by Ivy Smoak
“Now let’s see what they have in store for us.” Chastity broke the seal and pulled out a thick stack of papers. She read the top sheet. “Good evening, Raven. It was brought to our attention that your second wish - to learn all of Ryder Storm’s secrets - was not completed to your satisfaction. We hope that in the attached documents you will find whatever secrets you seek. Signed, The Society.” She flipped to the next page and her eyes got big.
“What is it?” I asked.
She tossed the stack of papers on the coffee table so we could all see what she was seeing. The top photo was of Ryder entering One57 with two gorgeous blondes, their arms linked with his. The next photo was of him at a bar with a brunette. Then another blonde at a restaurant. On and on it went.
The knot in my stomach got bigger with each photo.
“Well, I think that proves he’s not gay,” said Chastity.
I tossed the photos aside and let the couch swallow me up in its big cushions. “What was I thinking? I should have known better than to go after a billionaire. Especially one who’s in a sex club. He’s so far out of my league.”
“Hold on,” said Liz. “These are all from years ago.” She pointed to the time stamp on the back of one of the pictures.
I sat up. “Really?”
“What does that matter?” asked Madison. “He’s a womanizer. It’s irrelevant if it occurred a year ago or last week.”
“What’s wrong with being a womanizer?” asked Chastity.
“Everything.”
Chastity shook her head. “Imagine you hired a plumber to come unclog your sink. If he came and said that he had zero experience with sinks but that he was super eager to give it a shot, would you be very happy?”
“No.”
“Then why would you want some inexperienced loser poking around your lady pipes?”
Madison had no response.
“Guys,” I said. “Can we focus on the photos? We need to figure out if Tanner has taken any women back to his apartment since the start of April.” It was probably dumb of me to dream, but a little part of me dared to hope that meeting me had made him halt his endless carousel of random hookups.
We flipped all the photos over and started tallying the dates. It went surprisingly quickly with the four of us all working on it.
I held my breath when Chastity was about to reveal the results. “There are 150 photos in total, spanning the past 5 years.”
Damn.
“But none in the past 6 months.”
What?! “Really?” I couldn’t believe it. Not only had he not taken a woman home since we first met…he hadn’t taken a woman home since he first began stalking me.
“Really,” said Chastity. “I dunno what kind of looks you’ve been giving him as you pass him on the sidewalk for the past six months, but you’re gonna have to teach me your ways.”
I couldn’t contain my smile. Not only was Tanner totally smitten with me, but Chastity was complimenting my seduction abilities. I never thought such a thing was possible.
But then a horrible thought occurred to me. What looks have I been giving him? Did I bite my lip? Open my mouth? Press my tongue against the top of my mouth? I moved my mouth around, but nothing felt right. What if I can never replicate my sexy look? And why does my mouth feel so weird? Am I supposed to be clenching my teeth? Should my tongue be touching my front teeth?
“You okay, Ash?” asked Chastity.
“Uh, yeah. I was just thinking about…” How can I tell them that I forgot how mouths work? “About what Tanner told me before he left. He said that since I wasted my first three wishes, he had granted me a fourth. Then he told me to check my bookshelf.”
“That one?” asked Chastity, pointing at the only bookshelf in my apartment.
“That’s the one.”
“What did he do to it?”
I shrugged. “No idea. That’s why I called for an emergency girls’ night. It’s driving me crazy that I can’t figure it out.”
“It looks normal to me,” said Chastity. “Are you sure he’s not just messing with you?”
“Damn it. Do you really think that’s what’s happening here?” Because that was definitely plausible. It seemed like everything Tanner said was either a lie or something to mess with me.
“Definitely,” said Madison, grabbing the remote off the coffee table. “Let’s just forget about it and watch the Yankees.”
Chastity snatched it out of her hand. “How could you watch the Yankees at a time like this? We just found out that Tanner is madly in love with Ash. And we now have a treasure trove of photos from the Society. There’s gotta be some hints in there somewhere about where we can find Club Onyx.”
Yes! Was Tanner really madly in love with me? It kind of felt like he was. Maybe he’d tucked a love letter into one of my books while I’d been distracted by his houseboy and the cookies.
The only thing standing between me and my happily ever after with Tanner was figuring out his secret. Whatever it was, I was sure we could overcome it together.
I grabbed a stack of photos and started looking for hints. Someone had painstakingly blurred the background of all the photos. Or…almost all of the photos.
“You guys! Look at this!” I put the unblurred photo on the table. It was Tanner and some supermodel walking up the stairs. But I was more focused on the CLUB ONYX sign in the background.
“It exists!” yelled Chastity. “I knew it. God, we’re so close I can practically taste it.”
“I’m more interested in what the hell is going on back there,” said Madison, pointing to the corner of the photo.
I squinted to try to make it out. “It kinda looks like a big helmet?”
“An elephant mask,” said Liz.
“Are you sure?” I tilted my head, but there was no way to tell if it was an elephant or not. He was so far in the background that his head was like the size of my pinky nail.
Liz pulled up a picture on her phone of an unzipped backpack on a linoleum floor. Inside was a big elephant head mask made up of little triangular mirrors. “One of my students was showing this to all his friends. He claimed that this is what all the members wear at Club Onyx during some weird sex ritual.”
I eyed her suspiciously. That felt more like one of her furry fantasies than something they’d do at Club Onyx, but the mask did look pretty fancy.
“What else have you heard?” I asked.
“Oh, all sorts of stuff.” She flipped through her notebook. “I’m pretty sure most of it’s nonsense, but there are a few recurring themes.”
“We need to hear all of it,” said Chastity. “The littlest thing might give us the hint we need to find it.”
“Well, there’s of course the claim that Club Onyx is an elephant-worshiping cult. I don’t buy it, though. If they were furries, I definitely would have heard more about it.”
“Okay,” I said. “What else?”
Liz looked back at her notes and started reading. “Club Onyx is an illegal casino. A man in a minotaur mask chases women through a hedge maze, and if he catches them, then they become his sex slave. They host water balloon fights. One of the members is a man who never cums so he can just bang you for hours.”
Chastity bit her lip. “How likely is that one to be true?”
“Pretty likely. I’ve heard quite a few stories about him.”
“Yeah, we definitely need to find this place. Sorry…please continue.”
“There’s a rumor that James Hunter is the founder, but I’m not sure I buy that.”
“I would die if James Hunter was a member,” said Chastity. “One time he came to visit Mason at the office and my ovaries nearly exploded just from being in the same room as him.”
“And his wife is so beautiful,” I said. Penny Hunter was basically my idol. She’d grown up in Delaware and had red hair. Real red hair. Not that fake red hair like stupid Sierra. And she’d bagged herself one of the hottest men in New York.
I’d almost gotten to meet he
r once. Last year, right before the OG incident happened…I’d found out that the whole time I thought I was talking to Matt on the dating app, I’d actually been talking to Penny. She had been trying to set him up on a blind date. She kinda catfished me, but in the sweetest way possible. I shook my head. No, it wasn’t sweet. Because that had been one of the worst days of my life. All of my incidents were bad. But the incident? I’d kill myself if I ever saw Matthew Caldwell again.
“There’s no way James is a member,” I said. “He and Penny are the perfect couple. They wouldn’t join a sex club.”
“Unless they have an open relationship.” Chastity sighed. “A girl can dream. And…I don’t know why I didn’t think about this before! You can just text Penny and ask her about the Society.”
“I don’t have her number.”
“Of course you do. You talked to her for a few days before your date with Matt.”
“Only through the app. Which I immediately deleted after that.”
“Why’d you do that?!”
“Because I couldn’t show my face on there ever again after I literally lit a man on fire!” Why did this topic keep being brought up? I never wanted to think about it again. For the first time in my life, I turned to Liz to save me. “Was there anything else?” I asked.
“Yup. Two more common rumors. The first is that Club Onyx hosts epic games of Capture the Flag. And the other is that they have an Odegaard boutique on-site.”
Chastity scrunched her face to the side. “Very interesting. I always pictured Club Onyx as some underground club in the city, but now it’s sounding like it’s some estate in the Hamptons or something. The hedge maze, the pool party, the water balloon fights…those all require land.”
I nodded in agreement. “I think you’re right. The only problem is that Tanner leaves his apartment at 8 every Tuesday and Thursday. And Society events start at 8:30. He’d never make it to Club Onyx in time. That’s like a 90-minute drive.”
“That’s only a problem if you assume that Club Onyx operates under the same rules as your Society dates,” Chastity said. “And remember how I said that the wishes might be some sort of try-out for your real membership to Club Onyx? Maybe real events for the Society are just…all the time in the Hamptons.” There was a gleeful look in her eyes.
“Rich people do love to hang out at the Hamptons,” I conceded.
“Exactly.” Chastity turned to Liz. “Does that ring any bells? Maybe those crazy rich kids talk about their parents going to the Hamptons several nights a week?”
Liz shrugged. “All the time. But like half of them have a second home there, so that doesn’t tell us much.”
“Can I see your notes again?” asked Chastity.
“Sure.” Liz tossed her the notebook.
Chastity started scanning through the notes. “Wait a second! You know how in Twilight all of the vampires have special powers? Like telepathy and the ability to see the future?”
“Yes…” I said.
“Well what if Liz’s story about the man who can’t cum is about Tanner? That’s his vampire superpower!”
Could that really be it? Tanner had stared at my neck the other night in his office. And he’d looked very hungry while doing it. “But he overheard our conversation the other night about that being his secret. If it was true…don’t you think he would have just finished us off?”
“No, because he loves you. He wouldn’t suck your blood now.”
That was a valid point.
“And when he confronted you about our suspicions, did he deny it?”
I tried to think back to the conversation. I’d ended up asking him a different question. But I couldn’t remember why. Had he deflected it?! “No, he didn’t deny it.”
“Well…there you have it. And this new information about his vampire ability is a game-changer. I think we need to consult the literature.” She walked over and grabbed Twilight off the shelf. Or she tried to. “What the hell?” she said as she tugged on the spine. “Did you glue Twilight to your shelf to prevent me from reading it?”
“No…”
She pulled a little harder. The book tilted towards her, but before she could fully pull it out, the entire bookshelf swung backwards into the wall. “Uh, Ash. Did you know that this bookshelf is a secret door?”
What the actual hell?
Chapter 46 - The Secret Door
Thursday
I jumped up and stared into the gaping hole in my wall where my bookshelf used to be. All I could see was darkness. What the hell was in there? I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Had the previous owner of this apartment had a secret room for his murder victims? Or a creepy way to spy on the neighbors?
“Did you seriously get a secret bookshelf door and not tell me about it?” asked Madison. “I thought we’d promised each other that if we ever got one, we’d both install them at the same time.”
“I didn’t know I had a secret bookshelf door until about three seconds ago,” I said. Oh. It’s new! Of course! I took a deep breath. This had to be Tanner’s doing. There weren’t going to be any bodies cut up in little pieces in there. Hopefully.
Madison eyed me suspiciously. “If there’s a Hogwarts-themed reading nook on the other side of that door I’m gonna lose my shit.”
“If there is, then we have Tanner to thank for it. This must be the surprise he mentioned earlier.” I peered into the dark space. “The only question is…what kind of surprise?”
“Probably your neighbor’s apartment” suggested Liz. “You know…because that’s how walls and apartment buildings work.”
Fuck you, Liz. “Yeah, that’s probably it. And since you solved the mystery, you get to go in first.”
Liz gave me a look. “Thanks, but I’d rather not go into the dark scary room. This is a classic sloshing-lure if I’ve ever seen one.”
“Sloshing-lure?” I regretted asking as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
“You know,” said Liz. “When your neighbor keeps trying to get you to watch them going at each other on top of baked goods - cakes, puddings…the sloshier the better - and you keep saying no. So they find a way to lure you over, and the second you step foot in their depraved sex dungeon… BOOM. The lights go on and you see them naked and covered in food.”
What the hell? “Is that seriously a thing?”
“Walk through the door and find out.”
“Uh, no thanks.”
“I’ll go in,” said Chastity.
“Really?” I asked.
“Sure. I mean…so far Tanner has given you two big surprises. First he took you to a museum where you got to suck on Dr. Lyons’ beautiful cock. And then he took you to a Finnish sauna and offered you up to all sorts of Nordic hotties. If those are any indication, then I’d guess that this surprise is going to involve dicks. Lots and lots of dicks. I think it’s going to be a first-come-first-served situation.”
“I’m leaving,” said Madison.
“Wait!” I said. “How about we all go in together. The four of us could totally fight off a bunch of naked dudes.”
Madison pulled some pepper spray out of her purse. “Let’s do this.”
We counted to three and then all charged in. The lights flicked on as soon as we stepped over the threshold.
“Holy shit,” I muttered. It was like I’d stepped into an Odegaard boutique. There were mirrors and mannequins and racks of clothes everywhere. And shoes. So. Many. Shoes.
“This is the coolest closet I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Chastity.
“You call this a closet?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure it’s like twice as big as my apartment.”
“And it’s two stories,” added Madison, pointing to a spiral staircase.
I pinched my arm. Was this real life? “How did Tanner do this?” I asked.
“Probably hired some contractors,” said Liz.
“Right. I know he didn’t do it all by himself. I was more talking about how he did this without me no
ticing. You’d think I would have heard or seen the construction people. Especially when they cut a hole in my wall to make the secret entrance.”
No one responded. They’d all gotten distracted.
Chastity was holding up clothes and desperately trying to fit her feet into some of the shoes.
Liz was getting ready for a nap on one of the plush blue couches.
And Madison was jumping around corners getting ready to pepper spray hidden sexual predators. She didn’t find any.
“I’m always excited about Single Girl Rules,” said Chastity. “But I’ve never been more excited to quote Single Girl Rule #18: Clothes are shared amongst friends. Owner gets first choice.” She lifted up a very skimpy dress. “You lucky bitch.”
I laughed.
“Hey,” said Chastity, abandoning the dress. “There’s a note over here.” She waved a piece of paper around.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“I figured you needed a little extra room for your Odegaards,” she read. “Hope you like it.” She tossed me the note and shook her head. “Does Tanner have a brother? Please tell me he does. I would do anything to get a closet like this.”
“Tanner really is the best. First Spaceboy, and now this.” How did I get so lucky? Seriously. I knew he was a billionaire. But it still took a ton of thought and planning to surprise me with the coolest freaking closet in the history of closets. The fact that the entrance was a secret bookshelf just made it all that much better.
“Spaceboy?” asked Chastity.
“Yeah. At the launch party.”
“WHAT?!”
“Oh my God! I can’t believe I forgot to tell you. I was going to, but I wanted to do it in person. And then the whole thing with Joe happened. And then this closet…”
“Wait. Hold everything. Are you seriously telling me that Tanner got Spaceboy to play at our launch party for Wineflix and Chill?”
“Yup.”
“OH MY GOD!!!!” yelled Chastity. I had never seen her so excited. “I’m gonna get to bang Spaceboy!”
“DJ Spaceboy?” I asked. “Or his dancers too?”
“Um, all three of them can do whatever they want to me.”
