“Shut it, Kade,” Bianca barks at me with a pointed look. She pulls a white tube from her medical bag and starts dabbing at my side. I’m ready to scream out against the burn, but whatever she’s putting on me, it doesn’t hurt. “If we don’t deal with this now, there’s no way you’ll be ready to perform on Wednesday. Is that what you want? A cancelled show?”
“I don’t cancel shows, Bee,” I say, serious as the grave. “Broken bones only. The only excuse for cancellations.”
The crew groans, exasperated. Marco mutters something in Spanish that I don’t need translated to know it isn’t flattering. It’s true. The only time I’ve ever cancelled shows is when some rigging broke, a mechanical failure, and I dropped eighteen feet, breaking my collarbone. It fucking killed me that we’d had to cancel shows for six weeks while I healed.
A stagehand, Jessie, brings me a bottle of water and gestures at the angry red welt across my ribs.
“Saint Shade,” she says, tone dry, “you’re not fireproof.”
“Don’t tell the internet,” I shoot back, chugging the water. The burn stings.
Marco growls that rehearsal is over, and now I’m in a bad fucking mood, so I don’t argue. I pack my shit up and head home. Not that it’s a long commute. The walk from the theater to the parking garage takes me longer than the drive to my building one block away. It really would be easier to walk to work, but privacy is kind of a big fucking deal to me. So, it’s heavily tinted windows and commutes straight out of the gated parking for me.
I ride the elevator up fifty-one floors to a glass box in the sky that’s supposed to screamsuccess. A penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows, Strip lights flooding in like I’m living in a snow globe made of neon.
Saint Shade has been one of the most popular shows in Las Vegas for six years. The Vegas life has been good to me. It wasn’t even that much of a stretch when I bought this place two years ago, and I could buy ten more of them over now.
My place should feel like triumph. Like proof that the old me stayed dead and Saint Shade won.
Instead, it feels like a tomb.
I toss my rehearsal bag down on the leather couch—designer, custom, worth more than my first car—and it makes no sound in the cavernous silence. No voices. No laughter. Just the low hum of the air conditioning.
Floor-to-ceiling windows wrap the entire penthouse, giving me a panoramic view of the Strip’s neon glow. Everything inside gleams—dark hardwood floors polished to a mirror sheen, white marble counters in the kitchen that look like they’ve never seen a dirty plate in their lives, stainless steel appliances with a protective sticker or two still on the sides because I barely touchthem. The living room is all sharp lines and expensive leather, black sectional couches arranged around a glass coffee table that has exactly one item on it: a deck of cards.
The décor is modern, cold, impersonal—like a catalog showroom some designer put together for a client who never moved in. No rugs. No family photos. No knick-knacks or clutter. The only hint of life is the faint scuff marks on the floor from where I practice acrobatic moves when I’m too restless to stay still.
Even my bedroom looks like it belongs to a stranger: king-sized bed with crisp white sheets, a nightstand with nothing on it but a lamp and a phone charger, and blackout curtains I usually close the moment I get home because the lights are so damn bright. The whole space smells faintly of ozone and new paint, as if the walls themselves know nobody really lives here.
It’s the kind of place that screams money, success, security. But walking through it makes me feel… hollow. Like I’m still crashing on some stranger’s couch, waiting to be told it’s time to go.
Five thousand people come to see me perform five nights a week. Seven million people follow me on TikTok. My DMs are flooded every single day.
But every damn night, I take off the mask of Saint Shade, and I come home to this empty fucking place.
It’s easier to live as Saint Shade than it is to live as the man who takes the mask off at night. Because here? Here, there’s no crowd. No music. No distraction. Just me and the kind of silence that eats at your bones.
I hate it.
So, what shall I distract myself with tonight? My favorite little obsession.
I should leave it alone. Pretend I never saw what I saw. Pretend the Dagger Kitten didn’t stab a man through the hands and suffocate him without breaking a sweat.
But ignoring things isn’t in my nature. It never has been.
So instead of sleeping, I crack my knuckles and boot up my laptop.
I want to know who it was Willow killed, and why she felt it was necessary.
My digging and hacking skills are rusty at best. It’s been a decade since I really and truly had to put these skills to use. But old habits die hard, and I was taught by some of the best there is. I start diving into the dark corners, and they’re still waiting.
Step one: figure out the guy’s name. Which would be worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack, but I remember the bastard’s face. So, I start with traffic cams. Las Vegas has more cameras than sins. I slip into the system through a backdoor. It’s way too easy for how outdated my skills are. Local businesses thankfully know nothing about protecting their cameras. Within minutes, I’m staring at grainy Halloween footage, pulled from the vape store three doors down from Willow’s shop. And there’s Willow—cat ears bobbing, cheap tail swinging—as she leads her victim into the belly of her trap.
I rewind, squinting at the screen, and hit pause at the best point.
Freeze frame. Zoom. Enhance. I wish the picture were clearer, but it’s not as bad as it could be.
Step two: facial recognition. I shouldn’t be able to access this, but what the public doesn’t know is just how many companies and businesses use facial recognition software. And Las Vegas businesses have plenty of reasons to utilize the technology. It’s ugly. It’s dirty. But with only twenty minutes’ worth of work, I’m into a system that looks like it will do the job.
