by Apollo Blake
She grinned at us. “Ready to party?”
“Sure.”
“Hell yeah!” Riley laughed and gave her cousin a fist bump.
I rolled my eyes.
Penn looked exactly like an older version of Riley. Well, minus the purple hair. Hers was still its natural black, though she’d cropped it short and kept the sharp, choppy strands tucked behind her ears.
Penn did parkour in her free time, and she was kind of built. When your idea of fun was running around the city climbing the exteriors of buildings and bolting over things, you tended to develop some muscle mass. Her compact frame was lithe and spoke of a strength that she didn’t show off much, but as Riley’s best friend, I’d had a front row seat to enough of the rare moments where Penn displayed her sheer skill and grace that I was a bit in awe of her.
I would never admit that, though—I doubt she would ever let me forget it. She acted as if she were Riley’s older sister, and by extension, mine.
I doubted her idea of partying was the same as ours.
But really, she was too smart (and knew me too well) to try keeping me out of trouble. It followed me like a creepy, heartbroken ex with boundary issues.
“Took you long enough,” I said.
“I know, I know. I had to finish something up with Jackson. But come on in.” She threw the door wide, revealing a tiny room like an antechamber where a muscular bouncer sat behind her on a stool next to a small flight of stairs.
He nodded at us nonchalantly as we followed her in, but didn’t speak. For a second the tattoos trailing up and down his arms seemed luminous, but I couldn’t see closely enough to be sure. Some kind of glow-in-the-dark ink, maybe? When I blinked and looked again, they looked like plain, dull whorls of black ink, no trace of light. We left him behind, following Penn up the flight of cement steps.
“Jackson will be ready to see you soon. Until then, you two relax and enjoy yourselves. But don’t go too far, I’ll be back to find you before you know it. Drinks are on the house Sky.”
Penn took Riley’s coat from her as she led us to a set of glass doors with black-tinted glass. We stepped after her, and suddenly we were in another world.
Lights and pumping blood and the thrill of blasting music, flooding over my head and pulling me under, a glorious drowning.
The interior of Temptation was a sanctuary against the cold outside. The club was a furnace, heat filling the air like a solid thing. The massive room was dark, and packed with writhing, twisting bodies. The dance floor was a mess of bobbing heads and gyrating hips, like something out of a Renaissance painting turned techno. I felt something bursting with life jitter through my chest and hum in my bloodstream.
The entire first floor of the building had been gutted and turned into what was without argument the fanciest nightclub Saint John had ever seen. It was what the strip joint around the corner wished it could be.
Indigo and emerald lights flashed and swung over the dancing crowd, turning everything into a blur of neon shades and bursts of light and movement. Around the edges of the huge room, suede sectional couches formed little bubbles of intimacy—groups of friends talking and toasting, couples curling into each other, nursing drinks. Behind a bar that stretched nearly the entire length of the room, a massive screen fixed to the wall flashed with images of blurs of colour darting around each other in time to the pounding nu-disco music that tore over everything, emanating from the sunken DJ pit in the middle of the dance floor.
I froze where we stood looking out over the packed sea of bodies, and felt adrenaline and anticipation rush through me. I was gone someplace else inside my mind now, riding the energy of the crowd. No Mom or rent or life, just this.
Colour and sound and a bar calling my name.
But there was also something else, something unfamiliar that I couldn’t place. It raced through my body, my fingers clenching and unclenching at my sides.
“The place is packed?” Riley frowned at her cousin. “But there was no line outside. What th—”
“Later, kiddos.” Penn shot us an amused smile before she drifted off, swallowed up by the single living organism that was the crowd.
As I followed her with my eyes, my gaze caught on a tiny Korean girl standing nearby at the edge of the dance floor. Her black hair looked like ink spilling over her shoulders. She flashed me a smile (there was something off about her teeth, like they were crooked or bulged awkwardly) then turned and melted into the crowd.
“I’m not old enough to drink,” Riley said.
She wasn’t on her phone for once—a practical miracle—since she’d left it in her jacket pocket when Penn took it, and she was gazing at the rows of bottles lining the glass shelves behind the bar with a longing slant to her eyes.
I smiled, momentary strangeness left unspoken where it belonged.
The legal drinking age in New Brunswick is nineteen, so while I was in the clear, Riley had two more months until her birthday. Not that that had ever stopped either of us. Or, honestly, anybody else.
People think Canada is really wholesome for some reason. That it’s all quaint cheer and sunshine and rainbows and everyone is one-hundred-percent politically correct all the time. But it’s not Oz, and you won’t catch my ass skipping down the yellow brick road anytime soon. I don’t have the energy, or the patience, to be wholesome.
Why milk the cows when you could be tripping on meth in a trailer behind the barn, you know? We’re all addicted to one kind of escape or another.
Not that I was into meth, or anything.
I tried to keep my escapes on the non-lethal end of the spectrum.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I’ll order extra.”
“I knew you were a true friend.”
“Skirting the law until the end.”
“You’re too pretty for a life of crime,” she said.
“True, but someone’s gotta do it.”
I stepped forward, ready to be absorbed by the lights and the noise, and Riley followed at my heels. Her sleek purple strands fit right in here.
We wove through the packed club, swaying with the rhythm and the people and the energy that hung in the air and clung to the lights. This was a magical kind of claustrophobia—flashes of perfume and sweat and the sharp, sickeningly sweet tang of alcohol, elbows bumping my arms, shoulders brushing mine, skin on skin, on leather and velvet. It was like we all merged into one living thing, moving together, feeding on music and intoxication.
See? Escape, on the non-lethal end of of the spectrum. Perfection.
Riley laughed behind me, a sound that was practically inaudible compared to the sharp beat. The walls and corners were packed with enormous speakers, wires snaking over the walls and cording around corners, all connected to each other and thumping with bass like a heartbeat. As if the entire club was some living creature and we were dancing around inside it to the sounds of its organs pumping blood with a sick hook and a killer chorus. It was scary, in a good way.
Coming out tonight I’d had no idea what to expect, but the proposed payoff was too much to ignore. It meant an escape, freedom, so many things I’d dreamt of, and for how long?
This, though, hadn’t factored into my plans.
The more and more I saw, the more enticing the prospect seemed. This Jackson guy hadn’t been bluffing with his offer—he was clearly good for it. As rich as Riley had said, or maybe more. Probably more.
I had a feeling this job wasn’t going to be like the others I’d done, all cheating spouses and lying kids.
What have I gotten into? I needed a drink. Vodka first, thinking second.
The bar was a tall slab of gleaming white plastic and glass that stood at chest-height, and every stool was taken. I grabbed Riley by the arm and pulled her behind me as I squeezed into a tiny empty space between two groups of people.
“Hey there,” the bartender said. His eyes flashed pure molten silver for a second—I looked again, and they were normal. A flat, boring brown. “You the little
liesmith?”
“Huh?” I was barely listening. Was it a trick of the light?
“You’re the walking lie detector.”
“That’s me,” I said, and Riley nudged me. “Vodka and Red Bull. Two of ‘em, thanks.”
He started on our drinks and I focused on his eyes, but they stayed ordinary brown—nearly black in the pulsing lights. Not a lick of silver.
Was I tripping or something?
Beside me, Riley was bobbing to the music, totally kid in a candy store about it. I didn’t blame her—our usual drinking spot was a dive on Canterbury called Jetstreams, where the owner slash bartender Kelly was just as likely to slap you upside the head as she was to pour you a drink. Bonus points if she actually gave it to you, since she had a stronger taste for the elixir of life than most of her customers.
“You okay?” Riley asked.
“Probably not, but what else is new?”
“I’m serious.”
I smirked. “Wow. That is a new one.”
Silver Eyes placed our drinks in front of us and moved down the bar, and Riley took a sip before speaking again. “So, are you gonna take the job?” She’d given her coat to Penn when we came in, and she was adjusting the hem of her sparkly black tank and shooting looks at a guy down the bar while we talked. “I heard it pays well.”
“That it does.”
Fifteen grand for one job. Usually an hour of my time cost a hundred bucks, and this dude was going to hand over ten grand for. . . .
For what?
“So that’s that,” Riley said. She blew a kiss at the guy, and he looked like he might faint. “It’s not like you can afford to pass it up.”
I smirked at her. To be fair, I’d usually be making eyes at someone at this point too. But something felt off about the place. Or I was just being fucking weird. Which, granted, is my thing. Basket full of crazy. As exciting as every inch of the club had been so far, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to party here—let alone work for the guy who owned the place. The heat pressed down on us as heavily as the music, and I could see Riley was bursting at the seams to get out on the dance floor, fingers drumming on the bar top, head bobbing.
I took a long drink and tipped my head back, trying to breathe. “You can go dance if you want, I’m gonna find Penn and figure out what I can about her boss.”
“No way.” She grabbed my arm as I turned to go. “She said she’d be back in a minute, and if we get separated in here it will take forever to find each other. If I can’t get laid tonight I need someone to hang out with.”
“So you’re using me?”
“Yes. You’re my backup bitch.”
“Flattered.”
“You should be,” she said.
She was right. Ninety-percent of the boys in our graduating class would have killed to be her wingman. Not that I’d actually made it to the ceremony, or the diploma.
My ability made it kind of impossible to interact with that many people every day, surrounded by their millions of tiny lies.
“What happened to that guy from work?” Riley’s dream might have been to become a journalist, but so far the only career she’d managed to kickstart was one as the assistant manager of the drugstore in the North End plaza.
“Please never mention that again.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He called me” —she shuddered— “he called me his chocolate sundae.”
I choked on my drink. “Ew. So you dumped him?”
“I told him I was having some confusing thoughts about girls and I needed some space to think.”
“You didn’t.”
Riley was about to speak again, and suddenly Penn was beside us, tapping me on the elbow. “Jackson is finishing something up. He’ll meet you in his office in a minute or so. I’ll take you down.”
“Wait,” Riley said. She downed the rest of her drink—earning both me and herself a scrutinizing look from Penn—and set down her empty glass with a grin. “Now we can go.”
“After you, Princess.”
We trailed after Penn as she cut a path through the densely packed bodies. She led us along the edge of the long room, passing through an unmarked door around the corner of the bar. I stepped through, and as it closed behind us with a muffled thud, we were suddenly left in a thick silence. The concrete walls blocked most of the sound from the main room, and though I could still feel the bass from the music pounding, the beat and the chaotic din of conversation were both muted.
We were in a long, thin hallway with whitewashed cinder block walls and high ceilings. A few steel doors painted in different neon hues lined the corridor, all closed, but we didn’t enter any of them.
Instead, Penn led us around the corner and down a steep flight of stairs. As were were going down the air changed, and I felt my eyes open wider, my thoughts become sharper. Like I was sobering up, except I hadn’t even drunk enough to get buzzed. I had a high tolerance for alcohol, and with the change whatever slight sense of ease I’d worked up upstairs was gone. Maybe it was the temperature down here? At the end of the downstairs hall was an open door, painted fire engine red, that led into an office.
“I left your coat in here, Ri.”
“I’m freezing,” Riley said, and made a beeline for her coat the minute Penn closed the door. It was tossed onto the end of a sectional couch that wrapped around one of the corners, and she pulled it on and sank onto the couch. She had her phone out in an instant.
I surveyed my surroundings.
The office was mostly empty of furniture. The walls were the same white brick as the hallway, and a bookshelf was pushed against the wall near the door, overflowing with novels, fat binders, and decorations like masks and little statuettes. A few filing cabinets rested against the same wall as the door, and a massive stainless steel table served as a desk, a computer and a messy stack of papers crowding the surface.
Next to the desk was a metal cart on wheels, like the type a surgeon would keep beside their operating table, but it was full of half-drained booze bottles. It looked like Mom’s nightstand, but less low-rent.
I sat down in one of the chairs before the desk, ready to get this over with. My nerves were like cigar tips, sizzling and burning.
I hadn’t told Melissa about this meeting. If I got this job, she wouldn’t see a penny of the money. I would use it to escape her house and this life, this constant, forced use of my ability just to live day to day.
I would be able to paint all the time—at least for a while, a few months. A year, if I budgeted right, and if moving didn’t cost too much. I would leave everything behind and start over with just the clothes on my back, as long as I knew I would have a roof over my head when I got wherever the hell I was going. Probably Vancouver.
I wanted out of this city. Needed distance between me and my mother.
Distance between me and life.
I had no idea what Jackson was like or what he wanted me to use my powers for, but he wasn’t going to walk into this room and think I was some pushover who would do anything he wanted if he just waved a couple dollar signs in my face.
Because I totally was going to do whatever he wanted me to. He’d waved much more than a couple dollar signs in my face. He held out my freedom in the palm of his hand, ripe for the taking.
But he didn’t need to know that. If he knew I needed this he would be harder to talk down to.
It took nearly fifteen minutes, but soon there was noise in the hall, and the door burst open. The guy that strode in looked only a few years older than us, true to form, and I knew the minute his bright blue eyes met mine that he was trouble. His sandy hair was pushed back from his deeply tanned, deeply freckled, angular face. Jackson was tall and lean. He wore a faded black T-shirt that read Can’t You Tell I’m A Trophy Wife? in bright pink cursive. Something about him reminded me of a fox.
“Penn,” he said, without so much as a nod at us. “Roll over the cart, would you?”
Penn was there with the li
quor cart in seconds. Jackson sank into his chair, swiped a bottle of whiskey off the tray, and stared at me.
His eyes went past me to Riley, then moved back to me.
Then they widened a fraction of an inch, moved very, very slowly back to Riley, and stayed there. See this: straight boy with the job offer checking out my bombshell best friend.
Typical.
Before I could reclaim his attention, someone else walked into the room, and the words died in my throat.
Following Jackson into the office was one of the biggest guys I’d ever seen. He towered over everyone here, easily 6’3 to my minuscule 5’6, broad-shouldered and muscular. He was pale, but his eyes and hair were both dark, nearly black, creating a startling contrast. His gaze met mine for a second as he entered, then flicked away. He leaned against the wall near the door and stayed there. The colour of his hoodie made me think of blood for a moment, and for some reason I had to squeeze my eyes shut to stave off a swell of nausea. The backs of my eyelids were red against the light, which was worse, and I blinked them open again to find the fox watching me curiously.
