Read Online Illuminate by Aimee Agresti - Free Book Online Page A

cozying up and carousing. Oil-black stalagmites reached up in huge, menacing cones from the floor. Some were carved hollow, with crushed-velvet-cushioned benches inside for couples to rest their weary feet after dancing or to find other ways to set pulses racing. Stalactites in an array of lengths and widths and girths dangled like giant daggers and slim-fingered claws from the ceiling. Tables and banquettes along the outer periphery were recessed back into the walls and aglow in ruby-hued light.
    But all of this was nothing compared to the detonated dynamite at the center of the room. A circular platform, raised at least ten feet up with a waist-high wall, had been perched atop another of these rock formation–like structures, and was large enough to seat nearly two dozen with its own nook of a bar and room in the center for dancing. The area teemed with Outfit members. You could just watch them for hours, dancing, drinking, draping themselves on each other. And if that wasn’t enough to capture the crowd’s collective attention, there was this, which I saw only after noticing the Outfit members: a low flame burned around the entire circumference.
    “This is probably what hell looks like. Like, in a good way,” Dante said finally, when we had been silent for longer than I realized. The three of us were standing there like we were waiting to get picked for teams in gym.
    “Yeah, not a bad place to visit,” I said.
    “But would you want to live there?” Lance offered.
    “Depends on how the night goes,” I said.
    Dante elbowed me. “This from the girl who didn’t want to go out at all.”
    “I know, I know.” I shook my head. I was all talk.
    “So . . . what now?” Lance said, hands plunged in his pockets, like this was just another day at work.
    “I know,” Dante said, a hint of trouble ringing his voice. I peeled my eyes from the whirlwind swirling around us and looked at him, following his line of vision.
    “No, Dan, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
    He was staring straight at the platform with the Outfit.

5. Welcome to the Ring of Fire
    Let’s just try to go up there,” Dante said. Not waiting for an answer, he took off, a bullet straight to the heart of the room. Lance had taken off his glasses, wiping the lenses on his Cubs shirt, and could only squint in the direction of Dante’s destination.
    “Shall we?” I asked him.
    Lance shrugged and smiled.
    Waves of revelers, drinks in their hands, coursed around me as I darted between them, in and out, almost jogging to catch up to Dante. I looked over my shoulder and caught sight of Lance, glasses back on now, his head peeking out over most everyone else’s. He kept his own easy pace, looking around, taking it all in. Dante was already halfway up a spiral staircase hidden amid the rocky mass leading to the platform.
    “Hey!” I called up from the bottom.
    “What’re you waiting for? Get up here!” he called back, his grin wide and his perfect white teeth gleaming pink in the light.
    I climbed the coiled steps and grabbed for his arm when I got close enough, halting his ascent. He looked back at me with impatient eyes.
    “I know you think I’m no fun, but seriously, do you think we’re allowed up there?”
    “Only one way to tell.” He beamed. “C’mon, where’s your sense of adventure? Honestly, Haven, the worst thing that happens, they say no.” He continued upward and I let go of him.
    He was right; I was making too big a deal of this. We had already gotten into the club, after all, so it didn’t seem anyone was too concerned about our presence here. I followed him twisting up and up and up. I spotted Lance just below; he hooked my eye with a quick smile.
    Steps away from the top, I saw Dante already seated on the black crushed-velvet bench that ran along the rim of the circle. The Outfit members we’d seen earlier danced in the center and gazed out onto the dance floor, making eye contact with some of the partygoers. Dante waved