"You've never been to a ball, Izzy dear? Oh! You must come with me then!"
And so it came to pass that Izzy sat at the bar, looking warily into a glass of punch. Actually that would have been skipping over a few steps and a few reasons why he hadn't just left already. After hours a few days earlier, one of the shop girls had been talking very excitedly about some ball and some boy she was going to meet there and how he was so utterly charming and oh how lovely it was all going to be. Izzy had found himself in this conversation, and somehow had ended up mentioning that he'd never been to a ball in his life, hence the quote.
She'd offered to let him escort her, and promised to introduce him to her friends, since she was absolutely sure they would love him. As it turned out, all but the last came though, since he found himself on the edge of a conversation he really couldn't follow within five minutes of getting there. He'd managed to slip away without anyone noticing.
Things had taken an interesting (though certainly not good) turn when he discovered that there was a vampire here as well. In fact, there were probably a few. They were like mice that way. It was particularly irritating since he hadn't brought anything to dispatch them with, and even if he had, he a) had nowhere to put the bodies and b) he got the feeling it wouldn't go over well with whomever owned the hall. The best thing for him to do, he supposed, would be to track the one he'd found and see if he could find the others.
This was a difficult thing in a dimly lit with a lot of people wearing masks (albeit half-masks). He quickly lost track of the vampire, cursed in a very ungentlemanly fashion, and went to get a drink. Unfortunately, the punch seemed to be the only thing that was free, and he had his unreasonable misgivings about it.