“Velvet’s with Rosa at the pool,” a voice called across the kitchen. Kamal Reddy. The thirtysomething Indian Americanbodyguard had been in charge of Mad Dog’s security for about five years or so, having taken over from his father, who was back at the Bel Air house. Though he was mostly a nerdy tech guy—cameras, computers—he was trained and always armed to the teeth. Ever since the stabbing incident, Mad Dog had been paranoid. “I’m headed out there. I’ll take that to her if you’d like,” he said, nodding at the shampoo bag. “I just dropped off something in your room that she had me bring over from the main house. A dress for tonight. Might want to check on it… stat,” he said playfully.
Kamal could be nice. I mean, I had hoped Velvet would have forgotten about lending me clothes. That made me feel uncomfortable. But at least it got me away from Norma, so I gave him the shampoo, and he gave me a look that told me he was on my side.
“I don’t like that. I’m going to have a talk with Velvet. You don’t see me borrowing Rosa’s clothes,” Norma complained. “And why in God’s name is the dog whining like that? Where’s her toy? Get her settled upstairs before I have Exie put her on the dinner menu.”
Before Norma could change her mind, I grabbed a sandwich and drink from the staff fridge, then whistled to Frida, and the two of us jogged away from the chaos, up a short set of stairs that led to a second story over the carriage house’s garage.
Staff quarters. Quiet, at least for a few moments.
Nothing that interesting up there, just a shared rec room with a TV and couple of couches, and in the corner, Frida’s fencedplaypen area—a dog bed and a graveyard of rejected stuffed toy carcasses. I suspected she was using the furry carcass pile to escape, climbing the bodiesWalking Dead–style, so I spread them out strategically when I sat her in the pen. Then I headed down a narrow hall lined with bedroom doors.
Well. “Bedroom” was being generous. Other domestics have called them prison cells, considering the gray paint on the walls and the matching gray tile on the floors. I made a quick turn inside the room I’d been assigned that summer, but it was just like everyone else’s: nightstand and single bed pushed against one wall with a tiny window overlooking a gravel road that led into the garage below. The tile floor was easy to sweep but a little cold on bare feet, especially first thing in the morning when I had to run into the rec room to pee, because that’s where the shared bathroom and showers were.
But still. I had my own room. And before Fen ruined my day (summer, life), I could dream about getting out of this room and into my own apartment with Eddie. I checked my phone for any messages from him, but nope. I thought about texting a couple friends back in L.A. about my current straits, but they wouldn’t understand. We were friendly, but not “listen to my weird boy problems” close. It was hard enough trying to maintain friendships, living under Mad Dog’s roof. Dealing with the speech therapy, missing half the school year… I lost bonds with people.
The dress Kamal had dropped off was here. I ignored it and ate my sandwich. I barely had time to finish and slip into work clothes before Norma was calling me back downstairs. Once shegot her hooks in me, I was done. It was one thing after another, menial tasks that added up. Because the lodge grounds were expansive, running from the carriage house to the main took time, back and forth through the covered walkway that connected them. Never mind all the stairs.
Somehow, I also managed to help Velvet sort out clothes and helped set her hair. I didn’t realize I was signing up for hair duty. Or for being in the background of her video calls with her friends. But a half hour before the guests were due to arrive, I realized I wasn’t dressed or showered and that Frida hadn’t been fed or walked, and I’d never been so happy that I cut my hair this short, because it pretty much dried in a minute and styled itself.
Still. I was late. I raced from the carriage house to the main house, slipping a walkie into the dress’s side pocket and attaching the clear earpiece so that I could radio the kitchen if Velvet needed anything quickly during dinner—the only task I knew an assistant did during parties like this. Starla had filled me in on that much. Still, I wasn’t moving fast enough because my phone—juggled in my other dress pocket—buzzed with a text from Velvet:
Where are you sis??
Crap. Laughter and music floated up from the pool as I hurried through a living room filled with modern bookcases. The big glass doors were open to the courtyard patio, where a kidneyshaped pool curved around natural stone, and the sky above it was that soft ombré of orange and purple—almost dark, but not quite.
Candlelit tables dotted the patio, and behind them, an Indian sitar player was plucking out hypnotic melodies that reverberated around the pool. For a moment, I wondered if he was the “surprise” of Velvet’s party. Then I took stock of the guests.
Dad hovered to the side, near some shrubbery. Mad Dog lounged at a nearby table alongside Rosa in her wheelchair. She had scoliosis and a lot of back pain that came with it. Hence, Starla and her healing hands. Speaking of, Starla cheerfully chatted with someone I didn’t know—a forgettable white guy in his thirties—and some people I vaguely did: a middle-aged Black couple, the Taylors, who owned a winery in Sonoma County. They were friends with Mad Dog and dined at the lodge every summer—he knew them through ex-wife number two.
Then I spotted Velvet and her party companions a few yards in front of me. A graying dark-haired couple in their forties. The woman was taller than the man, with a big head of wild curls and heels that made their height difference even more pronounced, and if you’d told me I was standing in front of Frank Zappa with a horseshoe mustache and a wide soul patch, I would have believed it.
I realized with a shock who they were.
The Sarafians. As in, Serj and Jasmine.
Eddie and Fen’s parents. Theirvery importantmusic-industry parents. Who I’d never met. And Eddie wasn’t here to introduce us.
“Surprise,”I whispered.
Track [9] “Second Hand News”/Fleetwood Mac
Jane
“There she is!” Velvet announcedin a peppy tone.
She blinked at the dress she’d picked out for me, which was baggy up top and just the tiniest bit see-through, making my already underwhelming bosom resemble two frightened kittens hiding in a pillowcase. With my clipped hair and sandals, and the walkie and my phone in my pockets dragging everything down like the weight of the goddamn world, I might’ve been mistaken for a lost waif in need of a bowl of porridge.
Had I known I was going to be meeting the Sarafians, I would have summoned up a magical army of singing birds and bugs to help me stitch my own gown from the curtains in my room.
“Serj and Jasmine, this is our Jane Marlow,” Velvet said, smiling it all away. Under her breath to me she murmured cheerfully, “Who didn’t have to wear a walkie, haha.”
Yeah, regretting that now. Norma’s voice barking commands to the staff in my ear only made this worse.
“She’s practically a baby sister,” Velvet said. “We shared a nanny and everything.” Uh, yeah, butno. Where was my dad? I hated when she said stuff like that.… “And now she’s Eddie’s girl.Those sneaky kids have been dating behind all our backs—can you believe it?”
Oh God. No, I cannot believe… that you just said that.
Want to kill Velvet. Want to kill her so hard.
