He lifts an eyebrow. “Jay wouldn’t bring you up here. Not yet.”

“Maybe he would.” I tilt my head, holding his gaze.

“But he didn’t. Which means you’re sneaking around, spying.”

“Spying on what, though?” I move away from the wall, straightening my shoulders. “That’s what I can’t figure out. There’s something going on here.”

“A fantastic party.”

“Something more than that. Nick said you took him to a room to sleep it off because he drank too much. At least, that’s what you told him happened. But I wonder if you might have drugged him instead.”

Cody’s face remains perfectly stoic, nearly expressionless. “You think I’d do something like that?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure. I’d like to think not, because you’re Jay’s friend and he’s a good person. But I don’t know you at all, and I can’t help feeling like you’ve done something to Nick—changed him somehow.”

“Maybe I have,” he says smoothly. “What are you going to do about it?”

Anger churns inside me. My hands clench into fists. “Oh, I’ll think of something.”

“I’d love to see that,” he purrs. “You can’t hurt me, little Daisy Finnegan. I have no idea what Gatsby sees in you. You’re a white bread, milquetoast blond, interchangeable with any number of airheaded twentysomethings. Yet for some reason, no one else will do for him. He only wants you, the boring girl puttering around his room, asking her bland little questions.”

My stomach knots painfully. In my darkest moments, I’ve told myself this is why Tom left me—because I was too boring, too bland, too insipidly cheerful and generically likable, because I didn’t have enough of an edge. I had nothing to make me interesting.

But I know that’s not true. Tom just didn’t take the time to figure out the intricacies of me like Jay did.

I screw my courage tighter and step forward. “White bread, milquetoast blond, huh? Is that the best insult you can come up with? Seriously? I can’t change who I am any more than you can. Should I be ashamed of it, then? Dye my hair? Do something wild so I stand out, so I’m ‘not like other girls’? Jay and I have history, Cody. We know each other—knew each other long before he met you. And I’ll have you know that nobody is boring, because no one is exactly the same as anyone else. We all have different flavors, like…like coffee beans.”

The corner of Cody’s mouth lifts. “Coffee beans?”

“Yeah, you know how they taste different depending on where they grow, and the weather conditions and the soil and whatever… I watched a documentary about coffee beans once. Honestly, I’m no expert so I probably shouldn’t use that analogy, but I think you know what I mean.”

He’s actually smirking now. “So you’re not white bread—you’re coffee beans?”

“Um, maybe?” There’s a smile flickering over my lips too, and the knot in my stomach is loosening. “Listen, I’m sorry for snooping. I just… I haven’t seen him in so long, and he’s changed so much. I guess I was looking for something to explain it. Or maybe something to reassure myself that he’s still the same person.”

Cody sighs, sinking onto the edge of the bed. “He’s still a hopeless romantic, if that’s what you mean. An impossible idealist. And he’s worth more than the whole bloody bunch downstairs, that’s for sure.”

“You can’t know that.” I approach him and lean against the footboard, my fingers curled around the edge. “Each one of those people downstairs has layers and talents that you can’t gauge just by seeing them at an event like this.”

“You’re way too kind to the human race. Like Gatsby.” He stares at me, like he’s trying to perceive my deeper layers. His dark eyes flicker as he leans toward me. “You smell good. What’s your blood type?”

“My blood type?”

“It’s a personality test thing, like your zodiac sign.” He stares at me, unblinking, with an intensity that makes me nervous. Like he’s starting to find me a little too interesting.

“I’m type O.”

“Ah, the leader type. Outgoing, generous, resilient, passionate. You’re loyal, but a little unstable. You can seem careless or selfish at times, but that’s only because you don’t like to think about troubling events, lest they affect you too deeply. And you hate confrontation.”

I grin at him. “You just made up all that crap, didn’t you?”

He splays a hand over his chest. “I would never. It’s pure science.”

After a mutual chuckle, Cody meets my gaze again, with the same curious intensity. “You didn’t say whether you were O positive or negative.”

“Negative.”

“The universal donor. Exquisite.” He breathes the word with relish. “You’ll be a favorite on the blood donation circuit.” He smiles, teeth glinting, and then he closes his lips again, all humor fading from his eyes. His mouth is small and plump, like a rosebud. I can see why Nick likes kissing it.

“Do you know where Nick is?” I ask.

“Hydrating,” Cody says hazily, rising from the bed. He wavers a little.

“Hey, are you okay?” Instinctively I reach out to steady him.

His eyes flash to mine, and their depths are swirled with white, like cream drizzled into a cup of dark chocolate. His upper lip looks thicker now, swollen or something. He runs a finger along the bracelet on his wrist, and it flashes briefly yellow.

“I need to find Nick.” He sways, turning his face aside, staggering toward the door. His breathing is frantic and shallow.

“Okay. Okay, we’ll find Nick. But first, Cody, you need to calm down.” He’s scaring me. And the only thing I can think of to calm him, to help him, is to go to that place—to use that special tone of mine, the one everyone says is so musical, so persuasive. My voice lowers into its familiar timbre, like a guitar player shifting into a deeper chord. “Take a breath and relax.”

Cody instantly draws a huge breath, and his shoulders sag as if the tension is draining from his body.

His immediate reaction clinches it, cements my vague suspicions, flashes through me like lightning. I can’t deny it anymore. There’s something different about me. About my voice. “Okay. Good,” I tell Cody. “Now another breath—and you should, like, blink or something.”

He inhales, blinking several times.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” I say softly. “Now we’ll go find Nick, all right?”

“All right,” he echoes.

He’s calm now, and the weird thing with his eyes is gone. Maybe I imagined it? But he still isn’t acting like himself. He went from verbally sparring with me to almost liking me, and then there was that moment where he looked way too intense. And now he’s all glassy-eyed, like a zombie, following meekly behind me as we head down the hall. He’s behaving the same way that guy with the cocktail did, when I used “the tone” on him. Dazed and compliant.

It reminds me of the stories my dad sometimes tells about my grandmother. He doesn’t like talking about her career, because as a man devoted to science and logic, it embarrasses him. She was a medium, a mentalist, and a hypnotist—fairly well known in certain circles. She went on tour a few times, and she had a shop where she read tarot cards and held séances. She could hypnotize people, put them into a suggestible state and make them perform tasks. She even won some awards for her skills as a mentalist.

I’ve often wished she had lived longer. I only remember a few conversations with her—a handful of gifts I still cherish. She died when I was seven, and yet I’ve always felt more connected to her than to my mom’s parents.

Years ago, after one of Dad’s stories about her, I watched a documentary on hypnotism, and from what I saw, hypnotism and mentalism aren’t inherited gifts. They have to be learned and practiced, like anything else. It seems silly to think that I could have hypnotized Cody without meaning to. Although according to the documentary, certain sounds and vocal rhythms can affect brain waves, making a person more docile and suggestible.

There’s only one way to find out if I have inadvertently hypnotized my cousin’s boyfriend. If Jay were here, he’d want to do the scientific thing and devise some tests of this phenomenon. Experimentation to confirm theories.

“Cody,” I say quietly. “Pat your head.”

And he fucking does it.

Okay.

This doesn’t mean it’s hypnotism. Maybe he’s messing with me.