
She opened her mouth, but an alarm began to howl.
Tally spun around and saw the crowd parting. The group of Specials were pouring through the stairwell door, slicing their way through confused new pretties. Their cruel faces weren't costumes any more than Cray's ugliness had been, and they were just as shocking to look at. The wolflike eyes sent a chill through Tally, and their advance, as purposeful and dangerous as a hunting cat's, made her body scream to keep running.
At the other end of the balcony she saw Peris, standing frozen next to the rail, awestruck by the spectacle. His safety sparklers were sputtering out at last, but the light on his bungee jacket collar glowed bright green.
Tally pushed toward him through the other Crims, judging the angles, knowing exactly when to jump. For a moment, the world became strangely clear, as if the sight of Cray's ugliness and the cruel-pretty Specials had removed some barrier between her and the world. Everything was bright and harsh, the details so sharp that Tally squinted as if dashing into a freezing wind.
She hit Peris just right, her arms wrapping around his shoulders, her momentum lifting both of them up and over the balcony railing. They tumbled out of the light and into blackness, Peris's costume flaring up one last time in the wind of their descent, the safety sparks bouncing from her face as cool as snowflakes.