So I’d almost clawed my skin off waiting for nightfall, and then I drove through the darkness back to the Hudson Mansion, rapped on the black door, paid the fine, took the pill. Now I was back inside the cave, the goblin market, slipping between hungry people, the crowd bigger than the night before, the music louder, the effects of the drug anticipated but still disorienting.
Jamie would be pissed I’d lied and come alone. But without him, I was a rabbit in a wolf’s den, and they would show their teeth quicker. If I was born bait, I would at least dangle myself.
And it worked. All night I’d entertained conversations from people looking to buy me, or sell themselves—up until the point I asked my questions about Laurel, and their eyes glazed over, or narrowed in confusion, and soon they were walking away in favor of someone less complicated. A few warned me, similar to what the man had said last night: Don’t ask questions. You won’t like the consequences.
This time around, I clocked the watching eyes. Large, well-dressed men, like the man at the door, tucked unobtrusively into corners, eyes sliding over the dance floor, dipping into the hot baths, watching and waiting. They were the consequences, presumably.
I’d had enough of dead ends. I knifed across the dance floor to the bathroom, thinking to regroup, plot a different strategy. Would someone be more forthcoming if I agreed to their price and got them alone? Would they talk in the afterglow? What wouldn’t I do to know the truth about Laurel, the friend I’d failed to protect?
I pushed open the heavy door. The bathroom was menacing and beautiful: dark as sin, dim light from waxy, flickering candles, and round mirrors, each of them cracked through the middle.
The door closed behind me and snuffed out the music, leaving nothing but the bass vibrating the walls, becoming an anxious crawl under my skin. The bathroom was empty except for a single woman at the end of the counter, snorting a line. She looked up.
“Sorry,” I said, halting in place.
A smile spread over her face. She was pretty: red hair, freckles, dark halos of eyeliner. Younger than me, but you couldn’t tell by the way she sized me up. “New, huh?”
I resumed moving and stood in front of a mirror, two sinks away. “That obvious?”
“Normally, girls don’t look so surprised by—” She gestured at the drugs on the counter. “Not with everything happening out there.”
“Right.” I looked at myself in the mirror. The crack in the glass ran horizontal, splitting my face in two. My mouth moved, but above it, my eyes stayed still—glittering, pupils dilated. A stranger’s eyes. “Does it help?”
Her voice was a honeyed trap. “With what?”
I turned to face her. “Everything happening out there.”
She grinned this time, rubbing fingers under her nose, examining herself in the mirror. “Please. This place is for amateurs.”
I stood taller. “What do you mean?”
She pursed her lips, which were almost as red as her hair. “Amateurs and hustlers. The Sparrow’s where you come to make a little money, indulge people who want to pretend to be a freak for a night. It’s not the real deal.”
I found myself leaning in her direction, the edge of the counter digging into my hip. “Where do you find that?”
She slid me a coy look. “Asks the nice girl.”
“I’m not nice.” I took a step closer.
She scanned me. “Yeah, right. I can smell it on you. Money, good school, dinners around the table with your family growing up. Choir girl, probably.” She glanced down at my ring finger, and I resisted the urge to turn the diamond. “It’s like a film on your skin. You can take your clothes off, let someone do filthy things to you in the dark. But it doesn’t wash off.”