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There are men in there, and they don’t sound happy.
“Fuck!”
“Again? Are you joking?”
Someone chuckles, and there’s the unmistakable sound of chips clacking together. “Read ’em and weep, boys.”
It feels almost surreal walking into a poker game in the middle of Pervert Palace, but I think there might have been something in the water, because I feel invincible right now.
Serves me right taking anything offered on a tray by a dead-eyed girl.
“Sorry to interrupt, guys, just wanted to know if any of you have seen Red?”
The entire poker table turns, the guy scooping up his winnings the last to focus on me across the green felt.
Then I remember what the girl had said. “I mean, Master. Master Red.”
One or two of the vintage chairs creak as the guys shift their weight. The man beside the winner snaps his fingers, and a serving girl appears with another one of those trays. He leans over it and snorts down a line of cocaine as the silence stiffens to breaking point.
“You know what, never mind. I’m sure I’ll find him.” I give them a wave, and step back, my skin prickling as I expect someone to yell out that I’m a fraud.
“Try the den on the third floor,” the winner says as he starts stacking his chips in neat rows in front of him. “Chase was with him and a new girl a few minutes ago. Might still be up there.”
No clue who the fuck Chase is, but I give him a silent thanks as I nod and exit as calmly from the poker room as possible. The whip creaks as I tighten it around my fist. The staircase to the third level looms ahead, but I have to blink hard to make it focus.
I swoon to the left, my shoulder crashing into the wall just below a violent portrait of a deer hunt. Yup, there was definitely something in the water. I push away from the wall, the fingers of my free hand coming up to touch my jaw where Dave’s whip sliced me open.
Interesting. I can’t feel a fucking thing anymore. My feet thump over a floor that has no substance, my hands grabbing a railing that might not exist. Amazing how muscles still know how to function even when everything is numb.
I’m a few yards down the hall, veering unsteadily toward the first door I see, when someone rushes past me, their shoulder knocking into mine. I go sprawling against the wall, barely keeping my balance, and swing around in shock to see who the hell crashed into me.
A young, naked girl with strawberry blond hair runs down the hall, a bright red first-aid kit clutched in her hand. She stops outside a door and bangs on it with her fist, then looks in my direction with big, wide eyes.
It’s like a physical touch, those bewildered eyes. I can feel every ounce of her panic, her fear, the urgency spurring her on. Then someone opens the door and she’s gone like she never was. A phantom.
I slap my palm against the wall, and use that grip to drag myself forward, keeping my back pressed to the wallpaper. The sound it makes could wake the fucking dead, but no one can hear it over that insistent ringing, can they?
No. Wait.
That’s in my head.
Fuck.
I drag myself down the hall, my eyes narrowing as I try to force them to focus on the door the naked nurse disappeared into. But every time I blink, the world swims and bloats, and I have to pick out the doorway again.
“…too much blood,” a man says, and it comes to me like a voice spoken right inside my skull.
I freeze, flattening myself against the wall. The ringing is starting to subside, but that just makes every other sound louder. I swear I can hear my joints creak as I move forward again.
“No, it’s okay. It’s okay.” This voice is softer, feminine, hushed, panicked, urgent. The naked nurse. “It’s deep, but I can fix it.”
“Just give her the morphine, dolly. She’s fucking up my carpet.”
“Master Red, Sir, I can save her. Please.”
My heart clangs in my chest like a fucking church bell.
I let the whip pool out of my fist, and give it a tentative slash. It flops in the air like one of those inflatable tube men outside a second-hand car lot.
