Page 31 of Branding the Bat

"And Trevor." Sero turned the glass in his hands. The ice clinked. "Thank you for telling me. Before they came. Whatever your reasons, Amani pushing you, guilt, fear, you told me before they showed up at the club. That matters."

Trevor opened his mouth. Closed it. What should he say? Opened it again. "I should’ve told you the first night. At your apartment, when I drove you home drunk. I should’ve looked atyou and said 'I'm going to do something to you that you don't know about' and let you decide. I should have—"

"Yes. You should have. But you didn't, and we're here now, and right now 'here' means you go talk to enforcement and I sit at this bar and figure out what my life looks like."

Amani returned from the back office. "They want you now. I've got an address. It's a shifter enforcement facility off Flamingo Road. Ask for Agent Vasquez. She's expecting you."

Trevor stood. He looked at Sero one last time, a long, unguarded look that carried everything he couldn't say and knew he hadn't earned the right to say. Then he left. The elevator doors opened, closed, and Sero vanished. Would he ever see Sero again? Part of him wanted to go back in and plead with Sero, but maybe he’d have a better chance once he’d done the right thing, and Sero was safe.

***

The next six hours passed in the strange, suspended way that crisis time always passed, too fast and too slow simultaneously, every minute both urgent and interminable. Sero stayed at KK. He had nowhere else to be and nowhere else he wanted to be, and Amani's bar was the only place in Las Vegas where he felt certain that the people around him were exactly who they appeared to be.

Amani kept the bar open in the way that bartenders kept bars open after hours for friends, lights low, music off, drinks flowing at a pace that was less about service and more about having something to do with your hands. He made Sero four Shirley Temples over the course of the night. He also made him a fruit plate from the emergency stash, and when Sero couldn't eat, he wrapped it in plastic and put it back in the fridge without comment.

They talked. Not about Trevor, not at first. About the casino, Sero's shift he'd missed, the pit boss who'd be annoyed,the regulars he'd have to explain his absence to. About the documentary Sero had been watching before everything detonated, cuttlefish, masters of disguise.

"Cuttlefish freak me out." Amani was wiping down the bar for the third time, a nervous habit Sero had never seen from him before. Amani didn't get nervous. He moved through the world as if it had been designed for his comfort. That night the veneer was thinner. "Anything that can pretend to be something it's not. I don't trust it."

"That's most people."

"That's most people outside this club. In here, you are what you are. That's the rule." Amani set the rag down and leaned on the bar. "My mother built this place because she was tired of pretending. She was a lion in a world that wanted her to be a housecat, quiet, small, decorative. She said fuck that. She built KK so that every shifter who walked through the door could be exactly who they were, at their most vulnerable, and know they'd be safe."

"She sounds extraordinary."

"She is. She's also terrifying. You'll meet her eventually. She wants to talk to you about the enforcement case."

Sero nodded. The enforcement case. The phrase made it real in a way that Trevor's confession hadn't, a legal proceeding, witnesses, testimony. Trevor sitting in a room somewhere on Flamingo Road, telling a woman named Agent Vasquez about the machine and the vials and the Grizzly, and admitting to three years of taking things that weren't his.

"Can I ask you something?" Sero said.

"You're going to anyway."

A smile, faint and tired. Their running joke. "When Trevor came to you. When he told you what he'd been doing. Did you think about banning him immediately?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you?"

Amani was quiet for a moment. He pulled two glasses from beneath the counter, poured orange juice into one and set the other in front of Sero with ginger ale, a deconstructed Shirley Temple, no grenadine, no cherry. A drink for someone who was past the point of sweetness.

"Because banning him wouldn't have protected you," Amani said. "If I'd banned Trevor on Monday, he'd have been out of the club and out of my reach. I wouldn't have been able to make him tell you the truth. I wouldn't have been able to connect him with enforcement when the sharks escalated. Banning him would’ve felt satisfying, but it would have left you exposed." He sipped his orange juice. "I chose strategy over satisfaction. My mother would be proud."

"She would."

"But for the record, he is banned. Effective immediately, pending review. If he ever comes back, it's because he's earned it, and earning it is going to take a very long time."

Sero drank the ginger ale. It was cold and sharp and exactly what he needed. No sweetness, no garnish, no performance.

At seven in the morning, Trevor texted Amani:Statement complete. Agent Vasquez is moving on the Playground tonight. She says Sero should stay somewhere secure for 24 hours as a precaution.

Amani showed the text to Sero. "You can stay at the club. There's a room in the back, staff room, not a play room. It's got a couch and a lock."

A sudden wave of relief flooded through him. "I'll stay."

"Good." Amani started setting up for the day, stocking bottles, cutting fruit, the mundane choreography of a bar preparing to open. His tiny shorts were on. His bare chest caught the amber light. The vampire fangs from Halloween were sittingin a cup behind the register, where they'd apparently lived since that night. The world was resuming its shape.

"Amani."