So she’d found a way to pay back the money. She’d gone home for the weekend and stolen her grandmother’s garnet earrings to hock, had gotten a shift at Club Joy—the worst
of the strip clubs, full of losers who barely tipped and owned by a tiny guy called King King, who wouldn’t let you out of the dressing room without copping a feel first. It was
the only place willing to take her on with no ID and nothing to fill her bikini. “Some guys
like that,” King King had said before shoving his hand in her top. “But not me.”
She’d never come back short again.
Now she looked at Salome Nils, lean and smooth-faced, a Connecticut girl who rode horses and played tennis, her heavy bronze ponytail tucked over one shoulder like an expensive pelt. “Salome, how about you rethink your position?”
“How about you and your spinster aunt run home?”
Salome was taller than Alex, so Alex grabbed her by the lower lip, hard, and yanked.
The girl squeaked and bent at the waist, flailing her arms.
“Alex!” Dawes yelped, hands pressed to her chest like a woman pretending to be a corpse.
Alex wrapped her arm around Salome’s neck, looping her into a choke hold, a grip she’d learned from Minki, who was only four foot five and the one girl at Club Joy who
King King never messed with. Alex fastened her fingers around the pear-shaped diamond
drop that hung from Salome’s ear.
She was aware of Dawes’s shocked presence, of the Bridegroom stepping forward as if
chivalry demanded he do so, the way the very air around them was shifting, changing, the
haze dissipating so that Salome and Dawes and maybe even the Gray could see her clearly
for the first time. Alex knew it was probably a mistake. Better not to be noticed, to keep
your head down, remain the quiet girl, in over her head but no threat to anyone. But, like
most mistakes, it felt good.
“I really like these earrings,” she said softly. “How much did they cost?”
“Alex!” Dawes protested again. Salome scrabbled at Alex’s forearm. She was strong
from sports like squash and sailing, but she’d never had anyone lay hands on her, probably
never seen a fight outside of a movie theater. “You don’t know, right? They were a present
from your dad on your sweet sixteen or on graduation or some shit like that?” Alex jostled
her and Salome squeaked again. “Here’s what’s going to happen: You’re going to let me
into that room or I’m going to tear these things out of your ears and shove them both down
your throat and you can choke on them.” It was an empty threat. Alex wasn’t in the business of wasting a nice pair of diamonds. But Salome didn’t know that. She started crying. “Better,” Alex said. “We understand each other?”
Salome gave a frantic nod of her head, the sweaty skin of her throat bobbing against Alex’s arm.
Alex released her. Salome backed away, hands held out in front of her. Dawes had pressed her fingers to her mouth, and even the Bridegroom looked disturbed. She’d managed to scandalize a murderer.
“You’re insane,” said Salome, touching her fingertips to her throat. “You can’t just—”
The snake inside Alex stopped twitching and uncoiled. She curled her hand into the sleeve of her coat and slammed it through the glass case where they kept their little trinkets. Salome and Dawes shrieked. They both took another step back.
“I know you’re used to dealing with people who can’t just, but I can, so give me the key to the temple room and let’s get square so we can forget all about this.”
Salome hovered, poised on the tips of her toes, framed by the doorway. She looked so
light, so impossibly slender, as if she might simply lose contact with the ground and float
up to the ceiling to bob there like a party balloon. Then something shifted in her eyes, all
of that Puritan pragmatism seeping back into her bones. She settled on her heels.
“Whatever,” she muttered, and fished her keys from her pocket, slipping one from the
ring and setting it on the table.