I always thought of The Seven Deadlies as a sex club, and it is, in part. But when you first go in, it looks and sounds just like any other nightclub, complete with ear-splitting music, dim lighting, and a floor that vibrates with every bass note. There’s also the standard bar and dance floor.
But once your eyes adjust to the light, you start to notice the differences. The first thing you notice is that bunches of people in the crowd are wearing cheesy halos or cheesy devil horns, which they picked up from a table near the entrance. Adam had explained to me that one wore a halo if one was shopping for a partner for some vanilla sex, and one wore the horns if shopping for something more … exotic.
There was a sign above the dance floor that labeled it “Purgatory,” and I’d always thought that an apt description. There were rooms to rent on the second floor for the halo crowd. The balcony of the second floor looked down onto the dance floor, and was labeled “Heaven.” And then there was The Door, as I’d come to think of it. The Door led into a section of the club called “Hell,” and it was where the S&M crowd hung out … and played. I’d only been down there once before, but the things I’d seen remained burned on my retinas, and you couldn’t pay me enough to go down there again.
I’d have been repulsed enough if what happened down there were human S&M, which Dominic assured me was about mutual pleasure, even if that pleasure was obtained in unconventional ways. But unlike humans, the demons loved the pain itself. They are incorporeal in the Demon Realm, and many of them find physical sensation— all physical sensation—fascinating. Add that to the fact that they can heal wounds that would kill a human being, and you have a scene from your worst nightmare and scariest horror movie all wrapped up into one.
“I’ll go get a room,” Adam shouted into my ear.
I didn’t feel like screaming myself hoarse, so I merely nodded. Raphael, Barbie, and I hovered in an especially dark alcove near the entrance, trying not to attract attention. It wasn’t that hard. People were mostly occupied with their prospective partners, or so drunk they didn’t care what was going on around them.
Adam returned shortly with a magnetized key card. He and Raphael went upstairs to unlock the room, then Adam came back down and handed the key card to Barbie, who tucked it in the back pocket of her jeans.
“Happy hunting!” Adam yelled with a lascivious lift of his brows. Barbie laughed, but I just scowled at him.
Barbie snagged one of the halos and put it on, looking positively ridiculous, in my opinion, then headed toward the bar with me in her wake. Raphael, the author of our nasty little plan, had been very specific on the criteria for our mark. It had to be a demon who wasn’t into pain, for one thing. Even the demons who liked pain had their limits, but interrogating one of them would be … especially unpleasant. Which was why Barbie had donned the halo. It also had to be a demon who fit Shae’s description of these new illegals, with the look of someone who wasn’t far removed from a street person.
And that’s where I came in. Because these demons wouldn’t look like the stereotypical drop-dead gorgeous specimens, it would be hard for Barbie to tell the difference between a nouveau demon and a skanky human. I would have to discreetly slip into my exorcist’s trance and check the aura of anyone she was considering taking upstairs for the glow of demon red.
I wasn’t entirely sure I could get myself into the trance state under these circumstances. I don’t need the whole dog-and-pony show many exorcists require to induce the trances, but I feared the music and crowd might be a tad distracting, even for me. Still, I’d managed to induce the trance in less-than-ideal circumstances before, so I hoped I could manage it here.
The reason I still insist on calling Barbara “Barbie,” despite her repeated attempts to get me to stop, is that she looks so much like a Barbie doll. She’s petite and blond, with a curvaceous figure and a chinadoll face. Yes, I hate her, even though I actually like her against all my expectations.
Her delicate good looks made her the perfect bait, and we hadn’t even swallowed the first sips of our drinks before we had a candidate sniffing at her skirts. I shouldn’t have been surprised that said candidate was female. This was a demon club after all, and I’ve already mentioned their lack of gender preferences.
Barbie’s admirer fit our profile perfectly. She was way too skinny to be wearing a spaghetti-strap camisole, which showed off her bony shoulders and jutting collarbone. Her cheekbones were daggersharp slashes across her face, and there were hollows under her eyes. Her hair was a brittle, frizzy bottle-blond, with a stripe of brown roots showing at the part. She might have looked pretty enough at a healthy weight and with a decent dye job, but as she was, she was an eyesore. Definitely not the kind of person the Spirit Society would approve as a legal demon host.
I didn’t hear what Ms. Skin-and-Bones said to Barbie, but her smile was lascivious enough to get the meaning across. It also showed a chipped front tooth. I knew without even checking her aura that she was one of the nouveau demons. With Shae’s sense of aesthetics, she’d never have granted membership to a human who was so patently unattractive.
I expected Barbie to start up a flirtation, but instead she slipped an arm around my waist possessively and shook her head, smiling gently. Ms. Skin-and-Bones pouted, and I stood stark still, trying like hell not to show my surprise. I’m a shitty actress, so it’s a good thing our would-be mark only had eyes for Barbie.
Ms. Skin-and-Bones reached out and gave Barbie’s shoulder a squeeze. “If you change your mind, I’ll be at the bar,” she said, then sauntered off, probably thinking the way she shook her ass was sexy, rather than pathetic.
Barbie dropped the arm she’d put around my waist and gave me back my personal space. I frowned down at her.
“She was a perfect candidate,” I protested. “Why did you turn her down?” I doubted it was due to any homophobia, considering Barbie had pretended to be with me, but I couldn’t understand it.
“I thought we’d be better off with a male,” she answered, leaning close to me again so she wasn’t broadcasting her words to the whole room. Not that anyone could hear her over the blasting music. “I didn’t want Adam and Raphael to get squeamish.”
I was glad I wasn’t in the middle of sipping my drink, because I’d have spit it halfway across the room as I laughed my ass off. Barbie had been a member of our council for a couple of months now, but since nothing much had happened, she hadn’t gotten to see Adam and Raphael in action. If there were ever two people less likely to get squeamish—about anything—I sure didn’t want to meet them.
“Believe me,” I said between bouts of laughter, “they won’t let chivalry—” The laughter threatened to take over again, and I sucked in a couple of deep breaths to quell it. “They won’t let chivalry get in the way,” I finished when I could get the whole sentence out.
“All right,” Barbie said, the flush in her cheeks the only sign that my laughter pissed her off. “Maybe I’m squeamish. I’d rather pick someone who doesn’t look so pathetic.”
“That might be tough, since ‘pathetic’ is kinda one of the traits we’re looking for.”
We both looked toward the bar, where Ms. Pathetic sat sipping some kind of fruity drink. No one was talking to her. Hell, no one even looked at her. She might be one of the only demons in this club who’d have trouble getting laid.
Barbie bit her lip. “Are you sure she’s a demon?”
Yes, I was. But not sure in the way Barbie was asking, so I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
“I’ll let you know in a minute,” I said, adding a mental “I hope,” because I still didn’t know if this was going to work. The music pounded through my body, distracting me even as I tried to tune it out. No pun intended. When I breathed deep, I smelled booze and sweating bodies and a miasma of conflicting colognes.