Time to go.

  “Hey!” The voice and ensuing jab to my shoulder stirred me from sleep.

  Smells of disinfectant soap and latex permeated the air. My arm slid away from my face, allowing a view of the brown-skinned goddess standing beside me with a tattoo gun in her hand.

  Isha Kapoor scowled as her dark eyes met mine. “You didn’t tell me where you want it,” she said.

  I’d wasted no time. From the valet lot at the East Side Tower, it was a ten-minute drive to the Blooming Orchid, a tattoo parlor with fringe benefits for those in the know. The shop didn’t open till noon, and the Porsche’s dashboard clock read 9:30 AM when I arrived. But Isha never turned me away for business calls… or personal ones.

  The padded chair was comfier than last night’s bathroom floor, making this as good a time as any to catch up on my beauty sleep. Judging by Isha’s toe-tapping impatience, she disagreed.

  I flipped her my middle finger, an answer and a statement; one she understood, judging by her sigh. She sat, then rolled forward on a padded stool, situating herself between me and a stainless tray table set up with paper towels, a pot of black ink, and a spray bottle.

  The tattoo gun’s tiny motor hummed alive as Isha took my hand and pressed it flat against the chair’s armrest. My attention roamed to her breasts spilling over the neckline of her corset top. Soft black lines of flowers and skulls decorated her chest and vined down her bare arms. She looked as much the owner of this place as part of its décor.

  “You’re a class act, Fitch Farrow.” Isha’s crimson lips bent in a frown. “Stumbling in here, looking like a bum, and reeking of booze…”

  When the needle dug in again, I hissed a breath. My eyelids fluttered in protest of the light above. Nash’s anti-hangover potion was wearing off faster than I’d hoped.

  “Tell me you didn’t work like this,” Isha continued, barely audible over the tattoo gun. “You’re a mess.”

  When she lifted the needle, I took the chance to waggle my middle finger once again.

  “This,” I said, sitting up straighter, “is number thirty.”

  “Happy murderversary,” Isha huffed. “Now, hold still.” She bent to the task again, raven hair draping over her shoulder in waves.

  The beginning of the slim, black line looked stark on my hand. I would soon have three on every digit, one for each life I’d taken in my career as a criminal. They were Isha’s idea in the first place: strings for the Marionette to pull.

  “You think Grimm got me a cake?” I mused. “It’s the least he could do.”

  A damp paper towel swiped across the bend of my finger like a cool kiss on burning skin. I should have been used to it, having been Isha’s doodle pad for the past decade, but the strings hurt worse than most. Bones and tendons too near the surface prevented a comfortable experience.

  “Speaking of cakes,” Isha said while the tattoo gun buzzed, “maybe you should get your brother one. It’s his birthday, isn’t it?”

  “Fuck.” My groan stretched the word into several syllables.

  “Did you forget?”

  “No.” But I’d sure tried to last night. Drinking was my preferred method of coping with problems I didn’t know how to solve.

  “It’s a big one this year.” Isha dabbed my knuckle with the paper towel. “Grimm says he’s going to let Donovan join the gang. I bet he’s excited.”

  “Oh, he’s tickled pink,” I grumbled.

  “And you aren’t?” Isha arched a brow.

  My brother’s initiation had been all the talk for days. Weeks, even. The Reeves job had been my only respite from having to hear about the upcoming party and the activities that would follow. Joining a gang like the Bloody Hex wasn’t as simple as accepting an invitation. We had criteria and conditions that weren’t waived even for someone who’d grown up in our midst.

  Disdain must have been plain on my face because Isha paused her work to stare at me.

  “You aren’t,” she said.

  I sighed.

  Six years my junior at freshly twenty, Donovan currently filled the role of errand boy for our criminal outfit. He had no record, no kill count, and no appreciation for having made it to adulthood without Grimm tagging him with the gang’s mark as proof of ownership.

  He might have been welcomed into the fold years ago—they hadn’t waited for my coming of age to absorb me into their ranks—but Donovan lacked the thing Grimm valued most in his acolytes: magical power.

  Most of our city’s residents descended from centuries-old bloodlines, and my brother and I were no exception. Pursuant to the Capitol’s push on intermarriage, even our human mother was a sign of our father’s fealty to his government. So, Donovan wasn’t strange in his humanity. There were plenty like him in our world. But not in the gang. It welcomed unnecessary risk.

  “You know he just wants to be like you,” Isha said. “Who wouldn’t?” She leaned in to dab at the blood beading on my knuckle.

  “I don’t even want to be like me,” I said, squirming. “It’s exhausting.” Not to mention the moral complications that came with murder. I may have squashed my Jiminy Cricket conscience years ago, but Donovan still had innocence worth protecting.

  Isha reached to the tray table and came back with a glob of jelly on her gloved finger. “It’s also glamorous. From the outside, at least. All the fame and glory, the women…” A coy smile pulled at the corner of her lips. She smeared the antibiotic around my ring of fresh ink before adding a strip of gauze and a bandage.

  Grimm hadn’t divulged his intentions for my brother, but the only reason he kept any of us around was to keep his own hands pristine clean. Grimm was the face of the gang; the brain that told the body where to go and what to do. In that way, he was a better puppeteer than I’d ever been.

  Imagining Donovan as another dog on Grimm’s leash sickened me to the point I sat upright. “He’s about to get run over by a fucking bus and he doesn’t even see it coming.”

  Isha’s eyes met mine again, searching.

  I was rarely so candid, but I’d known Isha long enough—and intimately enough—that every conversation was like pillow talk.

  “Am I supposed to watch him die, Ish?” The hitch in my voice slipped out unchecked.

  “Literally or figuratively?” she asked.

  “Maybe both.” I swung my legs over the side of the chair and stood, seized by a sudden headrush that reminded me I had yet to find food.

  Isha fished into her hip pocket for a pack of Virginia Slims and a lighter. She dumped two cigs into her hand, then tucked them between her lips, lighting both before handing one to me.

  I took the cig for a greedy drag. My lungs swelled with warm smoke, chased by the feeling of settling calm. That would keep the hunger pangs at bay for another hour or so.

  Isha puffed smoke rings into the air. They stretched wide and thin, dissipating into the cloud of incense she’d had burning since before I arrived.

  “Have you talked to Donovan about this? Told him your concerns?” Isha asked.

  So had begun last night’s descent into today’s disaster. I’d always had reservations about my brother’s involvement in the Bloody Hex but kept them to myself. Rumors reached the top quickly in a group as small as ours. Any one of us questioning Grimm’s infinite wisdom was the nearest thing to treason. But, with Donovan’s initiation looming, I couldn’t sit by in silence.

  My brother had been there at the beginning of the night, when I was still of the mind to pretend that we were having the same private celebration we enjoyed every year on the eve of his birthday. I meant to tell him, but I never got a word in. He was too busy going on about what life would be like now that Grimm and the others would see him as an equal.

  The gang hadn’t always been hospitable to the two kids Grimm dumped unceremoniously into their midst. They were more likely to joke about killing us or using us as bait to entice the Capitol. At some point that changed, and they welcomed us into the fold. Rather, they welcomed me. Donovan had always been a hanger-on, so I understood what Isha meant about him wanting more. I’d seen a hunger growing in him for years. He had wants and desires he’d enumerated last night. Had I been so dramatic when I was nineteen?

  But no, my concerns never came up. Instead, we drank and laughed and recounted memories until he left, believing all was well. Then I kept drinking, long after midnight, and confessing to Nash as though he were my priest and the Bitters’ End my church.

  “Yeah, I talked to him,” I lied. “He thinks it’s my fault it’s taken him this long to get in. Said I’ve been holding him back because I’m afraid he’ll be better than me.” I sucked sharply on the cigarette, and the ash end flared.

  Donovan may not have told me those things last night, but he’d made his feelings clear in the past. Another reason I hesitated to broach the subject now.

  “For God’s sake, that’s all I want for him,” I muttered. “Be better than me, but not a better criminal.”

  Isha folded her arms under cleavage already threatening to spill over. “You don’t have to agree with your brother’s choices, but you should respect them. He’s spent a long time in your shadow. That can’t be easy.”

  I laid back in the chair. Her eyes were too full of truth for my liking, so I looked everywhere else. My attention drifted from the brocade wallpaper gleaming black and gold to the crystal chandelier swagged overhead.

  “You know what he should do?” I said at length.

  “Hmm?”

  “Get the hell out of Dodge. Leave this shitty place behind and all these shitty people, too.”

  Isha’s expression soured. “Oh thanks, Fitch. I think you’re great, too.”

  “Donovan’s human,” I continued. “He could live a normal, human life. Nine-to-five job, white picket fence, the goddamn American dream.” As I ticked the pros off on my fingers, my bandaged middle one throbbed in protest.

  “Sounds terribly boring.” Isha took another drag. “Would you be happy like that? Spending your days as an unremarkable man with an unremarkable life?”

  It sounded like bliss sometimes. Running off to somewhere sunny and, honestly, nostalgic. Donovan and I grew up in the suburbs, fifteen minutes from here. We lived in the same world then that surrounded us now, but we had been insulated. So well-protected that even the horrors of our father’s job never managed to touch us.

  “You’ve never been unremarkable, Fitch,” Isha concluded. “You can’t even fathom it.” She slipped a hand around my thigh and gave a squeeze. “But try to.”

  Her next draw on the cigarette reminded me of the one burning down between my fingers. I dropped ash onto the tray table.

  “While you’re at it, try to imagine a world in which you could walk out of this city and no one would stop you.” She met my gaze, her long lashes blending into winged liner. “It may sound like freedom, but it’s also a kind of insignificance I don’t think you could bear. And I don’t think Donovan can, either.”

  Silence filled the space between us. Her manicured hand rested on my leg until she moved it to cup my chin instead. She tipped my head up to see her smile.

  “Do you know what you should do, Mister Farrow?” she said softly. “Go home and get some rest. You’re dead on your feet by the looks of it.”

  Her fingers fell away, but I chased them, sitting up close enough to brush against her chest. Aromas of jasmine and patchouli wafted to my nose, the same smells present in her bedroom.

  “It’s early,” I murmured. “I need to get something to eat, and maybe…” My mind roamed ahead, thinking of myself in the very near future with a full belly and a warm body in bed beside me. “Do you mind if I hang around here awhile?”

  Her lips pursed, and her eyes glittered with mirth. “Only if you shower first. You really do smell like you crawled out of a bottle.”

  4

  Gang’s All Here

  It wasn’t like Nash to decorate. He outfitted his bar with a steampunk mad scientist aesthetic that didn’t mesh well with balloons. But they were everywhere tonight. Streamers wound around and through the nest of copper piping in the ceiling, and a hand-painted sign the size of a bedsheet hung on one wall, proclaiming HAPPY BIRTHDAY DONOVAN in slanted script.

  Nash waved from behind the bar as I meandered in. A polka dot bowtie made a comical addition to his flannel button-down and leather apron.

  Despite his toothy grin, I approached with caution and groaned when I saw the stack of party hats on the counter beside him.

  Sliding between stools, I leaned over the bar.

  “Jesus, Nash. He’s turning twenty, not ten. Isn’t this a bit much?”

  Nash’s sister, Pippa, emerged from the back room. She held a large, round tray brimming with shot glasses ready for tasting. Setting the tray on the counter, she clambered up to sit beside it.

  A martini glass heaped with olives nestled amidst the jewel-toned shots. Pippa plucked one out and cheeked it before asking, “Weren’t you just here last night?”

  “He was,” Nash replied. “Drinking his feelings about Donnie growing up.”

  I wasted a scowl on the bartender’s back as he turned toward the bottles lining the wall shelves. With no labels or discernible method of organization, it was a miracle he hadn’t poisoned us all over the years.

  “Pregaming twenty-four hours in advance?” Pippa mused. “Very on-brand, Fitch. Very you.”

  She’d been in attendance most of the previous evening, bearing witness while casting judgment—the trait that made her most unlike her brother. While Nash often dabbled in muddy waters, Pippa kept her hands clean of we criminals and our dealings. She and I were friends, but friends in the sense that I’d known her since I was fourteen but didn’t know her at all. She had a hell of a bead on me, though.

  “That reminds me.” Nash turned, tapping a finger to his temple. “The girl from last night left her number.” He dipped into his jeans pocket.

  “Who?” I frowned.

  Pippa leaned in and propped her chin on her hands, visibly amused.

  “The woman you insisted on taking to bed,” Nash continued, still searching his pocket. “Leggy brunette? Drank mimosas after dark like some kind of animal?”

  The recollection was vague, but there. “Ah. Yeah.”

  “She left her number,” Nash repeated. “Wants you to call her.” He pulled out a folded scrap of notebook paper and slid it across the bar.

  I eyed it, unmoving. “Why me?”

  “Something about oral Olympics,” he replied. “You made an impression.”

  That was enough to put a smile on my face. “Don’t I always?”

  The paper remained while Nash looked from me to it and back again. Finally, I picked it up and wadded it, then flicked it into the nest of shot glasses on Pippa’s countertop tray.

  “Thanks, jackass,” she muttered.

  Nash rolled his eyes. “Such a gentleman.”

  I sighed and straddled the barstool, changing the subject with my drink order. “I’ll take a Boulevardier. Neat.”

  Pippa snorted, having already turned and started looking through the drinks for the one with the paper floating in it. “Pretentious,” she muttered.

  “I’m expanding my horizons. Branching out.” I extended one hand in a mockingly grand gesture.

  She found the contaminated glass and plucked it from amidst the others, setting it off to the side. “Why, though, when you’re practically synonymous with well whiskey sours? They’re cheap, bitter, and effective for a man looking to bonfire his entire career over a bad hangover.”

  I froze. Pippa’s comments were often scathing, but not always so specific.

  “My career is safe and sound,” I replied. “I got the job done, and what do you know about it, anyway?”

  Pippa gripped the edge of the counter, then leaned back on braced arms. “I watch the news.”

  “I’m on the news?”

  “You are the news.”

  An old-fashioned glass hit the countertop with a thud, sloshing red liquid around an orange zest garnish.

  I looked past it at Nash, whose knowing expression implied he, too, had tuned into the six o’clock nightly broadcast.

  “How bad was it?” I asked him.

  He raised one shoulder then the other in a crooked shrug. “I believe the word ‘brazen’ was thrown around. Cocky…”

  “Careless.” Pippa grabbed my drink before I could and tipped it to her lips for a taste. “Hmm. You might like this too much.” She reached into her apron pocket, producing the straw her brother had failed to provide.

  “No straw, no napkin?” she teased him. “I thought this was a classy establishment, Nick.”

  Nash shrugged again and gestured to me, implying that such niceties were reserved for more discerning clientele.

  Meanwhile, my thoughts teemed with worst-case scenarios. I’d been caught on camera before. My wanted ads were crowded with stills from real life. Most were tabloid cover shots, catching me with a gas station burrito stuffed in my mouth, or later puking up that same burrito after learning it didn’t mix well with the bottle of vodka I’d found in the backseat of my car.

  “Do you think Grimm saw?” I wondered aloud. The thought sunk in my stomach like a fishing weight.

  Rather than answer my question, Nash dipped a hand below the counter. “I made you something,” he said, pulling out what looked to be a corked marble and tossed it to me.

  I caught it, spurred by the self-preservation instinct that informed me Nash made as many consumable liquids as he did combustible ones. It wasn’t unlikely he would throw a potion grenade my way, trusting I wouldn’t fumble it and blow this place sky-high.

  With the tiny orb safely in hand, I lifted it for inspection. Blue-green liquid swirled, mercurial, inside the glass. It was prettier than many of the alchemist’s concoctions, which often came out looking like thin mud or swamp water.