The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again

by A. C. Wise

  “I’ve got to run, but same time next month?” Butch asks.

  CeCe nods, pulling off her mask and gloves, and running fingers through her sweat-damp hair. “Same time next month.”

  She tries to hide the note of disappointment in her voice. She was hoping Butch would suggest a drink, or even another match. Despite the burn in her muscles, CeCe could go again. She considers looking for another partner, but even another round of parry, riposte, lunge, and feint would only be a delaying tactic. Eventually she will have to go back to her apartment, where she will inevitably think about Madeline and their fight.

  To hell with it, CeCe thinks. She’s not going to spend her nights slinking around; she’s going to face the music. At home, she showers and dresses in her finest. Wine-red velvet tonight, sharp as blood. When every line of her pocket square is precise and crisp and her shoes are buffed to a high shine, CeCe heads back to the Midnight Café. She’s no whipped dog to run scared with her tail tucked between her legs after one little fight.

  She slides into her usual seat at the bar, cool as ever, consciously keeping her leg from jiggling or her fingers from drumming on the bar. She doesn’t smoke her cigarettes any faster than usual, or gulp her drink, and she definitely does not look at the vintage art-deco pocket watch with its glittering silver fob chain.

  The Elysian Quartet’s set ends, and CeCe straightens, convincing herself the sudden speed in her pulse is only her imagination. Madeline always follows the Elysian Quartet, but CeCe doesn’t recognize the blonde who takes the stage.

  CeCe catches the bartender’s eye. “What’s with the new girl?”

  The bartender shrugs, but CeCe notes the way his gaze moves toward the door beside the stage. CeCe leaves a twenty on the bar and the rest of her drink untouched.

  Her suit picks up bloody highlights from the exit light as she ignores the Employees Only sign and pushes through the stage door. A narrow corridor leads to the dressing rooms. CeCe knocks on Madeline’s door, presses her ear to the wood, but only silence answers.

  What if Madeline’s gone for good? What if CeCe has fucked up irrevocably by failing to follow some arcane rule she doesn’t understand? Maybe Madeline wants to settle down, start a family. CeCe’s never considered herself a family man; it’s not her scene, but she could convince herself to be domesticated. For Madeline. But what if it’s something worse? The thought nags at the back of her mind—the distraction, the tension, the sudden anger. It’s not like Madeline. So what if this isn’t about her, or them at all?

  CeCe shoulders the door, and to her surprise, it gives. The dressing room smells like rosewater and cinnamon. The scent is an imprint, as if Madeline was just here, but the room is decidedly empty. The new scent, the one that doesn’t belong to Madeline, but which CeCe smelled on her the night she stormed out, is there too, increasing her unease.

  The lights circling the mirror over Madeline’s vanity are on, but the rest of the room is dark. Tubes of lipstick, compacts, and jars of cold cream — nothing seems out of place. A photograph tucked into the mirror’s frame catches her eye.

  CeCe swallows around a lump in her throat. Her and Maddy, cheek to cheek, smiling for the camera on New Year’s Eve. CeCe tucks the photograph into her wine-red pocket. Madeline is her girl. Come hell or high water, CeCe will figure out where she lost her and how to win her back.

  Something else catches her eye, crammed into the trash can under Madeline’s vanity. A long-stemmed rose, the stem snapped, petals bruised as though Madeline tried to grind it out like a cigarette. Another suitor? An unwelcome one?

  CeCe’s thoughts whirl. She’s so distracted, she nearly collides with a woman who appears out of nowhere as CeCe steps back into the hall. CeCe blinks. For a moment, she’s looking into a mirror. Except the colors are flipped, everything just slightly askew.

  Where CeCe is all velvet, the other woman’s suit is midnight silk. Her creases are knife-crisp, the blackness interrupted only by the bloody slash of her tie. CeCe’s hair is blonde-ash; the woman’s slicked-back do is as black as her suit, one lock worked into a jagged, lightning-strike curl over her right eye.

  “Excuse me.” The woman smirks, shouldering past CeCe. “I’ve got a show to do.”

  The woman walks with a faint limp, as though compensating with reality for the affectation of CeCe’s crystal-topped cane. The shape of her from behind is wrong, her shoulders too bulky. Or maybe it’s just a trick of the light.

  The red exit sign casts the woman’s shadow behind her. Wrong. The door slams; CeCe jumps, pulse echoing with the slam. The scent of cinnamon lingers in the air. Wrong. She needs to find Madeline.

  CECE RECOGNIZES SHE’S IN A DREAM, BUT SHE CAN’T WAKE UP. THE dream doesn’t behave the way a dream should, either. Everything is too sharp, too linear. It’s a sliver forced into her mind, and she can’t dig it out.

  She follows the hall behind the stage at the Midnight Cafe, and pushes open Madeline’s dressing-room door. The geography of the dream-room is all wrong. It’s bigger than CeCe’s apartment; the racks of costumes frame a heart-shaped bed. Madeline pours from the bed, boneless in ecstasy, hair spilling like russet ink, eyes closed and lips parted. The woman with the lightning-strike curl and sharp-angled black suit raises her head from between Madeline’s legs. “Mine,” she says. “Mine.”

  CeCe jerks awake, her heart pounding. There’s a weight on her chest, crushing her. She isn’t alone.

  Thrashing and scrambling at the covers, she stands and nearly falls. It’s a moment before she can convince herself the shadows aren’t leaking toward her, the world isn’t about to end.

  “Shit.” She runs a hand through her hair; goosebumps rise on her skin.

  She forces herself to breathe, to examine the dream, the strange angles of it. It doesn’t fade the way dreams usually do. If anything it sharpens, and that in itself kicks something loose in CeCe’s mind. Fragments of half-remembered mythology, related by an ex-girlfriend who fancied herself a medieval scholar. Incubus. Succubus. She can’t remember which is which, but aren’t they both demons that prey on people in dreams?

  Ridiculous. CeCe shakes her head. It was just a dream, her subconscious trying to tell her to man up or she’ll lose Madeline for good. She glances at the clock, decides fuck it, and calls Madeline anyway.

  CeCe loses count of the rings before hanging up. It’s two a.m. Where would Madeline be if not at home? CeCe pours herself a drink before crawling back into bed, pulling the blanket around her shoulders. The room is cold, even though the windows are closed.

  Her heart wants to crack in two, the image from the dream re-asserting itself, overwriting what she knows to be reality. She loves Madeline, and Madeline loves her. Except… Except.

  CeCe slams the glass down hard. This isn’t her. It’s like the dream, a sliver beneath her skin. But she’s stronger than this.

  She sucks in a breath, snapping the world back into focus. The chill retreats from the room. Think rationally. When everything else is eliminated whatever remains, however impossible, must be the truth.

  This is what CeCe knows: She loves Madeline. And because she’s never been this certain about anything else in her life, she refuses to believe Madeline would simply give up on her and walk away. There’s something else afoot—a demon, worming its way into her dreams, cocky, announcing her presence and intent. The question is, now that CeCe knows it’s out there, gunning for her, gunning for her girl, what is she going to do about it?

  CECE RETURNS TO THE MIDNIGHT CAFÉ.

  The blare of horns assaults her the minute she steps through the door. The music is blood hot, the place jumping, bodies packed shoulder to shoulder. The spotlights normally trained on the stage swing over the crowd in a pulsing, strobing panic. Everything is too bright and sharp and loud.

  CeCe stands in the door gripping her cane, dazed. Like a magician’s reveal, the lights swing back to the stage, illuminating the singer. Of course.

  The demon wears dark red today, her suit
the color of drying blood, her tie a slash of ink. She dips the microphone low, like a dance partner, and the crowd goes wild. Her voice steps up CeCe’s spine, but not the way Madeline’s does. This is an assault; voltage-dipped nails, driven with the power of a nail gun—Bam! Bam! Bam!—between each vertebra.

  It brings back last night’s panic; loneliness in the midst of a crowd, as though the demon sings for CeCe alone. Punctuating the point, the woman raises her head, echoing her motion from CeCe’s dream. She grins and the lyrics are lost in a rush of blood pounding in CeCe’s ears. The demon’s lips shape a word meant for CeCe alone: Mine.

  The demon throws a dark wink, tipping her hand. Even though she knows what will come next, it still tears CeCe’s heart out. As the song ends, a single spot sweeps to the side of the stage, illuminating Madeline. Her beads are black and crimson tonight. The light hugs her as it always does, but instead of CeCe, it’s the demon waiting to circle her waist, pull her close.

  Wrong.

  The demon whispers something in Madeline’s ear. Madeline laughs, head back, too-bright teeth flashing in the spotlight. The music kicks up again, a physical wave pushing CeCe away. She’s not wanted here. Madeline has made her choice. She wants nothing to do with CeCe. She wants to be left alone.

  CeCe slams through the door, not waiting to hear the music Madeline and the demon will make together. She’s outside, in the rain. Of course it’s raining. Alone. The word echoes, nipping her heels, chasing her all the way home.

  IT’S A TUESDAY, OR A WEDNESDAY. CECE DOESN’T REMEMBER AND doesn’t care. Just like she doesn’t remember falling asleep fully clothed. She has a vague sense that the phone has been ringing off and on. The Glitter Squadron is used to her going AWOL. Eventually they’ll give up, but just to be safe, she yanks the cord out of the wall, and crawls back into bed, piling the covers over her head.

  The world has gone away; she’s the only one left. Alone.

  But knocking insists otherwise. CeCe staggers to the door, opening it only to make the pounding stop, not because she wants to talk to whoever is on the other side. It’s a moment before her eyes focus, and a moment more before her brain catches up.

  “Sapphire?”

  “Honey, you look like shit.” Sapphire’s nose wrinkles. She purses her lips, then sighs. “I’m not going to stand in your doorway all day, so you’d better invite me in.”

  When CeCe doesn’t move, Sapphire pokes her in the chest with a long, gem-studded fingernail, forcing her back a step. Sapphire’s floor-length fishtail skirt hisses behind her. Her nose wrinkles again, taking in the disarray; she nudges an empty bottle aside with one glittering platform sandal and raises an eyebrow.

  “Taking good care of yourself, I see.”

  “What do you want?” CeCe hasn’t moved from the door, and in fact is gripping it in order to stay upright. None of this makes sense. Bunny she could understand, or Esmeralda. Sapphire doesn’t even like her.

  “Charming. You weren’t answering your phone. I thought someone should check to make sure you weren’t dead. Good to know you’re at least face-up in the gutter.”

  CeCe opens her mouth to snap a retort, but what comes out is, “Madeline left me.”

  “Oh, honey.” Sapphire’s expression flickers through a complicated range of emotions—animosity and sympathy and the urge for a smart-assed remark.

  CeCe almost smirks, but it isn’t in her. God help her, she almost wants to hug the other woman when Sapphire says, “You want me to make you some tea?”

  Defeated, CeCe nods. She isn’t Clark Gable, keeping her cool. She’s just CeCe, falling apart. She needs to sober up, wake up, figure out how to put her life back together. She needs to get the image of Madeline with the demon’s arm around her waist out of her head.

  “Wanna talk about it?” Sapphire asks when she returns from the kitchen with two steaming mugs of tea.

  CeCe finally moves away from the door. She almost asks if Sapphire has a flask on her, surveying the dismaying ruin of her liquor cabinet littering the floor.

  “All right, let’s try this, then,” Sapphire says. “Do you love her?”

  “I… Yes.” CeCe runs a hand through her hair, a futile attempt to slick the fallen strands back into place.

  “Okay. Good start. Now, go after her.”

  “It’s not that simple.” There’s a hollow space inside CeCe’s skull. “She was laughing. There’s another…woman.”

  CeCe can’t bring herself to say demon. Because it sounds ridiculous in the light of day, with all the alcohol gone. It would be easier, gentler to believe something supernatural stole Madeline away from her, but the cold hard truth of it is she wasn’t stolen. CeCe lost her.

  “She looked happy,” CeCe says.

  “Looks are deceiving. Do you know she’s happy? Did you ask her?”

  CeCe opens her mouth, but no words come out. She closes it again, frowning.

  Sapphire taps a nail on the table for emphasis, drawing CeCe’s attention. “If this was just about you making excuses to be miserable, then I would let it go, but Madeline’s happiness is wrapped up in this, too. Stop being such a candy-ass coward and let her into your life already.”

  CeCe looks up, stunned. Sapphire might as well have slapped her, but perversely CeCe finds herself chuckling.

  “The traditional response is ‘thank you,’” Sapphire’s tone is sour.

  “It’s just, I always got the sense you didn’t like me. But here you are, trying to put my love life back together.”

  “Honey, most of the time I think you’re an arrogant, self-centered little prick. But—” the corner of Sapphire’s mouth lifts in the faintest of smiles—“that doesn’t mean you’re not family.”

  CeCe feels something unknot inside her; maybe having a family isn’t such a terrible thing after all. “Thanks. You’re a swell gal.”

  Sapphire snaps her fingers, pointing a warning finger at CeCe’s chest. “Don’t you gal me. I’m all lady. And don’t you forget it. Now, go get your girl back.”

  CECE IS STONE-COLD SOBER FOR THE FIRST TIME IN WHAT FEELS LIKE forever. She rests her hand on the dresser for a moment before opening the top drawer. Bu

  ried under a ball of socks there’s a velvet box.

  The ring inside is an art-deco dream. She bought it at a pawn shop, the same one where she got her pocket watch, the week after she met Madeline. It’s been hidden in her drawer ever since. Holding the ring crystallizes her, drives away the rest of her fear, or at least holds it at bay. She should have given the ring to Madeline long ago. She can only hope Sapphire was right and it isn’t too late.

  Music beats a pulse through the Midnight Café’s skin, even from outside. It thrums in CeCe’s bones as she reaches for the door. Hot jazz. The hottest.

  It’s like a wave from a blast furnace when she steps inside. Sweat-slicked bodies writhe in a space cleared by pushing the tables up against the walls. It’s only dancing, but it might as well be sex. The air reeks of it, and the demon is eating it up. On stage, she howls, sweat beading her skin, but rather than looking like exertion, she glows as if lit by flames.

  Once again the demon’s suit is the flip-side mirror image of CeCe’s—blacker than black, with the flourish of a purple pocket square and tie. A single flower, its petals the same velvet nap as CeCe’s suit, decorates her lapel.

  As the demon dips the microphone low, leaning toward the crowd, a trick of the light paints the shadow of horns on her brow. The song comes to an end, and the demon sweeps a bow. Her jacket strains at the shoulders, as if against folded wings. Or maybe it’s just a bandage; maybe CeCe and the all-too-human-woman can exchange binding tips when all is said and done.

  Two conflicting truths exist in CeCe’s mind: She’s lost Madeline to another woman, and a succubus stole her girl away. Her head buzzes, struggling to keep the thoughts straight as she pushes through the crowd.

  “And now, fools and follies, ladies and gentlemen, sinners each and every one of you—I’d lik
e to invite my special lady to join me on the stage.”

  A sickening sense of déjà vu makes CeCe’s stomach lurch, and she freezes halfway to the stage. Madeline’s dress glitters like moonlight as she takes her place at the demon’s side. She scans the crowd, looking lost for a moment, and CeCe’s pulse skips on hope. She’s the one who should be up there beside Madeline—the Velvet Devil and the Silken Angel. But Madeline’s gaze passes over her, snagging on a blank space as though CeCe doesn’t exist.

  “Before we start our next set.” The demon winks. “I have a happy announcement. Not one hour ago, this little lady here agreed to be my wife.”

  CeCe’s ears ring, drowning out the thunder of applause, the whistles, whoops, and hollers. Madeline smiles as though the corners of her mouth are lifted with strings, a doll, moved by the demon beside her. Her eyes are glassy.

  “I object!” CeCe pushes toward the stage.

  “Well now, I don’t believe anyone asked you.” The demon’s voice is honey and tar, the edges of her smile cutting sharp.

  “She’s already spoken for.” CeCe hates the way her voice quavers.

  The demon smirks. The shadow of a tail twitches behind her. “Funny.” The demon lifts Madeline’s hand, showing a band of black metal. It looks heavy, and it absorbs the light. “The only ring I see on her finger is mine.”

  “Madeline? Doll?” CeCe reaches for Madeline’s other hand. Her fingers are cold. Up close, the blush on Madeline’s cheeks no longer hides the pallor.

  Madeline starts, jerking back. Her eyes focus on CeCe, but she shakes her head.

  “I can’t…” Madeline’s voice is strained. Her gaze losing focus again.

  “Fight it,” CeCe says. “It’s a trick.”

  “I think you’d best leave the lady alone.” The demon’s face is inches from CeCe’s. “She’s with me.”

  CeCe ignores her, keeping her gaze on Madeline.

  “Maddy, I know you can hear me.” She begins to croon, low and sweet, one of the old songs from her Velvet Devil days.