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All five Chers looked appalled.
“Would Cher rob anyone? Please,” said Bob Mackie Cher.
“She is a goddess,” If I Could Turn Back Time Cher stated adamantly. “Not a common criminal.”
Josie Lynn supposed that was reasonable logic.
“Plus, we really are friends of Zelda’s,” Sixties Cher said.
“So who the hell drugged and robbed us?” Drake asked.
“Oh, we can tell you that,” came a voice from behind them.
They all turned to see Johnny, Zelda, and Saxon—and behind them were two people wearing black leather masks with zippers over their mouths and cuffs on their wrists as they were being dragged along by dog collars and leashes. One of the leashes was the one Josie Lynn had used on Waldo, which meant the gator was probably on the loose again.
“Saxon figured out who drugged and robbed us,” Zelda said proudly, and clearly fully recovered.
“Who?”
Saxon peeled back one of the masks on the bound couple, while Johnny pulled off the other.
“Eric,” Josie Lynn said, not totally surprised. But her jaw dropped when she looked to the other culprit. “And Ashley?”
* * *
“WHAT THE HELL is going on?” Believe Cher asked. “Isn’t that Madame Renee’s daughter?”
Johnny wanted to laugh. He wanted to sit down in a chair and laugh his f**king head off at the sheer ridiculousness of this night, and his life in general. Here he was, standing in a burlesque club with five men dressed as Cher while Saxon revealed the culprits in the Great Wedding Dress and Drug the Vampires Caper. It felt like he’d fallen into an episode of Scooby Doo and he was the dog going, “Ruh?”
When Saxon had called him for backup after Lizette had taken off, he had shown up at Zelda’s and found her with her new husband in the Dungeon, trussing up a couple of college kids like they were Christmas geese. Or worse. Now he was being told that this blond girl, Ashley, who had looked so sweet passing out crab cakes at the wedding, but was hissing defiantly now, was a transgender vampire’s daughter?
Johnny didn’t need his acute senses to smell bullshit.
“You’re Madame Renee’s daughter?” Josie Lynn gasped, standing close to Drake. “But he’s so . . . old. And so fond of sequins.”
“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t like to boom-boom with a young thing in his room,” Bob Mackie Cher said.
Gross.
“So who drugged the punch?” Drake asked. “Was it these two?”
Neither Ashley nor Eric said a word, but it was clear from their silence that they were guilty as sin. Johnny’s urge to laugh disappeared completely. Not only had Lizette disappeared on him tonight, probably on the first flight back to France, but now he also found out that a kid with daddy issues had drugged a whole roomful of vampires? It was mortifying.
“I saw her do it,” Saxon said. “But since she was the catering assistant, I thought, like, she was supposed to add stuff to the sherbet. But when I thought about it, I realized you probably don’t add pills to punch.”
Johnny looked at Saxon, whose crimped hair was going limp in the humidity, and wanted to slap him upside the head. But he restrained himself. “So why didn’t you black out like the rest of us?” he asked him.
“I didn’t drink the punch. Dude, I don’t do rainbow sherbet. I’m a purist. Orange only. I should have been more specific with Josie Lynn when we ordered it.”
“Poor baby,” Zelda cooed to him. “I’m sorry you didn’t get your special sherbet. We can get some later and I’ll feed it to you.”
Johnny gagged a little in his mouth. Zelda had her foot on Eric’s back to hold him in place after the kid, looking more bored than terrified, had sat down on the floor and was holding his head up with his palm. Johnny couldn’t say he approved of the whole masks-and-leashes approach to the situation, nor was he okay with the image of Zelda feeding Saxon orange goop. He wanted to go home, desperately.
So he decided to take charge of the situation. “Okay, look. Eric and Ashley. You’re fired, obviously. But that’s the least of your problems. We can press charges for drugging us, but we’ll go easy on you and let the whole damn thing drop if you tell us exactly what went down and then promise to never show your face in the Quarter again. Where do you live, by the way?”
“Mid-City,” Eric murmured sullenly.
“So do we have a deal?”
“What do you want to know?” Ashley asked, flipping her hair back and meeting his gaze head-on.
“Is Renee your biological father?” Johnny was just too damn curious about that not to ask.
“Yes. He’s not g*y, he just likes to cross-dress.”
Huh. He knew that Renee hadn’t been a vampire for very long, and had wondered why the man had waited so long to cross over. Who wanted to be an old vampire for all eternity? But apparently Renee had been committed to being a dad and had put that before immortality. He had to say he admired the man’s commitment to his daughter, even if she had grown up to be a conniving criminal with poor planning skills.
“So why did you drug us?”
“To rob you and frame the Chers for it.”
Turn Back Time Cher gasped. “What! How dare you?”
Oh my God. Johnny looked to Drake for help, but Drake was too busy undressing Josie Lynn with his eyes to be of any assistance. How come Johnny was the one with the broken heart and the one dealing with divas and morons? This was not his usual role, being the responsible one, and he wasn’t really digging it.
Fortunately, Wyatt stepped in and helped him out on this one. “Ashley, why would you do that?”
“Because my father’s club is going to go bankrupt. It’s not fair. I just wanted to get rid of some of his competition.”
It was twisted and stupid and guaranteed to fail, but Johnny appreciated her loyalty to her family. He personally would do a lot for Stella. “What about the wedding dress?”
“I didn’t take the wedding dress!”
Bob Mackie Cher looked a little guilty. “Okay, that one is on me, I admit it. Zelda and I were in the ladies room powdering our noses and we had a girl moment where we traded clothes. Only I may have slipped out of the reception before we could trade back, because, honey, that leather bustier was the tits.” He held his hands out dramatically. “Eve presented me with the apple and I bit, I am sorry. I couldn’t resist. I’ll dry-clean the damn thing and return it.” He sighed forlornly. “Though it may kill me.”
