Screaming out, “Help he’s kidnapped me!” would most likely get a hand slapped over my mouth and a “she’s had too much to drink” from Hades before he dragged me out of here. But maybe I could signal one of my old girlfriends to meet me in the bathroom.
As it turned out, the only difference between my friend and their mothers was age. They all did the same thing in response to my eye-to-eye hails—either pretended not to see me or whispered about me boldly behind their hands. The party was crowded to the gills, but it felt like being in a tank at the Audubon Aquarium. I had a ton of people gawking at me. But no one was particularly interested in helping me escape my glass cage.
The hopeful feeling began to die in my chest. Then I froze in place when I saw the man standing nearing the bar.
It was my father, holding court with the Mayor-President of Baton Rouge, that judge he just had to talk with at my birthday party, and several other masters of the universe I remembered meeting back when I was forced to attend my parents’ awful dinner parties and keep the other bored kids company while our parents droned on.
Dad stopped holding forth, all of a sudden. As if he sensed me watching.
Our eyes met, and my father reared back. Like he’d been shot.
I could only imagine what he was thinking. I looked nothing at all like the girl who used to curate every look and vet it with her mother before walking out of the house. Even after I went away to college.
His expression became so stricken, hope flared in my chest. Maybe he was the one I should have been looking for all along. I don’t know why he or any decent father on earth would agree to Hades’s terms. But maybe he simply hadn’t thought the deal through. Maybe now that he saw the state of me, he’d come to his senses.
His pride and reputation wasn’t worth my complete degradation and death. Surely, he could see that.
Without a thought to Hades, I surged forward, rushing toward my father. Toward the sanctuary of him and his powerful friends.
But the respected lawyer, Antoine Perreault, turned on his heel before I could even take two steps—turned and bolted away, as if he’d just seen the devil, not his innocent daughter, coming after him in the distance.
I stopped in my tracks, and my heart broke all over again with the realization…
My father truly had no plans to help me. If my going to Hades saved him, he would let me rot.
I realized that. Then came Hades’s dark voice, cruel and taunting. “Aw, travester. Say it ain’t so, ma belle. Was you really thinking that capon would help you out?”
My Cajun French had gotten a lot better over the last few months. Hades was offering me faux condolences for not realizing what he had all along. That my father truly was a coward. That he’d do anything—even sacrifice his own daughter—to save himself.
Dad had probably told everyone some story to cover his own ass. What was it? I wondered. Had I gone crazy for girl reasons? Decided myself to run off with some criminal?
Everyone—everyone—was looking at me. Judging me. It was like all my worst nightmares coming true all at once.
The room closed in, and my stomach pitched.
“Wanna dance?” Hades asked.
“No!” I spat out, struggling not to throw up.
“It will be easier if you dance,” Hades told me, his voice almost gentle. “Come, ma belle.”
He didn’t give me a chance to turn him down again, just tugged me onto the floor with a bunch of couples much older than us just as the music switched over to that old “Glory of Love” song from one of the original Karate Kid sequels. Not exactly the club bangers I’d gotten used to hearing through the floor. Probably because no one under the age of 50 danced this early at a ball.
The older men’s eyes flared when we joined them. And a few of the women craned their necks to gawk at my back.
“Don’t look at them,” Hades advised, smoothly pulling me into his arms. “That’s your past. And every single one of them people judging you is a piece of trash. Ya hear me? They’re garbage people, just like your père.”
His words washed over me, a strange absolution that somehow cleared away the shame. But also cracked open something deep inside of me. I’d held on to my pride for so long. Forced down the emotional waste products, no matter what happened to me over the last three months.
But now tears welled in my eyes, threatening to spill.
Hades’s face fell. “Oh, no, ma belle. They’re not worth your tears.” He pulled me deeper into his arms, covering up the tattoo with what felt an awful lot like a hug. “Don’t pay them no mind. You’re with me now. Sssh, I’ve got you right here.”
I’ve got you. That scrap of solidarity made the urge to cry even worse. With that ’80’s guy singing about how he was the man who would fight for my honor overhead, it felt like Hades was a true friend, my only safe space.
He wasn’t just encouraging me. He was upset on my behalf. He sounded like he actually cared about my suffering. Maybe even regretted bringing me here.
But that isn’t true, is it?
