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Crowds and chaos were the whole of this place.

One down, one more to go.

I leaned over the counter, inspecting my thick eyeliner. The lavender eyeshadow made my golden green eyes practically glow.

When you look at me, it is like an endless meadow.

I scoffed at the thought I’d always carried with me. My first foster dad thought it was a silly description for hazel eyes.

“Hazel, kid. No need for all the flowery talk.”

I didn’t truly knowwho’ddubbed the colormeadow eyes; I didn’t have parents or family. They left me at a hospital before I was forty-eight hours old, and I’d never been claimed. But the term was a gentle memory, and I kept it close.

With a heavy sigh, I slung the strap of my bag over one shoulder and adjusted a cat-ear headband into my deep strawberry blonde waves. In this light, it looked like bits of rose-tinted gold were woven through the roots.

Halloween in Las Vegas called for a lot of sequins, feathers, and glitter. Like it was a plague, gold, silver, and red shimmer coated nearly every surface of the casino game floor.

Hell, I hated all the people, the touching,the jobsfor which I was here.

When I was growing up, threatening scumbags for other scumbags was not on the dream board. In truth, I was born in the wrong century. The only true joy I found was sneaking out of the group home whenever Renaissance fairs came to The Strip.

Dress me in a gown, add a sheath for a blade, show me to a mock tavern, and I found my bliss. In grade school, I’d been dubbed the freak or theater-kid-wannabe because I couldn’t master modern terms and language.Too formal,outdated,granny words, I’d heard it all. Soon enough, I’d embraced it and descended into daydreams ofanother time, another life in a gentle village near a sea or palace somewhere in a misty forest.

Alas, reality was less chivalrous, and I had to make do working for the crooks of Sin City with my sly fingers, skill with a knife, and unassuming looks. There were bills to pay and no valiant knight coming for me.

Big Lloyd, my current employer, knew how to make true victims out of those who owed him debts.

A fingertip was taken as the first warning.

Next, the shell of an ear would be removed and mailed to their wife, husband, or mother.

Third strike? Well, the rest of you would be shipped via priority mail to the rest of your relatives.

My insides coiled, hard and angry, simply rehashing the last year of my life. Why did I even allow it to bother me? I’d accepted long ago that people were inherently selfish, that I wasn’t particularly wanted, and I didn’t really belong . . . anywhere.

Someone slammed into my shoulder, knocking me free of my melancholy and self-pity.

“Shit, sorry.” A heavily tattooed Care Bear kept her hand on my shoulder. Her pink frilly skirt and padded rainbow over her exposed midriff matched the pastel cocktail in her hand, complete with cotton candy on the rim of the glass.

“All good,” I murmured, holding up one hand.

“Hey, love the finger tats. Pure red ink? Bold.”

My gaze kicked to my bare fingers and the flecks of red coils around my knuckles and tops of my hands.

“Birthmark,” I said, no time for small talk.

“Oh, wow. I’m a tattoo artist and from far away . . . you know what, never mind.” She started rifling through a pale blue clutch she kept tucked under one arm. “Listen, my apprentice is looking for someone to use for some hours. Do you like tattoos?”

On instinct, a hand shot up and rubbed the back of my neck. “I have one.”

But how did one admit there was an intricate tattoo trailing thelength of one’s spine that wasn’t there one day, then the next . . . a damn work of art was splayed out?

Like my fingers, red lines of a scattered design had littered my back. The troubling part about my spine was how, within the last year, the red marks shifted and faded. Left behind was a clear, black ink design of a snake and blossoms.

The body of the serpent wove around my spine, as though it physically threaded in and out of my skin, coiling around the column. Around the bulges of the body were thorny vines and blooms of fantastical flowers I’d never seen in Vegas.

“Well, if you’re interested, I think some highlights on your birthmark would be stunning,” The Care Bear said. “No pressure, just me imagining new designs. I can’t help myself when something catches my eye.”