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The petite woman shakes her head. “I’ll leave her to you.” And then she turns on her heel and strides back into the club.
The man’s eyes glide over me to Pat, stopping on their chest, their hip, their ankle. Not like he’s checking them out, but like he’s searching for the barest hint of a gun’s barrel, a knife’s hilt. He doesn’t look back to me before he turns to the bouncer, with her crossed arms and stern jaw, and gestures to me and then Pat. “She comes, she stays.”
Pat stiffens.
“Theycome with me, period,” I snap.
The man nods at the correction. “Then they come in unarmed.”
Pat stands straighter. “Deal.”
He crooks a finger. We follow. The bouncer watches, as if she could lay a hand on me before Pat broke it. We duck into an all-black hallway with purple mood lighting along the ceiling and floor, house music shudders loud and heavy through the building and up my legs. Pat shadows each step, and club-goers trickle in and out of the doors.
They brush a finger on my elbow, and I slow enough for them to lean down. “Darius Taylor. Andrea Tamayo’s second.”
I nod as Darius leads us to the coat check, bypassing the desk with the attendant and opening a side door with a keycard. It’s a bright, white room with metal shelves along the walls and baskets lining them. He pulls one out and arches a brow at Pat.
They sigh. “We invoke sacred hospitality.”
“We understand and accept.” Darius’s voice is somehow both smooth and rough at the same time.
Pat removes their weapons, shrugging out of their jacket to take off their shoulder holster and pulling the gun out of their waistband, the knife out of its sheath at their ankle. Darius watches. I tap my foot, impatient to get to my end-goal—Andrea Tamayo.
Pat holds their arms out, and Darius pats them down. And then he turns to me, expectant.
I snort. “Excuse you?”
“Your thigh,” he notes the knife strapped under my dress. “And your purse.”
I suck my teeth. Normally, Cardinal Family members aren’t subject to search, sacred hospitality demanding mutual trust between dons. But I’m not a don, and I’m not here with my father.
I’m just a worthless fucking princess.
I shove my purse at his chest, and he takes it, unzipping it as I remove the sheath on my thigh and slam it into the basket. Pat slips their jacket back on. Darius removes my pepper spray, likeI don’t deserve to protect myself from wandering hands, and leaves the too-large wad of cash and hard drive alone without even a raised brow.
I snatch my purse out of his hands as he’s zipping it closed. “Can we go?”
He places our basket of weapons back on its shelf and opens the door. “Follow me.” He leads us back through the door into the purple-lit hallway. In moments, it opens to the club proper.
Okay, so Den of Inequity isnota dump.
Black couch-like booths spread out in an arc before a lowered dance floor with bright, blacklights hanging from the high, domed ceiling. Stairs lead up to a balcony with doors like a hotel, windows looking into the rooms. Some are opaque with frost while others are clear. The DJ spins from her booth suspended from the balcony, and the bar continues the purple-lit theme with light panels lining the rail. Behind it, a mirror made into a mosaic pattern rises from the top-shelf liquor up to the ceiling and reflects the lights back onto the teeming crowd.
And the crowd isteeming.
Just like the line outside, people are dressed in jarring harmony, patterns and colors that aren’t usually paired but somehow work well. They use the lines of their body, the paint of their makeup, the texture of their clothes, to bend perception and force a double take. Someone wears a crop top and a belly chain with loose, ripped jeans, and it wouldn’t give me pause any other time, but their belly isn’t flat. Their hair isn’t long and blown out. Their thighs rub together.
And they look damn good.
They smile wide, laughing bright at whatever the tall, lanky person in combat boots and a plaid dress with hairy legs and chest said, and I am staring. Pat’s pushing me along, following Darius, but I can’t take my eyes off them. They don’t fit the mold. In fact, they blatantly ignore the mold.
And they’re happy.
I swallow hard around the tangle of feelings stuck in my throat. My parents always spoke of Den of Inequity with wrinkled noses, like it gave off a stink that washed downriver. And though they never said it, it was heavily implied that I was not allowed to come here, to fraternize withthese kinds of people. But being here now, seeing queer people in a place where they are simply people… I think it was a lot more than who owned the club that my parents disapproved of.
It’s the complete lack of othering.
I want to live in it. I want to run to the dance floor and revel in it. Darius corrected himself the first time I snapped Pat’s pronouns. Not a single person has attempted to run a hand over my ass only to have Pat grab their wrist and threaten to snap it in half. For once,womenare aiming heated gazes at me.