Chapter 10 Cocktails and Cock Tales
Cocktails and Cock Tales
After banishing Moneta into the murky waters of the Thames and disposing of Francis, Malachy traversed to the Emerald Club, his thoughts only of Cora. Had her memories returned with the demon’s death? The uncertainty was maddening.
Inside the club, a confused perfume of smoke and cold gin and warm musk clouded his senses. A sea of limbs entwined on the crowded dance floor to the frantic, yearning rhythm of jazz. In dark corners, sweat glistened on bare flesh that was gyrating with disturbing vigor.
Even for a Saturday night, the club was unusually amorous. Dozens of new reasons for Lt. Potts to arrest Malachy greeted him everywhere he looked. Public indecency was the least of the crimes currently being committed.
He searched the sweaty faces for his gang and found no one. It was only a matter of time before this disaster overtook the club and the coppers busted them.
“Oi!” Malachy shouted over the throbbing music. “Knock it the fuck off!”
His orders went unheard, drowned out by panting breaths and heaving flesh and unhinged jazz.
This was more than spring fever after an endless gray winter. Had Yvonne busted out her euphoria-inducing absinthe or inhibition-annihilating cocaine again? Worse, perhaps Julian Morro or Ari Razaq had sown their own seeds of discord on this fertile field.
Malachy would stop the party before it erupted into a full-blown orgy, but first, he needed Cora.
His only thought, his only driving need, was to feel her.
Run his fingers through her wild hair, kiss her senseless, lick her until she melted.
The desperate need clawed at his chest, threatening to tear him open.
He felt the pull of her, hooked through the meat of his heart, as he wound around packed tables and through the animal heat of sweat-sheened bodies towards the stage. Anticipation thrummed in his veins.
On the stage was not Cora, but three to five people fucking in a tangled heap. His orders for them to stop were summarily ignored. Frustrated, he fought back against the sensuous wave of bodies in search of her.
Dimitri plowed through the lust-crazed bystanders, elbows out in an unrelenting clothesline.
“Mal, thank god,” the Hydromancer said in what might have been the greatest display of emotion Malachy had seen from the stoic Slav.
“Not even midnight, and already I break up many fights and many more fuckings. In mirror room… Come. See for self.”
The crowd parted around the hulking water mage.
Dimitri swept back the emerald curtains into a room lined with gilded mirrors, and Malachy wished he could unsee what greeted him.
Body fluids were splashed across every reflective surface like an impressionist landscape of hell.
A cursory glance at the throbbing mass of flesh, reflected from every angle in every mirror, told him the room would never be clean again.
“Jesus.”
Dimitri dropped the curtains, shuddering. “Tried to break up. They pull me in pile. Twenty minutes until I am free.”
“Fuckin’ hell.” Malachy dragged a hand over his face. Yvonne’s enchanted coke had never done this much damage before. Once he found the Phytomancer, he’d make her throw out every flake of snow.
Music swelled along with inebriated laughter and pleasured groans and mad shouting. One mostly undressed man stumbled past Malachy and bumped into another unclad gentleman. After exchanging several fist blows, the men exchanged teeth and tongues in a brutal kiss.
Malachy pushed past them, driven by his need to find Cora, to continue what they had started in her moonlit bed and never finish.
The jazz, the dancers, moved in a collective pulse, thumping along with his own racing heartbeat in a medley of discordant notes.
Hands and other appendages groped him in the churning mass.
Two brawling flappers slammed into him, and he got a mouthful of hair as one woman ripped hanks of it off the other’s scalp.
He spotted Yvonne’s sable bob near the golden bar. Fighting through the crowd, he flung himself in the chair beside the Phytomancer. “Did you do this?” he shouted over the band’s frantic rhythm.
Yvonne sidled up beside him. She slowly crossed her legs, brushing the full length of her thigh along his. “Whatever do you mean, Mal?” she purred in his ear.
“This.” He waved a hand over the club. “This literal fuckin’ orgy.”
“Why, of course not. Yet, there is an ache in the air tonight. Can you not feel it?” She walked her ruby-tipped fingers from his knee to his groin. He snatched her hand away, and her laugh tinkled like a bell as she tossed her head in a wave of silken hair.
Yvonne trailed her hand down the ample swells of her cleavage to the antique locket on a chain nestled within, where she kept her most potent coca concoctions. On the mounds of her breasts, she dusted white snow that glistened with magic beneath the chandeliers.
“You used to love tasting enchantments from my body, Mal. You used to love doing so many things to me.”
His gaze did not stray from her face. “That is no longer our relationship.”
“The man doth protest too much.” With a predatory smile and surprising speed, Yvonne lunged forward and palmed his groin.
This, unfortunately, was when Julian Morro found him.
The Lumomancer’s mismatched eyes flicked from Malachy’s crotch in Yvonne’s hand, then up to her coke-crowned tits, and back to Malachy.
“I say,” Julian Morro drawled, grinning like a Cheshire cat in his dove gray suit. “You Europeans sure know how to throw a party.”
Extracting himself from Yvonne’s grasp was quick, but the damage had been done. “Ah, Julian. What timing.” His gaze sharpened on the Lumomancer. “What are you doing here?”
“Why, I’m here for our rescheduled meeting, darling, as your solicitor requested.”
Jesus, the meeting with Julian had completely slipped his mind.
Yvonne was far from thrilled at the interruption. “The American is here,” she said, lips curled in disdain.
“The mother of the bride is here,” Julian sniped back.
“As the mother of the bride I can uninvite you to the wedding.”
She planted a hand on her hip, and Malachy knew he would need to intervene soon before the cat fight got ugly. That did not mean he couldn’t enjoy the spectacle a wee longer. Lighting a cigarette, he watched on, ready to file away any potential leverage from their spat.
“And why, pray tell, would you uninvite the best man? As Larry’s close friend”—Julian offered a wide smile full of gleaming white teeth— “I know what’s best for him.
Things were going so well when Larry and I first came to London for his newest movie, until your little clone of a daughter sank her claws in him.
Not that I blame Larry for sampling the local cuisine, mind you, as long as he comes properly attired. Poor Larry just gets so lonely.”
“I can see that.” Malachy glanced across the club where Laurence Bellamy was surrounded by a flock of voracious fans vying for a piece of the Hollywood star.
Sloane Kilbride was at the forefront of the adoration frenzy, stripping Laurence one article of clothing at a time.
His teal ascot and cream-colored suit were lost to a sea of grasping hands.
Not that Laurence minded. Eyes closed and sandy-haired head tilted back, his mouth was parted in untold bliss.
“The only reason that vile chit Rosemarie has a ring on her finger and I—” Julian looked away. “Well. Threatening to expose a lovechild to the tabloids is one way to get a marriage proposal, isn’t it?”
Yvonne’s lips pursed into a line. “Horrid American.”
“The French.” Julian rolled his eyes.
Malachy decided to step in before the claws came out. “Yvonne, cut off the supply of whatever product you sold everyone and—we’ll talk about the rest later.”
She graced him with another carefully engineered pout, then sashayed away.
Malachy ushered Julian behind the bar. Among the crates of booze and shelves of glasses, he could almost hear himself think again.
“Whatever shite you and Razaq are pulling, stop.”
“Shite?” Julian, helping himself to the club’s finest bottle of sherry, paused with the glass halfway to his mouth.
“What shite, darling? I brought Ari along for our meeting—he’s so terribly eager to meet you that he even left his precious research behind—and you weren’t here.
Not that I mind, mind you, as I can amuse myself in this delectable den of ill repute.
But Ari is so finicky about schedules and other tedious details.
He’s probably off reading a book somewhere and missing the splendor. Ah, what a lovely evening.”
Julian toasted the orgy. “There is something about tonight. Can’t you just feel it pulsing in your loins?”
Malachy pinched the bridge of his nose. Listening to this Yank prattle on, his lies like spun sugar, was the last thing he wanted to do right now.
Julian was clearly more concerned with chasing forbidden fruit than running a gang.
Which meant Ari Razaq, somewhere in the club now, was pulling the strings from the shadows.
If Yvonne and Julian’s handler weren’t responsible for the club’s madness, then who?
Or what, he thought, recalling Francis’s curse-locked lips. Francis had mentioned glimpsing a lioness through the mirror, like the one Sloane had sighted near the club.
Perhaps neither mages nor humans were to blame for this circus.
“I’m gasping for a cigarette. Do you mind if I just—” Julian’s gaze fastened on something over his shoulder.
Malachy turned. Julian’s attention was riveted on Laurence Bellamy, the centerpiece of rabid adoration. The sandy-haired actor turned as if in a dream. Across the valleys of flesh between them, the Lumomancers’ gazes locked. A look of anguished longing crossed Laurence’s chiseled features.
Julian rubbed his hands together. “I’ve just had a marvelous idea.”
“Oh no.”