That old animal sense.
I freeze. Slowly, I turn my head toward the window.
The streetlight outside casts a thin line of gold through the narrow opening of the door to the back room across from the front door. The glass door. And in that slice of light—standing perfectly still—is a man.
Tall. Broad shoulders. A shock of pale blond hair that almost glows in the dark.
And eyes. Green and sharp, locked right on me.
My heart slams against my ribs.
No. No, no, no.
He’s not walking by. He’s not glancing in. He’swatching. Focused. Intent.
He saw.
How much did he see?
Every drop of blood, every scream, every twitch?
The world tilts. For one wild second, I think I might throw up. My whole ritual, my carefully plotted perfection, torn open by one stranger’s stare.
I blink, and he’s still there. Not moving. Just watching me like I’m the show.
“Oh, shit,” I whisper.
Our eyes lock. My pulse stutters, hard and uneven. He knows. And I know he knows.
The body is slumped against the table, head bowed like it’s praying. The scent of blood is thick in the air.
And I can’t look away from the stranger who just saw me kill a man.
chapter two
SAINT SHADE
The thingabout dangling forty feet in the air by a strip of fabric as thin as a shoelace is this: the crowd loves this part a hell of a lot more than I do.
They see danger. They see mystery. They see Saint Shade, the untouchable god of Vegas acrobatics and magic, the devil with the black halo.
Me? I feel my balls trying to crawl back into my body as I swing upside down and let go with one hand.
The audience gasps. Music booms. The spotlight follows me with exact precision, making me look otherworldly.
I grin under the mask. They can’t see it, not with the black gaiter pulled up over my jaw, but they feel it. It’s in the way I hold my body, the way I flex as if every move is calculated foreplay. The mask makes everything sexier—because the imagination does half the work.
And damn, do they imagine.
The silks burn against my palm as I drop three loops and catch myself a heartbeat before splattering into the orchestra pit. Pyro bursts at the stage edges—blue flame, hot and sharp. The front row screams like they’re watching me combust.
They eat this shit up.
I walk across the stage, setting off pyrotechnics as I go. I reach the black silks in the corner and climb again, every muscle burning, my shoulders screaming, abs tight. At the top, I twist, let the fabric coil me like a python. And then I release.
For half a second, I’m weightless. Spinning. Nothing but gravity and trust in my own masochism.
Then the silks catch, jerking me to a stop, and the crowd loses its mind.
