“Someone who deserves it.”
My heart kicked into high gear. There was one person who deserved the full bore of my wrath, and Laney knew how badly I wanted to deliver it. “Who?”
“Not him. But he’s bad enough.”
It was a he, always. Like Blythe said, our targets tended to have certain things in common. Social isolation. Anger issues. Misogyny.
Dicks.
“I’ll brief you at the meeting,” Laney said, staring off at a blur of blond and ginger. “Midnight. Be there.”
“Actually, I can’t. I haven’t vlogged in ages. I really have to put something up tonight.”
“Can it wait?”
“Time goes faster on the Internet. If I disappear for a day everyone thinks I’m dead.” I shrugged. “Besides, I need the money. If I’m late on rent, Ingrid’ll toss my shit on the street.”
She wouldn’t. But things were fragile between me and my ex-BFF, and I intended to keep them from outright shattering.
“This job pays,” Laney said.
I frowned.
“It pays well. In cash, and in satisfaction.”
“Lane, I can’t—”
She leaned closer, her voice dry ice. “I know how the work makes you feel. It’s the same for me. Catharsis. It’s something physical, animal. You need this. We both do. And we need each other to make it happen.”
Despite the humid air, I shivered.
She was right.
“Midnight,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Tell the others. And stay sharp. I need everyone on their A game.” The blue of her eyes flared like a gas flame. “This is going to be big.”
When she was gone I slipped into the crowd, into the glove of shared body heat, brushing up against pretty boys with coquettish eyelashes and dashing girls with chiseled jaws. I sought that physicality Laney spoke of. Friction between skin, biochemical sparks. The thrill of touch. A guy kept bumping into me, and we danced. Still strange, the feel of my thick arms around a man more slender than me. He pressed his ass to my hips and I went hard.
I pulled away. He winked.
Once the new owner took over Umbra, everything changed. Frats and sororities phased out; Pride paraded in. Journalists came knocking. I was spokesman by default—Blythe didn’t possess a social filter, and Laney’s camera presence was like Wednesday Addams on downers—but I made a perfect poster boy for Umbra 2.0: Mr. Transgender Tipping Point himself, handsome, popular, palatable. Word got around. Umbra was now the destination for LGBT kids in the city. A safe space. A second home.
Our new owner, Armin Farhoudi, made sure of that.
I found him at the bar with Blythe. Armin looked like a model who got lost on his way to a GQ shoot: tall and lithely muscled, wearing a bespoke suit and wing tips, his brown hair streaked with tendrils of sunset red. That dusky complexion gave him natural eye shadow. I used to fantasize about his stubble while I peered into my bathroom mirror and painted fake facial hair with a mascara wand. Armin was my ideal male. He made masculinity seem effortless, graceful. Beautiful.
Until I learned what he had done. Then he was just another man, no god.
We nodded at each other.
“The Little Wolf sent me,” I said. “Meeting tonight.”
Blythe’s eyes gleamed. “Finally. I’m going stir-crazy.”
“You’re always stir-crazy.”
“I’m just plain crazy.”
Armin’s mouth tightened. “Don’t say that.”
“Let me own it. It doesn’t shame me.”
“Nothing shames you. That’s not the point.” Armin rotated the watch on his wrist, some sleek tungsten thing. “You romanticize mental illness, Blythe. Make it sound glamorous.”
“I romanticize everything. I’m a bloody poet.” That gleam in her eyes had become a hundred razor points. “And you medicalize everything because you’re a bloody doctor.”
“I’m not a doctor. I’m barely even a DJ anymore.”
“A better doctor than a DJ.”
“Did you just call me a bad DJ?”
“Didn’t you just tell me not to romanticize rubbish?”
They both laughed. These two made an Olympic sport of insulting each other. Like Ellis, Armin was one of Blythe’s exes. There was no one in our circle she hadn’t hooked up with. Except me.
Third base notwithstanding.
“Laney says to stay sharp,” I said. “Whatever she’s planning, it’s big.”
“?‘Though she be but little, she is fierce,’?” Blythe said.
Armin sighed. “Please do not start quoting poetry.”
“Is my pretentiousness showing?”
“At least it’s not Plath.”
“Oh, don’t you bloody start—”
“Where’s Ellis?” I interrupted.
Their good humor dropped. Blythe glanced at Armin, then said, “Fucked if I know. Try the toilet.”
“That Aussie lyricism. Swoon.”