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“Thank you, Corinne.”
She squeezes my shoulder lightly on her way out. “Welcome to the Club, Tara.”
The door closes behind her.
I look at the folder in my lap, then at the four of them.
I think about the car in the back lot. I think about three thousand dollars a week, and what the share could mean after it, and how long it’s been since anything in my life was mine. I don’t know these men. I don’t know if I can trust a single thing they’ve told me this morning. One of them has fangs, one of them glows, one of them smelled my hair, and one of them turned to stone holding my hand.
But it’s mine. Dez left it to me. And I’m not handing it to some name in a sealed envelope without finding out what it is.
“I’ll stay,” I say. Long enough to see what I’m getting into, anyway. “When do I start?”
Lenart meets my eyes.
“Tonight.”
Chapter four
Tara
At eight-thirty, I walk Billy Bob two full laps around the back lot, feed him, fill his water bowl to the brim, and leave the windows cracked a few inches. It’s fifty-four degrees and falling, which is perfect for a basset hound and miserable for me. I’ve set alarms on my phone for ten-thirty and one-thirty. Those are my breaks. Nobody gets to argue with them.
“Be good,” I tell him. “Don’t eat the seat belts.”
He turns his back on me, which I’ve decided means yes.
By eight forty-five, I’m behind the main bar of the Monster Club, wearing one of the uniforms Corinne had waiting for me in Uncle Dez’s office. She'd stocked the closet with several sets, all in my size.
Low-rise black slacks that hug my hips and ass, a fitted black vest with a plunging neckline, and black platform boots that give me a few extra inches.
I caught myself checking out my own ass in the office mirror. Not bad. Not bad at all.
With my braid pinned up and my shoulders bare, I look like I belong behind this bar. And for the first time since I crossed the Oregon line, I know exactly what I'm doing.
I'm not officially on the schedule. Corinne arranged for me to shadow the main bar so I can learn how things run, and apparently everyone has been instructed to cooperate.
The head bartender is the woman in the black vest from the Solstice party. Her name is Kit. She has a shaved undercut, three silver rings in each ear, and the patient expression of someone who has been told to babysit the boss’s niece.
“You know how to cut fruit?” she asks.
“I know how to cut fruit.”
She hands me a knife and a crate of limes and goes back to stocking glassware.
The room is different empty, with the house lights up. Down at the end of the corridor, the red door is propped open, and every few minutes someone in black carries a stack of folded towels or a box of candles through it. I don’t look too hard. Tonight I’m here for the bar.
I wheel the limes, then the lemons and oranges, then set the garnish trays without being asked. Kit looks at the trays, then at me, and hands me a bar towel for my back pocket.
At nine, the doors open.
The first hour is a regular rush with irregular people.
A man with feathers growing down the back of his neck wants an old-fashioned, then complains it isn’t old-fashioned enough. A tall, very pale man in a dove-gray suit leans on the bar in front of me and orders a Sazerac.
I can’t guess his age. He has the kind of face that doesn’t give you anything.
“Can I see your ID?”
