Chapter 14

“My nose itches, so someone must be talking about me.”

Photo by Old Youth on Unsplash

Heath led the way out of the diner, turning up the collar of his jacket against the wind. Colin followed. He lit a cigarette with a disposable lighter as soon as he was outside, dragged on it, then turned and held the door for Clorox. “Keep up, mate,” he said to the dwarf.

Clorox glared at him. “How long do my legs look, ‘mate?’” he said sourly. “Let me in your truck. I don't like leaving my equipment unattended.”

Colin dug his key fob out of his pocket and clicked a button. The lights of the big black pickup truck flashed twice. He opened the passenger door for Clorox and walked over to confer with Heath. “Where are we meeting Puddles?” he asked.

Heath jabbed his thumb in the direction of the darkened neon sign on the strip club next door. “Where else?”

Colin laughed. “Did you pick the spot or did she?”

Heath walked up to the club and tried the door. It was open. He held it for the others. “She said it was a good place to gate in. No one would notice.”

Colin snorted loudly and walked into the club. Clorox slammed the door of the rented pickup, hefted his suitcases and followed. Heath pulled the door closed behind them, twisted the deadbolt to lock it, and turned on the lights.

There were three small stages against one dingy yellow-painted wall, each with a brass pole in the center, and a bar opposite. A door to one side had a sign on it that read “PRIVATE DANCES.” There was a stairway beside the bar with a sign that said “DO NOT ENTER” hanging from the wall to one side. A velvet rope with a clip on each end dangled from one of the eye screws drilled into the door-frame. There were three long tables pushed back against the wall with chairs stacked on top of them.

Clorox set his suitcases down. “So who is this Puddles?” he asked.

Colin leaned back against the bar. “She’s a Dancer,” he said with a smirk.

Clorox frowned. “A stripper moonlights as a cat burglar?” he asked skeptically. “Which Batman movie are we in right now?”

“She isn’t a stripper,” Heath said, looking at his watch. “Not exactly. Her powers work differently than ours. Colin and I are self-propelled, as it were. Hers don’t work without fuel.”

Colin dragged on his cigarette. “Dancers are a bit like ‘ounds,” he explained. “Human, but with a bit extra, like. Only we get proper training in ‘ow to use the extra.”

Heath opened the door with “PRIVATE DANCES” on it and peered inside, then closed it again. “Puddles gets energy from degradation and humiliation; her own or that of others,” he said. “She feeds on it. So she strips or does cam shows, that kind of thing, to fuel her gifts. She used to turn tricks, too, but we put a stop to that.”

“Why?” Clorox demanded.

“Kept eating the Johns.” Colin said. He reached behind the bar and found a glass, which he filled with club soda from the soda gun. “Dancers are fucking idiots, really,” he said, not unsympathetically. “They figure out how to do magic, right? That gets you involved in the Game whether or not you want to be involved. Since they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t learn ‘ow to make their own energy, and they end up as psychic vampires. Eventually someone ‘as to give ‘em a spanking and put ‘em to work. In the case of young Puddles, ‘Eath was the one who ‘ad to deliver the spanking.”

Heath sniffed the air and made a face. “Ozone. She’s here,” he said. He turned to Clorox. “The rules for dealing with her, real quick: Treat her like her body is a poison factory, because it is. Nothing about her is safe, ever. Don’t even make skin-to-skin contact with her; her sweat's hallucinogenic, like LSD.”

“Whatever you do, don’t kiss her,” Colin added. “Her saliva’s addictive and mildly neurotoxic. Turns you into a psychic thrall.” He scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. “As ‘Eath will tell you,” he added under his breath.

“My nose itches, so someone must be talking about me,” a voice said cheerfully from just outside the room. It was feminine, with a subcontinental lilt.

“Nah, more likely the chlamidya just spread to your face,” said Colin, leering at the young woman strolling down the stairs next to the bar. She wore a black deerskin motorcycle jacket over a cropped black suede bustier that showed off her toned stomach and black deerskin pants. Her feet were bare; her toenails were painted black with Sanskrit letters overlaid in white enamel.

“It could be worse, Colin,” the girl said calmly. She was small and slender and very beautiful, with shiny black hair in a long braid that reached the middle of her back. Her movements were unusually controlled, and that control was disconcerting; she appeared to be overruling a state of constant, frantic animation by willpower alone. All of a sudden, she smiled happily, displaying white, even teeth and the bright eyes of a madwoman, which were made brighter by the contrast with her smooth brown skin. “I could be unable to catch social diseases in the first place owing to the total unfuckability that comes from not only looking like a serial killer, but dressing like one as well.”

Colin hunched his shoulders and looked sullenly into his glass of fizzy water. “If the shoe fits,” he muttered. “I mean, depending on ‘ow you define the term, I am a serial killer.”

“Where do you get the name ‘Puddles?’” Clorox said warily. His hand came up to pat the front of his car coat as if to make sure his pistol was still where it belonged without ever taking his eyes from the girl.

Colin's head snapped up at that. He grinned nastily. “Oh, can I tell ‘im?” he asked the room at large. He took a gulp of his seltzer. “Why, yes I can,” he said, putting the glass on the bar and turning to the dwarf. “She’s under a magical compulsion to do as she’s told by Daryl's people. In addition, if she tries to fiddle with our brains, as is ‘er natural inclination, she gets a tiny ‘eadache. What ‘appens as a result of that, you may ask?”

Puddles shot a murderous glare at Colin. The Englishman’s blue eyes twinkled. He waggled his eyebrows at her and sipped his seltzer.

“What…what happens?” Clorox said, glancing back and forth from Colin to Heath.

“We don’t let her use all her gifts,” Heath explained to the cleaner. He gave the girl a friendly smile. “The cluster headaches the geas gives her if she tries to heat up her ESP and give one of us an aneurysm, in particular, are so bad she always loses control of her bladder just before she blacks out from the pain. She’s wet her pants trying to kill us so many times we stopped calling her by her first name. Isn’t that right, Deena?”

“Adeena, Heath,” the Dancer said seriously. “And I will ultimately succeed in breaking every blood vessel in your brain simultaneously and exsanguinating you completely via your nostrils.”

She turned and smiled brilliantly at the Greyhound. “I have considered all of the ways I will most enjoy killing you as well, Colin,” she said cheerfully. “Would you like me to detail them?”

“It’s only foreplay if I want to fuck you, Puddles,” Colin retorted, returning a ghoulishly exaggerated version of the Dancer's wide-eyed smile. “Since I don't, this is workplace sexual harassment.”

Puddles blew him a kiss. “Sue me, faggot,” she said gently.

She turned to Heath. “Where must I take you, maithili dog-heart?” she asked, tipping her head to one side. “I hope wherever we are going will not be immediately fatal to you and your scumbag friends.” She sighed wistfully. “It wouldn't be nearly as satisfying if you didn't suffer first.”

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