Chapter 7
Harper
Two weeks with no sign of Jess, no chance at a phone, no hint of rescue.
I’d spent every night under black lights and the gaze of men who’d never learn my name, and the only thing keeping me upright was the stupid animal hope that maybe he’d come for me.
I tried to burn that hope down to cinders, but it never really died.
It just smoldered in the pit of my chest, waiting for something to ignite it again.
Tonight the club was packed. Wall-to-wall bankers, oilmen, frat boys in knockoff designer suits, and the businessmen who decided if they were going to be more than predictors of prey.
The lighting was bluer than usual, maybe to match the night’s “Arctic Goddess” theme; maybe a cold theme was indicative of what this place was. Cold, indifferent, unfeeling.
I had a third set. I stood in the wings in my sapphire mesh and tried to breathe through the pre-show nausea, not that it did any good.
Every girl in the lineup glared at me like I was the prom queen about to ruin their night.
They hated me for a lot of reasons, most of which weren’t my fault.
I was always the “Princess.” They still called me that when they thought I wasn’t listening.
Sometimes they didn’t bother to lower their voices.
The real reason was Steiner. He made a show of favoring me—extra spa time, a nicer room, the best costumes.
He wanted me bright and shiny for his high rollers.
The rest of the girls didn’t get shit except broken nails and maybe a night off if they blew the manager hard enough.
I’d have traded every favor for a day with a regular job and no eyes on me.
I heard a commotion at the back exit and looked out to see what was happening.
Rage, one of Steiner’s bouncers, stormed through with a girl in a headlock.
She was small, brunette, maybe twenty. Not a shifter—her scent was all fear, no wolf.
She kicked and screamed, shoes flying off her feet and nails scoring angry red lines across Rage’s arm.
He didn’t even flinch. He just dragged her through the door.
The girl howled, “Let me GO!” Rage ignored her. He shoved her forward, hard enough that she hit the tile and skidded.
I knew what came next. They’d parade her through the back for “processing.” If she were lucky, she’d end up waiting tables or dancing on the side stages. If she wasn’t, Steiner would make an example of her.
Vespa, one of Darlene’s witches, followed behind in her little leather skirt and heels, clipboard held like a judge’s gavel.
She barely even looked at the new girl. Just wrote something down and stalked off toward the manager’s office.
When Rage hauled the girl to her feet, she tried to bite him.
He laughed and slapped her so hard her head snapped sideways. I felt the blow on my own jaw.
Vespa reappeared and motioned for Rage to bring the girl to her.
She pulled out a tiny black vial and uncapped it, waving the open end under the girl’s nose.
The girl tried to turn away, but Rage held her by the hair.
Vespa said something in a language that made my scalp crawl, and the girl’s body went limp.
The girl’s head lolled, her eyes half-closed, and Vespa grinned. She pushed a strip of tape over the girl’s mouth, then motioned for Rage to take her to the green room.
“See you on stage, honey,” Vespa cooed. Then, softer, “if you last that long.”
They disappeared into the gloom. I didn’t envy the girl. Not because of what was going to happen to her, but because I’d been here long enough to know that the real horror wasn’t the pain. It was the way it numbed you, day by day, until you stopped feeling anything at all.
The rest of my shift went by like every other: a blur of hands and money and the constant, low-grade terror that one wrong step would end me.
I watched from the hallway as the new girl took her first turn on stage.
She wore a red mesh bodysuit and nothing else.
Her movements were jerky at first, then smoother, as if she’d suddenly remembered how bodies were supposed to work.
But there was nothing behind her eyes. They were blank as marbles, not even tears left in them.
The crowd cheered, threw cash, screamed for her to go lower, bend deeper, show more. She did, because there was no other choice.
That was the part that made me sick: not the humiliation, or the pain, but the certainty that this place would eat you alive and spit out only the prettiest bones.
After her set, the girl was gone. I didn’t see her in the locker room, or in the bathroom, or even huddled outside for a smoke.
Sometimes, they vanished after a night or two, “transferred” to another club or “let go.” I’d stopped asking questions.
The last girl who asked ended up with her head shaved and her tips docked until she left on her own.
I didn’t even get a chance to take off my shoes before Darlene stormed into the dressing room. She didn’t knock—she just threw open the door, eyes already locked on me like I was the only thing standing between her and a five-minute cigarette break.
“Lucky night, Harper,” she drawled, lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Steiner wants you for a VIP. Right now.”
I looked down at my smeared makeup, my hair stuck to the sweat on my neck, and tried to make sense of it. “I’m supposed to have a finale set. Two more rotations—”
She cut me off, snapping her fingers so hard the fake diamond ring nearly broke the sound barrier. “Not tonight, sweetheart. Tonight, you’re the main event.”
Darlene set a Styrofoam cup on the vanity, the heat of it already wilting the cheap plastic lid. The liquid inside was the color of pond sludge, and it steamed up a sour herbal reek that made my stomach clench.
“Drink this,” she said.
“No, thanks,” I replied, and reached for the makeup wipes instead. My hands were trembling, and I hated her for noticing.
Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t get physical. She didn’t need to. She just said, “Drink,” again, and this time it hit my body like a shove.
I curled my fingers around the cup, trying to resist, but it was like my muscles belonged to someone else. My wolf howled in protest, but even she couldn’t override the compulsion. My lips touched the rim, and I tasted the bitterness before the smell even registered.
It was foul—burnt citrus, spoiled honey, and something metallic underneath. I gagged, tried to pull back, but the words Darlene hissed next—soft and in some language that sounded like broken glass—made my hands tip the cup further, until I had to swallow or choke.
The tea seared down my throat, blooming cold and hot at the same time, and I could feel it spreading through me: a shiver, then a numbness, then a faintly pleasant fuzziness at the edge of my brain.
Darlene watched, arms folded, smug as hell. “You can try to resist my orders, you little shit. But you’ll always do what I say. And you think that drink was bad?” She leaned in, her perfume a sickly wall of gardenia and nicotine. “Just wait until you see what’s waiting in that VIP room.”
She laughed, not like a person, but like someone auditioning for a horror movie. Then she yanked open the costume rack and pulled out a dress I’d never seen before. It was black leather, so tight it looked spray-painted, with a neckline that plunged to my navel and a hem that barely covered my ass.
“Put it on,” Darlene said.
I started to protest, but the words caught in my throat, sticky and foreign. My hands moved on their own, stripping off my stage gear and sliding into the dress. It fit like a second skin—if your skin was made of latex and hopelessness.
Darlene tossed a pair of stilettos at my feet. “He wants you in these. Walk careful, wouldn’t want you to break anything important.”
I slipped them on, each step a little more unsteady than the last. The tea’s warmth had settled in my chest, dulling the fear and replacing it with a strange, syrupy calm. I knew I should be panicking, or at least running, but my body just kept moving forward, obedient and empty.
Darlene checked me over with a critical eye, then grabbed my wrist and pulled me down the hallway, past the mirrored walls and the still-humming green room. The other girls barely looked up as we passed; they’d seen this before, and nobody wanted to catch the curse by accident.
At the end of the corridor was the elevator—real, not the decorative fake one in the lobby. Darlene punched a code into the keypad and the doors slid open with a hiss. I stepped inside, the world tilting slightly as the floor rose beneath me.
We went until we stopped on the second floor. The doors opened onto a short hallway lined with black marble and gold-framed mirrors. The air was cooler up here, thinner, and every surface gleamed like it had just been cleaned for a funeral.
Darlene pushed me out of the elevator, towards the door her grip iron on my arm. She put the code in another door and left me in the room. “Good luck, princess,” she whispered, then turned on her heel and left me standing in Steiner’s private VIP room.
I tried to steel myself, but the tea made it hard to care.
The door closed behind me with the click of an electronic lock, but I wasn’t alone.
The suite looked like a murder fantasy designed by a luxury architect—black marble floors, oil paintings that oozed sexual violence, a chandelier dripping with smoky quartz.
The curtains were drawn, but even with them shut, the parking lot light’s glow found its way in, crawling over the surface of the bar and the low velvet couches.