I nod, so slight it’s almost imperceptible, and he yanks open the door.
Dark synth rock rushes at us, a hard, sinister wall of sound. As we move inside, parting the dark, the music snakes inside me, trying to take over my heartbeat. The bar’s crowded with tattooed men I glimpse in flashes from the flickering bulbs swinging from the ceiling. There’s so much cigarette smoke it acts like a veil, plumes that shield the men we pass until they move and break the illusion. A man to our left lunges, cackling as another man staggers back. Against the walls, the smoke curls around women lined up, dressed in impossibly short skirts likethe one I saw on Beth the night she snuck in. Their hair is teased big and their makeup heavy. Some of them stare vacantly. Others won’t look up from their feet. All look like they’re waiting to be plucked.
I do my best not to make eye contact as I follow Ever to the bar, but it’s hard not to stare at the people snorting white powder off their hands and tabletops. Faces in here are sheened with sweat, more than the humidity calls for. Men emerge out of the smoke with dilated pupils, as if seeing ghosts.
“Let’s get drinks,” Everett says, voice raised over the music. I can barely see him in the flickering lights. “Can’t be empty-handed.”
“Beer, then,” I say, and Ever slides a bill across the counter to the bartender.
When our drinks arrive, I take mine and turn. “Tell me again.”
His arm brushes mine as he takes a swig of beer, eyes cast out over the tables. “About ten years older than us. Shaved head with a snake tattoo. Thick, muscular. Long blond beard.”
Jebediah Ray: part one of the plan.
I crane my neck, squinting to see. “Come on,” Ever says, slapping my shoulder. “Let’s move in.”
We weave through the smoke, eyeing the men we pass as subtly as possible. I hate that my hands are shaking, so I keep tipping the beer to my mouth, even though I don’t like the taste. After a minute of this, the razor’s edge of fear dulls. It’s when I take my last sip, my bottle light and empty, that I see him. There, in the back of the room at a crowded table, surrounded by men like a king thronged by subjects. Head bare so the first thing I notice is the enormous snake, its mouth open wide across his skull, fangs dripping, sinuous body coiling in a spiral down his neck. His long beard is braided, the end touching his chest, and though he’s listening to someone talk, his eyes roam restlessly, the scan of a predator taking stock of his surroundings.
I squeeze Ever’s hand and nod.
“Good,” Ever murmurs. “Eyes on him, but not obvious. Let’s stand over there to stay hidden.”
We’re walking to join the women on the wall when a man stops in front of Ever, solid as a house, and shoves him. He’s large, with long, wild hair trailing down his arms, and a leather vest with nothing underneath. A friend stands behind him, a foot taller, with a raised scar that bisects his face from lip to eyebrow. It looks like a knife wound healed wrong. “Hey,” the first man says, raising his chin. “Stranger. We don’t know you.”
I take a small step back. We’re caught.
But Ever doesn’t flinch. “Just passing through. Heard this was the place to be.”
“Oh yeah?” The man raises his eyebrows. “We don’t like people hearing so much about us.”
Ever shrugs, casual. “Then tell your friends to stop running their mouths. Heard about y’all all the way out in Trouville.”
There’s a moment of charged silence as the two Sons glance at each other. Then the taller man says, in a swampland accent so thick it’s nearly indecipherable, “Trouville, huh? I reckon we got people out there. Whatchu want then?”
Ever looks around. “Here?”
“You see any five-o?”
To my surprise, Everett slips his hand inside his leather jacket, peeling out a handful of crinkled bills—money from the safe. He slides the bills between his fingers, making them dance. The men’s eyes follow. “Whatchu got?”
I bite back a protest. Ever’s going off script.
Eyeing the money, the man with the long hair pulls out a plastic bag of white powder from inside his vest. “This shit’ll knock you sideways.”
I bite the inside of my mouth as Ever nods. “If you say so.”
The man yanks back the baggie and wags it just out of Ever’s reach. “Don’t you want to sample first?”
I shift, trying to communicatenowithout speaking, but it’s the long-haired man, not Ever, who notices. As the overhead lights flicker, I watch his hungry gaze travel the length of my body. His tongue darts out to lick his lower lip.
“Sure, I’ll try it,” says Ever smoothly, standing squarely in front of me and blocking the man’s sight. I breathe again the moment his eyes are gone. “Why not?”
The man shakes powder onto his hand and holds it up to Ever with a look of challenge. Before I can figure out how to get him out of this, Ever snorts the powder in one long rip, like he’s done it before. It’s abrupt, almost violent, and at the same time intimate, the man’s hand so close to Ever’s face, almost like he’s cupping it.
I freeze in horror.
“How ’bout her?” The tall man nods at me, and the long-haired man shakes out another bump.
