Page 26 of White Lights
And in her confusion, Dez drinks. She drinks the whole strange cocktail down, not realizing until the last sip that it’s the most unusual drink she’s ever tasted—crisp and bright like sage and sunlight—and the most intoxicating.
By the time she turns to Alice with a fuck-the-bastards shrug, her head is … swimming. Pleasantly, but still, should she have paced herself?
Or should she and Alice get another drink right now? Probably that.
She looks toward the bar. When was the last time she had anything to eat? What was in that cocktail that made it so delicious?
“Do I look as deer-in-the-headlights as you look right now?” Alice asks, her own wine unsipped.
“You do.” Dez nods but soon she has to stop because there seem to be two Alices.
“What should we do about it?” Alice asks.
Dez puts her hand on Alice’s shoulder and steers her toward the bar. “Let’s get another drink.”
ABOOM LIKE SOMEONE DRIVING Abattering ram into a concrete wall wrests Dez from a nightmare about Mo. She opens groggy eyes at an hour that feels obscene. So early that the room’s still dark. Her head pounds. Where is she?
The room she’s in is huge, warm and wood-paneled. She’s lying on a white leather L-shaped couch facing a fireplace on the far side of the room. On either side of the hearth, four large lead-paned casements frame a mountainscape dressed in snow.
Acheron.
The last thing she remembers is …
The bar last night. Villains. Esmeralda’s diamond nipples swaying in Rafe’s face. The deathtrap ski lift and the tryst she’d ruined on the porch. Alice Quinn. That cocktail. And nothing after that.
She pulls a soft fleece blanket tighter around her as a radiator coughs in the corner. The scent of peppermint wafts through the air. The floors are piled with several dozen ornate, antique Turkish rugs. There’s a coffee table heaped with books. A small kitchen in the back left corner.
Dez is wrung out, baffled, and her heart—it feels like someone is standing on her heart. She shuts her eyes again, feeling very far from home. Mo must be out of surgery by now. Is their mother with him? Is it easier for everyone without Dez around?
Where is she anyway? She sits up, rubbing her eyes and the terrible crick in her neck. What time is it? When do classes start? How did she let this happen? She takes out her phone, but the battery’s dead, and she left her charger back in Death Valley.
The steady pounding sound that woke her up increases in frequency and volume. And suddenly someone starts screaming. Dez leaps up, looking around the empty room. There are four closed doors, and behind one of them, someone’s hurt. Possibly dying.
“Hello?” Dez calls, seeking the door where the sound comes from.
The screaming only gets louder.
“Shit,” she says under her breath, because she’s way too hungover to save anybody’s life right now. But she doesn’t have a choice. She barges into the room.
It takes her a long time to make sense of what she’s seeing. And in that time, her full body flushes with another wave of humiliation.
A woman’s naked body dangles from some kind of translucent golden sling attached to a beam in the ceiling. The way her limbs are threaded through the fabric reminds Dez of aerial yoga, except for the nakedness and the screaming. Her back is to Dez, her body inverted so her bare feet are level with the bedknobs on the tall, four-postered king bed. She kicks the bedknobs feverishly, causing the pewter headboard to bash against the wall—the first sound that Dez heard from outside—as another woman circles her, holding a riding crop, wearing only boys’ white briefs, her long, loose dark hair covering her breasts. Now the dark-haired woman meets Dez’s gaze, narrows her eyes, and presses her mouth to the dangling creature’s spread legs.
The screaming begins again.
Not a death scream, then, but a pleasure scream.
Its decibel pierces Dez’s hungover brain. She closes her eyes so she doesn’t pass out.
Eventually, the screaming ceases and there’s an exasperated groan. “You again.”
When Dez opens her eyes, the dangling pleasure seeker has spun to face her—and it’s the woman from the porch at Villains last night. She scissors her legs, causing her body to spin in the gold fabric as she releases herself to the floor. The gold sling comes loose from its tether in the ceiling and floats down around the woman’s shoulders, a shimmering, sheer scarf.
“So,” the woman says, “what’s the story, morning glory?”
“What happened to Felipe?” Dez asks her.
“Felipe is still trying to get it up after meeting you last night.” The woman flings an arm toward the bed, where Dez looks over to see the male model dude from last night lounging naked in the royal purple sheets.
