“My injured leg precludes twerking on some guy’s dick.”
“It’s stronger now. Give it a whirl, you might like it.”
I shrugged. “We could do with some new office furniture.”
“That’s the spirit.”
I might not come back richer, but I was damned if I’d leave there empty handed.
The entrance to the Star Lounge was marked by a dirt-streaked sign of a chesty woman with star-shaped pasties riding a crescent moon. It was the classiest business on the block.
A woman in a purple fleece jacket, her dark hair flecked with gray, and a sharply beaked nose stood on the stoop, stomping her feet to keep warm.
I charged forward and slammed her up against the wall, my fist bunched in her jacket. “Gimme Gavriella’s face, Levi.”
She spread her hands wide. Her “Fuck Me Red” polish was flaking off her nails. “Take it,” she said in Levi’s infuriatingly smug voice.
My gaze dropped to his lips. Her lips. Argh. What was wrong with me? “This was my idea. My plan. Or didn’t you trust me to carry it out? Hey, I know. You could send Arkady to spy on me while I do it, since that seems to make you happy.”
Levi’s magic rose up around me and I stiffened. I could take it and teach him never to get in my way again–I pushed away, my hands balled into fists.
He dropped the illusion.
“Oh my god.” I rolled my eyes. “You wore a suit to a strip club?”
“I was at work and unlike you, I don’t have a duffel bag full of charming costumes. And what exactly was I supposed to do? Trust that your loyalty was to your newfound Nefesh identity and not your mother?”
“Yes.” He was supposed to trust me absolutely, not situationally like he did with other people.
“You were at an event specifically designed to get support to crush my community. Real loyal.”
“It was complicated.”
“Everything with you is complicated,” he said. “You’re playing so many angles, I don’t even think you know what the game is anymore.”
“Fuck you.”
A customer exited the lounge. Levi and I moved aside for him to pass, rain misting down over us.
“My life is complicated,” I said. “All this shit has happened, but I’m moving forward the best I can and I’m not going to apologize for that. It’s not a character flaw and it’s not a betrayal. I’m not your father.”
“That’s another thing,” Levi said. “Isaac is a master manipulator and if you don’t think he’ll try and find a way to use our acquaintanceship–”
“Good to know where we stand,” I muttered.
“Fucking hell, Ash, he doesn’t know we slept together. He’s so twisted in his anti-magic beliefs that he’ll do anything to stay in control. Damn the cost to his own son.” The thread of bitter anger almost overpowered his quiet words.
Our world ran on power. Isaac hated not having magic and Talia’s marriage had been upended by someone with it. Both of them were trying to stay in control of their lives.
Understanding it didn’t make it hurt less.
“Talia knows about my magic.” I raised a fist. “Go Untainted Party.”
“Fuck,” Levi said.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and rocked back on my heels uncertain of where Levi and I went from here. We weren’t that different, both of us attempting to find the right path and so used to being on guard that we couldn’t see that maybe our emotional fortress doors didn’t have to be battened down against absolutely everyone.
He gestured at the club. “You still want to do this?”
I nodded and he locked his Gavriella illusion into place again.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.
“I’m not doing this to be an asshole. Not totally an asshole.” Gavriella grinned, but when my stony expression didn’t change, dropped the charm. “You sprung this plan on me and we didn’t get a chance to discuss it. I have to stick close to you to keep up the illusion. Who am I supposed to be that would allow me to follow you anywhere in the club?”
“I don’t know,” I said stiffly.
She nodded. “And another thing. These are Mundanes. You can’t punch them and you can’t take their magic, but I can fuck them up. Let me be Gavriella and you go in as her daughter. It means one less person to illusion and less energy expended on my part. You’ve both got dark hair, and there’s a big enough age difference that it’s plausible. If we get split up, it doesn’t matter and you can ask questions as her concerned kid.”
I banged my head gently back against the brick wall. Levi had thought this through calmly and rationally and I’d been ready to charge in unprepared. My uncharacteristic lack of foresight galled, especially in front of him. Between the twin in Hedon with their destiny crap and my lack of answers on the Omar front, I’d spiraled into acting out of frustration.
“Must be nice always being right.” I hadn’t meant that bitter sound bite to slip out.
“It is,” Gavriella continued in Levi’s voice. “Too bad you’re a total loser who’s never on top of her game and certainly doesn’t get to have an off-moment where she hasn’t anticipated the next six moves. Should I continue, or do you want to get over yourself and take it from here?”
“No, your stirring pep talk did the trick. You should make House T-shirts reading ‘get over yourself’ on them. Add your snarky mug and they’d sell like hotcakes. The gospel according to His Lordship.”
“My wisdom does verge on biblical proportions. I’ll talk to my merch people.”
“Do that. Meantime, ask around about Evil Wanker. See if he’s come sniffing around this joint while Gavriella’s been gone or if they remember anyone visiting her before.”
“Friend or foe. Got it. Anything else?”
I compared his Gavriella disguise with my memory of her–minus the bruising. The illusion was flawless. Levi excelled at his magic and there was something incredibly sexy about someone that capable. I squirmed, uncomfortable, because my nipples were hardening while he wore the face of a dead woman and that was a shade too far of weird, even for me.
“Get into the dressing room and see if she left anything behind,” I said in a brusque voice and stepped inside.
The front doors opened on a room with all the charm of a failing Las Vegas casino, tarted up in a thousand kinds of bling in the hopes that all that glittered must be gold.
Rows of bottles glinted behind the bar to the right, illuminated by pink and blue-green neon tubing and epilepsy-inducing starbursts from the not one, not two, but three disco balls. The white stage needed a good coat of paint, but the clientele appeared satisfied with the impressive display of core strength demonstrated by the dancer flipping around the pole to Britney Spears’ “I’m a Slave 4 U.”
We made our way to the bar and Gavriella rapped on the U-shaped bar top to get the bartender’s attention. “Hey. I’m back.” Her voice had a light Spanish accent.
It was a gamble that Levi’s voice impersonation was correct, but people were so visual that they’d trust their eyes above everything else and find a way to justify anything that didn’t add up.
The bartender, in tube top and short shorts, did a double take, her hand stilling above the lemons on her cutting board. “Elektra. Where the hell have you been hiding?”
Gavriella shrugged. “Around.”
“Who’s this?” She cast a wary look at me.
“Her kid.” I jerked a thumb at the door to the left of the stage. “Any chance Mom’s stuff’s still there?”
“More likely Brandi and Crystal split it.” The bartender peeled a rind off one of the lemons in a single curly strip.
“Can I go check?” Gavriella said. That would give Levi access to the other dancers.
“Stevie wasn’t happy about your cut and run.” She jabbed the peeler at us. “I’d get outta here before–”
The front door slammed shut.
“You gotta a lot of nerve coming back,” a man bellowed.
>
“Too late,” the bartender murmured.
The dancer on stage was a consummate professional who didn’t even stumble in her choreography at the outburst, though a few of the customers glanced our way.
Levi-as-Gavriella was crowded up against the bar by a guy who made Miles look slight. Every inch of him was covered in tattoos. He even had horns tattooed on his forehead. The knuckles on his hands read “your next.”
“Got something to say for yourself, bitch?” Stevie said.
Gavriella’s eyes darkened. Levi did not stand for bullying women.
I muscled in between them before he could do anything stupid. Gavriella wouldn’t have stayed under the radar only to mouth off to her boss. I tapped Stevie’s knuckles. “The ‘you’re’ should be a contraction, not possessive.”
“Huh?”
“See, you’ve got this great threat all lined up to smash into someone’s face, except you used the wrong version of ‘you’re.’ It undercuts the menace. Now if you’d written ‘your turn’ that would have been scary and grammatically correct. A win on all fronts.”
Gavriella clamped her lips together. I surreptitiously pinched her hip so she wouldn’t laugh.
Stevie went that red specific to cartoon people before their head blew off with a kettle whistle. “The fuck kind of mouth you got on you?” He waggled his tongue between his index and middle fingers. “Maybe I oughta show you a few other uses for it.”
Gavriella-Levi grabbed his arm. “Please, Stevie. She’s sorry. She doesn't know who you are.” Her wide eyes, tilt of her head, and soft pleading voice seemed like overkill on the blow-smoke-up-Stevie’s-ass front, but he ate it up, puffing his chest out.
I made a face out of Stevie’s view, and Gavriella shifted to step on my foot.
“You ran out on me,” Stevie said. “Left me without a bartender on a Saturday night. I oughta toss you out the door.”
Gavriella’s shoulders slumped and she dropped her gaze to the floor. “I get it. But, could I please say good-bye to the others?”
“Fine. Fuck.” Stevie stomped behind the bar and poured himself a shot of whiskey.
“Back in a sec,” Gavriella told me and went through the door to the left of the stage.
I slid onto a barstool, tamping down the urge to run after Levi and control the play. He could search backstage fine on his own. “Has any guy come around looking for Elektra? Brown hair, dresses kind of nerdy, British accent?”
“Nope.” The bartender wiped her peeler off on a clean bar rag. “She in trouble?”
“Not sure. Elektra plays her cards close to her chest, you know? I don’t even know how long she was working here.”
“She started about six months ago.” Then disappeared after three when Chariot took her.
“Do you know her well?” I helped myself to some pretzels in one of the tiny wooden bowls on the bar, then immediately wished I hadn’t because they tasted like cardboard.
“Not really. We tended bar on different shifts.” The bartender swept the rinds into a small metal bowl, then grabbed a small manual juicer and efficiently squeezed the lemons. “Elektra kept to herself. A lot of the girls are all drama, dragging in every detail of their personal life.”
I swallowed a few times to clear my throat of pretzel dust. “She ever hang out with anyone in particular?”
“Dancers or dudes?”
“Either,” I said.
The bartender poured the lemon juice into a shaker, her eyes sweeping the bar. They paused somewhere over my left shoulder for a moment, but I resisted turning to see who she was looking at. “Sorry. No idea.”
“Thanks anyways. Is it okay if I go back and find her?”
“Go ahead.”
I scanned the gloomy interior for whomever the bartender had lied about. A scruffy Asian guy watched the dancer who was now gyrating to “American Woman.” He absently munched on pretzels.
He was between me and the stage door, so I was able to head in his direction without arousing suspicion.
Was he Gavriella’s boyfriend? Her pimp? He didn’t look as hardened as pimps I’d come across but you never knew.
One of the disco lights flitted over his face exposing his besotted expression as he enthusiastically applauded the dancer. She flashed him a sweet smile. Probably not a pimp, and if he was anyone’s boyfriend, it wasn’t Gavriella’s. Why else would she have hung around him? Was he a dealer? He had a backpack with him, so that was a possibility.
Was Gavriella taking drugs? Was that why Chariot was able to grab her? This job suddenly made a lot more sense if she was addicted, since she’d have easy access to product, but it didn’t fit with the profile I had of her. Unless something had happened to drive her to start using? The same thing that had her start working here six months ago?
One lead at a time.
The backstage area was brightly lit and surprisingly clean. Gavriella-Levi chatted with a blonde woman with a hard face in a skimpy sailor costume festooned with red and blue sequins. Their words were drowned out by the music from the stage that played even back here.
The blonde held out her hand and Gavriella gave her a wad of cash. The blonde counted it, then satisfied, dropped something into Gavriella’s palm.
“Elektra?”
Both women looked up at the sound of my voice. The blonde nodded as she passed by to exit out into the bar.
I joined Gavriella. “What’d she give you?”
“A ring.” Gavriella-Levi held up a dark wooden band burnished to a soft gleam. “She asked me if my shithead ex had caught up with me, then demanded her three hundred for keeping my dad’s ring safe until I came back.”
“I think Chariot grabbed her here at the club. If she sensed they were closing in and hid this from them, it has some value to her.” Taking the band, I ran my thumb over the ring, then I sniffed it. There was a faint scent of a buttery, honey smell. “This ring smells like the almond tree in the magic grove. It’s tied to Evil Wanker somehow, and while I don’t see him being the shithead ex, is the father part true? Was she close to her dad? Could she have meant a father figure? Someone on her team?”
“My people are still digging into Gracie’s background. We’ll know more soon,” Levi said. “How old was Evil Wanker?”
“Look at you getting all codenamey. You loooove this, Shaggy.”
He got a mock affronted expression. “Pfft. I’m merely stooping to your level to humor you.”
I patted his arm. “Keep telling yourself that. I couldn’t see his face, but I got the impression he was around our age. If he was old enough to be her father he’d have been about seventy. He didn’t have the voice or body language of someone that age from what I could tell.” I tucked the ring into my pocket.
“No, please, you hang on to that.”
Did Evil Wanker believe I already had the ring when he’d brought me to the grove and had wanted to eliminate me because of it?
“This ring’s properties might be specific to Jezebels,” I pointed out.
“They might not.”
“Guess we’ll find out. Now switch faces with me.”
“Why?”
“Gavriella may have been on drugs and I want to chat with her potential dealer.”
“Of course you do.” Levi seamlessly switched illusions.
“Too weird looking at myself.” I shuddered. “Let me talk to the guy alone.”
We returned to the bar and I sat down across from the dealer. I didn’t say anything, waiting until he noticed me and did a double take. “Elektra, babe. You don’t write, you don’t call.”
“Life.” I scratched my arm, twitchy. “Can you help a girl out?”
“Looks like you’ve helped yourself plenty elsewhere.”
“No way. I only trust your product.”
He snapped a junky pretzel in half with such force it shattered. “My ‘product?’ What am I? Some asshole corner pusher? Get the fuck out of here.” He turned his attention back to the stage.
How’d I insult him? Not a street dealer. Was he higher up on the food chain? If that was the case, where was his security? None of the other few customers were keeping an eye on him. Nor did they look like bodyguards, and a drug lord wouldn’t casually be hanging out in a titty bar unaccompanied.
What did that leave? His clothing was nondescript, nothing flashy or any identifiable name brands to give me a clue to how he self-identified. Up close, he was younger than I’d originally guessed, with acne-studded scruff on his jaw.
He popped another pretzel in his mouth with fingers that were stained red. That twigged a half-buried memory. Something I’d learned at a seminar about the drug crisis in Vancouver.
Iodine was often used in the manufacturing of drugs. It stained fingers and clothing red or brown. There was a tattoo of a skull and crossbones on the inside of his wrist. He was either a pirate or the brains behind a drug that Gavriella had gotten herself into.
“I don’t think you’re some pusher,” I said. “You’re an artist.”
He flicked his eyes to me.
“How you even come up with those chemical compounds is incredible. I don’t know anyone else that smart.” What drug had he given her?
He relaxed against the seat. “Youngest graduate of the Chem department ever.” He patted the backpack, revealing a university logo. “They tried to boot me out for being too forward thinking, but fuck ’em. I got my paper.”
“Academics wouldn’t appreciate your talents. But I do.”
“Everyone thinks smack’s so great ’cause it lets people nod off, escape it all. My design blows that shit out of the water.”
Great would not have been the word I used for heroin, but I nodded anyway, my brain whirring. Gavriella hadn’t been taking a stimulant like cocaine. She’d gone for something to escape. From what?
“Can you help me?” I said.
The chemist drummed his fingers on the table. “Song’s too loud.”
I glanced up at the speakers. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Not that.” He tapped his head. “It’s why you came back, right? Couldn’t handle your demons.”
Was this how she stopped the cravings? That ever-present humming? I threw a couple crappy pretzels into my mouth so I wouldn’t grab him by the lapels and yell “gimme.”
Death & Desire: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 2) Page 17