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through the clusters of people snacking, I caught the slightest glimpse of . . . no, I mean, what was wrong with me? My heart stopped for a moment, and then he was gone. That golden hair, the suit, a drink in his hand. I blinked my eyes, shook out my jumbled head. There were a ton of people here. I was seeing things.
    Dante huddled us up, his back to the crowd as he dug a small tin of mints out of his pocket. “Got something for you guys,” he said. “You’ll thank me.”
    “Should we be offended?” I checked my breath in my palm. It was still pepperminty from brushing my teeth before we left. Lance turned around and did the same thing over his shoulder.
    “No, no, no.” Dante rolled his eyes and opened up the case: three tiny brown leaves, each no bigger than a postage stamp, were nestled inside. “I only have a few of these left from, you know, the Lex. Let them dissolve on your tongue and you can eat whatever you want for the next twenty-four hours and you should be immune to any toxins.” His eyes darted past us, hoping no one heard. He didn’t have to explain. Before the hotel had been destroyed, Dante had pilfered all sorts of mysterious ingredients from the Lexington’s pantry—powerful plants and herbs harvested straight from the underworld.
    “Thanks, man. But, I don’t know, isn’t it a little reckless to use them so soon?” Lance asked what I’d been thinking.
    Dante just shook the tin at us. “There’s no point waiting. We have to play it safe. We’ll figure something out, but let’s try to fit in tonight, whaddya say?”
    I liked that idea. “You convinced me,” I said, taking one of the wispy, translucent leaves in my fingertips. “Laissez les bon temps rouler.” I placed it on my tongue; it tasted like cinnamon and bubbled up then dissolved in a split second. Lance shrugged and did the same thing; Dante took the last leaf, snapping the tin shut.
    “Okay, I don’t care how long that line is, who’s with me?”
    In no time, we had staked out a tall cocktail table where we stood silently tucking into the fiery gumbo. Dante had accumulated a staggering array of plates and little ramekins of other spicy, saucy dishes that he introduced us to: étouffée with its plump little shrimp and clouds of rice; chicken and sausage jambalaya that had a potent kick. Lance had stacked his small plate full of fried pickles and seemed content to eat his weight in those, while I had collected a handful of building-block-size pieces of cornbread.
    After we had consumed it all and camped out in the room with the band to watch them play for a while, then investigated the various species of plant life in the greenhouse, peeked into the scores of first editions and autographed books in the study (“This Mark Twain could pay for college for all three of us,” Lance said, pointing at an open tome inside a locked cabinet), and finally wandered back into the rollicking grand hall at half an hour to midnight, it occurred to me that we had missed the whole point of this occasion.
    “I guess we should be, like, getting to know people, right?” I said, a little embarrassed, food coma setting in. “I mean it’s kind of a mixer.”
    “The only mixers I’m interested in are the ones that go into the virgin hurricanes out there.” Dante flicked his head toward a drink station set up near the French doors leading to the side porch. I grabbed my water-filled wineglass—I was still parched from the spicy selections we’d been scarfing down all night—and we slithered through the crowd to that bustling spot where the fruity signature concoction was being blended by the gallon.
    “I wonder how many liters it takes to quench a crowd this size on New Year’s Eve, taking into account that people are especially in the mood to imbibe, and factoring in the ratio of alcohol drinkers to nondrinkers.” Lance scanned the crowd, wheels turning in his head to compute, thinking, thinking.
    And it hit me again. A flash. I