Jane sat forward and put her hand over Ree’s, resting on the table. “Stick with me, and you’ll meet anyone you want. Plus, I know she’ll want to meet the next great social SF writer.”
She’s definitely hitting on me
, Ree decided. The sexy eyes, she could deal with. The look down the shirt at cream-clear breasts, well, that was hard. The dancing even more so. But the electric current that ran up her arm, her hand in Jane’s . . . that was something else.
Will checks were something games never quite got right. When they come along, you really, really want to fail in the short-term, even if you know it might cause a giganto mess in the long-term. More of them should incentivize giving in to get the real sense across.
But all of that rumination was just her trying to distract herself from the temptation.
It’ll be fine
, said a (horny) interior voice.
You’re both grown-ups, and she’s surface-of-the-sun hot. Are you going to pass up an opportunity like this?
She felt her heart pounding in time to the techno, and picked up her glass of vodka for an excuse to take a break from Jane’s spotlight of attention. Ree took a sip and saw something move through the light cast by the exit sign above a door.
Granted, there were plenty of people moving around, but club patrons didn’t usually set off her personal Spider-sense, and this figure had.
Ree stood, keeping an eye on the exit.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, grabbing her leather jacket and setting off through the crowd. She was glad she’d stuck with her flats, even if it meant that Jane in heels was three inches taller than she was, which put her own head much closer to looking at her marvelous . . .
Focus. Something’s hinky.
Ree donned the jacket and surreptitiously pulled out the switchblade it held as she wove through tables and slinking club-goers. She hadn’t had time to power up with anything, and busting out her lightsaber in the club would be asking a lot of the Doubt. She scanned the crowd for whatever it was that was setting off her radar.
She reached the exit and leaned up against the wall just to one side of the door. She scanned the room again, wishing she had a BTRS or tricorder or something other than intuition for threat assessment. But a night on the town didn’t exactly call for DEFCON-1 in terms of preparation.
Danny emerged from behind a waiter and took a place beside her.
“What are you doing?” he asked. His tone was more intrigued than accusatory. She imagined cops in a world with supers might use the same tone when they came upon an unidentified hero at a crime scene.
“I got a weird feeling.”
Danny hrmed, nodding. “Me, too. You can go back to Jane; I’ll take care of it.”
Ree shook her head. “You’re the bodyguard. I’ve got this.”
Danny shifted his weight, evaluating her. “We could just call security.”
Ree winked. “What fun would that be? But yeah, do that, too. They can be my backup.”
“No offense, but if there’s something out there, what’s a skinny writer going to do about it?” Danny asked, a half-concerned, half-amused look on his face.
“A skinny writer with two black belts and a switchblade can handle herself, thanks.” Ree held out the handle of her knife and looked Danny square in the eyes, trying to convey her martial-arts-y-ness like people did in kung fu movies.
The corner of Danny’s hard-set mouth twitched into a half-smile, and he took a step back and started toward Jane’s table.
Ree scanned the room again, then took a sidestep and pressed on the bar to open the door. She left it open a crack, waiting to listen for conspicuous sounds like guns cocking, creatures snarling, or something equally terrifying.
Not hearing anything particularly scary, she leaned out the door and looked into the alley herself.
The alley outside Infinity was clean, well kept, with a Dumpster ten paces down to one side, allowing patrons to step out for a smoke without inhaling yet another kind of deadly fume.
Ree stepped out, scanning down the side of the alley to the street in the distance. It might have been the strobe light on the club walls, but she thought she saw a form disappear around the corner.
Did they give me the slip?
she wondered. With skills honed by years of Taekwondo, Ree took one step in pursuit while simultaneously pushing a
Don’t get locked out
rock between the club door and its frame.
She hurried a few steps toward the mouth of the alley, but her eyes quickly found something far more pressing.
Atop one of the plastic recycling bins leaning against the opposite building hunched something that looked like a panther crossed with a dragonfly. It had iridescent black-and-green scales, honeycomb eyes, and big, big claws at the ends of muscled feline forelimbs.
Where the fuck did you come from?
Ree asked in her mind.
You sure as hell don’t look like the thing I saw by the door.
Ree pulled her knife out and flipped it open. She circled out and around, trying to get the far wall at her back.
The panther-fly tracked her movement, shimmering wings flapping every few moments the same way a person might blink.
“If you promise not to hurt anyone, I might just let you leave. What do you say to that?” Ree asked.
In response, the creature’s wings unfurled, and it lifted off the ground, hovering forward. The creature’s forelimbs spread, as if getting ready to gather her up and rip her head off. Or maybe to give her a hug.
She wasn’t betting on the hug part.
Ree shrugged her jacket off, wrapping it around her left arm, then took the knife in her right hand. A couple layers might not stop those claws, but they couldn’t hurt.
What is it doing here?
Ree had learned that there was a baseline level of weird in Pearson, and that sometimes, creatures were just around. They lived on the fringes, in alleys and sewers and hidden away in parks. They seemed to mostly prey on smaller animals, but sometimes they went for bigger game.
Lucky me.
The panther-fly zipped forward, slashing with one paw. Ree ducked under the shot, lifting her jacket-padded arm as a shield and aiming for the creature’s elbow with her knife. She felt the blade tear through flesh, and rushed forward at the diagonal to get under the beast and avoid any retaliatory claw raking. She lashed out again as she turned, guessing on a shot at the creature’s thorax-abdomen-ish area.
She missed, then took another step back and looked up, seeing the creature turn in place like a helicopter. It swiped down at her, so Ree faded back and dodged out of the way of the cuts. When the creature hovered forward, Ree spun the knife around and slammed it into the back of the panther-fly’s left paw.
The creature shrieked with a tinny voice, rearing back and flailing. Ree pulled the knife out of its paw and stood back as the creature flew upward. Ree checked the nearby terrain (trash bags, Dumpster, fire escape) and saw that she couldn’t chase the thing down without ridiculous effort, and watched as the wounded creature climbed into the sky, wavering in the air but eventually passing out of sight.
“Huh, weird.” Ree checked the alley, wishing that real-life random encounters yielded loot the way they did in RPGs. She did her best to flick the sticky blood off of her knife, then walked out to the mouth of the alley to see if someone was standing around with magical puppeteer strings or the like.
What she did see was that the line to get into Infinity had at least tripled, but she couldn’t see anyone who projected
suspicious
, so she headed back into the alley, unfolding her jacket to put it back on and return to club mode.
Note to self: Always bring plastic baggies for monster-goop control. Hand sanitizer as well. Also: Figure out way to bring all of these things along without a purse. Jackets only go so far. See if Grognard can special order a portable hole.
Ree pulled the door open again and rolled the rock back out of the way. She caught a whiff of crisp-scented air, narrowed her eyes at the stray strobe lights, and stepped back inside.
Jane was waiting, perhaps even a little anxiously, when Ree made it back to her seat. The star brightened upon seeing her and lifted a full glass in greeting.
“Sorry, had to freshen up,” Ree offered by way of explanation.
Off to one side, she saw Danny at his table.
He must have covered for me
, Ree thought. She gave him a slight nod of thanks, again trying for that martial-artists-communicate-volumes-with-simple-motions thing from movies. Mostly she hoped she didn’t look dumb.
“Let’s get back to enjoying the evening. You owe me another dance for leaving me hanging when they played Florence + the Machine.”
Aw, damn.
“Khan! Done and done.” Ree jingled the glass, clinking the ice. “But if I have much more of this, the only dance I’m going to be doing is with the porcelain throne.”
Jane stood and took Ree’s hand, sending a not-at-all-unpleasant shiver down Ree’s neck. “Dance first, then. I can nurse you back to health after I’ve had my way on the dance floor.”
Twist my arm, why don’t you.
Ree walked with Jane to the center of the club. Jane worked her way through the crowd, dealing with a few touchy fans and one pushy drunkard who threw some choice curse words her way before the club’s security pulled him off the floor.
The crowd parted, and Jane dominated the center of the floor. The star moved with even more energy than before, taking bounding jumps as she fused punk-y moshing with more classic rocking out. Ree had done her fair share of dancing off her demons, but Jane was putting Ree’s old Goth days to shame, jumping, spinning, and grooving with intensity for one, two, three songs straight. And she wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Instead, she was practically glowing, her own light layering over the strobes and spotlights of the club.
Jane had her own audience, dozens of club-goers staring at any given moment, all feeding the star’s power.
Ree caught a glimpse of Danny at the edge of the floor. He looked worried. But not crowd-of-potential-threats worried. Really worried.
Ree started back toward Danny, but Jane caught her by the arm.
“Where are you going?” Jane asked, pushing her voice to be heard over the din.
Ree looked to Danny again, who had clammed up, back to normal ready mode.
Step down the Red Alert. It’s fine. Live life a little, Batgirl
, she told herself.
As if on cue, the DJ put on “Airships” by VNV Nation.
That’s what I’m talking about.
Ree dove headfirst into the dance, shutting out the world and submitting to the music. She flowed with the synth, adapting the flowing techniques of tai chi into the dance, her feet moving slowly as she gathered energy. Jane caught Ree’s change in attitude immediately, ramping up even more and directing her attention at the writer, showing her off to the crowd, giving her room. They owned the floor for eight minutes and eighteen seconds of mainlined catharsis.
When the song ended, they quit the floor without a word, still in sync.
There were ice waters waiting at their table when they returned, though Ree didn’t know if those were due to Lacey’s thoughtfulness or Danny’s protectiveness. Ree pounded the water and then collapsed into the chair, happily beat.
“All right, I’m calling it so I can go out on a high note,” Ree said to a still-glowing Jane. She shimmered with sweat, wearing it proudly. She was, frustratingly, one of the women who looked hotter when they sweated.
Damned if I don’t want to drag her home with me right fucking now
, Ree thought, most of her wishing to just jump into the roaring river of her desire.
“Will you at least be a lady and escort me home?” Jane asked, mischief in her eyes.
Ooh, boy
, she thought, considering all of the reasons why doing so would be professionally dangerous.
What the hell?
The rest of her responded, carrying the vote.
Ree extended a hand to Jane and said, “But of course, milady.”
• • •
Ree hoped that Jane had tipped the cabbie big-time for his discretion. Because . . . damn.
Scandalized
didn’t start to describe what went down on the cab ride.
They’d spent the whole trip wrapped around each other, limbs intertwined in a lascivious Gordian knot that was only partially untied when they climbed out of the cab and stumbled their way to Jane’s trailer, a four-legged smoochmoeba.
Jane closed the door of the trailer and Ree came up for air, disentangling herself for a moment to catch her breath.
Are we really doing this?
She flailed mentally, grasping for the smart thing to do while wrestling her libido.
She’d had her hook-ups during college, and they were fun, but they weren’t remotely responsible. She’d grown up since then, or at least tried to tell herself that she had.
“Are you sure you want to do this? We’ve had a lot of vodka,” she said to Jane, who had kicked off her shoes and was curling her toes in the trailer’s plush carpet.
Jane took two long, only slightly wobbly steps back to Ree. She breathed in, focusing. “We have, and I’m sure. Are you?”
Ree paused, the pleasant cloudiness of inebriation receding.
Well, am I?
There would be consequences, but there were always consequences. Jane was gorgeous, she was kind, and she was, according to all the tabloids, a total badass in bed.
What about Drake?
a voice asked. She and Drake had been on tiptoes around each other for months, and the things left unsaid could fill a novel. But he hadn’t made a move, even a charmingly overstated grand gesture or an understated request to call on her at her apartment, aka The Shithole.
“I am,” Ree said, and Jane smiled. The star turned toward the bedroom and exaggerated her gait, drawing attention to the movement of her hips; she looked at Ree over her shoulder in a manner more pronounced than Bugs Bunny in drag beguiling Elmer Fudd.
Hummina.