Alex shrugs a bit. “I’ve survived worse. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?” Then he leans in. “Hate to tell you this, but Gunn doesn’t strike me as being a softie either.”
I swallow, Gunn’s name piercing our little cocoon in the hallway. “I’m aware.”
Something Alex must see in my face changes his, because all his pretense of humor drains, and then he’s looking at me like he’s trying to see through me, to figure me out like I’m trying to figure him. “Seriously, what’s a girl like you doing in this place?”
I think about whether I should lie, keep everything as close to my chest as possible, but I find myself wanting to share the truth. “My family,” I say quietly. “My sister, and my cousin. I want to do right by them, so I’m up here trying to make a living.” I dare myself to take another step toward him, and now we’re close enough to whisper. “What’s a guy like you really doing mixed up with the Shaws?”
Alex gives a half laugh and looks at his feet. “I’ve been asking myself that same question. It started out about my family too, as some vague form of revenge. . . .” He looks at me. “You ever set out to do something for one reason, and that reason’s like a firm, set compass in your hand”—he holds his hand out as evidence, and a little brass compass appears, floating above his palm—“but then the further in you get, the farther you go, the more turned upside down everything starts to seem?” He looks back to the door to Gunn’s office, then at the brass compass floating in his palm. The little hand inside it starts spinning slowly, then faster, round and round, bypassing North, then West, South, East. . . . “Soon you start thinking that maybe your compass is broken, or wrong.” He looks back to me as the compass disappears. “But without that damn compass, you’re lost, plain and simple.”
His words hit home, burrow right under my skin. Ruby and Ben are my compasses—the reasons I get up in the morning, the reasons I perform illegal magic in an illegal club for Gunn, the reasons I’m using to justify helping this volatile gangster try to change the face of the underworld with a dark, dangerous spell. Those compasses make me who I am: a devoted sister, a daughter trying to right the past, an honorable woman. But without them, Alex is right. I’m lost, plain and simple. I’ve been trying to hold on to them even tighter these days, as I barely get a moment to myself away from the Den. From the blood-magic I’ve been obsessing over with Gunn, to the performances I’m practicing, perfecting, day and night. I swear, magic’s started seeping into my dreams. Even when I’m awake, sometimes it feels realer, stronger, than anything else.
“We’re not so different, you and me.” I look back to Gunn’s office. “Some days, it’s just easier to focus on what’s right in front of me, on just putting one foot in front of the other. On throwing myself into my performance, the magic—on what I was made to do. And I think I might actually be good at it.”
“You know you’re good at it.” Alex smiles.
“I suppose.” I drop my gaze, deflecting his compliment. “But . . . other days, when I look at how far I’ve come, when I think about what I’m helping to build—about what this place is . . . I mean, there are reasons that magic’s criminal, right? This haven, it’s a place where we trick people, drug people, help them get so high that they want to keep living in a lie.” I shake my head. “Sometimes I forget that, I’m so far in.” I run my fingers around my temples in little circles. “God, I don’t even think I’ve stepped foot outside this place for days.”
“You serious?” Alex asks.
“It’s pathetic, isn’t it? But yeah.” I raise my arms to signal the Red Den. “This is pretty much what I live and breathe, day in, day out.”
Alex’s little smirk is back. “Can you pull that trick you did a while ago?” He points to where the hallway meets the show space. “Where you protect the hallway?”
I look at him curiously. “Why? I don’t think anyone’s out there.”
He takes another step toward me. “Just in case. It’s a surprise. Come on, I promise, it’s worth it.”
I look at him curiously, then turn back toward the mouth of the hall. I whisper my words of power, wave my hand in front of me, and then a double-sided protection wall materializes at the entrance to the corridor.
“Come closer,” Alex whispers, waving me forward. Then he closes his eyes.
“What are you doing?”
He opens one eye to spy on me, and arches his eyebrow above it almost too perfectly, like some villain in a motion picture. “Do you not like surprises?”
I roll my eyes. “Fine.” I take a tentative step forward. Alex is so close, I can smell him now, a soft, textured scent of soap and cologne. If I leaned in, I could rest my head on the tweed vest that spans his chest.
Stop. Don’t think about his chest.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
I settle into my spot, and then I close my eyes, listen to his faint whispers.