The Model A had a false floor in the back. Three small crates of hooch just fit from one door across to the other. Jean slid into the driver’s seat while two of MacMurrough’s boys tossed cases of root beer on the bench, their official delivery to Club Sidhe. Usually she rode shotgun, but the last boy had clipped a limestone curb and blown a tire. The jalopy wasn’t exactly a Chrysler, but still. She’d be driving from now on.
It was nine at night, and the neon fairy above Club Sidhe’s front doors batted her green wings at a clientele that sure as hell wasn’t lining up for root beer. Jean drove around back, parked at the kitchen entrance, and rapped on the door.
She pulled her scarf up the back of her neck till it touched the brim of her fedora—she’d given herself razor burn again, and the cold really bit at it. She’d thought the wind on the prairie was bitter in winter, hurtling across the open miles, but here it seemed to take the ice off Lake Michigan and shove it pressurized through the brick canyons of the city.
A bouncer poked his head out, then grunted when he saw her. “Bring ’em in,” he said, swinging the door wide.
“You know how this works.” She jerked her thumb at the car. “You bring in your stuff while I talk to the money man.”
Every delivery, this particular bouncer tried to get out of the heavy lifting and seemed to think he’d manage it each time. He pouted. Again.
She patted him on the shoulder and stepped past into the dimness of the Sidhe. “Where’s Alan?”
“In his office,” came the grumble, but he obediently shuffled out to the Model A, cussing under his breath. Every goddamn week.
Jean threaded her way through the small kitchen toward the office. A jazzy trumpet was playing a solo in the club proper. Jean still didn’t know most of the popular tunes. Maybe she’d get a record player in a couple months.
Wild to think about things like that. Broken Bow’s barren fields were still buried in dust, the banks were nest-egg graveyards, and here was Jean Fletcher with more money than she’d ever seen in her life.
Jean pushed open the door without knocking. “New trumpeter out there?” she asked.
Alan Quinelly looked up as she walked in. The thin strawberry-blond was perpetually surrounded by ledgers, slide rules, gnawed-on pencils, and legal pads. “Paid extra for a hotshot from New York,” he said, expressionless as ever behind his gold-wire glasses.
She pulled out a chair across from him. “Oh? Trying to impress someone coming in tonight?”
“Mmm.” He went back to his ledger. “Shipment come in all right?”
“Three gallons at nine,” she said promptly. “Plus a dollar for the short notice.”
“Nine?”
“You wanted the triple-refined gin, right?” Jean smiled and crossed a knee over the other thigh. She brushed the hem of her slacks. “Who’s this bigshot you’re trying to sweet-talk tonight, anyway?”
“Jean,” Alan warned.
She laughed as he reached for his cashbox. “All right, let me guess. Ah... McErlane?”
It was Alan’s turn to laugh. “You just fall off a truck? He never leaves his own place, you know that.”
“That right?” Alan would let down his guard a little if he thought he was smarter than you. “Gosh, it’s gotta be someone just as huge for the trouble you’re going to, though. Fancy music, extra booze... Captain Winston?”
It was meant to be another toss-up, something for Alan to scoff at. Jean figured two, maybe three more wild guesses, and the pencil-pusher would be vibrating to tell her what she couldn’t add up herself.
Instead, his hand froze on the cashbox. “What have you heard.”
Jean gawked at him. “Really? You’ve got a fucking cop coming in for a good time?”
Alan went back to counting out her fee, his jaw tight.
She raised an eyebrow. “Not just a good time?”
Silence.
“Quinelly. He’s not trying to tell you how to run your racket. Right?”
“Knock it off, Jean.”
“Look, if he’s getting bored with taking bribes, I goddamn wanna know about it—”
Alan slid a thin stack of bills toward her. “Make sure the quarts get in all right, then you’ll want to leave quick.”
Jean put a hand on the cash. “Hey,” she said. “What are you up against?”
The gold-wire glasses stayed trained on the desk as Alan locked up the cashbox, set it in the safe underneath his desk, and returned to his ledgers.
“Alan.”
“Have a good night, Jean.”
If the chief of police had the Sidhe by the balls, it was only a matter of time before MacMurrough’s liquor business felt the squeeze. Possibly from a rope around the neck. “Quinelly, buddy, pal, how long have we known each other?”
Alan shot her an unamused glance. “Six months.”
“Old friends tell each other things.”
He clapped his ledger closed and made a shooing motion toward the door. “Now that we’ve established the longevity of your average friendship...”
“Alan, I’m serious—”
He leaned forward over the desk. “You think I’m not?” he hissed. “This is way over your head, Jean. Leave. Now.”
She studied him for half a moment, then finally stood, tucking MacMurrough’s fee into the inside pocket of her suit jacket.
“Thanks for dropping by on short notice, Fletcher,” Alan said rather more normally. “We’ll take our regular order all the same on Wednesday.”
Jean took her time rewrapping her scarf, adjusted her hat. “MacMurrough didn’t hire me for show,” she said, low enough only Alan should be able to hear. “When I feel in over my head, I’ll say uncle, how’s that?”
Alan snorted without humor. “You have no idea what you’re offering to help with.” He glanced at her above the rim of his glasses. They caught the light of his desk lamp oddly. “But if you really have no sense of self-preservation...”
“You let me worry about that.”
His mouth thinned. “The Sidhe gets going after midnight. Come back if you’re a fool.”
She grinned. “Been called worse.”
Jean pulled the Model A into the alley behind MacMurrough’s diner. Cut the engine and sat there. Laughed at herself a little. She’d just run a delivery by herself, no one to watch her back, and this was when the nerves kicked in?
She thought about a cigarette. But that would only delay the inevitable.
Jean entered the diner through the kitchen, as per usual, and as per usual, Clara Townsend was sitting at one of the three tables. She looked like a female Alan, in her sweater and long plaid skirt, paperwork spread all around her. A low-watt bulb cast light on loose black curls and glinted off the cheap gold bracelet on her right hand. Graceful brown fingers slid over figures on a legal pad.
She didn’t actually look anything like Alan.
There was an empty rocks glass on the table, precariously near a corner, shoved there by the stacks of bookwork.
Jean crossed the floor and picked up the glass. “What are you drinking?”
Clara’s head snapped up, a pair of thin wire frames slipping down her nose. “Goddamn, you’re silent as a cat.” She blew out a breath and slapped her pencil on top of her paperwork. “Do you eat owl feathers for breakfast?”
“Mmm, I wear a dandelion-fluff crown to bed, too. Keeps my shoe leather from creaking.” Jean waggled the empty tumbler. “What do you want to drink?”
“Don’t make fun of things you don’t understand.” Clara glared up at her, then adjusted her glasses primly on her foxy face.
“I understand you’re as superstitious as my dear granny, may she rest in peace. It’s more charming on you, though.”
Clara clicked her tongue. “I know you keep a fifth of rye somewhere in here. That’ll do.”
Jean smirked as she went to the distillery closet, a false door in the diner’s little storeroom. The bottle was on a high shelf, far back enough no one would see it if they weren’t looking. Jean, all of six feet since she was sixteen, grabbed it easily. “What were you drinking before I got here, Townsend?” she called out. She heard an exasperated sigh, and her grin got wider.
“I wasn’t drinking your rye!” Clara protested.
“Know you weren’t.” Jean tossed her hat on the diner counter, gave her hair a quick smooth—the Brylcreem toned down the ginger color at least—and grabbed an extra glass. She poured a couple fingers, one for Clara and one for herself, and came back to the table. “You couldn’t reach the bottle with a ladder.”
Clara took her glass. “Who’s saying I’d use a ladder?”
“What, you climb up the shelves when no one’s looking?”
“Maybe I fly.”
Jean paused, drink in hand. “I knew it.”
Clara went still. “Knew what?”
Jean grinned. “You’re an angel.”
Clara stared, then blew out a huff. “And you can’t see what’s right in front of your own face. I was just drinking water, relax.”
Jean pretended to choke on her whiskey. “What? Why? You work for a bootlegger.”
“Oh, that reminds me.” Clara held out her hand, palm up. “Alan’s fee?”
Jean took a swallow of her drink, reached into her coat, and pulled out the bills, holding Clara’s gaze. Clara dropped her eyes immediately and flicked through the stack. Busied herself making a notation in her ledger.
It had taken Jean months to be able to hold that steady brown gaze, but she could do it now. Mostly because she’d discovered that if she didn’t look away, Clara inevitably did. It felt like winning.
Jean sat and idly drank, watching.
“Don’t you have a home?” Clara asked at last.
“Kicking me out, Townsend?” There wasn’t much appeal in killing time in Jean’s postage-stamp apartment before going back to the Sidhe. She’d had enough solitude in Broken Bow.
Clara took a sip of rye and didn’t respond. Didn’t even look up. Jean grinned. That meant no.
“By the way,” Jean said suddenly, “I found out who the bigshot is that Alan’s wooing with MacMurrough’s fancy gin tonight.”
The No. 2 pencil scratched to a halt. Clara’s full red lips swept into a sly smile. She folded her arms on top of her books. “Do tell,” she murmured.
Jean forgot to swallow until the rye burned the back of her throat. She tried to lessen the inevitable cough. “He’s keeping a cop happy.”
Clara frowned. “That’s not so unusual.”
Jean hummed in agreement. “But I’m getting a whiff it might be something a little bigger. More than just a bribe and some free booze here and there.”
A brow went up, black as a crow’s wing. “Someone wants in on Alan’s business?”
Jean shrugged and sipped her drink. “Quinelly wouldn’t say much about it.”
Clara tapped her pencil on her arm. “Well, who is it?”
“Would you believe Captain Thaddeus Winston?”
Clara went perfectly still. Jean wasn’t confident she was breathing, couldn’t even see a pulse in her smooth throat. After a long moment, Clara’s fingers curled on top of her notepad, red nails scratching against the paper.
Jean raised an eyebrow. “That name mean something to you?”
Clara’s throat worked before she spoke. “Doesn’t every bootlegger in Chicago know the chief of police?” Too light, too flippant.
“Which does not explain that reaction.”
Clara leaned back in her chair, her slouch creating new curves in her rust-colored sweater. “Winston’s proud of his reputation as a hardass when it comes to Prohibition. He cracks down on business that’s rather relevant to me being able to eat. Should I wish him well?”
Jean was good at knowing when someone was lying. Or not telling the whole truth, which often amounted to the same thing. “Maybe he thinks you should have other business?”
Something sharp darted across Clara’s face, gone before Jean could be sure what she saw. “I’m more aware than you of what business the good captain would have me take up.”
Jean leaned forward. “You have personal experience with Winston?”
A closemouthed smile, and Clara took a long sip of her rye. She stood with Alan’s fee and walked over to the safe hidden in the floor behind the diner counter. She disappeared from view as she knelt to deposit the cash.
Usually, Jean could tell if an idea was bad. Usually she avoided them. However... “Feel like going out tonight, Townsend?”
The safe door clanged shut. A beat of silence, then Clara came back into view. She rested both elbows on the counter and held Jean’s gaze. “What was that?”
Jean tossed her a grin that was more confident than she felt. “Alan told me to come back to Club Sidhe at 1:00 a.m. I’m thinking of taking him up on the invitation. You should come, let me take you out. Show you what a gentleman I am.”
Clara tilted her head but didn’t look away. “Alan wouldn’t tell you to come back tonight. Not if Winston’s involved.”
“He pretty much told me.”
“So he didn’t.”
“Wanna find out with me if I’m wrong?”
Clara pressed her lips together, and Jean grinned. She knew when Clara was trying not to laugh.
A roll of the eyes. “What’s your plan, Fletcher?”
“Me?” Jean adjusted her necktie. “I’m going to Club Sidhe to have a quiet drink, listen to some good jazz, and watch you verbally eviscerate every man who tries to talk to you.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Right. That’s why MacMurrough’s boys always tip their hats to you. That or stare in silent awe. None of ’em have ever seen you castrate someone with your vocabulary.”
“Why does Alan want you back at the Sidhe tonight?”
Clara was too damn smart. MacMurrough had pulled a lucky card when he lured her away from New York City to be his accountant.
“Because he knows I’m a gifted problem solver?” Jean tried for a charming tilt of the head.
“Not this kind of problem.”
“You sound awfully sure.” When Clara didn’t say anything, Jean added, “Look, I know it’s dope, right? Greedy police chief wants to run heroin through a speakeasy, and he thinks Quinelly can’t tell him no.” That was the only thing she could think of that matched Alan’s warning about Jean being in over her head. True enough, she’d never gotten close to that game. But if MacMurrough’s crew could help nip it in the bud, they could keep Irish territory from devolving into a bigger bloodbath than it was already.
Clara’s jaw clenched. She glanced at her paperwork strewn over the table. “Clean up for me. I’ll meet you back here at half past midnight.”
Jean’s chest went hot. “You got it.” Too fast? “You need me to walk you home?” Yes, too fast. Slow down, Fletcher.
Clara’s red lips curved sweetly. “See you at 12:30, baby.”
Jean nodded and stayed in her seat as Clara shrugged into her coat and stepped out the back door into the night. Only then did she lean forward, elbows on knees, and wipe a hand over her face.
Baby.
Clara didn’t have her glasses on at 12:30.
She walked into the diner wearing a shin-length wool coat Jean had never seen before. A sparkly black headband wrapped around her forehead and got lost in a wonderland of short, loose black curls, highlighting big round eyes and thick black lashes. Shiny blue heels clacked across the filthy floorboards until they came to a stop at Jean’s table.
Jean slowly put down the novel she’d gone home and grabbed to pass the time. She made a show of scanning Clara up and down.
Clara tilted her chin up, the sparkles in her headband winking, and didn’t look away once.
“Well.” Jean had to say something. Something cool, something teasing, something cocky to hide behind. “Not what we’re used to around here, Townsend.”
Clara cocked one hip. “Just because I don’t go out all the time doesn’t mean I can’t play the part.”
Jean stood and picked up her hat off the counter. “If this is you playing a part, warn us before you make the stage your living. Give us time to take our heart pills.”
She risked a look at Clara. She was adjusting her navy silk scarf, patting her curls. Fidgeting. Maybe she wasn’t so immune to outrageous flirting....
Jean’s ears went hot, and she hastily put on her hat. “The car’s just in back.”
Ten minutes to pull up to Club Sidhe. Snow was beginning to fall. It would be rough getting home if they stayed late. Jean glanced at Clara in the passenger seat out of the corner of her eye.
Clara’s hand, one sparkling costume ring glittering in the dim light, clutched the scarf at her throat. She was staring at the flickering neon fairy above the club’s entrance as if it were a snake. If Jean was very still and listened close, she could hear tiny, sharp breaths. Like a panicking mouse.
“Hey.” Jean put a hand on Clara’s coat sleeve. “You don’t have to go in.”
Dark lashes narrowed at the neon sign. “No. I rather think I do.” Clara inhaled deeply, and her expression smoothed like glass. “Open my door like a gentleman.”
Jean was out of the car before she realized she’d moved.
Clara took her arm, light and graceful. Jean may as well have been escorting a queen to her throne as they walked up to the bouncer.
The man was twice as wide across the shoulders as Jean, and a few inches shorter. His eyes widened at Clara’s approach, and he opened the darkened glass doors with a grand sweep. “Ma’am,” he said with reverence.
Clara smiled sweetly at him and stepped inside.
“Keep up the elegance, Steve, it’s a good look,” Jean murmured as she moved past him.
The bouncer straightened with a glare. “Cover is twenty cents.”
Jean gawked at him. “You let her in!”
“Yeah, ain’t she lucky she don’t look like you. Twenty cents, Fletcher.”
Grumbling, Jean fished in her pockets and pulled out a couple dimes, then hurried in before Clara got too far away.
A hostess in a short fringed dress was already greeting Clara and looked up with an appreciative smile at Jean. She was used to it. Also used to the moment of adjustment that smile went through once it came out she was Jean and not John. But tonight, she returned it with a brilliant grin. “Table for two, please. A bit away from the stage and the lights, if you can.” She winked.
“Well, if the lady doesn’t mind?” The hostess raised an eyebrow at Clara.
Nice. Good on Alan to train his staff not to let a woman get put in a tough spot.
“As long as the hands stay where I can see them,” Clara purred, and batted her lashes just once at Jean.
When Jean raised her hands in surrender, it wasn’t entirely a joke.
At a small table with a single lit candle, Clara undid the buttons of her coat and paused. Jean belatedly realized she, too, was playing a part and stepped behind her to slip the coat off her shoulders.
The thing about Clara was... she was petite all over. To the point you almost wouldn’t notice how short her skirt was tonight. The beaded tassels on the hem barely covered her garters. Neat little hips, shapely calves, and a high chest—
Jean snapped her eyes up to the stage where a trumpeter was soloing. Safer.
“I can take that for you,” the hostess murmured. Jean felt the coat slide out of her nerveless fingers. She barely got herself together enough to hand over her own hat and overcoat, then clumsily pulled out Clara’s seat for her.
She smelled like tea roses when she moved, skin warm from the wool.
Jean closed her eyes, just enough to tell herself to focus, Fletcher, then reached for the small menu as she sat next to Clara. “You drinking?” she asked, pretending to look at the coded piece of pasteboard.
“No.”
Jean glanced up at the stiff tone. Clara was ramrod straight in her chair, trying and failing to scan the room without being obvious.
Jean leaned forward and tapped Clara’s wrist with the menu. “Hey,” she said quietly. “Look like you belong. Relax.” She smiled, her best one she saved for... well, no one, actually. But not the smirk she gave the boys.
Clara made an odd half-gasping, half-laughing noise. “Look like I belong?”
“Okay, that was vague. Pretend you like being with me, that’s a start.”
Her shoulders did lose some rigidity then. “But I’m a terrible liar.”
“That is a lie, and a bad one, because I saw you cover for the kid who was stupid enough to try drinking from MacMurrough’s stock last month.”
She sniffed. “That? MacMurrough didn’t need to worry. And it won’t happen again.” There was something dark and satisfied in her smile.
Jean chose to ignore it. “Come on.” She risked it and set a hand on Clara’s wrist, keeping up the wattage of her charm. “Act like you’re having a good time, and you can look around to your heart’s content. I’ll watch your back, you watch mine, what do you say?”
She expected a roll of those big brown eyes, putting Jean at her proper distance. Instead, Clara faced her fully, even leaned a little close. “You mean that?” she asked.
She sounded damned serious. Jean avoided serious, unless it was about the business. But sometimes you felt a tipping point, recognized you were on the edge of this or that. You had to go some way, and the other would cease to be an option.
Jean knew which way needed to stay open forever.
“Always,” she said. It was easy, in the end, to say.
Clara held her gaze for a long moment. Then smiled, so relieved, so breathtaking. Jean wasn’t used to instant validation for life decisions, but it was there, behind her red lips, in the flash of her white teeth.
Clara opened her mouth, smile still welcoming as heaven, then her gaze lifted to a point past Jean’s shoulder. Brown eyes iced over.
Jean knew better than to turn around. “Hey. Hey.” She tapped Clara’s wrist again. “Look at me.”
Clara’s breath came fast. But she focused on Jean, eyes too wide, bones too tense.
“Winston?” Jean asked.
“He just came out of the hall next to the stage,” Clara managed. “He’s talking to Alan.”
“How does Alan look?”
“He, um, he’s tense. But smiling.”
Jean huffed. “I just bet he is.” Easier than taking a gat to the head.
“Oh, they’re moving.”
“Honey, you need to be less obvious. Look at me. And I hate to say this, but... smile?”
Clara shot her an arch look.
Jean grinned. “There we go.”
“Alan got him to take a table close to the stage... He’s ordering from a girl.” Clara’s jaw clenched. “He’s trying to get her to sit down.”
Jean fisted her hand on her trouser leg. “Is it bad?”
“Alan sent her away.” Clara’s voice was barely a whisper. “Winston doesn’t look happy.”
“Glad Alan’s got a spine somewhere in there,” Jean muttered.
“Jean. He’s—”
Voices rose behind her, but Clara grabbed Jean’s hand. “Don’t look.” She stood from her seat.
“Clara?” Jean said, startled.
“Meet me in the alley in twenty minutes.” Clara took a step toward the stage, eyes like a deer in headlights. A tight whisper: “Please don’t be late.” Then she was striding away from their table. No, sashaying. Jean whipped around in her chair and watched that fringed gold dress sparkle under the club’s low lights. The dark curls gleamed. Smooth brown shoulders moved with supple grace. Jean could almost swear she was glowing.
Accountant? Where?
Clara’s blue heels stopped just at the police chief’s table. He was big and muscled, and his hair was a thick, wiry gray. No uniform tonight; he wore a quality suit, well tailored. Captain Thaddeus Winston, having come out of his chair to argue with Alan, paused to smile for Clara.
Jean didn’t care for that at all, but she stayed put. They definitely should have at least talked about a plan for digging into the captain’s business, but there was fuck-all she could do about it now.
Clara almost seemed to ignore Winston, instead chatting with Alan, teasing, giggling. He stared down at her, gold-wire frames obscuring any expression in his eyes. Winston didn’t stand idle for long. He leaned forward, teeth bared in the charming way of things deep under the sea, his hand extended to Clara. Jean was relieved she wasn’t close enough to hear anything. This was difficult enough to stomach.
She flipped open her pocket watch. It was an old-fashioned clunky trinket, the only thing of any value she’d taken when she left the farm.
1:16 a.m.
Twenty minutes. She bit her lip.
“Your girl is playing with goddamn fire, honey.”
Jean turned around slowly in her seat, putting her back to the stage. A blonde cocktail waitress stood at the table, a tray in one hand, the other resting on an angular hip. Helen had been serving at the Sidhe longer than Jean had been working with MacMurrough. Tonight, she wore a satiny red dress and a tense expression.
“Nothing wrong with making conversation.” Jean leaned back.
Helen eyed her. “You don’t know who he is.”
“Chief of police, last I heard. And not the first one who leaves work at the office, by a long shot.”
Red lips thinned, and Helen looked tired. And somehow old... like a stone carved by years of rain into a new kind of beauty. “Bootlegging wasn’t enough for you?” she asked quietly. “You had to find something worse?”
“What’s worse?” Jean whispered. Tell me I’m right, tell me it’s dope, and then I can—
Helen straightened enough that the circle of candlelight from the table no longer cast on her face, and it was as if her cheeks hollowed and her mouth widened and her teeth....
Jean stared.
“I’m only saying this because you seem like a good kid.” The voice was thin and rasped over Jean’s ears like a brick across knuckles. It seemed to be coming from Helen, but it damn sure wasn’t her usual sultry timbre. “Take us off your list. You don’t see Alan’s orders anymore. Never come back to the Sidhe.”
“What the hell,” Jean breathed.
Helen sighed, a rather human sound, then shifted in her heels, and her face came back into the dim light. Young and blonde and pretty once again. “But for tonight, what’ll you have?”
Jean’s brain was a stuck record of what. what. what. At last, she managed, “A Barry’s tea. No milk.” Translation: MacMurrough’s gin, neat. “Please,” she added, because she felt she’d better.
Helen tucked her bob behind one ear. “Sure.” Her eyes darted to where Clara was conversing with Winston and Alan. “Anything for the... lady?”
Jean cleared her throat. “Nope.”
Helen grinned, perfectly normal. “Knew you were a smart boy.”
Jean watched her walk to the bar. There was the usual sway of her skirt, the low laughter. Jean had probably imagined the face and the voice. And the teeth. No one had teeth like that. Like little needles all in a row....
She glanced over her shoulder to check on Clara. She was laughing at something Winston said, her fingertips brushing his barrel chest. Alan caught Jean’s eyes, and she read subtle worry behind those glasses.
She gave him a bare tilt of the chin across the oblivious crowd between them. He could move on; Jean was watching.
The captain handed Clara his own drink. She hesitated before accepting it, but Jean only noticed because she was looking for it.
Jean glanced down at her watch. 1:20 a.m.
Helen brought her gin, set it down with a smile. “Made you this one myself. On the house.” She left without another word.
Jean eyed the rocks glass. What was Helen playing at? Jean took a long sip. She was jumping at shadows. She scowled across the crowded club toward Winston’s table. And nearly dropped her glass.
Two men stood nearby, clearly Winston’s boys, casual and watchful. One had a wreath of glowing green leaves above his slicked-back hair. The other had bony spikes tearing through the padded shoulders of his suit. They curved up and back, and when he turned just a little, the suggestion of a wing shifted in the light.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Jean’s heart slammed against her ribs. Her eyes shot back to Winston and Clara.
He was enormous. Bigger than a man could possibly be. Where his suit couldn’t stretch, it was stitched together with scaled skins that nearly matched his pinstripes. A fiery green crown, its spires woody thorns, turned a slow circle around his gray head as it nearly touched the club’s low tin ceiling.
And Clara—little Clara Townsend—floated several feet off the floor with a pair of sparkling, green-gold wings. They dripped like melting icicles all the way down to her satin heels.
She smiled sweetly up at the beast in front of her and drained the glass in her hand.
1:29 a.m.
Winston leaned forward, rough and huge next to the fragile china of her bones. Whispered in her ear, right under her headband. His nose brushed her curls.
Jean felt the tightness of the holster snug under her left arm. Was a gat even worth anything here? And she’d been worried about a new dope game in the neighborhood... What the hell did anyone call this?
Clara handed Winston her empty glass. She swirled in midair, her wings tracing a warm, glittery arc that dusted her skin with its shimmer. He didn’t even pretend not to watch. Bastard all but tilted his head to one side as she floated down to earth and strolled into the dim hall running alongside the stage and out of sight.
1:30 a.m.
Winston didn’t wait a full minute before he followed. Impatient. Sure sign of someone confident in his own safety. Well, if you were seven feet tall and three times as wide as a Barnum strongman with your own goddamn magical crown....
Jean’s breath picked up the pace, never mind her attempts to keep it even. Maybe the gin had some new drug in it after all. Damn Helen anyway. Did Alan know what his people were shilling here?
The man with the bony wings tearing through his suit threw a whole dollar onto Winston’s table and followed his boss into the hall by the stage. He paused halfway down, spread his feet, and folded his hands patiently. No exit through the stage door, it would seem.
Jean clenched her glass. 1:32.
The second flunky, the one with the glowing wreath above his head, left to stand by the bouncer at the front door. Steve looked uncomfortable but didn’t tell him to piss off.
Nobody in or out, then.
1:33.
Close enough.
Jean tossed some change on her table and headed for the restroom. Alan had a bolt-hole in the gents’ that let you slip into the kitchen and then, if your luck held, out the back door to the alley. You just had to know where to tap on the cinder block wall.
A drunk was trying to fix his necktie in the mirror above the one sink. He had two tiny goat’s horns sticking out of his forehead. Jean shoved him out the door and flipped the deadbolt. No sense making it easy for anyone—anything—interested in following.
The cinder block wall took longer to open than she remembered. 1:34.
Damn, damn, hurry.
It spilled her out into the club’s little kitchen next to a box of onions. She swept her eyes around the counters and shelves. Only one cook tonight? His back was to her, evidently focused on...an empty skillet on the stove. She had just enough time to note how his chef’s coat stretched badly over wide shoulders before he turned around, his hands loose at his sides.
His fingers were too long. He had nails like rooster talons. Gray eyes pale as ice glinted in a rough face, and the man smiled. “Going somewhere, pretty boy?” He had the faintest brogue, but it was trapped in a high, raspy voice. Like Helen’s.
“Told a girl I’d take her home,” Jean said, all pleasantness. “She’s waiting for me, so—”
“Ah. The sparkly dish you came in with?” He was in front of her suddenly. She hadn’t seen him move. “She found someone more her type.” His grin widened. “Why don’t you go back inside, listen to some music?”
Jean wondered if he knew she could see the unreality of his hands, the otherworldly color of his eyes. “I said I’d take her home.” She took a slow step toward the door but didn’t look away from him, whatever he was.
“Now don’t be like that. You’re gonna get your nose broke, poking it in places it don’t belong. End up looking like me. Nobody wants that.” A heavy boot took a step forward with far too little sound.
She was wasting time.
She yanked her pistol from under her jacket and had it leveled at his nose before she blinked.
Icy eyes stared, but only with surprise. When he laughed, her gut rose in her throat. There was a difference between a bluff and someone who really wasn’t worried at all.
“You should try,” he encouraged. A talon tapped against his wide chest. “One of my hearts is somewhere around here, maybe.”
She pulled the trigger. The gun barked in her hand, and the bullet may as well have hit a wall of cotton in front of him. She saw it hang in midair, as if it was confused about not going forward, and then it dropped to the kitchen floor with a ping. Her pistol followed.
She’d never heard anything like his laugh before. Eyes grew larger, neck stretched long, and joints popped as limbs lengthened like cottonwood branches. And she remembered, vaguely, the horseshoes over the barn doors at home....
She lunged to the left, ripped the skillet from the stove, and brought the iron down on his right wrist. The bone cracked loud.
The man roared, and he grabbed the front of her nicest shirt with his left hand. “The hell’d you do to me!” he screamed.
“Fae shouldn’t fight in a kitchen!” She stiff-armed a counter to keep from falling into him. He brought his head down low and fast, and she just barely missed the headbutt, taking the brunt of the blow to her shoulder. “Motherfucker!” she yelled.
She raised the skillet again, couldn’t get it up past the tree-branch arm that fisted her shirt, and settled for slamming it into his knee. He screamed and collapsed, still yanking at her shirt. She switched the skillet to her left hand and caught the counter with her right to keep from being dragged to the floor. The buttons gave way and scattered all over, under the counters and into crates of cabbage and onions.
“Goddammit, I’m never gonna find all those again.” She brought the skillet down hard on his face.
He went still. His hand slowly dropped from her shirt, fell to his chest with a thud. His right wrist lay at his side, swollen purple and at an odd angle.
Breathing hard, she pushed against the counter to stand upright. The skillet dropped from her hand to the floor. He looked like a tree had seen a man from a distance once and thought it’d give the shape a try. Something silvery poured from his nostrils. Maybe a couple broken front teeth, too.
“Shit.” Jean scooped up her gun from the floor and stumbled toward the kitchen’s back door. “Clara.” She put her shoulder to it and tried to quiet her breath as she stepped out into the cold.
Distant traffic. The band, a little louder inside—had someone told them to turn up the volume? The wind, always the wind in Chicago. And something that smelled of tin in the air.
“I said no!”
And Jean moved on silent feet.
“Pretty bird, what did you think you were agreeing to in there?” Winston was amused and cruel. His voice rolled deep, a river filled with gravel.
“You come any closer...” Clara sounded like a trembling little bell “...I’m...I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Please tell me.” A crackling, staticky sound, and a clatter, and then a high-pitched gasp that had Jean running toward the corner of the club’s building. “I gotta tell you, little bird, I love to laugh.”
Jean flattened herself against the brick wall and peered around.
Clara was leaning against a trash bin, one hand to her face, the other arm keeping her propped up. She had to be freezing, in her slinky dress. Her shiny satin heels were stained with winter slush. Her stockings were soaked from her knees to her shins. Only one of her green-gold wings fluttered; the other lay limp on the cold metal of the bin.
Winston loomed over her, his back to Jean, his green crown ablaze with new thorns. His hands, huge bear paws, held no weapon. But did he need one, really?
Something glinted in the snow on the alley floor as Winston’s shadow moved away. A pearl-handled knife Jean had never seen before. Tiny gold lightning bolts skittered over the shaft, up and down. Mesmerizing.
“Wait,” Winston said softly.
Jean tore her eyes off the knife. He was reaching for Clara’s face. Jean’s gun was tucked firm in her hand. It was the first time its weight felt useless.
“I know you,” Winston said, so smooth and quiet.
Clara scoffed, but some fear leaked out. “I’ve never met you in my life.”
“No, no.” Winston waved her comment away. “Your eyes...” His hand darted out, snagged her sparkly headband, and ripped it from her hair. Clara hissed through her teeth, and Jean tasted copper.
Winston laughed. “I didn’t see it before. But when those eyes glare... You’re what? That kid’s mother? No, too young. His sister?”
Clara’s face sharpened, and she bared needle teeth. “His name,” she bit out, “is Jamie.”
Winston threw his head back and roared his delight. “He’s a senseless battery in a mound under Queens now, sweetheart.” He stood up straight, threw her headband into the slush at his polished wingtip shoes. “Jamie. Right. Smart little bird. Asked all kinds of clever questions about where my den’s power comes from. But look... now he knows.”
He took a step closer and leaned a palm on the trash can lid Clara huddled against. “Do you know how much gold fae will give to buy magic siphoned off creatures they never have to meet?” he whispered, too close to her neck.
Clara’s voice had razor blades in it. “I’ll kill you.”
Winston loved that. Laughing like a kid at the movies, he reached for her throat. “You don’t even have a weapon anymore, sugar.”
Jean shoved away from the brick wall and ran for him. She could barely see Clara’s brown eyes, wide and shining, turn toward her.
“Who says?” Clara choked out.
Winston whirled just in time to take Jean’s .38 whipped across his face. Blood splattered the slush in the alley, and he howled, hands over his face. Results were in—two out of two fae susceptible to getting their noses broken.
Jean got her toe under the pearl-handled knife. A smooth kick, and it was in her hand, and then in his throat down to the hilt.
She’d never knifed a man before. She narrowed her eyes as he grabbed at his neck, then slipped and fell to his knees. The ground shook under her feet. His bones must have been as dense as the Rockies. He slumped onto his face, gagging. The crown flickered above his head, once, twice, then winked out entirely.
Gunshots were prettier deaths, that was sure.
She glanced at Clara, still half sitting, half lying on top of a trash can. Her hand shook at her throat, and she was coughing a little, tears on her lashes and down her cheeks.
Jean shrugged out of her suit coat and threw it over her, mindful of the limp wing.
Clara’s laugh was raspy. “Finally see what’s in front of you, Fletcher?” The laugh turned into a small choking fit.
“You’re very funny. We can chat about all our secrets later. For now...” Jean knelt to pick up the headband from the slush. She held out the sparkling ribbon. “Here I am, right on time. Your weapon.”
Clara took a shaky breath and slid off the trash can onto her feet. Pretty heels staining in the snow. She lifted Jean’s chin. “No,” she whispered. “My baby.”
The kiss was somewhat different from the ones in Jean’s daydreams. She hadn’t pictured a seven-foot corpse at her feet, for one thing, and there had been fewer wings involved. But here in reality, her knee turning cold in the snow and ice, her neck arched, eyes closed, savoring the softness of Clara’s lips against hers, tasting the salt of a fairy’s tears....
Jean decided it was still an excellent beginning.