Violet Grenade(50)

And they came for the drug buffet.

The customers open their painted beaks like baby birds awaiting their mother. White pills skydive into their mouths and their throats thank them kindly. Ruby approaches a black box perched near the far wall and turns a knob.

The music grows violent.

And the dancing begins. 

Poppet and I dance alone for a long time. She's terrible at moving her body, and she'll admit as much, but what she lacks in rhythm she makes up for in energy. When she spots a woman hardly moving to the beat, Poppet takes the lady's sweaty palms in her own. She raises them over her head and shakes them until the woman laughs. Then she guides her toward me, and I dance on the opposite side of her.

I don't touch her, but I stay close.

Swallowing my trepidation, I yell in the woman's ear. Ask her name. Her hobbies. Offer to get her another drink. She refuses the drink, and I'm glad for it. Her eyes are fully dilated and I can hardly understand her responses. But she seems happy to dance between Poppet and me, and a few minutes later, another guest joins us.

Two, I think, but we need more.

A hand touches my waist and I spin around, heart pounding. The man's fingers leave my skin when he sees he's upset me. I take in his solar grin, his lean body, his blond hair.

Jack.





Chapter Thirty-One

Eyes Open

It's too-old-to-be-touching-me-that-way Jack. Too old to put a smile on my face, but I smile anyway.

"Didn't see you downstairs," he hollers over the music. "Had to pay again to come upstairs." He returns his hand to my waist. I'm not sure I like that. I'm not sure I don't like it, either.

I lean forward. "I got promoted."

He raises thick eyebrows to show he's impressed. "That what you want? To stay in this fairy-tale castle?"

I hesitate before answering. "Maybe, maybe not."

"I could help you do that is all." His hand is still on my waist. I can feel it there like a bee sting. "You need those coins, right?"

I nod.

"Tell you what; I'll help you out, but you have to help me, too." He smiles, but his eyes don't smile with him.

I lean close to his ear because I need his coin, and because Poppet has our other two customers entertained. "What do you want?"

He squeezes my hip, his fingers digging deep. "Tell me one true thing about yourself every night."

I forget his touch. He wants me to talk about myself? I wonder why he cares. I'm one girl among many.

My mind snaps to the house I want so badly, and my reservations slide away. "Show me what you can do to help me, and I'll talk."

His other hand finds my waist, and he lifts me into the air. I'm so surprised that I laugh. The sound is foreign, someone else's happiness. Jack jostles me over his head like I'm a child, light as a snowflake, as the disco ball dances across my face.

"I have here in my hands the most beautiful girl in the room," he bellows.

The smile leaves my face, afraid the other girls won't like what he's saying, but now the other customers are laughing, too. They take a hesitant step in our direction, and when Jack gathers my legs into his arms and clutches me against his chest, they take another. His body feels slight against mine, dainty almost. I imagine him without his shirt, bones above his hips sharp as lightning slicing the sky.

Cain could destroy him.

I don't know why my mind always goes there. Destructive, wicked places. Who's stronger? Who's more dangerous?

I am, Wilson answers.

His voice disappears inside the folds of my mind when Jack hands me to another customer. A boy of fifteen, sixteen at best. He's missing a canine tooth, and there's an insistent freckle in the center of his bottom lip. The boy celebrates the gift Jack has given him, raising me up to show his strength. I'm still being cradled like a doll, and realizing, remembering, I hate people's hands on my body.



       
         
       
        

The boy's hand trails down my side where a viper slithers in faded green ink.

"Let me down!" I yell.

He lets me down.

I figure I've undone Jack's work, but he's created a ripple in the tide, and now the customers have circled around Poppet and me. Jack's hand finds the bottom of my back. A gentle nudge, and I'm pressed against my friend. Poppet's small eyes enlarge when she finds me so close.

The room holds its breath, and then Poppet pulls me into her orbit. Now my hands are on her shoulders and her hands are on my hips and Jack reaches over to touch my bottom lip. My mouth opens on instinct, a venus flytrap welcoming a slippery-legged insect.

He tips his glass, and champagne rushes down my throat. Poppet does the same when he balances it over her lips. Jack raises the glass and the music thrum, thrum, thrums and my mind goes fuzzy and alert at once. Focusing on everything and nothing, becoming one with the dancing bodies. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.