Page 55 of Never Never

Pan just blinks. “Oh really?” he says, utterly flat.

“Really.” I reach forward, swat his Pancake Hut bag out of the way, and grab my cup for a long, pointed sip of my now perfect-temperature coffee. “Me and Fox are going to scope the place out and find this guy. Tonight,” I add, for emphasis. “No point in waiting.”

Pan studies me. Then Fox.

“Well, I sure hope you weren’t counting on my help,” he says at last. “I’m banned from those premises for life. So’s Blue here, I’m pretty sure.” He jabs a thumb at Blue, who gives a small nod. “So I’m sorry to say that if your little plan was relying on heavy backup from us, then⁠—”

“What plan?” Wendy interjects. “What’s going on? What are you talking about?”

There’s just the tiniest bit of panic in her voice.

“No, no, Wendy, it’s a good thing.” I set down my coffee. “I was talking with Zuzu yesterday and we…” I quickly spin through the details in my head, trying to figure out what to share and what to hold back. “We think we have a lead on figuring out who…who hurt your brothers.” It’s a lame ending to the sentence, but the best I can come up with. “We think they might hang out at the casino a lot—you know, by the dog track? So I came up with a plan to go there and…spy on them, basically.”

I expect some kind of reaction from Wendy. A smile, a look of relief, maybe even some excited little claps of enthusiasm.

But what I get is…nothing. No, worse. A hard line between her eyebrows. A scowl.

“Wendy?” Fox speaks up first, which is good, because I’m too stunned to say anything at first. “What’s wrong?”

For a moment, all five of us stare at her.

“That’s dumb,” Wendy says at last, her voice quiet but firm. “That’s a dumb plan.”

“What?” I’m more confused than anything. “Wendy, how is it⁠—”

“Just, like…” Wendy looks around at all of us, lingering on Pan, as if she knows he’s already on her side and wants backup. But he seems mystified about where she’s going with this, too. “You can’t just…just go there, can you?” She gives a scoffing little laugh.

“She did it before.” Blue. God, I’d almost forgotten he was there. “She found you there.”

Wendy sags a little. Something glimmers in her eyes—not tears, but close to. Like visible frustration. “No. I just mean it won’t work,” she says, her words picking up volume and a touch of preteen venom. “You…you…” She clenches a fist. “You can’t go like that.”

She looks at me with hard eyes, arms folded, clutching her milkshake in one hand, and suddenly…

I glance right, to the ornate mirror hanging on the bricks above the lounge.

…suddenly I understand.

Because yeah, bedhead and smeared mascara and day-old guys’ clothes are not going to get me into a high-roller floor at a casino. Doesn’t matter how much cash we drop or whose name I know. Even if I were in my best Tink drag, swagger, low voice, and everything, it’d be high-risk. Suspicious.

I swallow.

“No, you’re right,” I agree. “I can’t go looking like this.”

But I think I know someone who can help me with that.

Several someones.

Barely forty-five minutes later, I find myself a few blocks away in front of one of the few businesses in the Strip I’d never even thought about entering.

“Tink!” Something small and blonde rockets its way to my side, waving frantically. Emerald, I realize, after a moment. In jeans and a blouse, and without the candy-colored lighting of the Lagoon, I almost didn’t recognize her. “There she is!”

“You found it.” A few paces away, in one of the angled parking spaces, Treasure swings out of the driver’s side of a sleek black Mercedes. “Excellent.”

I look up at the sign that reads CLOUD NINE: A FASHION BOUTIQUE in shimmering sky-blue script and stuff my hands in my pockets. “Google Maps,” I explain. “Plus, it’s like, a mile away from home.”

The shopping center is small, one of the ones that takes up the last stretch of the Strip district before the cloverleaf onto the 303. Pretty unremarkable, the kind of blocky strip-mall storefronts that whip past if you’re riding fast enough. Cloud Nine sits between a Zest Pay-As-U-Go Wireless and a Korean BBQ place. And I can’t tell if it’s just the sudden stress of the moment or the blazing sun pouring down on the asphalt, but I feel a distinct line of sweat trickling down between my shoulder blades.

The fact that I’m still wearing a guy’s black T-shirt that hangs down to my elbows probably doesn’t help, either. But I guess that’s why we’re here.