10 Baz
10
Baz
Struggling against the tightness in my chest, I stumble along the corridor, past the bathrooms to the cool air-conditioned gloom at the end of the hall. I lean against the cloudy glass, which vibrates faintly with the ongoing beat of the club music. When nausea spikes in my stomach, I push away from the windows and bend at the waist, one hand braced on the glass, drawing deep breaths.
Cool hands slide past my neck, collecting my hair. “In case you throw up.” Dorian’s smooth voice. “Though I have to say, it’s a little early for that. You had one drink. Are you a lightweight, darling? It’s all right if you are. I drink enough for three. Can’t get very far past a good buzz, thanks to the portrait.”
“It wasn’t the drink.” I swallow, conscious that I’m shaking all over.
“The club, then? I know it’s a bit garish and loud. We have two weeks. I thought we’d begin here and then visit some of the finer establishments later on.”
“Not the club either,” I manage. “Flashback.”
“Ah.” He’s still standing behind me, gathering stray tendrils of my hair into his hands. Where his fingertips brush, tingling heat sparks on my skin.
“I have those, too,” he murmurs. “I can usually push them away.”
“Must be nice.”
“It is.” He strokes the shaved side of my head, his fingertips massaging the area just above and behind my ear. It’s strangely soothing. “Do you want to tell me about it? Or Sibyl? I can go get her.”
“Why would I tell Sibyl? I like her, but I just met her today. And you—I barely know you.”
I revolve, turning to face him, and he lets my hair slide through his hand and fall free.
He’s tall and beautiful, concern pooled in his eyes. The sight of him drives a stake of despair through my heart. Because after I deny him or paint him, I will never see Dorian Gray again. He won’t want to keep someone like me in his life—someone who has a panic attack at the very doors of the most exclusive nightclub in the city.
“Let’s take a walk,” he says.
“But the others—”
“Will be fine without us for a bit. Lloyd will dole out the VIP wristbands. We can get ours when we go back in, if you decide you want to.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I don’t mean to spoil the party. God, I–I ruin everything.”
“Bullshit,” he says, with that faintly British crispness in his voice. “Come on, Baz.”
He leads me down the steps again, with a murmured excuse to the bouncer. I suck in a soothing breath of fresh air, resting against the brick wall by a shop window.
Dorian takes a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shakes one out, and tucks the pack away before producing his lighter, sleek and blue lacquered, with gold trim. He flicks it, touching the orange flame to the tip of the cigarette. Putting the lighter away, he holds the cigarette out to me.
“Just one, to calm you,” he says.
Sighing, I accept it and take a pull. Warmth crackles through my lungs, my chest.
“This is how you destroy people, isn’t it?” I murmur, blowing smoke. “You tempt them to share your vices—drugs, smoking, drinking, sex with literally everyone—except you don’t have to worry about any bad effects, and they do.”
“You’re too young to be so concerned about what vice will do to you,” he says.
“Maybe.” I tug the savory smoke into my lungs again. “When you kill your dad and your mom commits suicide, that tends to change your perspective on life.”
I glance at him, expecting him to look horrified. His eyes are wider, his lips parted—but there’s no horror, no judgment. “Your father is the person you hurt with your ability.”
“Bingo.” I tap ash from the cigarette and hand it back to him. “Sorry about flaking. I haven’t had one of those episodes in a while, but I never know what’s going to trigger it. Stress, sometimes. Crowds. Since I’ve moved here, I’ve kept to myself a lot. I know, I know—it’s a crime to be unsociable in a city like this. It must seem especially weird to someone like you who parties all the time.”
Dorian props his back against the bricks, shoulder to shoulder with me. “I do party often,” he says. “But I also value quiet and solitude. Say the word and I’ll call you a ride home.”
I’m tempted to accept the offer. I’m already tired from the shopping today, from being constantly in the presence of two people who know what I am. I need downtime to unwind and process everything.
But I hesitate.
“Or…” Dorian pushes himself away from the wall and steps in front of me, his eyes eager, pleading. “Or come in with me and enjoy the music. Drown the visions that haunt you in the finest wine my money can buy. Dance with us, laugh with us. Kiss your cares away. I promise to show you some of my best tricks.”
He winks. Dimples.
I feel the smile coming, even as I shake my head at him.
“There it is.” He grins. “Come on, love. If the ghosts return, we’ll dance them away.”
Dorian crushes out the cigarette and leads me back inside, where we find the others ensconced in our VIP booth. Sibyl hands me my wristband and greets me with a gentle, “Hey, girl,” and a sympathetic look that tells me if I need to talk, she’ll listen.
But I don’t want to talk. Not about the memories that chew on my mind with jagged teeth.
Damn, I need to paint that. A person, wide-eyed, mouth open in silent pain, the top of their skull hinged and open, while a black wolf, standing behind them, places its paws on their shoulders and noms on the brain like a chew toy…
Memories, depicted as a literal monster.
“Wine,” I say breathlessly, and a moment later, I have a full glass. I’m no expert, but it’s a rich, smoky vintage, and I’m sure it’s expensive.
“DJ’s pretty hot tonight,” Sibyl says, lifting her glass. “Vane, be sure you get some usable pieces of content. Footage of Dorian dancing, all that jazz.”
Dorian flashes her a grin, his eyes still bright and dilated. “I’ll dance if you do.”
Sibyl holds up a long-nailed finger, playfully warning him off. “Give me a minute to get my drink on, and then we’ll see.”
We drink, and then the crowd begins to light up, stirred into motion by a pumping beat. Clutching his phone, Vane beckons Dorian onto the dance floor, and Sibyl pulls me along, too. Cherith and Noel follow, but Lloyd stays behind, nursing his drink and looking appropriately broody.
The warm flush of the alcohol slides along my veins, blurring the remnants of the sickening panic I felt earlier. A remix of DNCE’s “Cake by the Ocean” is the white-hot shot I need to start jumping, hands in my hair, letting myself go. Sibyl has her hands up, too, her voluptuous body swerving to the rhythm, chunky rings flashing on her fingers. I feel as glorious as she looks. The little gold-and-black dress hugs my body just right, and the shoes are wicked-looking but they’re not killing my feet.
More people crowd onto the dance floor, jiving, bopping, jostling. I try not to be continually conscious of where Dorian is, but I can’t help tracking him in my periphery. He’s dancing with Vane and Lloyd, his lean form undulating in a perfect body roll, his feet executing flawless steps, hips slanting, shoulders popping.
He flings back his head and throws a glance sidelong at me. When he catches me watching him, he gives me a snarky grin.
I turn pointedly away, hiding a smile. Sibyl has started dancing with a busty redhead, so I locate a guy with a neatly trimmed goatee and pleasant eyes, and I sidle over, intent on loosening the hold a certain angelic-looking devil has over me. I need an antidote to Dorian Gray’s flawless poison, and this guy’s cute in an earthy, healthy way. Not a hint of the supernatural about him.
My tattoos, piercings, and bold hairstyle tend to lure in the mild-mannered guys. They assume I’m a freak in the sheets or something, I guess. This dude is no exception; his eyes light up with immediate interest as I sashay into his space. I pin my wrists together above my head and let my body writhe, sinking low before rising again. Whipping around, my back to the guy’s front, I let him place his hands on my hips, pressing my butt lightly against his crotch.
The contact feels good. I haven’t been touched like this in longer than I want to admit. Once I got to Charleston, I had a crapload of stuff to do, sorting out my aunt’s affairs, setting up my studio, and fulfilling art orders. I kept thinking I would make some friends I could go out with, but then I slipped into my routine, and it just…never happened.
I haven’t danced in a club in ages. The flashback is over; I’m past it, and I’m able to let myself relax. I forgot how good it feels to let the pounding music blur my existence into nothing but physical sensation and flashing lights and the touch of a stranger’s hands.
I sigh, leaning back into the guy, and he surges against me in response.
And then Dorian Gray fills my sight, a tall silhouette blocking out the slash of the blue and green lights.
He takes my throat in his hand—a caress, not a threat. His thumb grazes my jawline. Then his hand slides to my nape, tugs me toward him, and I relent, impulsively, willingly.
“Hey, back off,” begins the guy behind me, but Dorian takes a step—one step, every line of his body radiating dominance. His smile has vanished, and a glare of icy malevolence has taken its place.
“Whatever, man.” The goatee guy holds up his hands and moves away. I lose track of him immediately because Dorian’s hand has dropped to my lower back, and he’s guiding me with him, moving to the music.
The rhythm is a primal pulse in my brain, a giant black moth beating smoky wings in my chest. I don’t have much by way of dance moves—I’m more Wednesday Addams than Shakira—but it doesn’t matter, because Dorian magnetizes me, drawing me with him, and the flow of my limbs seems to match his naturally, easily. Almost as if we’ve done this before.
His hands drift along my body, every touch a purposeful thread in the spell he’s weaving over me. The heat of his palm cupping my shoulder, the brush of knuckles along the underside of my breast, the graze of fingertips over my stomach, the press of his hand at my hip. I try to remember why we’re here, what he really wants from me, why he’s doing this—but it all slides together into a slick, melted mess, and there’s only his beautiful face and his exquisite body. His scent erases the faint odor of sweat and cloying cologne, replacing it with clean, sweet lavender and smoky sage.
I think if we were alone, I’d fuck him right now, ethical complications be damned. I’m two seconds away from asking him to follow me to the bathroom or literally anywhere we could get five minutes’ privacy.
And then Vane’s voice cuts through the music. “Dorian, I need footage of you without her in it,” he complains.
“Don’t you have enough?” Dorian doesn’t take his eyes from mine. The raw lust in his gaze tells me he’s been having desperate thoughts similar to mine, in spite of his claim that he doesn’t want me for a quick fuck.
“I want you to do that fire thing,” Vane persists. “My followers would die , okay? Come on, Dorian. For me.”
There’s a pleading intimacy in his tone that reminds me of what Dorian said—Vane’s good in bed. They’ve been together.
Of course they have.
I bite my lip, reluctantly pulling away from Dorian’s lovely long fingers. “You keep dancing. I’m getting another drink.”
Shortly after my return to our VIP booth, Sibyl comes back to the table as well, fanning herself. “I need some damn ice water.” She downs half a glass.
“Where’s your pretty redhead?” I ask.
“Oh, she had to leave. Got her number, though.” She sighs, pouring herself more wine. “Don’t let Vane bother you. He’s used to Dorian playing with everyone, and it weirds him out to see Dorian so focused on one person. Makes Vane a touch jealous, I guess.” She shakes her head. “Boy’d better watch himself or he’s gonna be out on his little bubble butt. Like I told you, Dorian doesn’t do jealous—doesn’t indulge in it himself and doesn’t put up with it in others. He keeps himself free, and anyone who can’t understand that—” She hitches an eyebrow and jerks her thumb over her shoulder.
“But he pulled me away from the guy I was dancing with,” I counter. “That seemed a little jealous.”
“Yeah, that was weird,” she concedes. “Not something he usually does. Where did you two meet anyway? He didn’t say—Oh god, is he going to do the fire thing again? Lord, don’t let him set the place ablaze!” She shields her eyes, peering through her fingers anyway.
I chuckle, following her gaze.
The bartender has allowed Dorian behind the counter, where he’s flipping and catching bottles with expert hands, fingers flying so quickly I can barely see what he’s doing. He mixes a variety of complex drinks in what must be record time, because everyone starts cheering and clapping. He ends the demonstration by spinning a flaming bottle of alcohol up and down and around his body before taking a mouthful of liquor from a glass and spraying it through the flame to create a massive fireball as it spews from his lips, a spectacular display that has me rising from my seat and cheering along with everyone else in the club.
He bows, grinning, and makes his way back to our VIP booth, draping his long frame on the bench seat across from me.
“Show-off.” Sibyl plants a kiss on his cheek, gives his shoulder an affectionate pat, and goes back to join Noel, Vane, and Cherith on the dance floor. Lloyd isn’t dancing; he’s standing by another table, speaking to a pair of the nightclub’s guests. He glances up, his eyes snapping straight to mine, and I swerve my gaze, suddenly nervous at being caught watching him.
Lloyd’s a bit of a mystery. He’s Dorian’s best friend—sort of like an older brother maybe. And he knows Dorian’s secret, which is big. But I get the feeling there’s something else between them, and not necessarily a romantic connection.
Maybe I can find out what it is.
“That was pretty cool, with the fire,” I tell Dorian. “Where’d you learn to do that?”
“In Portugal,” he replies. “It’s amazing what you can learn when you don’t have to worry about physical harm.” He leans against the back of the booth, folding his hands behind his head. “I’ve been everywhere, Baz. Done everything. I suppose you’ll say that’s a good reason for me to…end.”
Okay, the thought had flashed through my mind.
“How do you always know what I’m thinking?” I make a cross with my fingers and hold it toward him, a playful ward.
“I’ve observed people for decades. There are different categories of people, you know. And I’m not talking about personality types exactly, though there’s some validity to that system. You’re an interesting blend of types. As if you were meant to be one thing, but your birthright and the tragedy in your life set you on a different path. I find you fascinating, Basil Allard.” He shivers a little at the name on his own lips. “Why did your parents name you after that particular ancestor? Especially since it seems you were taught to shun your gift? Why give you such a powerful reminder of your heritage?”
“I’m not sure.” I thumb the rim of my wineglass. “Mom would never give me a straight answer. Something about a woman who told her to name me that. Said it was lucky or meant to be. Fated or whatever.”
“A woman? Like a soothsayer or a fortune teller?”
“I guess.”
A haunted look etches Dorian’s face, and I quickly add, “You know I’m not him reincarnated or something, right?”
“Of course I know that.” He scoffs lightly, shifting in his seat and swiping a hand over his mouth and jaw.
Normally I don’t care to hear about people’s breakup stories. They annoy me, honestly. I always feel like standing up and screaming, You think you’ve got it bad because your boyfriend texted that he needs a break? I killed my dad with my magic powers! Beat that, bitch!
It’s not some kind of demented contest, and everyone’s entitled to feel their own grief. Sure. I get that. Still, I’m not the listening ear most people want for their tiny personal “tragedies.”
But for some reason, I’m very interested in hearing more about what happened between the original Basil and Dorian Gray.
“You said he broke it off,” I nudge gently.
His gaze skips away from mine, travels to some distant spot above the bobbing heads of the nightclub guests. He clears his throat, wets his lips. “I wanted to travel with him so we’d have more freedom to be together. We could never have been completely open about our relationship, not in those times, but we could have found cities and communities where we had more liberty to exist. He didn’t want that. Not with me. Certainly not after I told him about the painting.”
“Wait… He didn’t know what the portrait does?”
“Not at first. I told him about it the night he left me. He wanted me to have it exorcized or splattered with holy water or destroyed. But I didn’t want to tell anyone else about it—certainly not a fucking priest.”
“He wanted it destroyed?” My eyebrows shoot up. “Did he know that would kill you?”
“Back then, he didn’t understand his powers. He rarely painted portraits, simply because he preferred still life and landscape paintings.”
“So he might have painted other portraits like yours without realizing it.”
“I thought of that. But I never bothered to find out if anyone else had a soul-bound portrait from him. If they did, that was their story, not mine.” Dorian tips wine into his mouth. “I refused to have anything done to the portrait. I asked him, once again, to travel with me and be my husband in life if not in law. But he wanted to get married to a woman and have a family. Do things the ‘right’ way. He cared about what people thought more than he cared about me. Always so restrained for an artist.” Dorian scoffs again. “So fucking straitlaced, except when I was buried deep inside him. And then—god, the way he’d come undone…”
My cheeks feel like a pair of glowing lanterns, and my stomach thrills.
Dorian’s gaze, distant for a moment, swerves back to me. He inspects my face, the corner of his mouth tilting up. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
I swallow. “No.”
He sets his forearms on the table, leaning toward me. “A few people thought I killed Basil. But he actually ran off that same night without telling anyone where he was going. He used to do that occasionally, take random trips to France, Italy, or Germany. A break from the normal pace of his life. I suppose I was only ever that to him—a break, a holiday, a bracing bit of rebellion that enabled him to return to his placid, comfortable life of art and books. His art was all that ever mattered to him in the end.”
Calm as Dorian seems, his long fingers are working, winding, twisting together, thumbnails prying harshly at each other’s edges.
This is a pain he must continually push away, one that keeps oozing freshly from a wound that has never healed. Pity wells in my heart, and I reach across the table, my fingers pressing lightly over his. Dorian lets out a long exhale, and his hands grow still beneath mine.
“When Basil left, I faked my death,” he continues. “Things were getting too hot for me in London. I had several obsessive former lovers who would have tracked me down and followed me anywhere if they thought I was alive. So I died. It was so much easier to fake one’s death back then. No pesky DNA evidence. Just find a body of similar age and proportions and burn it inside a house, and there you are. I roamed Europe for a while under another name, half hoping I’d run into Basil again. By the time I heard a rumor of him, he was married, with a child on the way.”
“And then you came to the States?”
“No, I didn’t venture near America until the 1920s.” His eyes brighten, his tone intensifying with the delight of a beloved memory. “Baz, you should have seen it then! So much hectic, vibrant life! So many dark secrets, an undercurrent of wicked poison beneath the glittering roar.”
A painting begins to form in my mind—flappers in fringed dresses and beads on a thin crust of gold leaf above a pit of toxic sludge. I ache to paint it, and I ache for the wealth of human history and experience tucked away in the vault that is Dorian Gray.
“Two weeks isn’t enough for you to tell me everything I want to know.” Shit, I said that out loud. Hastily, I try to amend it. “It’s just… You’ve seen so much history. I want to hear it all. And I want to know how you manage it—living so long while things change around you.”
“Like anyone does, I suppose. Except unlike other people who live to a hundred and then end , I must keep going. I don’t have the finality of an expiration date, so I have to stay relevant. I have to study pop culture, learn the slang used by people in their twenties, adopt the mindset of the generation I’m supposed to be so I can fake it when I need to.”
How must it feel to live a life of constant pretense, to keep yourself malleable and susceptible to the ever-changing vagaries of human language, politics, culture, and trends for so long? To not have the privilege of becoming “set in one’s ways,” of reaching an age where people shake their heads and say half-indulgently, “Things were different back in his day.” The sheer mental energy it must require to adapt, to transform, to remember everything… It’s hard to grasp. Yet Dorian is incessantly learning, shifting, adjusting, pretending, playing a slightly different role with each new decade.
“You’re an actor, basically.” My thumb strokes over the top of his, absently tracing the edge of one of his silver rings.
“I suppose. And the Oscar goes to—” His hands slip from mine, and he spreads his arms wide, his triumphant grin tinged with pathos. “I love acting, honestly. Nothing reveals one’s true self more than playing a role. And to live my life is to have played a thousand different roles in a thousand different settings. I wear the costume of the century, the decade, the year—paint my face with the fashionable attitude of the time, coat my tongue with idioms. I’m quite good at it.”
“And what has been your favorite decade so far?”
“This one,” he says immediately. “Because self-indulgence and narcissism are in.”
I roll my eyes, and he chuckles.
“Not only that,” he says earnestly, “but the once-forbidden delights are now celebrated, and some of the cruelty of the past is being dragged forward, condemned, and repudiated. It’s a painful time to be alive, distressing and confusing, but it’s wonderful, too. Wonderful to watch humanity crawl forward, bloodied and brave, into the next phase of our societal evolution.”
“So Dorian Gray is a philosopher as well as a fire-breather.”
“Sometimes. Cocaine tends to make my brain run faster, makes me erudite and contemplative, brings out old-fashioned turns of phrase. Don’t worry. It’ll pass, and I’ll be back to my vacuous self.”
We fall silent then, staring at the dancing crowd. Lloyd-Henry has moved to the edge of the dance floor, where he’s speaking with a tall black-haired woman. When he sees us watching, he blows Dorian a kiss.
“He called you the ‘love of his life’ yesterday,” I murmur. “Are you two a thing?”
“That’s just how he talks to me sometimes.” Dorian chuckles. “I tried kissing him once. It didn’t feel right. What’s between us isn’t that kind of affection; it’s something else. Familial, maybe. He’s not quite a brother, father, or cousin, but he’s more than a best friend. Not less than a lover, but—different.”
“Oh.” Why does knowing that soothe me so deeply?
Dorian gives himself a little shake. “I’m starving. You?”
“No.” Then I tilt my head, my brows pulling together. “Can you starve? Do you technically need to eat?”
“Yes, I do need to eat. If I don’t, I eventually lose all my energy and shut down. I stay healthy-looking and gorgeous, but I can’t move much until I get some food.” When I cock an eyebrow at him, he laughs. “What can I say? I got bored. Decided to experiment with deprivation.”
The word deprivation strikes me like a stray bullet, pain slicing through my chest. Memories of skipping an after-school snack so there would be something to eat for dinner.
I can’t not mention it. “Speaking of deprivation—you realize with what you’ve spent today, you could have fed several families for a month?”
“I know.” Dorian pours himself more wine, then looks me straight in the eyes.
“And you don’t care.”
“I’ve worked for decades to amass this wealth. And I work to maintain it. It’s mine. If people want to pay me for being beautiful, that’s their choice.”
I already know about his sponsorship deals from TikTok. But when he said, “Pay me for being beautiful,” another idea popped into my head.
“Do you have an OnlyFans?” I blurt out.
He looks startled, and then he grins. “I did, for a while. I wore a mask, though.”
“Oh,” I breathe. “What did you… What sort of content did you offer?”
His dark lashes shade his blue eyes, and his tongue traces over his lower lip. “I did everything.”
Oh hell.
I draw in a shaky breath. “I can understand wearing a mask for an account like that. But I still wonder about your other socials, about people figuring out that you never age.”
“Lots of celebrities don’t seem to age nowadays. It’s not a problem. If someone finds a really old photo of me, I brush it off as a relative, an ancestor who shared the same name, an accidental resemblance—some shit like that. Over the years, I’ve acquired enough hacking skills to find the source of any digital images and destroy them. I prefer to let Sibyl manage most of my online presence, but certain things I handle myself to avoid uncomfortable questions. If the evidence can’t be destroyed for one reason or another, I ignore the person or pay them off. And if they still won’t shut up… Well, there are other options.”
A cold spike of dread jabs through my chest. As I open my mouth to ask if he has actually had people killed, Vane staggers up the steps to the booth and drapes himself against Dorian’s shoulder. “It’s so dead here, Dorian,” he moans. “Let’s go home.”
“One more dance,” Dorian says. “Then we’ll go.”
We all pile out of the booth and return to the dance floor, where Sibyl and Dorian catch Lloyd’s hands and laughingly draw him into the churning crowd. Noel and Cherith reappear, with Vane in tow, orbiting the sun that is Dorian Gray. With the end of the evening in sight, I relax even more, letting my arms and body undulate with graceful moves, allowing my head and neck to tilt and roll. It’s a witchy, goth style of dancing I learned from my college bestie Marsha and her girlfriends. A natural ebb and flow of energy, reflected in the dances of a hundred different cultures…a universal, instinctual response to music.
Maybe the sway and weave of my body puts me more in sync with the energy of the people around me, or maybe I’m more attuned to Dorian himself than I thought. A dissonance tweaks my enjoyment of the dance, and I look around for its source.
There’s a bearded man in a shiny silver shirt, half-hidden by the crowd, dancing with automated stiffness while he stares at Dorian. That in itself isn’t strange. Half the room is watching Dorian, because he’s fucking magical. But this guy stares with a look of horrified surprise mingled with raw malevolence. Like he wants to take Dorian by the throat and choke the life out of him.
I suppose someone like Dorian must have made enemies throughout his long life. But this is a little weird. By all accounts, he hasn’t been in Charleston long. He came here looking for me. Looking for the artist who might be able to save his life.
The angry-looking man in the silver shirt has turned around. He’s pushing through the crowd, working his way toward the exit. If he had any plans to confront Dorian about something, he has clearly thought better of it.
When the song ends, Dorian slides his palm across my back. “I like the way you dance,” he murmurs in my ear. “Primal and beautiful.”
“Well, you know what they say about the way a person dances,” I reply, breathless. And then I want to bite my own tongue right off, because I basically just asked him to imagine me having sex.
“I do know what they say.” His hand slides to my waist, fingers pressing more firmly, and I remember what he confessed last night.
I want you. Badly.
Not just for the portrait. He wants my body. And even though I know he wants a lot of different bodies, it’s still flattering.
Vane jostles between us, breaking Dorian’s hold on me and draping an arm across each of our shoulders. A sharp whiff of his acrid sweat, mingled with pine-scented deodorant and wine-soured breath, breaches my nostrils.
“Let’s roll,” he drawls.
God. Jealous much?
I let myself be herded along anyway. Once we’re outside, I turn my face away from Vane, inhaling the cooler night air. He lets his right arm slip from my shoulders but keeps his left arm around Dorian—a slightly awkward feat since Dorian is so tall.
“We should go for a swim in the rooftop pool once we get back,” Vane croons. “Doesn’t that sound divine, Dorian?”
“Sounds nice,” Dorian admits. “Want to join us for a swim, Baz?”
“She probably needs to get home to her cat,” Vane says.
“Actually, I left him with plenty of food and water and a clean litter box this morning.” I’m glad I took the extra minutes to do that—totally worth it, not just for Screwtape’s sake but because I get to see Vane’s face fall when I say, “Sure, I’ll come along for a swim. I can try out the new Burberry bikini.”
“Perfect.” Dorian shoots me a grin.
Noel and Cherith decline the invitation; they’re heading to another party. We part ways, and our group turns the corner of Ann Street and heads down the wide concrete alley leading into the parking garage. The passage is empty at the moment, an expanse of pale concrete and shadow, with the beetle-like gleam of parked cars far ahead.
A solitary figure runs down the steps from the second floor of the garage. A bearded man in a silver shirt that glimmers in the white haze of the overhead lights. The man I saw in the club.
He hesitates for a split second when he sees us, then strides forward, his fists clenched and his mouth set. The same hostility I sensed earlier is pouring off him, but now his eyes are red and swollen, like he’s been crying.
“You.” The man points straight at Dorian. “I recognize you. You used to party with my sister. Yeah. She never told me your name, but she had a photo of you. She called you ‘Prince Charming.’”
“I party with a lot of people,” Dorian says coolly. “Is that a crime?”
“It became a crime when you introduced my sister to drugs. I saw you in Scoundrel, so I went to my car—to get this.” He reaches to the back of his waistband and pulls out a gun.