"Remember that time you used your power to throw the goalie before she could slam into a pole?" Adele asked as the two women made their way past the bouncer (who knew Crin by name and knew that she was far older than eighteen). "Even though we all hated her for ratting on us about the biology project?"
"I always forget that you know all of my secrets," Crin replied ruefully.
Their favorite nightclub, the Parisian Fox, was unusually busy for a Tuesday night, but neither lady minded. Even though Adele was engaged, she usually came to see if she could find Crin a guy. That plan usually worked until the guy actually tried getting to know Crin—and was promptly scared away. She usually proved their first impressions wrong right away. She may have been small and thin, but she made it quite obvious to anybody interested that she could take them.
And she had, a couple of times at least.
"If Nancy Jones had hit that pole," Crin continued, "she might have knocked herself out and we would have lost. Meredith White just wasn’t a very good goalie, and she was the only backup we had."
"The look on Nancy’s face was still priceless," Adele sighed happily, remembering the particularly shocked expression Nancy had sported for at least twenty minutes after Crin had flung her through the air without touching her (although to everybody else, it looked as though Crin had barreled into her). "Does she still try and keep in touch with you? I’ve gotten a couple of invitations to high-class parties."
"Are you kidding? I think she was one step away from dousing me with holy water and burning a crucifix onto my forehead. She used to flinch every time I would walk into the room." They ordered their drinks and a plate of buffalo wings, both hungry for the long shopping trip.
The Parisian Fox was one of Crin’s better finds from her bounty hunting trips. It was a place where she couldn’t possibly be recognized as "Sticks," mainly because the riffraff she hunted had no clue a place so refined existed. It was one of the fancier nightclubs New York had to offer, usually hosting a white-tie band and fancy appetizers (although she and Adele liked the buffalo wings too much to consider anything else). She could take Adele there without having to worry about the more dangerous side of her profession.
"You collected a lot of enemies at Podmore," Adele observed, wiping her fingers on a napkin.
"Only a few. And only one tried to murder me or hurt me in any way," Crin felt the need to point out. "And I still stand by my original claim that she redefined insanity. Forget having a couple of screws lose—she never had any of them to begin with."
"There was something wrong with Rachel before you came." Adele looked up and gave a cheery little wave at a tall, dark stranger that had been eyeing their table throughout the conversation. "Look, Crin, he’s giving you the eye."
Crin barely glanced over at him. "Too tall. I don’t date people over a foot taller than me. Petty, I know, but that way I don’t get a cramp in my neck from just looking at him." She took a swig of her beer and nearly smirked. Adele, pretty princess of the south, deeply routed in an old money family, was enjoying a rather dainty fruity drink, but Crin was nursing a rather simple light beer. She peeled the label off now, and began folding it into an origami figurine. Adele rolled her eyes and laughed. "So how are things at Daddy’s plantation?" she asked cheekily after a moment of comfortable silence.
"Oh, you know as well as I do that I’m not in Georgia anymore." Adele rolled her eyes and hid her smile behind a sip of her drink. "Recently, I’ve been down in Philly, working on a promotion campaign for a movie we’ve been shooting there. My boss still sucks, but we had some meetings to attend up here, so I shoved everybody else out of the way and came myself."
"A bounty hunter and a movie ad guru," Crin said slowly, contemplating her beer. "Never would have seen that one coming. I always figured you wanted to be in front of the camera, not programming it."
"In this career field, you take what you get. Besides, with my job, I’m able to cover up the black eyes I get with the stage makeup that’s lying around." Adele gave Crin a stern look, and the small redhead winced appropriately. The last time Adele had come into the city, it had been the day after Crin had nabbed another bounty, but that one hadn’t come easily. "Besides, with programming it all, somebody’s bound to come up and say, ‘You’re just what we’ve been looking for!’"
Crin grinned at her friend’s sarcasm. "Have you even bothered to audition for any of the movie roles at all?"
"I’ve got an audition lined up for a romance soon. Maybe I’ll get a supporting role."
"You’ll get a role, that’s for sure. You’re pretty enough. Maybe you’ll be the chick the guy sees on the street at just the wrong moment, and he stares at you, and then the main chick gets jealous and dumps him, and everybody in America will hate your character, and by default, you!" Crin chortled and Adele rolled her eyes again. "Sorry, sorry, had to say it."
"Only your compliments can make me want to punch you," Adele decided. "Fine, see if I recognize you at all when I become the next It girl."
"For your sake, I hope that never happens." Crin’s expression was somber, but her eyes twinkled. "I’d really hate to have to call you ‘It.’"
"Oh, don’t lie. You’d absolutely love it." Adele laughed and hauled on her friend’s arm. Crin rose begrudgingly, already knowing what was coming. The two had been coming to the Parisian Fox since Crin’s twenty-first birthday, after all. Few things changed with them. They were always unstintingly loyal to each other, and reused the same jokes around each other, getting a kick more out of laughing at each other than at the joke. "C’mon, let’s go dance!"
Something caught Crin’s eye, and she tugged her arm from Adele’s grip. "Give me a minute? I’ll be right back."
"Sure!" And Adele was off, dragged into the massive crowd on the dance floor. Crin, to avoid the same thing happening, ducked behind a table and made her way to the wall, putting her back to it so that she could study the room and try to figure out what she had just seen. Somebody she knew, that was for sure. But whom?
Crin felt the cold prickle of eyes on her shoulder and she swung her head to the right, grey eyes narrowing over the dance crowd. Somebody in that throbbing mass was watching her, dropping the temperature in the room to just below subzero. Her fists clenched as she felt the powers warn her. Play to the open space, she told herself, and slipped from the crowded room into one of the smaller back rooms the Parisian Fox kept open for those who wanted to dine away from the source of the music. There were several couples dining at tables in there, but she kept her head down, eyes flitting left and right without landing on anything in particular. Whoever was watching her was following her.
There was a corridor twisting through the back of the club, she knew. A few of the more frequent customers in the Fox used it as a place to get away for perhaps a make-out session or other amorous encounters. Crin had discovered it on her initial tour of the club, although she hadn’t had to use it since. Now, she headed for that very area, turning sharply into the corridor—
And her head exploded.
Something blunt, heavy, and painful clubbed the back of her head, sending her forward on her hands and knees, swearing enough to make a sailor blush. Luckily, whoever had hit her wasn’t very strong. Sparkles of pain exploded against the outsides of her vision, but she still had enough thought retention to swear, and roll out of the way—just in time.
Pale hands clawed at the space she had just vacated, a feminine voice cursing. Crin rolled until she was on her stomach and pushed off, trying to lunge to a running start. However, in her dizziness, she overestimated and stumbled impressively, bruising up both knees. A thin arm wrapped itself around her neck and she felt the cold muzzle of a gun butt into the short strip of exposed skin between her shirt and the waistline of her jeans. Cold, delirious fear mingled with the pain. "What do you want?" Her tongue felt thick, her words slowed and jarred.
The chill of hot breath on her neck made her tense up. "To see your corpse lying on this pretty carpet."
"I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m using it now." She’d been in a lot of sticky situations, most of them worse than this, but never at the Fox. This was supposed to be a safe place—a place where she was Crin Dalmeiier, the somewhat-pretty young lady that came from a rich background and a polished education. Her rougher street side was not supposed to haunt her here. "Who are you? Why do you want me dead? Did I catch your boyfriend or something?"
"I’m hurt, Corinthia. You don’t recognize me?"
At this, Crin’s whole body began to quake. Her captor knew her personally, knew not only that she wasn’t just Sticks, but knew her birth name, a name that wasn’t written anywhere but on her school records and birth certificate. Most didn’t even know her as ‘Crin,’ let alone Corinthia. It was then that a lock of glossy black hair slid over her shoulder, and she let out a very uncharacteristic gasp. "Ra—"
"Something the matter here ladies?" asked a smooth voice just out of Crin’s line of sight.
Her captor’s grip faltered, and Crin didn’t wait for a better opportunity—she grabbed the hand on her neck and lunged forward, throwing her legs and rear up into the air in a ferocious kick. Her upper body hit the floor, hands flat, and the woman behind her flew in an ungraceful flip. When Crin leapt to her feet, she was holding not only her Glock, but her captor’s gun as well. "Rachel Dumont. Should have figured. I expected you’d come after me, but in a nightclub?"
Seated in front of her, frozen in the act of climbing to her feet, Rachel Dumont stared at her old childhood rival. Unlike Crin, she was willowy and tall, her ebony-black hair shiny even in the dimmed lighting. She was the color of milk as she stared at the two guns Crin had aimed at her, and now both women were shaking. Neither had laid eyes on each other for over ten years, but the moment was enough to bring up a thousand emotions that had been buried in Crin. The old fear that had kept her awake many late nights effervesced on the very surface of her skin, almost corporeal in its intensity.
"You know this psycho, miss?" asked her rescuer.
Crin jerked and nearly fired the gun in her left hand. She had forgotten that he was there at all. Now she turned her head to thank him. Sadly, that moment never came for her. With an emphasis she had not felt in years, her strange powers kicked in, sending her flying forward with a shouted "DUCK!"
"Okay. Short. Small. Redhead." That really wasn’t helping very much, Jacks decided about two hours into his stakeout at the Parisian Fox. Whoever he was supposed to be protecting had good taste, he had decided before, but he was positive that every small redhead had congregated in this rather unique nightclub—and that none of them looked like bounty hunters at all. Of course, he hadn’t met up with many bounty hunters at all. Lawyers and bounty hunters just didn’t eat at the same establishments, and bounty hunters definitely didn’t land in Limbo very often. When they died, they tended to be snuffed on the spot. "This shouldn’t be this hard!"
His eyes lingered on the form of a particularly well-endowed redhead that passed his table. There wasn’t a trace of anything related to bounty hunting in her demeanor and she was much too tall to fit the description, but hey, he was male. He could look, couldn’t he? Honestly, why did he have to be such a sucker for a redhead? While it made noticing his quarry easier, finding a redhead that could stand him was something of an issue with him. Most of the ones he had met and tried to flirt with tended to blow him off.
"You going to dance at all tonight, man?" asked his drinking partner for the evening, Tim Jaymer. "All you’ve done the whole time we’ve been here is sit there and stare at any woman that walks by. It’s kind of creepy."
To his credit, Jacks did not squirm at this comment. He hadn’t exactly been truthful when he had told Tim why they were going to the Parisian Fox, of all places. Somehow, he just couldn’t blurt out, "I have to go look out for this redhead I’ve never met at this club because one of my clients thinks that somebody’s going to try and off her there." Words had never failed Jacks before, but there he was, pretending to actually like this Fox place for all its chintzy class and overpopulation of redheads. Tim had abandoned him pretty early to schmooze his way across the dance floor, but Jacks had remained vigilant in his seat for about two hours now. So far, so good.
"Er, yeah, man," he said lamely, trying to think of a convincing excuse that would let him stay in his chair. "Actually, I’ve got to take a leak. I’ll be right back."
He swore that he counted four redheads on the way to the bathroom.
The bathrooms at the Fox were buried in the back, down a darkened corridor carpeted with a particular design that would have made any observer dizzy. Jacks, however, wasn’t paying attention to the carpet. His gray eyes were alert and constantly sweeping the crowd. Still, the mysterious "Sticks" did not make herself known. Sighing, he slipped into the bathroom, and emerged two minutes later to face an entirely different scene.
At the mouth of the hallway, too far off for him to intervene, none other than a small redhead was pointing two guns at a woman lying on the floor. Heart clinging to his uvula, Jacks rushed forward to prevent any catastrophes—only to slam full-force into a bouncer on the way into the bathroom. While he was tall and rather burly, the solid wall of muscle bounced him back easily and he backed into the wall. The bouncer gave him a dirty look and slipped into the bathroom.
"DUCK!"
Jacks looked up, but the damage was already done. The scene before him unfolded—the redhead had thrown herself forward, the black-haired woman was up and running, and a heavyset man staggered away from both of them. Even at the distance, Jacks could see the stark black knife hilt sticking out of his back. One of them had killed the man, knifed him right in the back. He took off towards them in a sprint, but they were already getting away, the redhead chasing the other woman.
The man collapsed to the floor, and Jacks got a startling view of his face as he hurtled over him in pursuit of the two women. Somebody had just knifed Willy Spores, of all people. Anger caused Jacks’ feet to pelt faster, and he swung his head back and forth, looking for his targets. Willy might not have been the best guy in the world, but he was a paying client! And nobody deserved to die like that!
Movement out of the corner of his eye spurred him to run straight through the crowded room after a fleeting figure, presumably the two women. They slipped through the mob of dancers like pulled strings through warm butter, while he had to shove and jostle dancers out of the way. Not really caring about the dirty looks he was receiving en masse, he plunged on. "C’mon, people, move it!"
His prey was rapidly getting away, he saw, pushing his fancy shoes faster. Why on earth did he have to dress for style on the one night he might have been chasing down bad guys? Oh, yeah, he was a lawyer, not some kind of deranged Daredevil superhero. Annoyed now, he pushed his legs to run faster. The Parisian Fox sure had a lot of back hallways that twisted in weird patterns, he couldn’t help but observe as he ran. That ended abruptly when he turned into a room, skidding to a halt to see his objective scurrying out a window across a large, abandoned room. Sheets of plastic lay draped over bulky, disfigured objects in the room, some hanging down from the ceiling and partially obscuring his view. As he watched, yet another figure slipped out of the window, the identity masked by the darkness of the room.
Jacks didn’t pause to think. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and sprinted at it. It dove through the window and he followed, not caring that the ledge ripped at his nice trousers. Pants were expendable—catching Willy’s killer and saving himself a terrible legal battle was not. Both feet landed squarely on a window-cleaner’s platform before he stopped moving, inches short of pitching himself over the side of the building and to his death.
He wasn’t alone on the platform, but the other occupant, the one he’d followed out, wasn’t Willy’s killer. He turned, and the woman blinked. "You!" they both shouted.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t any time for reminiscing, for with an almighty creak, the platform plummeted, taking both Jacks and Crin with it.
