“Anyone could give him that,” I replied. “Anyone with a dick and a decent amount of stamina could satisfy him.”
Leaning back, Colette narrowed her eyes. “You really think it’s that simple? Thathe’sthat simple?”
I didn’t answer as she pressed on, her voice low and firm.
“You keep trying to diminish this, to make it small so you can feel large. But you should know better than anyone—real affection is not that easy to give. Or to fake.”
I stared across the table at my rejected bourbon, watching the light beam through it in a honey glow. Colette was always right because she was always honest. Honest the way Zephyr was. It was a trait I valued. Admired. And one I might do well to emulate.
“I didn’t make a deal with him,” I confessed, more to myself than her. “Not like I usually do. No contract. No fine print. But Ididmake a promise.”
Her brows lifted. “What promise?”
“That first night we snuck out to the limo, Zephyr showed me something.” The words felt heavy in my mouth. “He said… not a lot but enough. Something’s going on in the Dollhouse, and I told him I’d look into it.”
“But you haven’t.”
The admission felt more damning when spoken aloud.
“I’ve known Maz a long time, and I think…” I paused, recalling the conversation in the wraith’s office. The portfolio of blueprints. The scathing comments about the lesser demons who made his business profitable. “He said a few things too. About other souls in Hell. Demons who want to get out. If he’s exploiting Zephyr… If that’s how he curated his staff…”
Colette’s expression was unreadable. Pondering perhaps, the information already at my disposal. The puzzlepieces fit together in a way I wished they didn’t, creating an ugly picture of the world behind the Dollhouse’s velvet curtain.
“You know I’ve never seen any of the dancers on the Strip?” I asked as a sick feeling settled in my gut. “Not in a casino or restaurant or another club. Never once outside the Dollhouse. And every time I take Zephyr to the limo, he looks around like the world is new.”
He claimed the dancers couldn’t leave the club, told me he couldn’t, but I hadn’t… what? Hadn’t believed him?
No, I just hadn’t taken it seriously. I’d been too busy taking advantage.
Colette’s brown eyes narrowed. “You’re going now? To take care of it?”
I wasn’t sure I could. Even less sure I wanted to since the problem I aimed to solve was currently benefiting me. If I fixed it, I could become superfluous. Zephyr’s life would be better, but I might not be welcome in it.
A speech hovered behind Colette’s pinched lips. Something about altruism, or the purity of love, or one of a thousand ideals demons weren’t supposed to believe in. And if I lingered here, wasting this already unsatisfying day, I was bound to hear every word of it.
To save us both the headache, I planted my palms on the tabletop and slid toward the edge of the booth.
“Yeah, I’m going,” I said.
Because that was the promise. And as long as I ignored the possibility that Zephyr was on some kind of leash, I had no business pretending I wasn’t holding the other end.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Beck
The bouncers weren’t waiting for me this time, as my arrival was unexpected. After knocking on the Dollhouse’s locked door and receiving no response, I called Maslow and told him I was outside, ready to talk.
Now I was in his office, sitting on the visitor’s side of his obnoxious desk while he stood near the windowed wall, watching the stage below.
The dancers were there, practicing the routines they performed seven nights a week. I couldn’t imagine needing to rehearse as much as they seemed to, or how exhausting it must have been. Zephyr never complained, but he didn’t talk much about himself. The few times I’d probed about his life before coming to work at the Dollhouse, he’d redirected the conversation. I hadn’t realized until the drive over here that I hardly knew a thing about him.
Maslow rolled a cigar between his sausage fingers,toying with it more than smoking it and dropping ash with every sweep of his hand.
“I knew you’d be back,” he said while his gaze stayed fixed on Hemlock, who was midway through a pole routine that had him upside down with his head angled dangerously toward the stage floor. “You’re a savvy man, Beckett. Not one to let this kind of opportunity pass you by.”
Of course he meant Fairmont Street. As far as he was concerned, that’s where we’d left things. So much had happened since then, I’d nearly forgotten his ill-fated proposal altogether.
