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Stacy didn’t really have a reason, just she didn’t like Jackson and the vibe of the club was off. No one did anything to her or was ever mean, but she felt like they weren’t her people. Fair enough, but if her gut was telling her not to let Lisa know, that was a failing of Lisa as a manager.
Or there was a problem at that club.
Natalia didn’t think it was our training program or Lisa accidentally slipping as a manager after that many years of being one. So she pulled everything on the club and there weren’t any glaring issues.
But there wasn’t anything that stood out as great either. The club made money, but it was one of our lowest earners. Fine, Jackson, Mississippi wasn’t exactly a high-income area. Natalia showed me numbers, and the average household income was under forty grand, and a quarter of the city lived in poverty.
However, there hadn’t been any growth in the past few years. That was odd.
Really odd. We had a good business model, and even when other areas were hit hard, we normally weren’t. Even bars turned a good profit in areas that weren’t in high-income areas.
The club also had a high turnover—for our clubs at least. Not enough to have flagged us or set off flares, but it was near the top. So it wasn’t any one thing, but a combination that made it clear something was going on there, and given we were worried about rats or ways for bad people to find weaknesses to get at us… We needed to get the answers.
Which meant I was taking Stacy’s place under the guise that she got a ticket and the police realized there was a problem with her ID and corporate got involved to help her. They pulled me from a different club that I hadn’t been getting enough hours from, and I was going to cover while everything got squared away and the heat was off of Stacy.
If things were fine and there wasn’t a problem with the club, Stacy would simply like the new area she was working in better, and we’d put a new dancer at this club permanently. If things weren’t fine… Well, there was a range of what could and would happen.
I got ready and did my normal first dance of “Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child for the joke that I was new. I did a few more and was shocked when two of the shifter dancers stole private dances right out from under me. Not that I couldn’t handle multiple guys and I would have passed them on—as were our guidelines—but one said I was still working on my moves as a new girl.
Not cool.
I went right to the manager. “I don’t know if this is some sort of test to see if I follow the rules, but I do.” I told her what happened, and she gave me a look that she gavezerofucks, muttering that she would speak to her and make sure that it wouldn’t happen again. That it was probably my misunderstanding, and the dancer didn’t want me to be overwhelmed my first night at a new club.
Right.
Yeah, no. Bullshit.
The whole night was off like that. I still made good money though, and that proved my point that the numbers weren’t adding up. I put my tips in the provided envelopes with my name and in the lockbox so they could all be totaled and split for the tip share.
And I witnessed someone skimming. Fine, it happened. Maybe she had something going on or maybe she was just a bitch, but she clearly knew where the cameras were and how to work it. I didn’t know her name, but I would make sure to get it and have whoever was going to be working with me on this keep a watch on her.
But I wanted more eyes inside. There was more to it, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
They knew I was a demon, so there was no problem using the portal hidden in the manager’s office that we kept from the humans. I walked into the home base we were using in Atlanta and switched my glamour back to Jasmine. I wanted to talk to Kyle and get his insight, maybe figure out a way for him to get in with some of the demons that worked security.
I locked eyes with Mason and immediately knew why I’d felt so off.
And I’d missed it for hours. Damnit.
I grabbed my normal phone that was there protected so it didn’t get me busted and texted Natalia that I wanted to see her at home base. I wasn’t surprised when she came through the portal with Kiera seeming like they’d been waiting for me to be done. “They’re using magic.”
“What?” Natalia asked. “You felt it?”
“No, I didn’t feel desires,” I told her firmly, nodding when she couldn’t hide her shock. “The whole night was off. Pieces aren’t fitting there, and I get why you couldn’t put your finger on it and something just seemed weird. It wasn’t until I just saw Mason that it hit me. It’s like when he’s holding people off from me. I didn’t feel the manager’s desires nor other people.”
“The customers?” she asked.
I frowned. “Muted. It was weird. I felt weird. There are a low number of demons that work there, right?”
She nodded. “It’s mostly shifters and vamps. That’s weird for us. Fine, it happens, butwhy thereof all places?”
“Because they don’t like this feeling,” I surmised. “If they haven’t been around a warlock or witch to understand what this is—and not many of us have—I would feel like I’m having an off day. Hell, if I wasn’t so busy looking for what was wrong and simply was dancing, I would have been worried something was wrong withmethat I didn’t sense desires.”
“What else?”
“The manager’s pissed we haven’t rolled out the red carpet for her to come to corporate,” I drawled.
Natalia snorted. “I’ve flatly turned her down when she said she wanted a promotion. A few years ago, she said it was time or she would walk. I told her politely to walk then because the club she manages is stagnant and that’s not corporate material. I get it’s not a huge area, but we don’t really have stagnant clubs.”
