Page 17 of Glitz & Goals

“You’ve been in Vegas for about two minutes, and you’ve already fallen for a magical girl,” Erin muses. “Impressive.”

“Are you going to help me or just make fun of me?” I demand.

Laura tips her head from one side to the other. “Why pick one? I’m more than a label. Besides, this is prime teasingcontent. Even better than when we used to paint your toenails pink back in grade school.”

“Maybe you should do a catch and release,” Erin suggests. “There are plenty of fish in the sea.”

Laura snickers. “I never took baby Grady for being the kind of guy who’d be obsessed with chasing tail.”

“She sounds like a cold fish if she didn’t even give you her name,” Erin adds.

“Did you get on Dante Giovanetti’s bad side, Grady? Because this is the first time you’ve mentioned wanting to sleep with the fishes…”

My sisters are in hysterics. I try to keep a straight face, which of course only makes them laugh harder. There are actual tears in Laura’s eyes by the time she tries to get herself back under control.

“Sorry, sorry,” she pants, still fighting down giggles. “Okay, so you lost your mermaid. The next question is, where do mermaids go when they’re not at home?”

I wait for her to make another joke, but apparently, this is a serious question. And it’s a good one, now that I think about it. She might have been a… ugh, afish out of waterat the arena, but it’s not like she tripped and fell into a high-quality mermaid tail. The costume must have been part of something. Like a show. There are a lot of shows in Vegas, but surely it should be possible to narrow down the number of performances that include blue-haired mermaids.

“I don’t know.” I sit up straighter. “But I bet I can find out.”

“Good luck, kid!” Erin pumps her free arm, the one not controlling her camera, like a cheerleader. “We believe in you!”

“Tell us how it goes!” Laura adds.

We say our goodbyes and hang up. On my way out of the office, I stop just long enough to drop off the papers with Renee, then take the elevator to the ground floor. Tonight, I’ll try tofigure out where mermaids congregate. Which shouldn’t be too hard…

Except that I don’t even make it to my car before I’m stopped in my tracks. The marquee beside the stadium switches from an advertisement for the game, to an ad for a new show at the Mona Lisa hotel. Among the performers is an image of a woman in a familiar costume.

Right tail. Wrong girl. But at least I know where I’m going next.

Chapter Six

Vivian

I’m backstage making some minor adjustments to the massive mantis shrimp puppet when Viktor pokes his head in.

“Hey, Viv!” he calls. “How’s it going?”

I roll my eyes at him. “What brings you here, darling brother?”

“I wanted to see if you were still stuck in the mermaid costume,” he teases.

“You thought I spent the last, what, thirty hours stuck in a tail?” I scoff.

“Hey, you never know.” Viktor crosses his arms and squints up at the mantis shrimp. “I gotta say, Viv, your designs have only gotten weirder over the years. Does that thing glow in the dark?”

“If you want to know, you’ll have to come to the performance.” I step back to admire my work. Sure, it looks strangenow, but it looks almost alien in the right lighting. I’m especially pleased with how the rotating eye stalks turned out. All of this is beside the point, however.

Viktor sighs. “You know Mom’s gonna drag me.”

“So, what brings you by?” I hold up a warning hand. “If this is about the new mascot costume, Reneejusthired me. I’ve had like twenty minutes to think about it. Gimme a break already.”

“I’m just here to see my sister.” Viktor gives me his most innocent smile, which might be convincing if I hadn’t known him for his entire evil life. “I thought I’d take you to lunch. We don’t spend enough time together.”

I check my watch. Sure enough, I’ve missed today’s lunch spread by at least two hours. “You’re in luck. I’m too hungry to question your motives.”

We head out to the main floor, passing a cluster of aerial acrobats dressed in the red-and-white costumes of peppermint cleaner shrimp, and make our way to Sakana. I could have eaten from the buffet for free… then again, Viktor’s paying, so I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s not like he can’t afford it. Dante pays him a stupid amount of money to play for the Venom so he can foot the bill without batting an eye.

---