Kicking It

by Faith Hunter

  “How was your trip?” she asked.

  “Educational, I think. The past is never quite what we imagined it to be.”

  “That’s awfully philosophical,” she said.

  “New York will do that to a girl.”

  We reached the car, and the driver put her bag in the trunk and opened the door for her.

  “I’m really sorry you got wrapped up in this,” I said. “It was something from the past I never thought would kick up again, and you got dragged into the middle. You could have gotten hurt because of me. I’m sorry for that.”

  “Hey,” she said with a smile, “every family has its skeletons. It’s just yours are more likely to be animated super-ghouls or something.”

  “I don’t think those exist.”

  “You think that now,” she said, pointing at me. “But life usually proves us wrong.”

  We exchanged a final hug, and she climbed into the backseat. The driver shut the door, tipped his cap at me, and the car disappeared down the street and into the darkness.

  —

  There weren’t many hours left before dawn, but Ethan gave Luc and me both the rest of the night off, promising he and Merit would keep an eye out for intruders. As that would require them to keep their hands off each other, I found the offer dubious. But it had been a long couple of nights, so I didn’t argue aloud.

  Luc and I retreated to my room, where I offered a treat for the man who’d traveled half a continent to save me, even when I’d been sure I didn’t need saving.

  He lay on the bed in boxer briefs and a smile. When I emerged from the closet, his eyes widened just as I’d hoped they would.

  “You’re wearing the boots. And very little else.”

  I put my hands on my hips just above the lacy undergarment that covered only what it needed to and smiled cattily.

  “If we’re going to be in a real relationship, I figured we should get started on the right foot.”

  “Damn right,” Luc murmured, holding out a beckoning hand.

  For once in my very long life, I didn’t hesitate.

  THE PARLOR

  BY LUCIENNE DIVER

  “Tell me again how on earth you got talked into wearing booty shorts,” Christie said, with a laugh at my expense.

  “Forget the booty shorts—would you take a look at these boots? I look like a fembot alien queen.”

  She eyed my knee-high boots with their three-and-a-half-inch Plexiglas stiletto heels and the rest in a silver so shiny I could blind passing motorists. The matching silver short shorts and halter top weren’t see-through, but only because they didn’t have to be. They didn’t leave anything to the imagination.

  “They are kind of Hooters-meets–space brothel.”

  I groaned, took a step forward, and nearly fell on my face. I should have insisted on hazard pay.

  “Okay, enough fun,” I told her. “You’re supposed to be teaching me how to walk in these damn things and how not to kill customers for tucking tips into inappropriate places.”

  “You should have just sent me in.”

  I eyed Christie—five-ten, one hundred and twelve pounds of blond, blue-eyed runway gorgeosity. She was my best friend, and she was tougher than she looked—she had to be. But patrons of The Parlor would probably eat her alive.

  “Honey, I can’t afford you.”

  “True,” she said without a trace of gloat. She made more in one shoot than I made in two weeks of PI work . . . or longer when times were lean, like now. It’d be a wonderful thing to get on my high horse and say I didn’t take dirty, low-down, cheating-rat-bastard cases (my client’s words), but beggars couldn’t be choosers, especially after the memorable incident a few weeks past with the singing fish possessed by Poseidon, who’d gotten pissy with me and tried his best to flood me out, doing extensive water damage to my office and leaving me with a sky-high deductible and an insurance company that would barely return my calls.

  “Anyway, all I have to do is get in, get surveillance photos, and get out.”

  She gave me a once-over. “Where are you going to hide your camera?” she asked dubiously.

  “Hair clip.” I showed her the gaudy silver bow I’d rigged.

  “Better facial recognition if you hide it in your cleavage. That’s where everyone will be looking.”

  “Christie!”

  “What? It’s not like I’m wrong.”

  —

  My client—cheating-rat-bastard’s wife, Marta—was convinced her husband was having an affair. He was smart enough to keep it off the credit cards, but his huge cash withdrawals and occasional guilt gifts had painted her a picture. Spontaneous diamond studs were almost always a dead giveaway. But in this case, I wasn’t so sure. I’d tracked her husband, Gareth, all week, and until last night his routine had been that of any other mild-mannered professor. There were no rumors of closed-door meetings with his students, and the only late nights had been spent in the lab with his myopic male research assistant . . . not that that necessarily meant anything.

  But last night he’d come here, to The Parlor. He’d pulled an all-nighter, but not at the office or the lab as he’d told his wife. When several hours had passed and he hadn’t emerged, I’d followed him in, inspired by boredom and curiosity.

  I found a gambling club in serious need of a miracle makeover. The chandeliers hanging from the high ceilings looked like jellyfish, with little lights swimming among the tentacles, providing enough illumination for patrons to avoid tripping over their own feet but not enough to notice the stains or wear marks on the really gnarly carpet, patterned like a clown had scattered Technicolor confetti and it had stuck. Of Gareth there was no sign. He’d disappeared like a six-pack at the Super Bowl.

  I haunted the restrooms for a while, waiting for my mythical boyfriend to finish his business and watching the ebb and flow, getting a feel for the club. The Parlor wasn’t the kind of place a man went for an illicit liaison—not unless he was courting one of the cocktail waitresses. From what I could see, it was much more about making time with Lady Luck. It didn’t have the flash and pop of a Vegas casino with shows and dancing fountains or the Old World glitz and glamour of a Monte Carlo establishment. The Parlor was for the hard-core gamblers. There was eye candy in the form of the waitstaff, even a few men who looked like Rocky from The Rocky Horror Picture Show in their tiny silver shorts. But mostly there was a club full of chain-smoking, chain-drinking patrons looking for another kind of score. My precognition sat up and took notice, sending a little jolt through my system, letting me know there was danger about. But what kind? If I weren’t working, would it warn me off a bad bet? Help me at the tables? Or was the temptation to try for a quick score exactly the kind of trouble I faced?

  It was in poking around for the off-limits and VIP areas, trying to find my wayward quarry, that I’d met Red. Or rather, he’d gone out of his way to meet me. “Meet” being a euphemism, of course, for intercept and potentially subdue. I debated giving him the gorgon glare, freezing him in his tracks, but I couldn’t be sure I’d get into the VIP section and out before he would unfreeze, and then I’d be in for it. I’d save that as a last resort and see where bluffing got me.

  “Can I help you, miss?” he asked, stepping right into my path.

  He was a mountain of a man, and it would have been hard to miss him even if I hadn’t been on the lookout for security. He was dressed much more subtly than the rest of the employees, in jeans and a short-sleeved black button-down shirt, which must have been specially made, because there was no frickin’ way a standard size could have covered those biceps. That didn’t stop him from leaving several buttons open to deal with his oversized pecs. He didn’t fill in the gaps with any gaudy chains. They would only have ruined the view.

  But I’d seen Detective Nick Armani in full flagrante delicto, and while I couldn’t say that made me immune to Red’s
charms, it did leave me able to form complete sentences.

  “Miss? Well, thank God for that. I think if you’d ma’amed me, you’d have finished me off.”

  He gave me a look of great confusion. I got that a lot. “The back room is by invitation only.” He forged on, standing between me and the curtained-off area I’d been about to explore. “Were you looking for something? Maybe I can help.”

  “What does it take to get invited?” I asked, batting the one gift the gods had given me—my thick, dark lashes that looked like falsies and weren’t.

  He grinned like he appreciated the effort, but not like it was having the desired effect. “You ain’t got it.”

  He hadn’t given me the once-over, hadn’t consulted any sort of list, mental or otherwise. I’d looked for the telltale eye movement.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Look, you seem like a nice girl—”

  I dove in before he could give me the speech. “Oh, please! I’m desperate! My no-good, lousy, cheating, thieving ex cleaned out our bank account, and we were already behind on the rent. If I can’t leverage my coffee-can money into enough to get caught up, I’m going to be out on my ass. I need higher stakes than the rinky-dink tables out here.”

  He looked at said ass—or tried to, anyway. Since it was behind me, he had other real estate in the way, but he didn’t seem to mind. “You a gambler?” he asked.

  “I am tonight.”

  “Uh-huh. Those guys back there’d eat you alive. You ever waited tables?”

  I eyed him back. “Why?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “That’s how I put my stupid ex through school, and now—”

  “One of our girls just quit,” he cut in. I let the sexism of “our girls” slide right by, but it cost me. “You want to earn some extra money, we could use you. Tips are pretty good, I hear, especially if someone gets lucky. A hundred, two hundred a night sometimes.”

  —

  That was where the booty shorts came in. It was also how I came to be waiting for my drink order at a bar made of glass block like you’d see in a shower. It might have been cool but for the blue light behind it that had me expecting my Close Encounter of the Third Kind any minute.

  Unfortunately, a guy seated in my section, whom I’d dubbed Mr. Musk—for obvious reasons—wanted a close encounter of his own. If he wasn’t careful, it was going to be with the heel of my boot. As satisfying as that would be, it wouldn’t get me any closer to payday, or to my quarry.

  According to Marta, Gareth had called, claiming to be pulling another all-nighter at the lab. Tonight I was going to get intel for her on what he was really up to. I’d thought I’d have greater access as an employee than as a random mark off the street, but so far all I had to show for my efforts were blisters on my feet, bruises on my butt from men’s pinching fingers, and some seriously high blood pressure. I understood exactly why my predecessor had quit. I was counting the minutes until my first break, and then I planned on doing some serious reconnaissance. Already I was coming to know the patterns, and noticing that one of the bouncers disappeared frequently to deal with what I assumed to be overactive-bladder issues. But Red—he was the ultimate immovable object.

  Until she walked out from the off-limits area. My precog went off like a slot machine that had come up sevens across the board, and Red actually stepped away from his post for a word with her. She wore big black aviator sunglasses that matched her shiny black dress, which was fitted at the top to show off considerable skin and then flared, longer in the back than in the front and with a kind of bustle or hoop to bell it out around her backside. She looked like Trinity from The Matrix all dressed up for a costume ball. Yet, strangely, it worked for her, probably because the power rolling off her in waves kept her from being overwhelmed by her couture, making it complement instead of clash. At a guess, this was her Parlor . . . And all the men and women merely players. Wow, it wasn’t often that my brain defaulted to Shakespeare. Macbeth at that . . . not a good sign.

  I looked away as her gaze swept the room, for some reason not wanting to catch her eye. That precog again, warning me. I still didn’t know what the danger was, but I now had a crystal clear idea of where it emanated from. As one of the two harried bartenders leaned close to take my drinks order, I asked him first, “That the boss?” I twitched my head in her direction.

  The bartenders got to wear skintight silver pants that were, if possible, even worse than the short shorts. This one had shot glasses strung on bandoliers across his impressive chest. It was the oddest look. Mad Max meets Starlight Express. His chocolate brown eyes flickered toward the lady in question. “Yup. What can I get you?”

  “She looks like a hard-ass. And sunglasses in here—is she kidding?”

  The bartender huffed impatiently. “Do you have drink orders for me or are you just trying to chat me up? I don’t have time for this.”

  So much for my womanly wiles. Christie would be so disappointed.

  I gave him my order rather than blow my cover, and I watched the lady work the room as I waited. She air-kissed those who greeted her, slid her hand familiarly over the shoulders of others—regulars, I guessed—who were too focused on what they were doing to pay her any attention. She stopped by a table or two, exchanging meaningful glances and sometimes nods with the dealers, and then she slipped back into the off-limits area toward the back, as silently as she’d entered.

  I had to get back there, past Red and whatever other security there might be. I didn’t have what it took to make their invitation-only games, but I bet I knew who did. Apollo Demas. Actor, agent, and general pain in my ass.

  —

  Gareth never made it home that night, not even in the wee hours of the morning. A frantic Marta called me at six a.m., a mere few hours after I’d gotten off shift and wound down enough to sleep. In the old days, before I’d pissed off some of the greater gods, I might not even have heard the phone, but with my new unasked-for powers of perception, I reached for it before it even rang. The opening notes of Santana’s “Oye Como Va” played out as I struggled to focus and find the right fingering on the phone to accept the call. I did it with probably milliseconds to spare and said a groggy “’Ello.”

  The tears came through first. “He never came home!” Marta wailed. “I know I called him a cheating bastard, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want him back. And I never called him that to his face. Do you think he’s left me? What did you find? Is she young? And pretty? And, oh, God, Tori, you have to help me. Tell him . . . just tell him . . .”

  She broke up then, and the sobbing was more than I could take.

  “Marta,” I said, semi-sharply, trying to cut through the tears. “Wait up a second. If I hadn’t gotten in after two a.m., I’d have called you with a report. I figured it could wait until morning, but now . . . Listen, he’s not having an affair. At least, I don’t think so. He’s gambling.”

  She broke off in midsob and stunned silence reigned. “Gambling? But he’s way too smart for that.”

  “Smart enough, maybe, to feel like he could beat the system or count cards or find some other edge?”

  More silence. “Maybe. I don’t know. I wouldn’t have said he’d sneak out on me at all, but now . . . Oh, I know I shouldn’t have insisted on that Sub-Zero refrigerator, especially with our son needing all his crazy orthodontics. Did I tell you they need to reset his whole jaw?”

  She hadn’t. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. But however Gareth’s gambling had started, if he’d made it to the invitation-only games, he was in deep. Maybe even to addiction level. Marta was right to worry.

  “I’m sure he hasn’t left you,” I said with more assurance than I felt. If he was an addict, he might not leave physically, but his new passion and priorities might amount to the same thing emotionally. I struggled with how much to tell her. “He’s pro
bably just on a roll or . . . something. The club is closed for the night, but I doubt that means anything for the backroom games. I haven’t been able to crack the inner sanctum yet, but I have a plan.”

  “Oh, Tori, please, you have to get him out of there. We’ll get him into a twelve-step program. Whatever. Just tell him to come home. I’ll return the fridge.”

  I almost smiled at that. At least Marta had her priorities straight. “I’ll tell him. Let me get my plans in motion. I’ll call you as soon as I can, but I’m not sure how quickly I can make things happen.”

  “I’ll stay by the phone.”

  So that was it. I was going to have to call Apollo. I’d known it since last night, and yet I’d hesitated. I already owed Apollo my life, and I knew just how he wanted to collect. Even if I wasn’t taken by a certain hunky police detective with midnight blue eyes and dark hair that fell half over them when he ruffled it in frustration, as he often did where I was involved, I would have known better than to get involved with Apollo. For one thing, there was his track record. Mythology was chock-full of his tragic loves. For another, I was pretty certain that I had nothing to offer him after his millennia of experience, and I knew that if . . . when . . . he grew tired of me, I’d be left bereft. Why let myself in for an unhappy ending I didn’t need my precognition to predict? (Not that it worked like that. I couldn’t actually see the future, sadly. It was more like I had an early warning system where danger was concerned.)

  I looked at the clock. Six eleven a.m. Definitely too early to call Apollo. I debated it anyway and decided that I’d have a better chance of catching him in the mood to humor me if I gave him a few more hours of sleep. I could use more myself.

  But those hours of sleep turned out to be more elusive than an invitation to The Parlor’s inner sanctum. After half an hour or so of tossing and turning, I gave it up and rose. My oversized Arctic Monkeys T-shirt was crinkled beyond belief, but there was no one to see or care, since Nick’s and my schedules weren’t syncing up at the moment, so I just pulled my wild mane of hair back into a scrunchie and booted up my computer. Undercover work was all well and good, but there was something to be said for public records searches. The owner of the club would be a matter of public record, and if the place had ever been featured in any kind of press piece, any partners or major players would likely be mentioned, maybe even pictured. A few keystrokes and all would be revealed.