“Please,” Mose said, looking Jonah in the eyes.
“Sure,” Jonah said. “After the gig.”
“You good, Mose?” Natalie put a hand on his shoulder and leaned down to look into his face.
“Me?” He grinned wickedly. “I’m always good.”
Natalie chewed her lower lip. She wasn’t buying it.
“I’ll start setting up,” Jonah said.
Music was blasting from the overhead speakers and the dance floor was crowded an hour before the official showtime. For Club Catastrophe, Teen Night was an add-on, a way to bring in customers on slow nights. They’d filled the rear of the room with billiards tables, dartboards, and vintage pinball machines to give younger patrons something to do.
As soon as Jonah appeared onstage to set up, a faint cheer went up. Fault Tolerant had a following around town. They even sometimes opened for national touring bands that Gabriel booked into the Keep.
Scanning the crowd, Jonah saw some familiar faces. Being walking distance from school, the club was a popular hangout for savants. The rest of the crowd was a mingle of Anaweir and mainliners. There was lots of Weir action in town, due to Cleveland’s proximity to the seat of Weir government in Trinity.
Jonah had learned to ignore the whispers, nudges, and pointed fingers from guildlings. Still, he couldn’t help picking out a faint chant of “Labrats!” from a crowd of mainliners at two tables next to the stage.
The Anaweir were, as always, oblivious.
Jonah began hauling amplifiers onstage, taping down power cords, testing mikes, and generally making himself useful. When he’d finished the setup, he collected a soda from the bar and carried it backstage. He found a viewing spot from stage right as the club manager ran through the usual announcements about restrooms, smoking, drugs, wristbands, and warnings that Teen Nights were a privilege that could be revoked if there were any more problems.
“And now, without further ado, Club Catastrophe welcomes Fault Tolerant!”
Lusty shouts and foot stomping ushered Jonah’s friends onto the stage. Natalie strode back to the drums, Severino took his place behind his Roland, and Alison and Mose carried their guitars out from backstage and plugged in.
All of the songs were familiar. Natalie had written most of them, some in partnership with Severino, and she and Jonah usually jammed on them before she ever brought them to the band. “Never Say Die.”
“Straw Man.”
“Caliente.”
“No Way Home.” It was all original music. Natalie believed in controlling the whole package.
Jonah breathed in the usual crowd funk of sweat, perfume, and raging hormones. Then caught a whiff of mischief mixed in. That was his term for the nose-prickling mingle of shade magic and rotting flesh. Shades? This close to the Anchorage?
He leaned forward and peered out from the wings, scanning the crowd. Blinded as he was by the stage lights, all he could see was a murk of dark moving bodies, studded with the patches of light that denoted the gifted.
Turning up the collar of his jacket, hunching his shoulders, Jonah slipped offstage and walked down the aisle, turning his head from side to side. But he couldn’t pinpoint the source, and then he lost the scent.
Ditching his sanctuary backstage, Jonah found a table in the corner closest to the door where he could keep a better watch on comings and goings. There was a price to pay, now that he was out in the open. He kept having to snarl at those who wandered over, thinking he looked lonely, sitting there by himself.
Every so often he breathed in the stench of decay or the burned-insulation scent of shade magic, but could never figure out exactly where it was coming from.
When the first set was over, the club sound track came on, and Natalie and Rudy waded into the crowd on the dance floor. Mose shuffled back outside to smoke, and Alison joined Jonah at his table.
“’Sup, Jonah?” Alison asked, tucking her hair behind her ears. She’d peeled off her jacket during the set, revealing her muscled arms. “How come you’re sitting out here?”
“Do you smell anything unusual?” Jonah asked, trying not to ask a leading question.
Alison wrinkled her nose. “Dude at the next table should go easy on the cologne,” she said. “And I think somebody’s been smoking weed in the ladies’ room. That what you mean?”
He shook his head. “I could’ve sworn I smelled a shade.”
Alison shrugged. “I know you say you can smell them, but I can’t—not from a distance, anyway. I wish I could.”
Jonah grimaced. “No you don’t. Trust me.” He paused. “You’re looking good, Shaw. Did you lose weight or what?”
She looked up, saw that he was kidding about that last part, and grinned. “I’m feeling good,” she said, sipping at her drink.
“I’ve been going to a new skin therapist. He is amazing.”
Jonah stared at her, puzzled. Skin art was Gabriel’s specialty, one of the treatments he never delegated. “Really? I didn’t know Gabriel had hired anyone else.”
“He hasn’t. This one’s an independent. Dimitri Weed.
He has a clinic on Canal.”
“You’re going outside of the Anchorage for treatment?”
Jonah said, beating down surprise.
Alison nodded. She leaned toward Jonah. “Don’t tell Gabriel. Or Natalie. It’s not that I don’t have confidence in them. It’s just, you know, an add-on.”
“How’d you even find this guy?” Jonah said. “Where’d he come from? Is he a sorcerer or what?”
“He’s a sorcerer,” Alison said. “Some of the other savants have been seeing him. They said he works wonders, so I thought I’d give him a try.”
Jonah’s heart sank. Charlatans tended to prey on savants, offering them the kind of hope that Gabriel couldn’t. “Alison. You know as well as I do that skin therapy is nothing to mess around with. There are lots of quacks out there who are more than willing to take your money. They do more harm than good.” He paused. “What’s he charging you, anyway?”
“It’s pricey,” Alison said evasively. “But what if it works?
How much would you pay for something that works?” Everything, Jonah thought. I’d pay everything for Kenzie. “Here. Want to see?” She slid her dress off her shoulder to display a new tattoo: a lurid, glittering snake that angled down between her shoulder blades. Jonah leaned in to take a closer look.
“What the hell is that?” Natalie snapped, over Jonah’s shoulder, startling them both. “Nothing.” Alison jerked her dress back into place and hunched over the table.
Natalie and Rudy stood tableside, still flushed and sweating from dancing, both holding drinks. Nat had a familiar fire in her eyes. Jonah braced himself for incoming.
“I thought there was something different about you,” Natalie said. “Let me see that.”
“No,” Alison said. “I know what you’ll say.”
“You went to that guy on Canal, didn’t you?” Natalie slammed her drink down so hard the contents slopped onto the table. “After I told you not to.”
“Leave her alone, Nat,” Rudy said. “It’s not your business.”
“It is my business,” Natalie retorted. “She’s my friend!”
Alison scraped back her chair and stood. “If I’m your friend, you want what’s best for me, right?”
“Exactly,” Natalie said, eyeing her suspiciously. “That’s why I—”
“Well, I’ve felt better since I’ve been seeing Dimitri than I have in two years,” Alison said. “I’m sorry, but it’s true. I think you’re just jealous of his success.”
“That’s not it,” Natalie said, cheeks flushed. “There just aren’t that many good skin therapists out there. And you don’t go to anyone who doesn’t know what meds you’re taking. Besides, I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something—I don’t know—wrong about his work. I don’t trust him.”
“Well, I do. And so does Rudy.” Alison threw a challenging glare his way.
“What does that mean?” Natalie asked, looking from Alison to Severino.
“Shut up, Alison,” Rudy said, licking his lips nervously.
“You promised you wouldn’t—”
“When were you going to tell her?” Alison asked. “In the middle of a hookup? She’s not stupid.”
“I think you’d better tell me now.” Natalie’s voice had gone from fire to ice in an instant.
Jonah wanted nothing more than to escape the oppressive stew of emotions swirling around him—rage, guilt, suspicion, fear. But he was hemmed in by his three friends, with no way out.
Even worse, the shouting match in the corner was drawing attention from onlookers.
“Fine,” Rudy said. “I’ve been seeing Dimitri, too.”
Slowly, deliberately, he turned and yanked up his sweater.
There, at the base of his spine, curled a dragon. “I feel great, Nat,” he said, over his shoulder. “I’m sleeping better, and I have more energy during the day.”
Natalie stared at the tattoo, the blood draining from her face. “And I guess next you’ll say you can quit anytime you like,” she shouted at his back. “Oh, no, that’s right, you can’t.”
“Don’t be mad, Nat,” Rudy said, turning back around.
“Even the music is better. If you’d just keep an open mind, I—” Natalie leaned toward him, fists clenched. “So the music is better, is it?”
“What’d I miss?” Mose had returned, limping his way through the gawkers. “We’re back on in three, right?” Fault Tolerant returned to the stage, bodies stiff, glaring at one another.
This is exactly why I don’t like to go to clubs, Jonah thought. Too much drama. And since he only had four friends, this kind of drama seriously affected his quality of life.