“Yeah,” she says. “By a dead man.”
Vivienne rests a hand on Hallie’s arm. “Let’s not be dramatic now. We don’t know that he’s dead.”
“Well, I don’t want to risk it,” Hallie mutters, shakily.
I don’t know this girl. I’ve never met her before tonight. Butit doesn’t take a genius to know she’s wary of an angel or something.
“Okay.” Vivienne taps her arm, straightens and gives her head a brief shake. “I’ll leave you to it. But Hallie?” Her gaze carries a warning. “Please think about it.”
Hallie plasters a fake smile to her face and speaks through closed teeth. “I will.”
I wait until Vivienne is out of earshot, then turn to Hallie, who seems a lot nicer. “Thanks for the help. I don’t know anything about hosting.”
She cracks out a laugh, her large blue eyes warm as she takes me in. “You got this, honey. It’s so easy you could do it with your eyes closed.”
“That’s good because I worry I might be blinded by all of these masks.”
She looks up briefly. “Right? Some of them are made with real gold, can you believe it? Guests take the dress code hereveryseriously.”
My eyes almost pop out of my head. Masks carved from gold? Seriously, what is this place?
“This is the guest list,” she says, pointing to the screen in front of us. “It’s a technicality really. The guys on the door know exactly who’s a member or who’s been given a pass to come in. This is more like an electronic record of who came here, who with, for how long, etcetera. We simply click this box when they arrive, and click this one when they leave.”
“Is that all?” I’m pleasantly surprised. Maybe I won’t be utterly terrible at this.
“Yeah, that’s all. But while they’re here…” She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “we watch them.”
My gaze snaps to her face. “We what?”
She arches a brow. “You heard.”
Her fingers move across the screen and she selects a guest name.
“This guy here arrived an hour ago with a woman we aren’tfamiliar with. Now, he’s a member, so he’s allowed to bring non-members, but he’s supposed to give us notice so we can check them out. He didn’t, so I had to do a pretty swift check on his lady friend over there while they were getting settled.”
She points discreetly to a couple in a corner, both of them wearing elaborate, jeweled masks, hands resting on each other’s thighs as they watch other people in the room.
“How do you run checks? What do you look for?”
She taps the screen and a list appears. “This,” she explains, “is connected to every database in the country—official andunofficial.”
I swallow.
“It takes roughly thirty seconds after we enter details like her name, address, social security number, for the system to show us a report. It will even flag up sections in red if there’s anything we need to be aware of—prior convictions, known contact with shady operators, that kind of thing.”
Holy crap.
“Does that happen… you know… often?”
She lifts a shoulder and continues to scroll absent-mindedly through various lists.
“Most weeks,” she replies casually. “Everyonewants a piece of this place.”
“So, um, what do you do when that happens? When someone is flagged up on the databases?”
“Oh yes.” She shakes out her shoulders. “Almost forgot to tell you the most important part.”
She draws my attention to a small red button beneath the screen.
