“Well, they better not be paying in chocolate coins.” Tabitha returned a nod from a guest in a maroon suit and aPhantom of the Opera–style mask studded with matching red rhinestones, then she snuggled closer to her husband. “Tell me again who the man in the silver suit is?” Tabitha’s gaze settled on the man in question, standing off from the rest of the guests. “The one in the silver-and-black gladiator mask?”
“Senator Aaron,” Willem whispered. “Chairman of the Cryptid Regulation Committee. I’ve been inviting him for months, but this is the first time he’s come.”
“A senator. So this is about influence, not money, right?”
Willem gave his wife a private frown, but Tabitha only shrugged her bare, shapely shoulders.
“You said most politicians can’t afford our services,” she reminded him.
“Yes, but that’s a generalization, and a crass frame of mind.”Though accurate, in this instance.A strong champion in the senate would enable Willem’s containment collars to move beyond the current small-scale beta-testing phase. “If you think like that, it’ll inevitably show in your bearing,” he scolded gently. “So just be your usual charming self, and I’m sure he’ll be eating out of our hands.”
“I think he’s more interested in a different set of hands.” She nodded subtly at the masked senator as he accepted a flute of champagne from a slim cryptid who had been meticulously painted with leopard rosettes across her exposed breasts, limbs, and the sides of her torso, leaving her navel undisguised. Her bikini bottom had been decorated to match the rest of her, but she wore significantly more paint than material. “I assume any services he requests are on the house?”
Willem nodded. “For tonight, at least. Let’s give him a taste of the possibilities and hope he develops an appetite.”
A man with a secret is useful, Willem’s father used to say.But a powerful man with a secret is indispensable.
Delilah
“Mirela,” I said as the oracle stepped into the line behind me. We’d stacked the sleeping mats and folded the blankets, which put us near the back of the bathroom queue. “Were you awake when they got back?” I nodded toward Lenore and Mahsa, who were several spots ahead of us in line.
“Yeah. You?”
I nodded. “Who could sleep?” We shuffled forward a couple of feet, and I rubbed my temples, as if that would actually fend off my day-old headache.
“Did they say anything?” Mirela whispered, staring at the siren’s back.
“No, but I haven’t asked.” It killed me to see our friends taken out of the dorm night after night, knowing they were headed for humiliation and abuse, and that there was nothing I could do to stop it. “I assume they’re bound by the same gag order that crippled Finola and the others.”
Mahsa turned to us with a small, cryptic smile, showing off her feline incisors. “We are,” she said. I should have realized she’d hear us—shifters have great ears no matter what form they take. “And that’s a real shame, considering how much trouble I had brushing blood and tiny chunks of human flesh from my teeth when we got back.”
My eyes widened. “You bit someone?”
The shifter shrugged. “I can’t answer that. But what I can tell you is that—hypothetically—if one of these collars is set to let a shifter shift, it might not be able to stop that shifter from biting.”
“Mahsa, you’re brilliant!” I seized her hand and gave it a tight squeeze. Hypotheticals were a very clever work-around for Vandekamp’s standard gag order!
She shrugged, but her face practically glowed with pride.
“But why would they let you shift in the first place?” Mirela asked.
“It’s usually more of a requirement than an allowance.” Simra spoke up from behind us. She was the last in line. “Some of the clients just want to look. Some want to touch. Others want to see ladies with nonhuman parts dressed up in six-inch heels, holding trays of fancy food. Some like to see shifters shift. Whatever the client wants, he makes us do.”
“He canmakeshifters shift?” Horror surged through me like ice in my veins, chilling me from the inside.
Simra shrugged. “He can make anyone do anything.”
My mind spun with the horrific implications. Was she saying that he would simply shock those who refused to perform? Or that Vandekamp’s collars could trigger the release of hormones that led to the performance he wanted to see?
That was it. Understanding slid into place in my head with an ominous, nearly audibleclick.
That’s why he’d been so desperate to find out what I was—so he could make me transform.
Vandekamp had figured out how to effectively disarm cryptids of their distinguishing traits and abilities, while retaining the ability to draw out those same traits and abilities on demand. On display. For money.
He had created push-and-play functionality in his living captives, with a built-in punishment for failure to perform.
“I thought you weren’t allowed to talk about that,” Mirela said.
