Elise grew to hate nighttime in New York, as everything bad seemed to happen when the sun disappeared and the darkness emerged. She stood in the middle of Lenox Avenue, gloved fingers twisting the pearls at her throat while she watched Sterling balance on the edge of the curb. The last of the evening light had faded, but Elise could still see the blush in his cheeks, rosy as ever in the glow of the streetlights above. Music drifted faintly from the club just down the street, the gentle saxophone notes a smooth rhythm to which Sterling moved. His freshly polished shoes creased as he stepped down and he glanced up at Elise, jaw hard with concern. “Elise. I will descend into misery if I have to wait any longer,” he said.
“You are so dramatic. She’s probably just stuck in traffic.” Elise rolled her eyes, but her gaze drifted down to the bouquet of white roses in Sterling’s hand. Despite his nervous fidgeting, he had managed to keep the flowers pristine and undamaged. It’s a congratulatory gift, Sterling had insisted when he showed up in Elise’s room with them earlier that night.
Elise could not wait to see Thalia’s reaction to them.
“I just know this is Colm’s fault,” Sterling muttered, moving next to Elise. “He doesn’t know how to drive at night. I always tell him he can go fast because he’s driving a Saint car and everyone will understand—”
Elise scoffed, “You might as well run for office with the way you already assume the law should bend to your commands.”
Smirking, Sterling gestured to his silver Saint seal, pinned to the front of his suit, then flipped his jacket back to reveal the two pistols tucked into his waistband. “It already does.”
“Right,” Elise said dryly.
A group of white people came bustling down the street, voices loud and smiles wide while they waltzed into the Cotton Club. There seemed to be fewer Black faces on Lenox Avenue than there’d been five years ago. Now white people were flocking to their neighborhood.
“It feels less like home,” Elise muttered.
Sterling sighed. “I’m still getting used to the changes.” He eyed a Black couple while they passed the Cotton Club, white pedestrians waiting by the entrance watching them with hard glares cracking their carefully made-up faces.
Elise studied the line of cars parked along the street until she caught a familiar vehicle just at the end of the block. “Sterling, I think they’re here.”
Together, they walked down the sidewalk, Sterling walking a bit faster than Elise out of excitement. But the car was empty.
“Maybe they went inside already?” Sterling asked.
But Elise knew that couldn’t be. They had been waiting outside the club since it had opened; they would have seen Thalia and Colm if they had walked in. Elise stepped away from the car. Her heel snagged on something on her way past the alley behind her, and when she shook her foot free of it, the sound of metal hitting the ground split her focus.
Metal glinted in the streetlights as she looked down, then gasped with recognition.
A silver signet ring engraved with the Saint seal. Josi’s ring.
She picked it up, turning it in the light. As the ring slipped between her fingers, blood smeared across her gloves. Startled, Elise dropped it and it skidded across the ground, into the alley. “Sterling…” she breathed. What she had assumed were shadows spilling from the alley were pools of blood. And when Elise stepped forward, she saw an all-too-familiar face staring up at her, eyes glazed over.
A sharp breath left Sterling. He stood beside Elise, eyes wide and face struck white with horror. The roses fell from his hand into the puddle of blood. Elise could only scream as blood soaked the fair petals, Thalia’s lifeless hand outstretched toward them.