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Even now, standing in this frigid line, with people pressing around us on all sides, I still felt mildly anxious. They had no idea how different our lives were, and maybe they were lucky for it.

They also had no idea that there were two of us in the line with them, and with this being Max’s first outing I could only imagine he was struggling with the same thoughts I once had.

We were surrounded by people. Many of them smelled good and looked good. For a few of them, After Dark wasn’t their first club of the night. Some of them were already well on the way to being drunk, shouting their talking points at the person standing next to them because they had limited control over their voices.

I watched them, listened to them, overheard their conversations. Max was doing the same, only his eyes were a lot wider than mine were. He looked almost afraid to move, like a deer in headlights. It fell to me to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

I placed my hand on his shoulder. “Are you alright?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “This is just a little surreal.”

“They’re just people, Max.”

“I know, but mom and dad?—”

“—they like to exaggerate so they can keep us under their thumbs. Family above all, and all that.”

“Family does come above all else.”

“Right,” I nodded, “Exactly. That’s why I’m here with you right now, on your birthday, trying to give you the best night of your life.”

A drunk girl staggered and bumped into Max. He got a little jostled, but he managed to stay upright. When the girl spilled all over him and laughed her apology, he looked like he didn’t know what to do with himself. When she ran her hand over his stubbly beard and called him cute, it was like he was screaming help me with his eyes.

I left him to it, grinning at him while the girl righted herself and went back to her group of equally drunk friends.

“I think she likes you,” I said.

“I think she may have thrown up on me a little,” he said.

I shook my head. “We need to get you to loosen up, but this line is taking forever.”

There was one bouncer at the front door, and a ton of people between me and him. At this rate, we wouldn’t get in until the wee hours, and we needed to be back at the mansion way before then if we wanted our little excursion to remain undetected.

I scanned the faces of the people around me. No one was paying me much attention except Max.

“Oh no,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“I know that look.”

“What look?”

“The—I’m about to use magic—look,” he hissed. “You can’t! There’s too many people around.”

“I have an idea.”

“An idea for what? We can just wait in line, Bee.”

“Just follow my lead.”

I grabbed Max’s hand and pulled us both out of the line. Confidently, I walked right past it, heading straight for the bouncer with the tablet by the door. I ran a hand through my hair, shook it out, and roused the power inside of myself to attract his attention. In an instant, his eyes were on me, watching me as I made my way toward him.

I wanted him to look at me and believe he was about to come face to face with someone important, someone he probably shouldn’t put too many obstacles in front of. It was a simple bit of magic, nothing fancy, or terribly overt, but the presence of so many humans made things a little complicated.

I wasn’t sure why, but the more humans were around, the harder it was for a mage to use their magic. There were a few factors involved, namely how loud or how covert a piece of magic was. If you could keep your spells subtle, and quiet, they generally worked, even in big crowds.

Influencing the minds of a handful of people wasn’t too difficult—hurling a fireball down a busy main street was more problematic.