Page 65 of Heart Over Heels
The caller rattled on, his amplified voice bouncing off the ceiling as the crowd hunched over their cards. Darby hunkered down, poised for the kill.
“B nineteen.”
Darby shot up, and his chair legs screeched across the floor. “Bingo!” he shouted, waving his card overhead.
In the same motion, his tail slipped loose from where it had been hidden beneath his skirt. It unfurled, dark and sleek, and danced like a charmed boa in the air behind him.
Laughter burst out of me. He looked adorably triumphant, tail and all.
But the happy moment shattered almost instantly. The caller drew a sharp intake of breath and the microphone drooped in his hand as his bespectacled eyes fixed on the slithery black thing cresting Darby’s shoulder.
Darby noticed the other man’s gaze, and the joy drained from his face in a single, awful heartbeat. His winning card fluttered to the floor as he reached instead for his tail, hauling it in and hugging it to his chest.
I sprang to my feet and turned toward him with my hands half raised.
It’s okay. You’re safe. You don’t need to hide from me.
I thought those things—meant to say them—but I wasn’t sure if anything came out because Darby was already dashing for the exit. He bolted into the night, and the door slammed shut in his wake.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Darby
Mama raised me better than this.
She told me ladies didn’t hide their faces or wear their shame. They shrugged it off like an old coat or shed it like a skin they’d outgrown. Most of the time, I was a lady. Or at least Luxe was. But this time, I was just tired and sad.
I could have called an Uber, but as much as I wanted to get away, I didn’t want to abandon Mercer. So I yanked off the wig that was making my scalp sweat, shucked my heels, and parked my ass in the gravel bed around the corner of the VFW Post building.
I didn’t want to consider what was going on inside, didn’t want to hear the uproar. Poor Mercer had likely found himself at the end of a firing line of questions, taking the bullets I’d sought to dodge for just one night.
Was it too much to ask?
There wasn’t much good press about demons. People assumed we must have been despicable in life to become damned, and maybe I had been. Unplanned pregnancy. Unwanted child. The son of a whore with a body for hire.
I was born other, lived other, and died other—only to become other all over again.
In the distance, cars trawled the highway with their headlights slicing through the night. It was so much darker here than on the Strip. Back there, LED signs and casino buildings blocked the sky and blotted out the stars until you almost forgot they existed. But in the desert, constellations burned bright, crowding a horizon painted in the colors of dusk. Purple gave way to blue gave way to black that climbed until it framed the pale face of a half-moon.
It was quiet too. Quiet enough I could hear the crunch of boots on the gravel as someone approached. Mercer’s stride was unmistakable, the faint hitch in his gait betraying the hours he spent on his feet, circling the Dollhouse like a watchdog. By the end of a night, he always seemed to favor his right side.
He hadn’t been gone long. Maybe the fallout from showing up to Bingo night with a demon hadn’t been as bad as I feared. Or maybe he was running, same as me. I wouldn’t blame him.
When he rounded the corner, I raised my head. I must’ve looked pitiful, tucked against the wall with my tail draped across my thighs and the wig heaped on top of it like a mangy carcass. Or a dead poodle. Fucking Colt.
Mercer stopped short, and my gaze lifted to the box in his arms. The nearest lot light illuminated the text and photo printed on the outside.
He’d brought the toaster oven.
Traitorous heat pricked my eyes. I hadn’t invited any tears to this pity party. Mama insisted ladies shouldn’t cry either, though some nights I’d heard her sobbing behind closed doors when she thought no one heard.
I tightened my jaw and pasted on a weary smile.
“Is that for me, Mercy?”
His mouth curved as he held the box out. “Only if Oz is willing to share.”
