“Sorry,” I replied with an equally snarky smile. “Momentary lapse in judgment. Won’t happen again.”
She playfully punched me on the arm. “You ready for tonight? Know what Fontaine looks like?”
Shake down a club owner, sell some drugs—yeah, that was gangster shit. Shit I’d grown up doing, even if I’d never liked it.
But this? Hiding in plain sight to take some photos of a target doing something shady? Mere child’s play for a bounty hunter like me.
Out of all my tests, this was the only one not leaving me with a nasty taste in my mouth.
“Yeah, I know how to spot someone in a crowd. I’ve been doing it for years.”
She held up her hands and spoke in a low, mimicking voice. “I’ve been doing it for years, meh meh meh. Just get as many shots as you can. We need all angles and close-ups so there’s no ambiguity. No reasonable doubt.”
“I know how to take a photo.”
“Do you?” she asked, holding up my phone. “Because you have like, ten photos on here, and they’re all just cats, birds, and creepy screenshots of Sage.”
I tried to snatch it back but she held it out of reach. “What the hell?” I snarled. “How’d you get my passcode?”
“Took me two seconds to guess. I mean, your mate’s birthday? Come on.”
She tossed it back to me and I caught it with a growl. I’d only updated it the other day, as though that might make us closer somehow. Make our bond more… legitimate. Like we were a real couple.
And not like she was currently being held captive by Premier Victor Corvane in Noctis.
“Whatever,” I grumbled. “And what the hell else would I have to take pictures of, anyway?”
She looked at me like I’d just grown two heads. “Ugh, I still can’t believe you’re the one Dad wants to take over the family.”
“You and me both.”
She walked back into my room and sat on my bed as I looked over my accessories, and then thought better of it. I was supposed to be a bouncer, so expensive rings and watches wouldn’t fit.
“What’d this guy do to find himself on the Oniguro shit list, anyway?” I asked, taking out a belt and a pair of boots from the bag I’d brought with me. They were good brands, but accessible to someone on a bouncer’s salary.
Maia gave a casual shrug. “Does it matter?”
“Kind of. I mean, on just the word of Corvane, I’d signed away my soul to track Sage down like she was a criminal. If I’d stopped and thought about it first, maybe—”
Maia put out her hand to stop me. “You’re going to kill yourself going down a road of ‘coulda-woulda-shouldas.’ We just deal with the situation as it is now, got it?”
I took a deep breath, happy she’d caught me before I fell into a dark spiral of regret, loathing, and despair. “You’re right. But at some point, I gotta learn from my mistakes, too. So what did Fontaine do?”
He certainly wasn’t the first wealthy Magik to cheat on his significant other while in town. If we made it a habit to blackmail all of them, they’d stop coming.
Maia’s tongue ran along her teeth, calculating her response. “It’s one of his friends who’s asking us to do this. Apparently, Fontaine’s a piece of shit and he wants him to call off the wedding because the fiancée is a ‘nice girl.’ Says he’ll leak the photos no matter what, but the blackmail is our cut for the work.”
Well, I supposed that was motivation enough.
Boot laces tied, I gave myself one more look in the mirror. Yep, I’d be invisible to a group of rich seraphim in town to party and fuck strippers.
“Let’s do this, then.”
* * *
Ravaric, I hated strip clubs. They attracted the worst kind of people—not the dancers, though. And not the lonely guys in search of a little bit of connection, either. They were usually fully cognizant of or deluded to the fact that these women were only being nice because it got them more tips.
Sad sacks, but typically harmless.
