Page 56 of Spade

Joker leaned in the doorway. “Nice place. You guys do birthday parties?”

The first man snorted, half laugh, half sneer. “Depends on the cake.”

It took under a minute to clear the room. The men shuffled out, blinking in the light, arms crossed over their chests or hanging loose at their sides, a few with come dripping from the one-eyed monster. Aces herded them to the base of the stairs, then up, all without a word.

Back in the main room, the Queens had gotten dressed. They made a line in front of Selene, arms folded, not defiant, not cowed, just waiting for orders.

Selene faced the Queen, who had a shaved head. “You’re done here,” she said. “Tonight. You’re out of the valley by sunrise.”

The Queen nodded, no smart reply this time.

“If you come back,” Selene continued, “I won’t be this polite.”

There was a pause, and then the Queen grinned—wide, animal, almost proud. “Wouldn’t expect you to be.”

Nines handed the Queen a folded sheet of paper. “This is your cease and desist. You don’t sign, we burn it down anyway.”

The Queen took it, read the first line, then handed it back. “We’re not lawyers.”

“Neither are we,” Aces said.

It was a bad standoff—one with no honor, just logistics and tired people who didn’t want to spend the night in lockup. The Queens filed past us, single-file, boots wet, faces unreadable. At the base of the stairs, one turned and looked back. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes lingered on me, long enough that I remembered her from somewhere—a scuffle outside a roadhouse in Henderson, maybe, or the time we’d both gotten kicked out of the same county fair for fighting in the pie tent.

When they were gone, Selene checked the time. “Fifteen minutes. Get it done.”

We moved like an assembly line. Joker and Aces started hauling the vials out of the freezer, smashing them into a rolling trash bin. Nines dumped every logbook, hard drive, and printed receipt into a metal can, then doused it with acetone.

I circled the floor with a red gas can, splashing it across the machines, the chairs, the wall where the corporate logo used to be. The smell mingled with the bleach and the sick-sweet residue of the operation, making my eyes water.

The men from the basement gathered at the front door, shivering in their paper slippers, waiting for instructions. Aces handed each one a windbreaker and a slip of paper with a phone number. “Call if you need a ride,” she said. “Or a lawyer. Or a nurse.”

None of them made eye contact, but a few nodded, holding the numbers like tiny lifelines.

When everything was soaked and ready, Joker dug a matchbook from her pocket, struck one, and handed it to me.

“Ladies first,” she said.

I flicked the match onto a puddle by the main desk. It caught instantly, blue and orange rippling up the vinyl. We watched as the fire moved, liquid and bright, rolling through the aisles, curling up the walls and devouring the machinery. The buzz of the pumps was gone now, replaced by the soft roar of the building eating itself from the inside.

We stood on the sidewalk and watched it burn. No sirens yet; the city had seen enough fires to wait for a second alarm. Selene checked her phone, then nodded once. Job done.

The men filtered off into the darkness, some walking, some just standing and staring at the flames. I caught the eye of the one who’d spat at me earlier. He raised his chin a little, like he wanted to say thanks and couldn’t quite bring himself.

Joker said, “I give it twenty minutes before the city dispatches. You want pancakes?”

Aces said, “I could eat.”

We mounted up, the orange of the fire lighting the street like a sunrise that meant business. The gas caught a drum somewhere in the back, and the whole roof blew out, raining sparks across the empty parking lot.

The building was gone, but the message would last. I looked at Selene, waiting for her to say something about next steps, about contingency, about what the fuck we’d just witnessed. She didn’t. She just watched the flames and exhaled, slow and even, like she’d been holding it in all night.

Then I saw her.

Jenna was twenty feet down, leaning against a streetlight, arms crossed, half her face lit by the flames. Queens of Chaos vest, no shirt underneath, wrists marked up with old scars she didn’t bother hiding. She looked at the building, not at me. The glow caught her cheekbone, the line of her jaw, the corner of her mouth where she bit down on whatever she was about to say.

For a second, nobody moved. Even the rest of the Harlots held their position, like a pack clocking an unknown variable. Selene watched her with the flat, forensic curiosity of a surgeon planning a cut. Joker sized her up in two blinks and then pretended she’d already lost interest. Nines and Aces flanked out, no sudden movements, just a casual, deliberate angle on the perimeter.

Jenna didn’t react to any of it. She just stared at the blaze, eyes narrowed, smoke painting her irises black.