Chapter 1 #2
“The Audi, it’s over there…” She pointed in the general direction. “In the overflow parking lot.”
He picked her up and started walking, carrying her like an infant. She wanted to argue she could walk, but the truth was, she was still weak, and it would’ve taken everything she had.
He settled her on her feet by the driver’s side, saw her in, and then walked around to the passenger side. No arguments, no bossing her around. He let her drive her own car.
“Head across the street,” he told her. “Stop at the gate, and go ahead and roll the front windows down now.”
Well, so much for not being bossy.
When she got to the gate, she remembered Cora calling it a compound, and that seemed the right word for this. An entire city block was walled off. Not fenced off. This was a fifteen-foot-tall mega-impressive wall, and no one was getting in without the people at this gate letting them in.
“She’s with me,” Knife said to the man who looked in her window. “This is Tuesday. Tuesday, meet Paco.”
“Nice to meet you,” she told him. But he only nodded and said, “Knife will show you where to park.”
“There are clubhouse rules,” Knife told her while she parked.
“A lot of them. We won’t stay in the front for too long, but mostly, don’t touch anyone.
Not even a hand on an arm to walk by them.
Don’t interrupt someone in a vest. To be safe, tonight, don’t speak to anyone in a vest unless they speak to you first. Be friendly with the ol’ladies.
Sometimes they accept people right away, sometimes one or two of them will be a bitch.
Usually, most of them accept new people, and I can’t see why that won’t be the case, but you kind of have to stand on your own for that.
I can step in, but if I do, they won’t respect you. ”
“Ol’ladies? I mean, I saw Sons of Anarchy, but I guess I thought that was just a TV thing.”
He tilted his head. “They didn’t get everything right, but a lot of it was accurate.”
The clubhouse was loud, with multiple conversations going on at once, people on a sofa playing video games, and a lot of women sitting at a table, drinking.
Knife whistled when they entered, and the room quieted.
Everyone looked at them, and he said, “This is Tuesday. She’s mine.
I won’t introduce her to all of you motherfuckers at once, but feel free to introduce yourself if I’m not around and you want to talk to her.
” He looked to their right, where the women were all sitting together. “Harmony, can I trust her with you?”
“Yeah, I’ll take care of her. You should tell her it’s okay to share her species.”
He glanced at the table, looked back at her, and told her, “They’ve all been bound to the secret. Your choice, but… it’s better if you share.”
And he literally handed her over to the women and then left her to go talk to his brothers.
She breathed in and clocked them — Harmony was a wolf, but the rest were human.
She kept her face neutral and filed that away.
“I belong to Brain, the VP,” Harmony said. “That’s Gen, who’s Duke’s ol’lady. He’s the Pres. Angelica is Bash’s sidekick, and he’s the Sergeant-at-Arms.”
Gen looked her over, clearly judging her clothes, her shoes, her hair. Tuesday figured it was probably important the head bitch approved of her, but she wasn’t terribly happy with the way she was being analyzed.
But Harmony didn’t seem to notice, and kept going with introductions, motioning to a woman with pastel hair. “That’s Lexi, sitting beside Daisy, and then Matty, who’s kind of an honorary ol’lady, since we don’t really know what to call him.”
Matty smiled. “I belong to Razor. Duke is clear that I’m not an ol’lady, even though I’m in that category.
Welcome. What’s your drink? I’m sticking with beer because I’m human and Razor doesn’t want me drunk tonight.
Harmony does Long Island tea. Gen is doing margaritas, and Lexi is drinking water with lemon. ”
“Bubbles told me no alcohol tonight,” the woman with the pastel hair said. “Daisy is drinking really slow. She’s allowed to drink, but she isn’t allowed to get drunk tonight, either.”
Allowed.
Tuesday had so many questions, but wasn’t sure how to ask them, so she merely nodded and said, “Long Island tea sounds good. Show me where everything is, and I can make my own.”
“We are going to be really good friends,” Harmony said, and she walked her behind a gorgeous bar.
Tuesday hadn’t intended to get fancy, but by the time she’d lined all the bottles up, Harmony had filled a shaker with ice, so she filled it with the amounts she preferred for each ingredient, shook it, and then poured it into a glass.
“Not the first time you’ve done that,” Harmony noted.
Tuesday held her glass up, Harmony touched hers to it, and they both drank.
When she sat with the women, she verified, “Knife says ya’ll all know about… you’ve been bound. Oathed?”
“God yes,” Gen said. “Abbott for me, but a few of the new ol’ladies had to do it with Marco.”
She nodded. “Okay then. I’m a wolf. Knife seemed to think it was important I tell ya’ll.”
“Yeah,” Gen said. “You know what we are by scent, but we just have to wait for you to tell us. Matty mentioned being human before you told us, which is a no-no. Not sure why the magic let him.”
“I heard Knife telling her we’ve been bound to the secret,” Matty said with a shrug. “Told me she isn’t human, just not what she is.”
Tuesday learned Gen works in real estate, Matty’s an interior designer, Daisy’s a tattoo artist, and Lexi a hair stylist. Harmony owns a horse farm, and Angelica is a mechanical engineer who works for TVA, and apparently can rebuild an older car from the ground up.
And Tuesday liked them all.
Also, Gen was in couture, so Tuesday was glad she was in at least a name-brand skirt and blouse. They hadn’t cost thousands of dollars, but hundreds. At any rate, Gen seemed to have accepted her, so Tuesday tried to forget about the early judgmental looks.
Matty was sharp, funny, and seemed to find life genuinely entertaining.
Daisy was quieter, watchful. Young, but not na?ve, though Tuesday had a feeling she’d been absolutely that, once upon a time.
Lexi was young and bright, and seemed to be deciding whether Tuesday was going to fit in during the first five minutes, and then asked, out of the blue, “Did you know you’d end up at a bikers’ clubhouse when you put those pearls on? ”
Tuesday touched her neck on instinct. “I did not, and I contemplated taking them off on the way across the street, but Knife told me not to.”
Lexi nodded, and Tuesday got the feeling she’d just passed some kind of test.
Thirty minutes later, Matty had her in stitches with his opinion on pretty much everything, and Lexi also turned out to be pretty damned funny.
Gen kept a quiet kind of order over the group, and Tuesday felt as if she’d known Harmony for months.
And she picked up subtle clues that told her most of these women knew things about the MC that Tuesday hadn’t expected them to know, and none of them seemed troubled by any of it.
Knife appeared at her side when she was on her way to make her fourth Long Island tea, and told her, “You get to see my room here, next.”
She said her goodnights to the women and followed him out the back door of the large room, down some stairs, through several locked doors with different kinds of locks, some needing codes, two requiring a palmprint.
Several levels below the clubhouse, they walked down a corridor that reminded her of an old school hallway, with closed doors on both sides.
Finally, he opened one of the doors and motioned her in.