He met my gaze evenly. “I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been disappointing your father.”
Ouch. But fair.
As he turned away, his voice softened, just a fraction. “Next time I see you in here better be for a wedding tux.”
The bell chimed again as he disappeared into the back. I swallowed and lingered in front of the mirror a moment longer, imagining Sage in witch’s green at my side.
* * *
My next stop was the barber’s for a long overdue trim and to clean up my beard, and by the time I got home, the suit was already waiting for me, hung on the hook behind the door in my room.
I unzipped the garment bag, the fabric drinking in the dying light of the sunset filtering through my windows.
Mori’s work was impeccable, as always. The fabric was smooth yet thick beneath my fingers. Armor made of wool, a shell stitched to perfection.
He’d included a white dress shirt, but as I reached to grab it, I paused. Maybe it wasn’t a flashy tiger print, but it still felt too much like the old me.
I left my T-shirt on instead.
As much as I’d filled out, or gotten “fat,” my old belts still fit, and I pulled out my accessories drawer to grab one. I scanned the contents, looking first at all of the jewelry I used to wear. Gaudy gold chains and diamond studs for pierced ears long since closed, heavy rings that were just as much about their cost as they were about the damage they could inflict ina fight. With a disgusted scoff, I grabbed a black belt and then paused at the titanium Deveraux watch my dad had gotten me for my eighteenth birthday. I hadn’t worn it much, preferring the flashier Meridian back when I’d wanted to make a statement.
But I wasn’t twenty anymore, chock full of hormones and flashing my colors like a bird with something to prove.
My power, my status… I wanted it to whisper. To go undetected by those who weren’t in my path, keeping them safe and happily ignorant of the violence that kept Ignareth running beneath the neon lights and perfumed skin.
A black sedan with tinted windows was waiting for me outside the house, a grunt I didn’t know holding the door open for me.
“Ripped Lace,” I said, sliding into the back seat.
“Yes, sir,” he replied, shutting me in.
The car was a vacuum for noise, so quiet it was unsettling. The chaotic noise of the city completely blocked as we drove down streets I knew as well as the freckles I’d already mapped on Sage’s cheeks.
Even shifting in my seat produced no noise.
“Can you turn on the radio or something?” I asked.
He cleared his throat nervously. “Is there anything in particular you want to listen to?”
“Anything but jazz,” I said with a sigh, looking out the window.
He tuned into a pop station, the bubblegum melodies and lyrics so at odds with the task that lay ahead of me.
Magiks from all over Lundaria prowled the Grand Circle like werewolves under the full moon, in search of easy entertainment like prey in the night. It was almost laughable that anyone came to Ignareth thinking they could beat this city-state. Every shiny distraction was a trap designed to lure them in, chew them up, and spit them out.
And my family was one of the few that helped make sure that machine kept running, the black of our suits hiding the oil that would inevitably spill in the process.
* * *
Ripped Lacehad an unassuming facade—a heavy, red door, a velvet rope, two potted palms and a single bouncer, his muscles straining through the seams of his polyester shirt.
It wasn’t meant to pull you in off the street. This was a club you had to already know about, a destination for those looking for something a little more sophisticated and exclusive.
The car stopped right in front, and the grunt ran out to open the door for me. The sound came back all at once, the smell of the desert, sex, and money hitting me like a tidal wave of sin.
I straightened my jacket as I stood, running my fingers through my freshly cut hair as I nodded to the bouncer, and he let me in immediately, bowing at the waist.
The heady mix of sweet omega perfume that assaulted me upon entry was thick, settling on my skin like a blanket of pheromones, and the elf hostess smiled widely as she saw me.
