I want to run out into the street to the agreed-upon safe house, where I will be able to retrieve Brigit in a few days. There will be no missing persons report filed with the police. There will only be increased vigilance, since her uncle is still waiting to make his move. All I need is to know that she’s there, and then we can get on with our lives.
Rumors about her kidnapping are already spreading. People give me concerned looks, their brows furrowing, the corners of their mouths turning down. But they don’t ask. In this business, it’s better not to know. Knowing things can make you an accessory. I am not known for turning people into accessories. I’m known for discretion. Their faces relax when I turn the conversation to the newer girls, to the properties for sale nearby, to the music. I dance with one woman who’s here because she’s the mayor’s mistress. He has his fun upstairs while she deals with the men downstairs. She laughs and laughs, telling me secrets because she can’t help herself.
Every minute is a shallow cut. By the end of this I’ll be a bloody mess, and I planned this.
The mayor’s wife shows no evidence that Demeter has gotten to her, or that there was talk of a disruption tonight. I’ve kept it contained. It will be fucking fine.
“May I cut in?”
It’s Reya, cutting in on the mayor’s mistress some indeterminate time later, so I press a kiss to her knuckles and wink at her. “Business to discuss,” I say. She blushes and heads back to her table, and Reya steps in. I have never seen her look so careful in all the time she’s been here. I’ve seen her lots of other ways. Never like this.
This is not a shallow cut. It’s a bold slice, slipped through the ribs with enough force to stop my heart. “Zeus,” she says. I take her around the outer edge of the dance floor, people’s faces melting into one another. I taught her how to dance shortly after she first arrived. It made her a sought-after escort for men who like to have dates around the city, not just at the whorehouse. There’s an element of tension here. Not her usual games. Reya will flirt with me whenever it suits her, whenever there’s a performance to be put on, but there is no flirtation in her eyes.
“Is there some sort of delay?”
Let it be just a delay.
“No.”
On the next turn I catch sight of James at one of the exits, framed by the door. His face is drained of color. A laugh tears its way out of me. “Tell me, Reya.”
“There were others outside.” Her voice is so even, as if she knows this is a killing blow. I can still feel the press of the carpet in that room against my knees. I can still feel the absence of Katie’s heartbeat under my fingertips. “They knew to follow the van. We lost two of our men. The last one is in the emergency room with four stab wounds. We were his first call.”
My hands tighten around her back, and now it’s Reya who has to pretend to be leading. I’ve lost the thread of the dance. Of everything. My heart is outside my body. A heart can’t work outside a body. That’s a fact of life. It’s fitting that I should die here, in this place. I’ve already died once. Of course it would happen again.
I am not looking at her when I manage to speak again. “Is she alive.”
“As far as we know.”
It’s not enough to force a real breath into my lungs. “What the fuck happened?” I sound so normal. So calm. I steer us toward the other side of the dance floor. Plan. Get out. Find her. Tear down the city until I find her.
Reya pulls me off to the side, both hands on the front of my jacket. She has done this a thousand times, for this reason or that, and even in this horrified haze I’m impressed with her. “You can’t leave. I can see you trying to leave.”
It’s only in this moment that I realize the facade has slipped. That my face is hot, that everything about me is tense. This is the kind of display I never put on at the whorehouse. Fucking. Never. But I can’t stop. I also can’t breathe. “I own the city. I believe I’ll do whatever the fuck I want.”
She gives the jacket a shake. It’s a sign that I’m not myself. Normally Reya would have no effect, but she manages to move me a few inches. “If you go out there now, everyone will know. It will cause more unrest in the city. It will put all the girls at risk. All of us. You can’t go after her.”
The connections between the people in this room and the people outside are an enormous, glittering web. I’m in the middle. I’m always in the middle. What happens when the center doesn’t hold? The rest collapses.
“Then. What.”
“James. In a room. You can’t do this yourself.”
“The fuck I can’t.”
“You can’t,” she insists. “Look.”
So I do. I look at all the people I’ve gathered here tonight, drinking and dancing and selling themselves and being bought. The moment they know there’s a disruption, that my hands are not on the wheel, is the moment that this place descends into chaos.
The women would be on their own.
“Get everyone we need.” Reya lets go of my jacket and turns away. I catch her by the wrist. If anyone is watching, they’ll think we’re about to begin dancing again. I can’t breathe. “You—”
“I know,” she says. “Keep it quiet.”
“Hurry,” I tell her. “Hurry.”
2
Zeus
The meeting room is off the main ballroom.
It was specifically designed for this purpose.
The last time I used it, it was to plan a brotherly assault on Hades’ mountain while business transactions continued outside the door. James has someone standing outside, but even if a client wandered in, they wouldn’t find anything that suggests sensitive information. They’d find a smaller version of my lounge. Reya brings in drinks and replaces them periodically to maintain the illusion that I’m having a private gathering and not fucking dying on the inside.
James puts a tablet in front of me first thing so I can watch in crystal clear detail as one of the tires blows out on the front of the van. This wouldn’t be a problem in isolation, obviously, but it wasn’t in isolation.
The people shooting the guns don’t look trained. They look lucky. My guess is that if Brigit’s uncle is behind this—and I am certain he is—that he’s reached down to the dregs of society, who are unlikely to have papers or people to care about them. This was a quick score for the evening. Cash in their pockets. Guns in their hands. No long-term agreement.
I watch my third man escape.
I watch Brigit get taken out of the van and shoved into the back of a sedan that is the very picture of nondescript.
I’m watching the end of my world.
“License plate?”
“I have contacts on it now,” James tells me. “They’re outside city limits.”
“Going what direction?”
“North.”
“Fuck.” The room rocks under my chair, but I will die before I let on that panic has already overflowed its boundaries. I shove it back down with a few well-placed blows to the head. This is a lost asset, nothing more. “I want other updates.”