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“So closing doesn’t protect her,” Merek says. “It just empties the building around her.”

“I’m only telling you what the schedule says,” Corinne says.

I watch her. She’s holding the tablet in both hands, the way she held her coffee the day she found out about Billy Bob. She looks like she hasn’t slept.

I think about not yet.

“Thank you, Corinne,” Lenart says. “We’ll let you know.”

She goes.

“Okay,” I say, when the door closes. “Here’s what I think, and then you can all yell at me.”

Merek crosses his arms.

“Close downstairs,” I say. “All of it. Every room, every lounge, everything below the red door, until somebody who isn’t Grady has been through it. Keep the suite locked and taped. Keep the main bar open, because it’s one room, it’s full of people, and nobody’s going to cut a cable over my head in front of two hundred witnesses.” I look at Merek. “And I’ll be here, because I have to be here. But I’ll be in this office, on this couch, with somebody in the room with me the whole time. I won’t go anywhere alone. I won’t go downstairs except to the stone, and I’ll go with all of you.”

“That’s not closing,” Merek says.

“No. It’s being careful.” I look right at him. “Don’t look at me like I’m just trying to be brave, Merek. I’m trying not to die or lose the Club.”

Merek doesn’t answer. His lines flicker, gold to orange.

“I’ll call the council,” Lenart says. “Downstairs closed for an inspection. That’s a reason they’ll accept.”

“I’ll put people on the main floor,” William says. “Every exit. Nobody goes through the red door.”

“I’ll get an inspector in from outside,” Tav says, from the floor. “Not Grady. Tonight, if I can get one. I’ll walk it with them while one of you sits here. Until then I’m not leaving this office.”

“You’ll be in this office,” Merek says, “because she won’t let go of your horn.”

I look down. I’m holding on to the base of Tav’s horn again. I didn’t notice I was doing it.

I don’t let go.

Merek huffs out a breath. Some of the gold goes out of his skin. He comes over and sits on the arm of the couch and puts one hot hand on the top of my head.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine. But it’s still somebody trying to scare you out of here, Trouble. That’s all this has ever been. Somebody trying to scare you off.”

I look at the four of them. Lenart behind his desk. William in the doorway, gray to the wrist. Tav on the floor with his shoulder against my legs, his hands finally quiet. Merek on the arm of the couch, his palm warm on my hair.

I think about the headboard, bent in half like a paper clip.

“Nobody’s trying to scare me anymore.”

Chapter fifteen

Tara

I wake up at noon on Sunday with my knees bruised purple and my palms stinging, and the first thing I do is check whether my head still hurts.

It doesn’t. Not much. There’s a dull ache behind my eyes, the kind I used to get after a double at Lucky’s, and my throat is still scratchy. But the belt-tight headache from last night is gone.

I lie there and do the rest of the inventory. Knees, bad. Palms, scraped. Brain, working. I know what day it is. I know my name. I know that at midnight last night I sat on the bottom step of the narrow stairs behind the bar, because Odette wouldn’t let me stand, and put my palm on the ward stone with Lenart on one side of me and William on the other, and felt the building settle. Then at 3:00 a.m. Merek drove me home and sat in the chair by my bed until eight, checking on me every hour the way the discharge sheet said. Every time I opened my eyes, he was there with the lamp turned low and a cocktail binder open on his knee.

His chair’s empty now. I can smell coffee.

Billy Bob is asleep on the end of the bed, on top of my feet. When I move, he lifts his head, looks at me, and drops it back down.