“Joan.” I shake her awake, gently. “Joan, you fell asleep. You need to get upstairs, get some rest, all right?”
She comes to slowly, and then as soon as she sees me hovering over her, she gives a little start. “Where are we?”
“The VIP lounge, off the performance space.”
“Gunn,” she says in a panic, and then collapses back down when I say, “He’s on the road tonight, remember?”
She shakes herself awake. “Wait, but—”
“You don’t remember our little shine experiment?” I say. “Watching the ceiling break open into stars? Dancing? Passing out on the floor?” I give her my best smile. “All your idea, for the record.”
I watch realization sink into her, even as I’m trying to joke. She remembers what she told me. She remembers how she cut herself open and showed me all her darkness inside. I wonder if she regrets it. God, I hope she doesn’t.
“Alex.” She puts her hands over her face. “My Lord, I was such a mess. I can’t believe . . . those things I told you . . .”
I reach out tentatively, begin to stroke the top of her hair. “I’m glad you told me about your past. I’m glad I told you, too.” And I realize, above all else, that I am. It felt right, coming clean to her about how essential I was to my father’s crimes. Cathartic, and freeing. Like a last confession, before I can fully leave it all behind.
Joan sits up next to me, leans her head against the soft green fabric of the couch behind us. The heady dance of before, the shine stripping off our inhibitions, the -electric feeling of possibility at being alone with her: that’s all passed. It’s left us with something more honest maybe, but also more uncomfortable. I still want to kiss her, obviously, wrap her up in my arms so bad it almost hurts—
But not right now. Not like this. “You want me to help you get upstairs?”
She gives me a wan smile. “Probably a good idea.”
I help her up, take her arm around mine, and walk her across the main performance space, which is now dark and abandoned, pristine from the stagehands’ nightly cleanup. I glance at the clock hanging above the double doors: almost two a.m.
“Happy New Year,” I whisper.
She smiles up at me. “Happy New Year.”
We cross the space to the other hall, walk quietly side by side. When we pass Gunn’s office, we both notice a dim light reaching out from underneath the door, and Joan’s eyes go wide. She puts her finger to her lips.
That quick, there’s a different energy between us, as if Joan’s awareness of Gunn inside the Den has set her to a new gear. Is she just his best sorcerer? Something more? Is she really involved in the score I’m circling in on, or is there something else—-something personal—going on between them?
She pulls me past the door swiftly, to the bottom of the stairs. She mumbles a good-bye and begins to climb the steps quickly, like now she can’t get out of the hall fast enough.
Then, like a second thought, she turns around, descends just as fast. She throws her arms around me. “Thank you,” she whispers.
But before I can figure out how to answer her, she’s gone, and I’m left alone at the base of the stairs.
I wait, look back anxiously to Gunn’s door. This is a gift, a stroke of fortune finding his office closed without one of his sorcerers around to spellbind and protect it. I approach it quickly but quietly, lean in, whisper the word, “Amplify,” and the muffled voices behind the door louden into audible exchanges.
“You really think the troupe can pull off fifty gallons in a few days?” The voice is familiar, low and gravelly. Win Matthews. Win must somehow be involved in whatever’s shaking down too. And fifty gallons . . . fifty gallons of shine? That’s fifty times the amount that we brew for a show. Why?
“They’ll have to. Anything less looks like an amateur operation.” Low, flat, even tone—definitely Gunn. A pause. “Before we go any further, I need each of your words that if this goes through, I have your backing.”
Another pause, a longer one this time.
“You have it,” a third man answers slowly. How many gangsters are behind this door?
“And mine,” another voice, this one higher, tighter, chimes in. “You make this deal happen with Colletto? I can convince O’Donnell to fully step on board too.”
O’Donnell—McEvoy’s underboss who works on the loan—sharking side. Win Matthews and Gunn. My guess is, the rest of the men behind this door must be Shaw higher--ups too. And a deal with Boss Colletto? Just the man’s name sends a familiar, hungry rush of vengeance surging through me. The Shaw underbosses are breaking bread with D Street?
“You’ve got the support of the majority of the underbosses,” Win says softly. “This will happen, Gunn.”
“Hell, you ask me, this is your birthright, Harrison,” the third gangster adds.