Chapter 10
Ophelia. Then.
I (mostly) forget about the incident and the silver fox in the ambulance until I was rummaging through dirty laundry, desperate for one shirt that didn’t have baby food or spit-up on it, and I found the card again at the bottom of the hamper.
I was suddenly plagued by the memory of a paramedic with the tight-lipped smile and a small, curved birthmark on his jaw.
It was Friday. I could check it out.
I pocketed the card. Evening rolled around.
Aleena and I were both too tired to cook, so I picked up a couple shawarma sandwiches.
By the end of the night, she was parked in front of the TV.
Kira was fast asleep, her head in her mommy’s lap, and Squeaky was passed out in Aleena’s room, the baby monitor on the table.
I snatched a pint of ice cream from the freezer, two spoons, and cuddled up beside Aleena.
Aleena was dressed in her soft, fluffy PJs.
Normally, I too would have my PJs on at this point, so I could feel her eyeing my jeans-and-shirt suspiciously as we shared the pint.
“Going somewhere?”
I shrugged, trying to be blasé. “Maybe. I don’t know. I was considering it, but then you turned on Pirates of the Caribbean...”
Aleena sat up, picked up the remote, and flipped the channel.
“Do it,” Aleena said. “Now, you have no excuse.”
I pressed my lips together. “I don’t want to abandon ship…”
“What ship?” She motioned to the sleeping kids. “The crew is out of commission. Go. Before I physically shove you out of the house.”
I hesitated. “Are you sure?”
She screwed her eyes at me. “One of us has to have a life.” She took the pint from me and dug in. “Tell me everything when you come back.”
“Obviously.” I pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Call me if you need anything. Anything.”
“Out, out.”
That settled it. Permission granted, I started to get excited.
I was a creature of the night, and it’d been months since I’d be able to make bad decisions in the dark.
I checked the clock on my phone. It was almost seven already.
I’d be fashionably late. I jumped in the shower, untangled my hair so it fell into perfect curls around my shoulders, and adorned my eyes with dark liner.
I pulled on a fitting, chocolate-brown slip and a puffy, faux-fur jacket.
I left my bedroom and found Aleena still on the couch. She had her head tilted back, mouth open, and the pint was melting in her lap. I put the ice cream away, pulled a blanket over her and Kira, and then headed out.
Seekers Welcome. I couldn’t get that out of my head. Who were Seekers? There was a good chance I was walking into some kind of occultist cult experience and—you know what? Why not? I’d look good in a white dress and a pair of antlers.
I hopped on the subway, taking the G to the C, which dropped me off near a park in Harlem.
My heels clicked along the sidewalk as I took in the aging brownstones, the family-run barbershop, and a Spanish grocery store.
A guy sitting on his stoop gave me a nod and a, “hey, baby,” and I greeted him right back.
New York was a city with a constantly racing heartbeat—everything was fast, relevant, and trend setting.
Harlem, however, was a neighborhood with an old soul.
Things slowed down here. There was a reverence in the air.
If you were really quiet, you might hear the ghost-tunes of Billie Holiday playing from the Apollo theatre.
My directions led me to a jazz club. The club was bumping, muted sounds of sax and trumpets bleeding from red-tinted windows. A plaque next to the door touted the building as a registered landmark.
I checked my card. I was a door off. The address didn’t lead me to the jazz club—it directed me to the brownstone beside the jazz club.
The building was a clay-red structure with a dark door.
I climbed the steps, and I noticed someone smoking outside of the jazz club.
His eyes didn’t leave me and he wore a Cheshire-cat grin, like he knew something I didn’t.
The faint light from behind the curtains suggested life inside. I rang the doorbell and adjusted my coat around my shoulders.
I didn’t have to wait long. The door opened, and I was greeted by a leggy blonde woman in a crop top and pigtails.
Oh. Whoops. This was not Casper. This was…his daughter? His wife? Honestly, hard to tell with men these days.
Thumping music played in the house behind her. Her eyes flickered over me, scanning me from head to toe.
“Are you a Seeker?” she asked.
I was seeking someone. So, sure. I played along. “You know it.” I held up the card, hoping it would let me through.
Her eyes registered the card, and her expression relaxed. She widened the door and motioned me inside. “Come in.”
Victory. My heels clicked as I stepped up the last of the brownstone steps and entered.
I was met with autumnal tones; fire red and low gold. A hypnotizing beat played on the speakers, something without words but full of percussion. I could hear the clamor of people, but the sounds seemed like they were mostly coming from upstairs. Some kind of party?
As I walked through the foyer, we stopped at a man kneeling on the floor.
He was completely wrapped in a black leather suit, and I mean wrapped, mummy-style, from head to toe.
A black mask covered his head, leaving only slits for his eyes.
Where his mouth should be was, instead, a closed zipper.
His head was bowed, his arms open in wait, and he was so still, it took me a moment to realize he wasn’t a bizarre statue.
The blonde motioned to him. “You can give him your coat.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
I shrugged out of my coat and slung it over his arms. He rose suddenly, like a coin-operated-animatronic who had just been dropped a sweet penny. He opened the closet and hung my coat as though it were woven with pure gold.
I hadn’t made it past the foyer, and already, I wanted to know everything about this party.
I felt the blonde studying me. “It’s your first time, right?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“I have some paperwork you’ll need to fill out. Do you have your ID?”
Paperwork? For a party? “Sure…”
The front door clicked open and a new flock of people entered. The blonde’s mouth thinned, seemingly annoyed at being interrupted. “I have to check them in. Can you wait over there just a moment?”
She motioned me through the front room. It was set up like a lounge area with a bar, a few couches, and sexy, dim lamp light.
I took a spot at the bar, which appeared to be self-serve, since I didn’t see a bartender.
I craned over the bar top to hunt for the liquor, but I found nothing but water and seltzer.
Someone brushed up beside me. “Phantom hides the good stuff,” a male voice said. “But I can help you find what you’re looking for.”
I glanced up. He was gorgeous. Early thirties, maybe. A band shirt over a tight body. Dark skin with the greenest eyes I’d ever seen.
I lowered myself from my tip-toes. “Oh, yeah? What am I looking for?”
“No idea.” He grinned. “But I can’t wait to find out.”
He was looking at me like he wanted to devour me, and the look sent a ripple through me. I thought I might let him, until another voice interrupted us. “Settle down, Carver. She’s here for me.”
That voice. It was same voice that had reached into my consciousness and brought me back to life. It had the same effect, even now—the second I heard it, I felt parts of me tingling, waking up.
Carver pulled back. “My bad.”
Carver retreated, revealing the man on the other side of the bar—there he was.
Casper. Only instead of the paramedic uniform, he wore a black t-shirt, blue jeans, and those same, weathered shoes.
I found myself pulled by things I shouldn’t be pulled in by—the silver in his hair.
The darkness around his eyes. The stern pinch at the edge of his mouth.
I felt a strange swooping in my stomach. The odd pride of being claimed by a man who was clearly the lion of the pack.
I slid down the bar, closing the Carver-sized gap between us.
“I’m here for you, huh?” I asked.
Without meeting my gaze, he answered, “It would be a strange coincidence if you weren’t, Ruby.”
A light thrill whispered through me. So I did leave an impression. He remembered me. I leaned in closer so our arms brushed. “You summoned me. I just answered the call.”
Only he just furrowed his eyebrows at me, confused. “I summoned you?”
I removed the card from my pocket and slid it over the counter. “You gave me your card.”
He stared at the card as though it had insulted him. He twisted it between his finger and his thumb and sighed. “Cortez.”
I pointed to myself, correcting: “Ruby.”
“No…Cortez. My EMT.” He passed the card back to me, snapping it against the counter. “This is her meddling. She thinks I’m lonely.”
Oh. Well, that was disappointing. This wasn’t the flirty, getting-to-know-you I wanted. Instead, I felt like I was being chastised by someone’s dad for not stopping long enough at the stop sign.
I tried another tactic. “Are you?” I asked. “Lonely?”
His eyebrows hiked up his forehead. He gestured to the party. “Do I look lonely?”
But while he was looking at the crowd, I was looking at him. I clocked the darkness around his eyes. The tight lock of his jaw. The guarded way he squared his shoulders.
I answered honestly, “Yes. You do.”
He blinked, surprised. His expression shifted from mildly annoyed to mildly curious.
Before we could continue psychoanalyzing each other, the blonde returned, a clipboard in hand. “Okay,” she smiled, flustered. “Sorry about that. If you can sign here, real quick…”
She set the clipboard on the bar and I examined the pages. “What’s this?”
Casper answered, “Your invite to the playground.”
I flipped through the pages. Non-disclosure agreement, confirmation of date of birth, warnings of nudity, sexual acts—
It was starting to click together. “This is a sex club,” I announced, triumphant to have solved the mystery. “You run a sex club.”