Chapter 9
LUCY
My heart flutters like a stressed-out hummingbird as I peel off my falsies in the warped locker mirror.
What a freaking night. Everything went completely wrong.
First, I had the bright idea to perform in a booth for the first time and take the hot stranger I’m trying to sus out with me to do it instead of just Mirror him on the floor like normal. Then I freaked out on said stranger, nearly having a panic attack.
I was supposed to gain intel from him. We don’t receive a lot of true strangers in The Rabbit Hole. Usually they come with a friend, or Mariposa or Castle’s already been notified who they are before they ever step foot inside.
This one, though? A complete mystery. And for the first time since coming to The Rabbit Hole, I got absolutely nothing useful out of a target for Castle or me.
The past few weeks, I’ve gathered bits and pieces of information that had to do with the Troisgarde tangentially, but nothing about my friends or family.
Which means Luna’s still safe, all things considered, and still off the grid.
And I don’t expect to hear anything about Brylie.
If news about the extremely protective and private Luciano mafia ever made its way into The Rabbit Hole, then things will have gone terribly, terribly wrong.
The sheer anxiety that thought causes strangles my throat and burns my eyes. I grab a baby wipe and scrub at my makeup before I can catch myself tearing up in the mirror.
Later. Feel later.
I’ve cried too damn much these past six months, and I’m sick and tired of it.
The only time I really let myself do it anymore is in the water.
The ocean has been my favorite spot recently.
The freezing cold makes me forget what I’m upset about for a few minutes, and the saltwater blends with the tears anyway.
So I’m not crying now. I refuse. My eyes are only red and watery because I’m rubbing them hard, taking off my mascara and shadow. Not because I’m feeling defeated after hiding from my family for so long and missing them so much it physically hurts.
I’m glad they’re safe, but how are they actually doing? Does Luna like Appalachia? She’s loved the mountains all her life and always wanted to live there. Is she happy? Is Brylie upset she couldn’t finish out her senior year at Bordeaux Conservatory?
Heck, I even miss Nox. He didn’t go to Bordeaux with us, but is he still going to go to grad school? That was his plan before everything happened. Before Benoit.
And then there’s my parents…
I cough and quickly rifle through my bag for… something. Anything to keep myself from choking on a sob.
I know they know I’m safe. It’s why I’ve left the McKennon playing cards everywhere I’ve been. A breadcrumb trail telling them I’m okay. But do they hate me for leaving? Do they understand why I couldn’t stay?
My fingers wrap around something cylindrical, and the second I pull it free, I drop it with a gasp and scramble backward.
The syringe.
I forgot I tossed it into my bag when I came into the dressing room. Forgot I even had it when I ran from the Hatter after I danced…
“Dance for me, Lucy girl.”
The blue tarp slaps against the broken window high above the table beneath it. I may be able to reach it if I get on top—
His chair creaks as it tips back.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
His thick hand grabs my arm while the other pats his thigh, right beside where his belly hangs over something hard in his pants. I feel it underneath me sometimes when he puts me on his lap.
“Sit right here. This is all I want from a little thing like you for now.”
The huge room smells like a dumpster in the summer, and my eyes cut to the furry heap in the very far corner.
He grabbed her to force me to come with him, but she scratched him trying to protect me.
Now she’s gone and she’s been laying there for days.
I tried to keep her company at first, but then the bugs came and I couldn’t stay.
“When you get older? That’ll be a different story. Now I just want a dance. We oughta pass the time somehow while we wait for your parents to rat out the others.”
A tinny voice crackles through the phone.
“Do not touch her. We’ve scheduled a meeting with McKennon. Info in exchange for her unharmed. He’ll give us what we want, but only if you don’t fuck it up.”
“Don’t worry about me, just do your job. I’ll do mine.” The phone beeps before he lets it clatter to the ground.
“You’re so stiff. Stop crying. I thought you were supposed to be good at dancing,” he snaps. I’ve been dancing for days, and I’m so tired… but I know I have to keep going.
“This’ll help loosen you up.”
Orange caps litter the ground and roll under his boots as he digs for another syringe from his bag.
“Dance for me, Lucy girl.”
The pinch of a rubber band…
Let it happen this time. No fighting. He’ll go after you.
I cry at the sharp pinch before agony burns through my veins, then… bliss.
“Dance for me, Lucy…”
Anxiety and something light and airy cloud my mind. Triumph fills me when the man finishes the rest of the syringe instead of grabbing the very full one beside it.
“Dance for me…”
It’s only a stretch away. Wait for him to pass out, and then I can run…
“Dance for—”
“Alice!”
My blurry vision glitters with crimson as two hands clamp onto my shoulders.
“Alice! Babe, you gotta snap out of it!”
Long nails dig into my skin as I’m shaken hard enough to rattle my teeth, and I blink back into the present to find Duchess’s violet eyes stretched wide with concern.
“Duchy?”
She exhales hard. “Jesus H. F. Christ, girl. I thought I was gonna have to call Dorman in here with some Xannies.”
“No!” I squeak.
Her perfectly manicured brow arches.
“I mean… no drugs.” I grimace. “You know how I feel about them.”
She scoffs. “Well, I don’t feel too keen on slapping people out of panic attacks either, so pick your poison, girl. What the hell happened?”
I shake my head and yank a Rabbit Hole t-shirt over the sports bra I already changed into.
“Nothing. It was just a bad reaction to…” I glance around for something to blame, but Duchy cuts me off.
“I’d say him pulling a knife on a guy is way more than a bad reaction.”
“Um.” I frown. “What?”
“The Hatter’s reaction to Frog? That’s what you’re talking about, right?
” She gives me a pointed look as I try to get on the same page.
“Hatter pulled a knife in your honor. I’d freak out too if someone tried to decapitate one of Castle’s men over me.
Or did you forget that happened and you were actually having a panic attack over a falsie? ”
She cackles at what she thinks is a joke, but I just stare at her because she’s not entirely wrong.
I did forget. The Hatter nearly murdering the guy who grabbed me somehow got shoved into the back of my mind behind the fact I completely blew my chance to get info out of him, the syringe, and my flashback just now.
Duchy stops laughing.
“Wait, did you actually forget?” She squints at me. “Dude. Who forgets that kind of thing?”
A girl whose family did “that kind of thing” on the regular?
Definitely can’t say that.
I quickly adopt the bewildered, innocent doe eyes that’ve kept me and my friends and family alive the past six months.
“No, I’m still so shocked!” I put a waver in my voice. “Why on earth did he do that?”
“Right…” Duchy hums, scanning me. “And what’s crazier is he kinda acted like he knew you. Weird, right?”
Okay that makes me laugh. “I’ve never met the guy in my life. I think he got protective over me and felt bad after I freaked out on him before the whole Frog thing.”
She tilts her head in confusion. “You did? Why?”
“This.” I point at the syringe I really don’t want to touch again. “I thought I found drugs in his pocket.”
“His pocket? Why on earth were you in his… Ooo, wait.” Her eyes light up at where I’m pointing. “What kind? Meth? Heroin? Ooo, what if it’s Pining? That shit in concentrate either makes you go insane or gets your clit hard as a rock in seconds. Or both.”
“Okayyy,” I sound out and my nose scrunches. “You sound entirely too excited about all that.”
“What?” She shrugs. “I haven’t gotten a good high in months. The Boy is such a buzzkill. All he’ll let me do is weed he buys himself. He doesn’t even like Smoke.” She frowns suddenly. “Wait… why did you freak out?”
I think of an answer as I step into the gray sweats I stole from Luna’s brother years ago. They swallow me whole and I have to wrap their drawstring twice around my waist before tying them to make sure they stay up.
“I, uh…” I swallow then finally go with a truth. “I thought he was going to drug me or kidnap me or something.”
Rage flashes across her face so fast it startles me.
“Why would you think that? Did the perv do something?” she snaps. “Say something weird? Want me to sic Xavier on him?”
I can’t help smiling a little at Duchy’s full big-sister-bear mode as I pull my hair into a ponytail.
“No. It’s—it’s my own hangup.” My smile fades. “He was actually freaked out that I was freaked out.”
The way his dark eyes had gone wide and his mouth had gone slack—he’d looked genuinely shattered the second I said it. If I hadn’t been on the verge of a flashback like the one Duchy found me in just now, I might’ve stayed and tried to explain what I could.
“He said it was allergy medicine.”
Duchy crosses her arms over her corset. “And you believe the bastard?”
I hesitate. “I do?”
I’m surprised to admit it, because that’s a problem in and of itself. I haven’t trusted anyone in months. Not with my real name. Not with my past. Definitely not with my safety.
And yet I trusted a complete stranger because he looked heartbroken at the mere thought of hurting me.
“Hmm.” Duchy takes the syringe and turns it over in her hands. “Label looks legit. If it’s in a syringe it’s probably heavy-duty stuff. Hopefully he doesn’t die without it.”
My jaw drops. “You think he’ll die without it?”
She snorts. “Girl, I have no idea. It was a joke, okay? I’m sure he’s fine.
” She squints at the label. “‘Take as needed for allergies. Do not operate heavy machinery, mix with alcohol or hallucinogens, blah, blah.’ The usual. No patient name, though, which is odd. Just the prescribing doctor…” She tilts it to the light.
“Prince? Filled in Charleston. And…” Her nose wrinkles. “Diphenhydranitrozine?”
“Does that mean something to you?”
“Nope.” She tosses the syringe back into my duffel.
“Never heard of it. Could be some new experimental one, though. Drug companies are always trying to pump us full of something so they can pump out more dough. Prefixes and suffixes look allergy-med-ish, though.” She pauses mid-unclasp of her corset. “Wait, lemme check.”
I raise a brow, as she takes her phone from her locker and swipes through it, all while stripping out of her stage costume into pasties and glittery panties. Honestly, kind of impressive multitasking.
“Mhm. Like I thought.” She flashes her screen at me, displaying a journal article with a word longer than the alphabet. “Experimental.”
She turns it back around and scrolls more. Her pretty face furrows.
“Very experimental. Jesus, how the hell did he get this stuff? It probably costs a fortune. Wasn’t he wearing a leather jacket old enough to drive its own motorcycle?
Huh.” She exchanges her phone for a shirt from her bag.
“I fully expected it to be something insane, laced with fentanyl or PCP or some shit. After the way he handled Frog? Dude seemed capable of anything.”
“Yeah,” I agree idly, biting my cheek. “He did.”
“Were you not terrified?” she asks as her head pops through the neck hole of an oversized black T-shirt, so long it doubles as a dress as it billows over her thighs. “If you’re not on stage, you’re such a skittish little thing.”
I should’ve been terrified. But there’s zero chance that I’m telling her the way he protected me made my core ache.
Heat creeps into my cheeks, and I duck my head while tugging on the oversized Chicago Bears hoodie I bought a few cities ago.
I loved it there, especially when the boys finally won the Super Bowl.
But I had to get the heck out as soon as possible.
Chicago in the winter? For a girl raised in Las Vegas and New Orleans? Absolutely not.
“I was more scared of Frog, honestly,” I admit quietly. “I haven’t been grabbed like that in…”
A long time.
I swallow hard.
“… in here,” I finish.
Duchy winces. “Xavier’s usually on the ball with that stuff, but he’s having to be everywhere at once now that Dorman’s high ass is becoming a complete waste of space at the door.” She shakes her head. “Hatter shouldn’t have even gotten a syringe inside the club, let alone a knife. I’m so sorry.”
She walks over and takes my hands, sympathy in her violet eyes as they dip to mine. “Are you okay?”
The earnestness in her question actually makes me stop to think about it before I nod. “I’m okay. Just… embarrassed.” I blew out a breath. “I panicked so hard, I didn’t get one useful thing out of the guy. Now he’ll probably never be allowed back in here.”
Duchy sucks her teeth. “Yeah, a guy like that’s bound to have juicy deets on something.” She plops onto the bench to change into fuzzy boots and muses, “Maybe he’s a hitman from some crime family or something. Shame he probably got on Castle’s bad side. He probably would’ve made a good ally.”
I try very hard not to side-eye my new friend.
We don’t know each other’s backgrounds, so she likely has no idea I recognize the strategic way she talks sometimes. All she’d have to do is throw in a “Blood of three, power of many,” and she could pass for a Troisgarde daughter just as easily as me.
Is she from some other dynasty? A runaway mafia princess?
Though… she does have a Southern accent.
Could she be a Wilde?
My chest pounds.
What if she’s—
A knock at the dressing room door makes me jolt.
Duchy glances at me before yelling, “We’re decent!” Then, she chuckles under her breath. “Not that it ain’t nothing none of y’all ain’t never seen before.”
I snort, and some of the panic melts away. No matter where Duchy came from, she’s running too. Same as me. And I know firsthand you aren’t your family’s sins.
My father made a deal that signed my life away to the Furys.
A deal that nearly tore our families apart once already, and one I refuse to contribute any more bloodshed to.
I learned the hard way I can’t fully trust anyone with my safety, but I’m not about to become even more paranoid around the only real friend I’ve had in months.
I’m still smiling when X pushes open the door, and Duchy nearly squeals at the sight of him. The girl’s got a fantastic poker face until it comes to Xavier.
But then she stiffens. “What’s wrong, Xav?”
The dressing room lights catch on the furrow in his brow. The eyeblack smeared across it and the matching smudges on his hands look like he’s been dragging his palms down his face in frustration… or worry.
He exhales slowly, gaze sliding toward me.
“Alice…” His expression tightens. “He wants to see you. Now.”