Page 102 of The Deer and the Dragon
I sneered as if her question offended me.
“Right away, ma’am.”
“And your perfume?”
She gave me a worried look.
“Do you have anything that smells less…cheap?”
I’d appraised the town well. The picturesque qualities reminded me of my findom days in the upper-class resort town of Vail—of meeting wealthy clients on their wealthy ski chalets while their wives and children waited at home. They’d buy me cashmere and order the nicest vintage and I’d play the role required, holding their elbows as we walked from shop to shop, each more exorbitantly priced than the last. The more money I spent, the more important they felt.
This town may not have been surrounded by mountains, but I understood its bones. It was built on prosperity; whether through the blessing of an ancient god or the exclusivity of a wealthy clinic, money flowed through the city. Perhaps Azrames and I had found the only shitty motel in the entire vicinity simply for the long-term rentals of the staff employed by the elite. The Bellfield Inn reminded me more of my childhood than any kid wanted to admit. But even the poor needed a hovel to be shoved into so that the affluent could wander about prosperously.
The jewelry shop gave me the same disgusted look when I entered, which changed to profuse apology when I picked out the first pair of diamond-encrusted pearl of earrings and handed them my black, metal card with no expense limit. Maribelle’s expression remained on the razor’s edge of dark and bored.
“Shall I wrap them up?”
“I’ll wear them out,” I said coldly.
The ATM around the corner sucked up my card and spat out my cash advance before returning my precious piece of metal. Fortunately, the blowout bar and makeup artist down the street required neither appointment, nor attitude adjustments. It was the sort of place that played pop music, painted yellow geometric shapes on the wall, and hadBlow Mein neon pink scrawled across the far wall. They pushed a mimosa into my hand as I took a seat. I assumed the ambience was a pandering way for the well-to-do women of Bellfield to recapture their vitality.
My need to talk down to snobs would never extend to those in the service industry. That’s what sex work was, after all, and we had to stick together. I dropped the act while my hair was shampooed, blown out, and curled, chatting away while my face was painted. While I didn’t regret buying the overpriced perfume from the saleswoman, the gentle scents of cucumber that had gone into my scalp massage were more my preference. We kept it light, funny, and open as we gabbed about the world. Everything was honest, save for my name and the date of the information. I had them call me Maribelle, and we discussed my life and theirs right up until I left the country for South America. Before that, I was just one of them.
While my stylist gave me the spiel about how long she’d been pressuring her boyfriend for a ring, it made me examine my own nails. I wished I had time for a fresh manicure, but time was of the essence. Fortunately, my existing gel manicure, though a bit grown out, was unchipped and clean.
I caught Caliban’s eyes any time I wasn’t looking at my stylist. I ate up his look of approval like it was oysters and fois gras and caviar.
He loved every second of it. He leaned against the polished shampooing sink in his short-sleeved shirt of darkest black, crossing his arms and eyeing me with predatory evaluation.He winked at me from where he watched me, devouring me with his gaze from directly across the stylist’s chair. If she noticed my prolonged stares into open air, she said nothing. I nearly went into cardiac arrest when he casually approached to run a finger along my forearm, up my bicep, onto my neck. Chills covered my body.
The stylist stopped at my sharp intake of air. “Is everything all right, hun? Are you cold?”
He shot me a wink and returned to lean against the sink as I choked through an incoherent response.
I made a mental note to ask him to tell me about our interactions among humans in other lives, but whether we’d done it in the previous life or never before, the thrill on his face at watching me switch between skins was invigorating. Azrames was equally impressed, though I’d assumed he would have been desensitized to watching women jump through hoops to have their humanity acknowledged.
From the chair in the salon, I held Caliban’s gaze, loving that no one else could see the silver twinkle in those diamonds. I extended my hand and did my best to imitate Fauna’s doe eyes as I asked to borrow the stylist’s phone. She didn’t fight me on it, remarking on how often she shattered hers or dropped it in the toilet. I searched the only car rental in town and made a call. The man on the other end went from sounding bored to surprised to speaking with me as if I were the president himself.
“Steven, is it? Yes, that’s fine,” I said smoothly. “No, I want the upgrade. Is that the best you can do? No, upgrade. And how soon can you get it here? And tell me, Steven, how much does that number change if I tell you I’ll give you two hundred in cash to be here in the next fifteen minutes? Excellent, you’re a doll. See you soon.”
I tipped my stylist and artist three times their rates, offering parting hugs as if we were old friends. I used to say there was a special place in Hell for those who mistreated those who worked in service but was once again confronted withthe turn of phrase. Perhaps I should start saying there was a special place on the bottom of the ocean, or in the Antarctic, or perhaps Ohio.
I stepped from the salon as a nervous-looking attendant in a polo handed me the keys to a champagne-colored BMW. I flashed him my most radiant smile and touched his arm, just for the joy of confusion, while I slipped him his promised tip.
“Now,” I said to my companions, “I have a fertility goddess to see. Time to get me pregnant.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“We can’t go in there with you,” Az said, voice low. “The moment Astarte sees us—sorry,Doctor Ayona.” Then to himself, he muttered, “Little on the nose with that one—our cover will be blown.”
“I propose we set the building on fire,” Caliban said.
I wasn’t sure if he was kidding.
Once again, I’d parked facing the entrance so that we could watch people come and go. The BMW’s display screen told me I had roughly ten minutes to pull myself together and walk into the clinic. I now looked the part, and with my name firmly at the number one spot on theNew York Timesbestseller list and after having made the Thirty Under Thirty list of self-made women, I knew that, not I but Merit Finnegan could do this.
When no one took him up on his proposal for arson, Caliban explained Astarte’s chosen moniker. “The name has a few meanings, and all of them are egotistical. ‘Eternity,’ ‘princess,’ ‘fertility’…she’s really challenging anyone to come find her. But the cage works both ways. It keeps her in, yes, but no one who knows this is a terraformed seal would ever enter.”
My heart felt heavy as I asked, “Then why did you come?”
