36. Evelyn
Idrove in the Aston Martin, parking outside the club formerly known as the Gilt and Gloam. If I didn’t know its history, I never would have guessed. Roxy’s Red Room flashed in red above the door.
Mr. Carter was eager to get out of the business when Bodrov and Gorky disappeared. Laszlo told me they were dead, but Roxy didn’t know that. When she bought and renovated the place using the money recovered from Gorky, I wanted to support her in her dream.
She started working every night. I was working every day at the store. We didn’t have a lot of options to hang out, so I called it exposure therapy and we met every other week in the lounge.
“Belle! My beauty!” Roxy gushed as I entered.
I wrapped my arms around my oldest friend. She looked the same as when I first met her: drop dead gorgeous. The only change was the spark, the light in her golden eyes that hadn’t been there back then.
Roxy’s Red Room had a different clientele, and the bachelorette party in the corner was already drunk, despite it being eight in the evening.
“You look amazing.” I never needed to lie about that. Her red sweetheart dress hugged her curves, giving her a perfect hourglass figure.
“So do you!” Her eyes scanned over my silk blouse, the pale pink complimenting my skin tone, and my A-line black skirt. She lifted my arm up. “New bracelet?”
“Yea, we’re thinking about carrying them at the shop, it’s by a local designer. It’s a pink rhodolite garnet set in white gold. What do you think?”
“Amazing,” she gushed. “I swear, you have the best taste. Though I don’t know why you refuse to make any custom pieces.”
It was hard to lie to my best friend, to keep her in the dark about what Laszlo and I had to do. I couldn’t risk selling my custom designs and then cut myself off from my dream future once we escaped Arkham. Once we did what we needed to do, the world had to think we were dead.
“I’m still learning,” I said truthfully, and she dragged me into a quiet corner near the door.
She ordered us a bottle of champagne, pouring it up, and I relaxed back into the horseshoe shaped bench. From that position I could watch my bodyguards standing at the door like old times.
They’d never dare call me a bimbo or turn their back on me if a man touched me.
I was safe with them.
I caught Aleksei and Roxy flirting a couple of times. He absolutely loved curvy redheads, and she loved himbos with a heart of gold. Her words, not mine.
“He said you turned him down last time he asked you out,” I said, staring at her over my champagne glass. I took a polite sip, crossing my legs casually.
“I like hearing his disappointment when I say no.” Roxy shrugged, and I frowned at her. “Fine, fine,” she threw her arms up in quick defeat. “I’m trying to avoid, you know, connected guys. I have to be careful.” She lifted the slit of her dress, revealing the small gun strapped there.
“I’m glad you’re taking your safety serious. I still have nightmares of the Crab.”
Roxy touched my shoulder. “He’s been gone for a long time. He was always pissing people off, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he got shot and tossed into the Miskatonic. Fish food.”
“Yea,” I murmured, though that sounded too good to be true. I checked the obituaries every so often for Jimmy Chernyk or any of his aliases, but nothing. Laszlo told me he was a fed and was probably in some witness protection thing.
“Oh, speaking of the past, you’ll never guess who I ran into the other day.”
“Who?”
“You remember Fiona?”
I remembered how she hated me for no reason. I nodded.
“Well, apparently Ty did what Ty was always gonna do and fucked her over. She was down on her luck and me, being the benevolent beauty I am, told her she could come back to work. Well, serving, rather than entertaining. You know. The tips aren’t as good, but,” Roxy gestured to the bachelorette party screaming into the karaoke machine.
“You’d be surprised how generous girls can be when they meet a girl’s girl. ”
I actually laughed.
“Fiona? A girl’s girl? Since when?”
Roxy’s expression softened. “She asked about you. Said she had something of yours.”
“Something of mine?”
“Yea. Look.”
I spotted Fiona by the bar, older, but still beautiful.
Her dark hair was cut short into a flattering bob, and she’d gained a little weight, the hard edges of her face softened.
The strangest thing, though, was how sheepish she looked as she caught my gaze, and lifted a hand in an uncomfortable wave.
Roxy gestured her over, and she glided across the bar in her six-inch pumps.
“Hey, Belle.” Without further hesitation, she reached into her bag and set on the table something I never thought I’d see again.
My grandmother’s protection pendant.
Rage flashed through me, hot and angry and potent. But when I blinked, there was Fiona, looking as lost as I had when I first came to the Gilt and Gloam. That darkness in her eyes had become an ocean, threatening to drown her in it, and all I felt was pity.
I deflated, realized Roxy’s hand was on my knee, holding me steady.
“Where did you find it?”
“It fell off one night when you were working. I don’t know, you pissed me off. I thought you were acting so prissy and perfect. Like you thought you were better than us, so I wanted to knock you down a peg. I was on a self-destructive streak, I guess. I’m… trying to be better now. Make amends.”
I tried not to clench my jaw, but I sucked in a deep breath through my nose. My fingers touched it, and that same warmth that always existed in it ignited beneath my fingertips.
“Thank you,” I said, pleased that my voice was earnest. “It means a lot to me.”
“Yea, you said it was, like, a good luck charm or something. That night when I was fighting with Ty. I don’t know if you remember.”
I did, vividly. She’d called me a Jesus freak.
“I do.”
She glanced down. I could tell it wasn’t easy for her to confess, and she was sincere, but that didn’t erase the past. She stole my talisman when I most needed protection and the comfort it provided.
“I had nothing but shit luck since stealing it. First Gorky disappeared with all our money, then Ty fucked me over… Karma, right?”
“Well, I hope good luck finds you now.” I meant it. There wouldn’t be any good to come from holding onto a grudge, and if Roxy forgave her for stealing her boyfriend and trying to steal hundreds of thousands in cash, then I had to try to do the same.
“Roxy said you got married to that goth guy you met in the club?” Fiona asked curiously.
“To Laszlo, yea,” I said, flashing her the custom ring I’d designed. It was a snake wrapped around a stormy pink gemstone, protective of it, like an egg. He wore the matching one, his made from a cloudy chalcedony crystal.
It would kill me to get rid of them when we had to take on our new identities. Laszlo convinced me to make at least a few personal pieces and told me he wouldn’t let me put all my dreams on pause for him.
“Wow.”
My phone rang, and I answered it without looking at the caller ID. “Hi, husband.”
There was something comforting, knowing he was always watching. It was the same back in the cult, but that was to watch us for sin, not our own security. Laszlo wanted to protect me. He cared for me. That was the difference.
I subtly smiled up to the hidden camera at the entrance next to our booth, the one even Roxy didn’t know about. It had been missed in the renovations, and I hoped she’d never find it, so after we escaped, I could still see her every once in a while.
“Is that Fiona?”
“Yes.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Is that your protection necklace?”
“Three for three, husband.”
He laughed, and I joined him. We kept cell chatter to a minimum, despite all the security he had installed on my phone. It was best not to make things any easier for spies than necessary.
“I’m fine, catching up with Fiona and Roxy. I’ll be home around midnight.”
“Okay, I love you,” he said with a hint of giddiness that I couldn’t help but return.
“I love you too,” I said before ending the call.
Fiona excused herself, and Roxy looked at me.
“You love him too? That means…”
“He said it!” I gushed, and my best friend wrapped me in a hug.
“I told you! How could anyone not love the most lovable girl in the world?” Roxy helped me put my protection necklace back on, and it settled above the rhodonite necklace Laszlo bought me from the Farmer’s Market, as if they were meant to be worn together.
“It kind of feels like fate brought this back to me,” I confessed, to Roxy’s giggle.
“Well, fate and a baddie BFF.”
“That too.”
After all this time, the cult had reached out to me, and dread coiled in my stomach. The return of my protection crystal helped dull the edges of the blades, but it was still there.
“Did something happen? Other than the big L, I mean. You seem a bit tense.”
Roxy could read me frustratingly well, and though I tipped back the rest of my champagne and she poured me another, I hadn’t come up with a good way to broach the subject. I hated talking about my father, but I wasn’t about to lie to her.
“Caleb reached out to me.”
Roxy let out a low whistle, drinking her own glass, then topping mine up again.
“Damn, must be that time, huh? The eclipse you told me about? Think they want you to get married?”
The eclipse.
The eclipse!