by Zara Lisbon
I didn’t have Ruby’s address, but when Fabrina got off the freeway in San Onofre I was able to guide her to the beach house Eva-Kate had taken me to that day. It was easy: two lefts then a right, then a left again, no more than half a mile from the freeway. The nuclear power plant loomed, two bulbous tumors growing up out of the beach.
When I knocked on Ruby’s front door, Declan appeared, topless, as he was last time, but this time with red eyes. Was he her butler? Who were these boys to her?
“Cobalts or Crimsons?” he asked when he saw me there, rubbing his eyes.
“Sorry, what?”
“Going up or down?”
“Umm?”
“Are you looking to go up?” He pointed theatrically to the sky. “Or are you looking to go down?” He spiraled his finger toward the ground with a goofy, crooked-toothed grin.
“I’m looking for Ruby Jones,” I said, annoyed at myself for choosing such a formal tone.
“Oh, yikes.” He made a wincing, sour face. “Nobody who really knows her calls her that. Anyone showing up here calling her Jones is surely not here for any of the reasons we like to have people here.”
“I … don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He got serious then. “She’s not here.”
“Are you just saying that because I didn’t call her the right name?”
“I am saying it because you didn’t call her the right name, but I’m also saying it because she’s not here.”
“Can you tell me where I could find her?”
“Ha,” he said. “Yeah right. You don’t know what to call her and you had no idea what I meant by going up or down; for all I know you could be a cop.”
“Me?” I balked. “Have you seen me?”
“There are plenty of undercover cops who look twelve.”
“I’m sixteen,” I said. “And I’m not a cop. But why would you care if I was? Is something illegal going on?”
It was a dumb move, but I was offended and getting impatient. The feeling of being locked out made my heart race.
“All right, we’re done here.” He started closing the door on me.
“No, wait.” I held it open with my arm. “It’s about Eva-Kate.”
“What about her?”
“I’m trying to find out how she died. Why she died. I thought Ruby could help me.”
“Wait, are you that girl who was living with Eva-Kate?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Whoa. You’re not even gonna believe this, but Ruby was actually looking for you.”
“Do you know why?”
“She thinks you can help her find out what happened. Seems like you two should be sharing info or whatever.”
“Then can you tell me where she is?”
“I don’t know where she is right now, but I do know tonight she’ll be at Je Vous En Prie.”
“Je Vou…?”
“The club?”
“Amazing, thank you.”
“But you won’t be able to get in unless you’re one of us.”
“One of who?”
He flashed his wrist at me long enough so I could see the tattoo, then swung it back down.
“The Underworld…”
“Yeah, you in?”
“Mhm.” I nodded.
“Then you’ll have no problem. Door guy is named Saxon, just show him your tattoo.”
“Right,” I said, stiffening. “Got it. Thanks.”
“You got it. See ya.”
He saluted and slammed the door shut.
Dammit. I clenched and unclenched my fists. I didn’t have the tattoo, I wouldn’t get in. I knocked again and the door swung back open.
“You’re not really a member, are you?” Declan smirked proudly. “Knew it,” he said. Him knowing that I didn’t belong made me want him dead.
“I’m only helping because I know Ruby wants to see you,” he said. “And I know this is what she’d want me to do.”
“Great. So…”
“When you see Saxon and he asks for your tattoo, tell him you’re new. Then he’ll ask you for the password. Tonight it’s Messiah Apocalypse.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, committing it to memory.
“If you have to ask, you obviously don’t know.”
“Of course I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why I asked. I think you mean ‘if you have to ask then you’ll never know.’”
“Whatever.”
“Do you know what it means?”
He was about to speak but then held back and sighed.
“No, no idea, couldn’t care less. Spencer makes them up. Tuesdays are kind of his night. He’s the resident photographer. And DJ.”
“Spencer Sawyer?”
“Yep. That idiot.”
“Got it.” I saw a text come in from my mom and chose to ignore it, and instead looked back up at Declan and asked, “What are Cobalts and Crimsons?”
“If you have to ask”—he smiled—“then you’ll never know.”
* * *
Saxon the doorman looked me up and down. He wore a black hoodie and on top of that a brown suede bowler hat. He was the first guy I’d ever seen successfully pull off eyeliner. I stood perfectly still like one movement could trip an invisible laser and set off an alarm.
“Tattoo?” he asked.
“I’m new,” I shot back with a smile I hoped was firm but friendly.
“Password?” he went on without blinking.
“Messiah Apocalypse,” I recited, summoning all the confidence I had.
Again, without blinking, without betraying the slightest emotion, he unhooked a red velvet rope and jerked his head in the direction of the door.
Walking up a set of black carpeted stairs, I could hear music getting louder, heavy synth and heavy bass, and the sound of a hundred conversations happening at once. The first room was a Moroccan-style bar lit by the honey glow of a chandelier. On blue tufted sofas sat bare-legged girls and scruffy-faced guys, not one of them looking a day over seventeen. In “22,” off her fourth album, Red, Taylor Swift mentions kids who’re too cool to know who Taylor Swift is. I never thought people like that could possibly exist. But here they were. I found them.
Above the sofas was a mosaic made from reflective glass tiles, catching and refracting the light, casting a disco-ball glimmer onto the room. I stood by the bar and surveyed the room for Ruby’s big, brassy array of curls.
“What are you having?” The bartender startled me. I turned to face her and the wall of liquor behind her, immediately feeling better with my back to the room.
“Scotch, please,” I said. “Just plain. No ice.”
“Oh, really?” She was impressed. “I like your style.”
“Thanks.” I smiled shyly.
“Gotta love a girl who likes it neat. Preference?”
“Preference…?” I had to yell for her to hear me over the music. They were Top 40 songs, but warped and deformed by remix upon remix. In 2013, Cedric Gervais remixed Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness.” We were now listening to a remix of that remix.
“Type of scotch? Do you have a preference?”
“Oh.” I glanced up at the top shelf. “Lagavulin 16, if you have it.”
She poured me something from the top shelf and when I tried to pay for it, she held up her hand.
“Don’t worry about it.”
I thanked her and took a big gulp, then thanked God for the immediate release. Living in my own skin had only become more and more uncomfortable over the years, and now it was almost too much to bear. I savored any moment when that painful self-consciousness could be lifted.
* * *
“Justine?” The voice behind me was high-pitched and appalled. I recognized it immediately as Olivia’s, accompanied by London’s unkind giggles. I turned around.
“Wow,” said Olivia, holding a martini glass, maybe a little drunk, “I thought it was you, but I also thought no way could you possibly have the nerve to show your face.
Guess I was wrong.” The inside of her mouth was a bright, electric red like she’d downed an entire jar of maraschino cherries.
“Excuse me?” I took a step back, but was cornered by the crowd that had formed around the bar.
“Everyone knows you killed her,” London cut in, popping up out of the darkened crowd. “Josie told us everything.”
“Josie doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” I assured her, trying to push past. They joined together to block my way. My heart pounded. What had Josie told them? Judging by their faith in her story, it sounded to me like she’d woven a convincing one. And who were people going to believe? Eva-Kate’s personal assistant or some new girl with a questionable mental health history?
“The truth is going to come out. You might as well turn yourself in,” said Olivia.
“Why, Olivia? Why would I kill her?”
“Because you were in love with her and she didn’t feel the same way.”
“I was not in love with her. This is so absurd. We barely knew each other.”
“So you’re saying your relationship was purely platonic?” Olivia challenged, unwrapping what looked like a small red marble and sliding it into her mouth.
I thought about how Eva-Kate had kissed me, insisting it wasn’t just the alcohol. Maybe it hadn’t been a dream. And there’d been a light in her eyes, a presence, making me believe she actually wasn’t all that drunk, and that she knew exactly what she was doing. She’d pulled my dress off so easily, her movements so coordinated as she pushed me down onto the bed and straddled me with her silk-smooth legs.
What had happened then? I tried to remember but couldn’t; the memory was so murky all I could make out were streaks of skin and hair and lips, the sound of Cigarettes After Sex on the turntable—your lips, my lips, apocalypse—then black. Had I fallen asleep? Blacked out? How much did I have to drink? I asked myself for the hundredth time since summer had begun.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it was purely platonic.”
Whatever it was, it was none of her business.
“Liv,” said London, checking her purse, “I’m out of Crimsons, can I have one?”
“Fine, but you owe me.” Olivia handed one of the wrapped red spheres to London.
Cobalts or Crimsons? Declan had asked me just a few hours earlier. Are you looking to go up or are you looking to go down? By Olivia’s jittery belligerence, I gathered that Crimsons must be the way up.
“Hey,” I asked, “where did you get those?”
Olivia looked down at me like I was the most pathetic creature she’d ever seen.
“As if I would tell you, ya psycho bitch.” She laughed.
I flinched at those last three words. Not because they stung—though they did—but because they felt familiar. I hope you die, ya Barbie, someone had written on Eva-Kate’s Instagram. We’re literally at the beach, Olivia had said to London that morning at Soho Malibu, so yeah, it does have to be bright, ya vampire.
A shiver zigzagged up my spine. I stared at her, needing to see into her thoughts.
“Olivia,” I asked, “where were you the night Eva-Kate died?”
She froze for a moment, clutching on to the leather strap of her Rag & Bone purse, then laughed, exposing her bloodred molars.
“Bitch, you must be kidding,” she said. “I can tell you where I wasn’t, and that’s Eva-Kate’s bedroom. You know who was there? You. If you think this Nancy Drew act is gonna make you look innocent, you’re wrong. Once they find your fingerprints on that knife, it’s all over for you, baby blue.”
“Yeah,” I said, “we’ll see about that.”
Ruby sidled up to us, manifesting from the crowd, and grabbed hold of my wrist. “Olivia, stop being a bully,” she suggested calmly. “It’s not a good look on you.”
“Yeah, well.” Olivia sipped her martini. “I’m not exactly going for good, now am I?”
“Couldn’t possibly care less, babe. I’m gonna steal Justine for a bit, hope you don’t mind.”
“Couldn’t possibly care less.” Olivia stared daggers at me, and I stared right back at her. A personal colloquialism was not enough to prove guilt, that’s for sure, but I was putting the pieces together, whether she liked it or not.
CHAPTER 7
IS THE PARTY OVER FOR JUSTINE CHILDS?
“Everyone has their own grieving process,” Ruby said as she pulled me into the next room. “I wouldn’t take it personally.”
“She thinks I killed Eva-Kate,” I said. “That’s as personal as it gets.”
Ruby stopped short. The room we were in now was three times the size of the first one, with red stucco walls and houndstooth lounge chairs and spiraling topiary and a canvas roof pulled to one side so that partygoers could look up at the stars and smoke.
“She thinks you did this?” Ruby furrowed her brow.
“That’s what she says, yeah.”
“What an imbecile,” she said. “Here, let’s go this way.”
I followed her through the crowd to a second bar, this one with art deco fixtures and almost no light whatsoever. She walked around to the left of the bar and pushed open a swinging door that led to a chilly service hallway with a placard warning, EMPLOYEES ONLY.
“Are we allowed to be back here?” I asked, following her down the hall.
“You’re cute,” she said without stopping, her crushed-velvet dress lightly sweeping the floor. The hallway led to an aluminum staircase that went to the roof, where some bartenders and busboys were taking a cigarette break. They turned to acknowledge her, waved hello without even the smallest smile, then went back to their cigarettes and quiet conversation.
“You know them?” I asked, just trying for an icebreaker.
“I know everyone,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “I’m sorry about Olivia. She’s just looking for someone to blame. Plus her heart is made of ice. She’s a sick girl.”
I thought it strange that Eva-Kate’s healer would also be a smoker. A hustler, a ruler of her own little kingdom.
“Sick? How sick? Do you think she could have … I mean, I’m sort of wondering if—”
“Could she have killed Eva-Kate?” Ruby inhaled. “Definitely not. She’s a total baby around blood. One time she cut her hand on a broken champagne glass and literally fainted. Like, literally, we had to take her to the hospital. Plus, she didn’t have any kind of motive whatsoever.”
“Then who do you think did it?”
“Dr. Silver.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“Eva-Kate’s plastic surgeon. He did her lips.”
“What? Why would he kill her? What makes you think it was him?”
“She ever tell you about him?”
He retired in 2012 but he’s been a darling about making time for me here and there. He’s the only one I trust not to fuck up my mouth.
“A little. I know he was retired and she was his only client.”
“Well, not anymore. And he wasn’t retired. He lost his license because of malpractice. I think he was caught operating under the influence. Then he started working illegally. You know, pretending to have a license or whatever.”
“Shady.”
“But now he has his license back and is working again.”
“Okay … but why would he kill her?”
“She was going to expose him. He was obsessed with her, calling, sending weird presents. His practice is finally thriving again. I think he’d do anything to keep it.”
“Why would she blackmail him?” I wondered if there was anybody she hadn’t been blackmailing. “And why would she knowingly get lip injections from somebody with that kind of history? She said he was the only one she trusted to—”
“I don’t totally understand it, but it was kind of her thing. Blackmail. I think she enjoyed it, feeling powerful, having control over people. When he started taking on new clients again, she got … possessive.”
“Jesus,” I whispered. “Where was he the night of the murder?”
&n
bsp; “That’s the best part. Or the worst part. London told me he came by the house. That night.”
“Plastic surgeons don’t generally make house calls.”
“Exactly. I’d go talk to him if I were you.”
“Why me?”
“I heard you’ve been asking around, trying to figure out what happened. This is a good lead, trust me.”
“Too dangerous,” I said. “If he really did kill her I can’t go around accusing him.”
“Don’t accuse him, just ask some questions. I’ll come with you. I’ll have my boys stand guard in case anything goes wrong.”
What are those boys doing for you? I wanted to ask, but thought better of it. She was helping and I didn’t want to scare her away.
“Why are you helping me? I mean, thank you, but why?”
“It doesn’t exactly look good that the murder weapon was a gift from me,” she said. “If we don’t find who really did this, I could be in trouble.”
The athame. In the shuffle of Cobalts and Crimsons and passwords and remixes and Olivia becoming my newest suspect, I’d forgotten why I’d come looking for Ruby in the first place: Liza had said the athame was a gift from Ruby. And now Ruby had confirmed it.
“How did they know? I mean, that you’re the one who gave it to her.”
“They were able to trace it to my Etsy account.”
“Etsy? I thought it was a medieval artifact.”
“Imitation medieval artifact.”
“Of course,” I said, allowing myself a brief moment of amusement. “Wait, but then…”
“Then who’s to say I’m not guilty?”
“Well…”
“I have an airtight alibi. I was still in San Luis Obispo. There are multiple witnesses who can attest to that. On top of all that, I don’t have a motive. We’ve been friends for as long as I can remember, practically sisters. Nothing but love there.”
“I have to sit down,” I said. “This is all too much.”
“Then sit,” she said. “You don’t have to ask my permission.”
We sat with our backs against the chain-link barricade between the roof and the three-story drop to the street.