“Simon.” He announced himself to me, holding out his hand.
I hesitantly touched my hand to his, intending to shake, but he pulled my knuckles to his mouth and I quickly scrambled not to wrench my fingers out of his grip.
“Seraph,” I offered. “Nice to meet you.”
“So polite.” He laughed, releasing my hand and turning his attention back to Poison. “What are such polite girls doing trying to get a job in my club?”
“I ain’t polite.” Poison sounded offended. “Since when did I say I was polite?”
She was still chewing her gum, and though she was certainly much more striking than your average stripper… or even your average human being, she was still playing the part well. Unlike me. I quickly unbuttoned my coat, tossing it over the back of one of Simon’s chairs and crossing my arms beneath my breasts.
“Just trying to make a good impression,” I said, inserting a pout into my voice.
Simon’s eyes bugged on my corset, and then slid down my legs, before flicking back up again. He couldn’t seem to decide where to focus.
“Damn,” he choked out, slumping momentarily back against his desk and then just as quickly straightening up again, before leaning against the desk in a more deliberate way. “Damn… I could make a fortune off what you got going on there. I went to a conference last month where they talked a lot about niche marketing, and you’re a niche market right there. And you two together? It’s like good stripper/bad stripper. I like it. I like it a lot. Why didn’t you just take your coat off to start with? I don’t even remember your name. Neither of your names.”
“Poison.” Poison pointed to herself with an eye roll, before turning her finger in my direction. “And Seraph.”
He nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, great stage names. Fits right in with the whole illusion. Bad Girl Poison and Good Girl Angel. You should change it to Angel, not many people out there know what a Seraph is. Only reason I know is that I went to another conference about book marketing the month before the niche marketing conference. I was hoping to publish a book since there are so many how-to small business books out there, but none of them are about strip clubs. Anyway, they only talked about stupid teenager books with angels and demons and vampires and werewolves. So yeah, you need to change the name.”
Whoa. The guy was completely mental. “Point taken,” I said dryly.
“Well I’ll give you girls a try tonight, but I’m making no promises. I ain’t gonna pay you for tonight either. It’s a trial day without pay.”
“That’s bullshit!” Poison spat, making me believe for a moment that she actually wanted the money.
“You came to me, princess, so that means you’re desperate. I don’t wanna hire you and then find out you ran away from your pimp. I ain’t gonna trespass on no G’s territory.”
I burst out laughing, and they both shot me vastly different looks. Poison’s was a warning look, but Simon seemed partway angered and partway confused.
“Don’t mind her.” Poison recaptured his attention. “She’s a little crazy.”
“The ones who look that good always are.” He nodded sagely.
I was still trying not to laugh. If he said anything even slightly as gangster as what he had said before, there was no way that I was going to be able to contain myself.
“You got any experience dancing?” he asked us both.
“I don’t need experience.” Poison sniffed, waving a hand down her body. “They aren’t going to care about my level of skill.”
Simon shrugged, jerking a finger at me. “We’ll see about that. And what about her?”
I had been slowly coming to terms with all of the collective information that I had gathered about the nature and ability of the Voda and Voda Heir, and I was almost confident that I could do with pole dancing what I had done with gymnastics and piano the year before.
“I’m a fast learner,” I answered. “I can copy the other girls.”
He didn’t seem convinced, but Poison stepped into his line of vision and effectively distracted his attention away from me, charming him with harmless flirting and her own brand of self-confidence. After only five minutes, he declared the interview over. He picked up a phone from his desk and spoke into it, asking for someone named Kitty. I was forced to hold back a cringe as Kitty walked into the office; her passing from the dim shadows and into the light was a transition I wouldn’t recommend for anyone over the age of fifty trying to obscure the truth of their years beneath an inch of concealer and cover-up. Her eyes were framed with blue eyeshadow and her lips were painted a deep plum colour. I could tell that she might have looked partway alluring without the light glaring down on her, especially with the frothy white teddy that covered her from chest to thigh. Her legs were long and toned, definitely her best feature.
“New girls?” she asked without preemption, cocking her head at us.
“Giving them a trial day,” Simon confirmed. “Show them the VIP rooms, won’t you, love? People haven’t been visiting them lately… maybe a little good girl/bad girl is just what the doctor ordered.”
Kitty nodded, clucking her tongue. “Follow me then, what do you call yourselves? Any experience?”
“Poison and Angel!” Simon shouted out after us, probably making sure that I wouldn’t say Seraph again.
“We don’t have much experience,” I answered her other question as the door fell shut behind us.
Cabe and Clarin had disappeared, but that was part of the plan. If we wanted to draw Silas’s attention, it needed to look as though I was there without any of the guys watching over me. They would step in if they were needed, but would otherwise stay invisible. Poison didn’t seem to be having too much trouble keeping up with Kitty—who was weaving expertly between the people, once again rejecting the reality of her age—but I was struggling in the heels that I was unaccustomed to. Finally, Kitty paused at a small alcove, yanking back a set of heavy red curtains.
“Cameras,” she announced, pointing up into the corners of the small, square space, “so we’ll know if anything goes down here that shouldn’t. You don’t have to take everything off—only what they pay for. Remember the price list, because it ain’t printed down on flyers. Twenty will get them a show in a VIP room, but you’ll have to get them to pay up front. There’s a guard down the hallway…” she pointed back the way we had walked. “Give him the cash and then bring the guys back here. No touching at all, understood? We don’t run a prostitution service here. Lap dances are an extra twenty once you’re in here. You make your own prices for other stuff, but remember that we have cameras… so don’t go trying to swindle Simon out of a cut.”
“Got it,” Poison spoke up, sounding completely unfazed.
“Well go on then.” Kitty waved us away. “Find a client or two, get them worked up enough to wanna try out one of the VIP rooms, and then bring them back. They get fifteen minutes in the room unless they pay for more.”
She turned and we watched her speed off before turning to each other.
“Sure you can do this, cupcake?” Poison whispered, examining my face with concern.
“Maybe. Let’s find the bathroom.”
We went further down the hall and pushed into the girl’s bathroom, checking to make sure it was empty before locking the door behind us. I tossed my now-useless coat onto one of the tables, extracting the little notepad from one of the pockets before crawling up onto the counter. The bathroom looked like it had recently been cleaned and hadn’t been used since. That wasn’t particularly surprising, since there weren’t very many female patrons in the club and the dancers probably had a staff bathroom. The counter was made of some kind of material that was meant to look like marble, but clearly wasn’t, since it was beginning to peel in places.
I closed my eyes as Poison busied herself on her phone—probably texting the others.
Show me something, I pleaded my forecasting ability. Show me anything. Show me what to do.
Slowly, almost hesitantly
, the pencil began to move. I screwed my eyelids even tighter together, trying to see the scene as my fingers drew it. Oddly, no details made themselves known to me, though I searched and searched until my pencil stopped moving. When I opened my eyes again, the blackness remained, and I panicked.
“Poison!”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Poison! I can’t see!”
I stumbled off the counter, pitching sideways in confusion and colliding with her, the notebook falling from my shaking fingers. She gripped my shoulders, and then touched my face, moving it this way and that.
“What the hell…” she muttered, sounding afraid. “Your eyes…”
I started to cry, the panic clawing up my neck, but the tears seemed to wash away the blindness, clearing my sight with each tear that toppled over the lower line of my lashes. Poison watched in mixed horror and fascination until I drew away from her touch and searched the bathroom for the fallen notepad. I snatched it up off the floor, flicking through the pages to the one I had been drawing on.
It was a threadbare sketch, the face achingly familiar. I had etched out Silas’s scars and the frowning set to his mouth with unerring clarity. Silas was reflected there just as I knew him, except that his eyes were bare and white from the lack of detail to the page.
“He’s b-blind,” I stuttered.
Poison snatched the notepad off me, staring at it in confusion. “How?”
“Danny,” I moaned. “It’s his power, remember? Killing? He can take things away. Life, the use of movement, consciousness… sight.”
Poison swore quietly, shoving the notepad back at me with enough nervousness that I assumed she didn’t want to be confronted with the evidence of Danny’s power any more than I did, so I stowed the notepad away again.
“Well that wasn’t very informative,’ I said. “But I guess we know for sure now that Silas is with Danny. We just need to draw him out… before this happens. Or before worse than this happens.”
“Agreed. So, we’re doing this?”
“We’re doing this,” I confirmed quietly.
“Can I give our mission a code name?”
“Depends on the—”
“Operation Seph the Dirty Slu—”
“Nope. No way.”
“Buzz kill,” Poison accused.
There was a part of this plan that I hadn’t yet fully considered, and it was the part that was now staring me straight in the face as men brushed past me, staring at anything but my face. I was burning with a mix of guilt and confusion over the unspoken reasons that Quillan and Noah were staying behind. I couldn’t help but feel guilty, because the very fact that this was so uncomfortable for my pairs was the reason that I was doing it in the first place. I needed to anger Silas enough to force his hand, but that required me to anger the others right along with him. At least they understood the greater need, so they weren’t stepping in to prevent me from doing what I needed to do… but I felt exposed without them.
I couldn’t even do what I had come to do. I tried flirting, but Poison had to do most of the work while I cowered behind her.
“How much for a private dance?” someone asked me, toying with one of the ribbons on my corset.
I glanced at the guy and forced a smile, but my mind had gone completely blank.
“She’s new,” Poison interjected, pushing in front of me as though she was jealous of the attention—though she reached behind her back and squeezed my hand in reassurance. “I’m way more fun.”
“Oh yeah?” The guy laughed, clearly impressed with what he could see. “Wanna show me and my friends what you’ve got then?”
“Sure, but you gotta remember the touching rule or I’m gonna have to charge you like quadruple.” She moved his hand away from her waist, delivered him a wink, and then began to stride away.
His whole group followed, leaving me alone. I couldn’t believe she was going to dance for a bunch of strange men just to help me with my stupid plan. I followed the group hesitantly, my eyes fixed on Poison. I didn’t want to leave her alone with them, but I couldn’t exactly just invite myself into the room.
“Hey, baby, you forgot about me!” a familiar voice declared, cutting off Poison’s advance just before she reached the hallway. “You said you’d come and find me after you went to the bathroom,” Clarin accused, managing to sound both pissed-off and petulant.
“Yo, dude, she’s busy right now!” One of the men stepped up to Clarin, probably ready to start a fight which would get both of them thrown out.
“My bad, my bad.” Clarin backed off immediately, but pulled out his wallet, thumbing through the sizable stack of notes within. “Why don’t I just join you guys? I’ll pay?”
They agreed readily, eyeing his wallet, and he handed the money over to Poison, who gave it straight to the security guard before striding off down the hallway without a backward glance.
“Are you going in or what?” the guard asked me.
“Er…”
“Yeah, she was just waiting for me,” Cabe said, appearing by my side and pushing a note into my hand.
I didn’t even glance at the money. I handed it straight to the guard and hurried past, ducking into the first available room. Cabe followed at a more reasonable pace, pulling the curtains shut and sitting down on one side of the padded seats that bordered the room, framing the small dance stage in the center.
“There are cameras,” I said quietly.
He wasn’t looking at me. He had lowered his head into his hands and his fingers were gripping his hair with tension. I could see the agitation straining his broad shoulders, but I couldn’t soothe him because of the no-touching rule. Then again, that rule seemed to only go one way; it seemed like the dancers were allowed to touch as much or as little as they wanted. I stepped up to the small stage and stood there awkwardly, contemplating the pole. I should have observed the other dancers while I had the chance, because I now had absolutely no idea what to do.
“I don’t think I can take another hour of this,” Cabe admitted softly. “Let alone however many nights it’s going to take to get Silas’s attention. If you bring another guy into one of these rooms I’m going to bury him. I don’t care about the no-touching rule. I’ll bury him just for looking at you.”
I had been standing inactive for too long. I needed to comfort him in some way, so I moved from the stage to where he sat, pulling his hands away from his face and planting a knee on the bench beside him. He stared at it as I gripped his shoulders, using him for balance as I lifted my other knee, and then he dropped his head back to stare up at me. It didn’t escape me that he avoided looking at anything between my knees and face.
“I don’t know how to dance on the pole,” I explained, smoothing a hand over his shoulder. “Can you tell me what to do?”
He closed his eyes, his forehead lined with tension. “Just dance.” His voice was so low I almost didn’t catch the words. “Listen to the music.”
He wasn’t even going to watch. I found that oddly comforting, though if I had been a different girl, I supposed it might have offended me. Instead, I knew that he had closed his eyes out of respect and restraint. I smoothed my hands over his shoulders again, trying to thank him and console him at the same time. The music was loud and thumping, a song I didn’t recognise. I wondered if they turned the music as loud as they did so that people didn’t have to speak to each other. I had no idea how many ‘15-minute dances’ Cabe was permitted to monopolize, but I figured that it didn’t matter as long as he paid for the time accurately.
Closing my eyes, I tried to block it all out, everything but the smooth vibration of music and the assurance of Cabe’s body so close to mine. It was in those moments that I realised something astounding.
I had never danced before.
It seemed preposterous, but if I had ever danced before, all memory of the event was wiped from my mind. The slight movement of my body as I tried to follow the flow of the music was completely alien. I began to ev
en block out Cabe’s worry and my own fear. I forgot about the plan in pursuit of a new task—a skill that my body was attempting to master. My mind emptied of all emotion and the familiar urge to strain my muscles, to challenge myself, flooded through me. I followed every shift in the music, every change of the singer’s tone, and as one song rolled into another, my body relaxed into something fluid and eager. This was different to gymnastics. It wasn’t the same as learning the piano, though I had also enjoyed that. This called to something inside me, it clawed its way into my chest and made itself at home as though it had always belonged to me. I had so rarely ever pursued anything for my own enjoyment in life, and I was beginning to understand all that I had been missing. I had been missing my own taste for experience, my own hunger for an activity that sparked joy inside me. Other teenagers had picked up instruments or pursued sports, but I had been so busy trying to stay invisible, trying to stay sane, and trying to stay safe that I had completely neglected any normal pursuits of simple pleasure.
“Little dancer,” Cabe whispered, drawing me slowly back to the real world.
Someone was knocking against the wall beside the curtain blocking us off from the rest of the club.
“Everything okay in there?” It was a deep male voice, probably a security guard.
“U-um, yes!” I called back.
The man grunted in reply and walked away, and that was when I realised… Cabe was touching me. His hands were on my hips; completely visible to the cameras in the corners of the room. I supposed that they were going to allow the touching as long as I allowed it, as nobody burst into the room after the guard walked away. Maybe I would get into trouble later, but I didn’t really care.
Cabe didn’t seem to care either. He was staring at me, a spark of amazement in his toffee eyes. My movements had halted, my body seeming to remember that it didn’t know how to dance, but Cabe shook his head, his hands catching in the dangling strands of my hair that hung between us. He tugged gently, bringing my face down to his.
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