Some are open.
Some show other girls.
My stomach drops.
Jassy would take notes. Jassy would count the exits, memorize faces, calculate her odds. But Jassy is fictional, a character I sketch in the margins of my notebooks when I should be paying attention in class, and I'm just Mira, who can't even remember how she got here.
Think. Think!
I'm still dressed in the same clothes I remember wearing this morning. Was it this morning? My oversized cardigan and worn jeans, my sneakers still on my feet. That's something. That's something, right? It means they didn't—
I stop that thought before it can finish.
Against the far wall of the bordello, dominating the space like a countdown to someone's doom, a grandfather clock glows. Except it's not a real grandfather clock. It's a digital display made to look like one, all golden scrollwork and Roman numerals rendered in LED, and the numbers are ticking down.
2:31:47
2:31:46
2:31:45
Half an hour until 3AM.
The masked figures keep glancing at it. Some tap their fingers against champagne flutes in rhythm with the seconds. Others lean in to whisper to their companions, gestures sharp with anticipation. A woman in a sapphire gown checks a small card in her hand, then looks up at my window.
At me.
Whatever happens at 3AM, they're waiting for it. They're excited for it.
I press my forehead to the cool glass and try to remember.
My last memory was—
Pain seizes my temples. White-hot, blinding, like someone's driven a spike through my skull. My vision blurs, the golden bordello smearing into a watercolor nightmare, and I feel myself swaying, my knees buckling, my shoulder hitting the glass—
Oh.
That's when I remember.
Hands. Grabbing me from behind. Something hard connecting with the back of my head.Oh no.
I was abducted.
And in thirty minutes, I think I'm about to find out why.
