“You might, but not up to her standards, I promise. If she really wanted to make trouble for you, she’d have asked for the impossible.”
Tai nodded his agreement, grinning. His tattoos gave it a slightly manic appearance. “See? Told you she liked you.”
8
Now, I wouldn’t say I’m movie-star-level handsome, but I haven’t been kicked out of bed for eating crackers. Yet. I mean, I do clean up okay. A quick shower and shave, and I’m almost presentable in civilized company.
But next to Tai and Bobby, I felt like that little cartoon Chihuahua, bouncing along at the feet of the much bigger dogs.
Decked out in their evening attire—black slacks, black T-shirts, black tailored jackets—both men managed to look suave and businesslike all at the same time. Tai had confined his hair into a short ponytail, not unlike mine, and if you could ignore the facial tattoos, he could have been heading to any boardroom meeting. And with Bobby’s stiff military-trained posture, I couldn’t see how he could look anything
And then you had me. A pair of black jeans, never worn, a plain black T-shirt and a pair of ratty combat boots. Not to mention that both bodyguards looked like they could bench-press me without breaking a sweat.
Gretchen emerged from her bedroom as I was checking the wards on her doors one more time, and gave me the old up-and-down. “You’ll do, I guess.”
Well well, I had the queen’s approval. La-de-freakin’-da.
Her Highness was mind-bogglingly gorgeous, of course. It was a nice little bit of nothing she was almost wearing, her silver dress baring more skin than it covered. The height of her spiked heels almost put her eye-to-eye with me, and I had to marvel that she didn’t break an ankle in those things. I also made a mental note that if anything nasty went down, there was no way Gretchen would be running away from it. Not in those shoes. Mira doesn’t wear stuff like that. She’s more practical.
“The limo’s waiting downstairs.” Bobby held the door for all of us, and we were off.
Whoever named the place Purgatory should have just gone all out and named it Hell. At least, it was pretty close to my idea of it.
First off, I had no freakin’ clue where I was. Turns out riding in the back of a limousine is fairly disorienting, especially when in a strange city to begin with. No one else seemed perturbed by it, but I kept peering out the tinted windows to try and get a look at my surroundings. I knew we were close only when there was a sudden increase in bright lights and honking horns.
The limo drove around the block three times for no reason I could see other than making sure as many people as possible were watching when we got out. Bobby and Tai exited first, clearing an opening in the rabid throng by means of their sheer size, and Gretchen slid out behind them, leaving me to cover the rear. Watch her tail? Follow behind? Wow…none of these things sound innocent. I walked last. There we go.
And oh dear lord, these people were crazy. There were camera flashes from every direction, screaming women (and some men), a hundred hands reaching out and grabbing at anything and everything they could. Any one of those hands could have held a knife, or a gun, or anything really, and there wasn’t a thing any of us could have done about it.
Only a few short yards separated the car from the door, and still I was tight and on edge by the time we got through the gauntlet. I wasn’t worried so much about the demons making a try for her in a crowded club, but what about these crazed fans the guys kept talking about? Any of these people could be armed, and I don’t know that we would have known. The very thought made me want to crawl out of my skin. How Bobby and Tai did this on a daily basis, I would never know.
Gretchen walked through it like the crowd wasn’t even there. She wore her short, slinky dress like it was a royal robe, and she held her head regally high, waving to the crowd at large, but careful never to stop and pay too much attention to one person. I was willing to bet, if I could see her face, that she was meticulously avoiding eye contact with the rabid throng. Wouldn’t do to encourage the crazies.
The bouncers at the door didn’t look at us twice, just sweeping us through and into relative safety. Tai paused behind us for a moment, having a brief talk with the head bouncer. No doubt the club’s security staff was accustomed to things like this, but I could appreciate Tai taking a moment to make sure things were up to snuff.
I couldn’t say much for the decor of the place. Metal grates and bare steel beams seemed to dominate, punctuated now and then by a splash of black-light paint, glowing coolly against the brick walls. Oddly, it reminded me a lot of my workplace back home, and as I looked around, I realized I could pick out at least seven outfits that had been purchased from my store. I also realized I was a teeny bit homesick. My teenybopper, punk coworkers would have loved it here. Kristyn, my boss in the loosest sense of the word, would have fit right in with her multicolored hair and flamboyant fashion sense.
There were dancers in hanging cages flanking both sides of the stage, dominated at the moment by a DJ and his rig. The girls had on glittery devil horns, and not a whole lot else, writhing inside their faux-steel prisons. I spotted one of the bartenders across the room passing one of the devil horn hair bands to another girl who had earned his favor somehow. No doubt I’d be seeing her up in one of the cages later.
The music was loud enough to be completely incomprehensible, distinguished only by the low thud I could feel through the thick soles of my boots. Strobe lights and disco balls cast rainbow streamers across the seething, writhing dance floor, and I was more than a little grateful when Gretchen and her boys steered us around that mess and into some private tables toward the back.
Walking in front of me, I could see Gretchen’s back, bared almost indecently low, and in the black light, the iridescent tattoos glowed softly. They rippled under my gaze in a way that had nothing to do with how she moved, and part of me squirmed. It was like watching ghosts moving under her skin, the remains of living people glowing like cave worms. It struck me as eerie and sad all at once.
The starlet claimed a large round booth, big enough for at least a dozen people, and slid across the black leather seat to the very center, while Bobby and Tai took seats at each end of the bench, obviously there to
