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That would be worth it. Seeing Raven and Evie brought down? Worth it. Because my life turned so differently now, because I was working my way toward my college degree and applying to DEA, there was a chance I might even get to be there when they were brought down.
That would be amazing.
Evie offered me a hand up. A little weird coming from someone who less than twenty minutes earlier had caned me into oblivion.
Whatever. I took it.
Six hour drive from Phoenix to Los Angeles. Evie dressed me up and made me up until I wondered if she'd ever traveled on a hot fall day for a six hour road trip through largely desert. I'd be rumpled by the time we arrived. AC might mean I didn't sweat into a puddle, but I'd still be wrinkled and my makeup would be coming off.
"Are you paying attention?" she snarled midway through and I suddenly realized this was as much tutorial as her getting me ready. This was all innocent makeup and candy pink lip gloss and teased hair.
"Why do I care how you do it?" I demanded. Evie had dragged me to the large restrooms with their banks of stalls and sinks, set up a stool in front of one of the long counters with six sinks and started work.
Her claws sank into the back of my neck as she shook me. "Stupid girl!"
The stool tipped over and went flying back. Before I could think to stop it, I'd slugged her. The shaking was too close to my brain, too scary a threat. But the instant I reacted I knew I might have tipped my hand.
Evie was still dazed from the blow. I took that time to start slapping, ineffectual and untrained. Unbidden and not because I was acting, a torrent of tears poured out of my eyes, soaking the short sleeved idiotic white shirt she'd put on me so far.
For a couple seconds Evie responded the same way I'd attacked: Like hissing cats we went at each other, slapping and screaming, until out of nowhere she pinned my arms to my sides. The move was amazingly intimate, putting us face to face. I swallowed and tried to pull away from her but she kept me tight.
"I know what you think of me." Her breath was appalling. I hadn't seen her light a cigarette but she reeked of it.
I just glared, unable to flail as Erin or punch as Annie.
"Not everyone has a choice, Erin." Her eyes searched mine as if she was honestly trying to tell me something. "You don't have a choice anymore."
Now she was definitely telling me something. I didn't relax in her forced embrace but I stopped struggling. She might tell more to a naïve girl than to Annie Knox. On the other hand, she was so close I was afraid she'd see the incipient crows feet that most teens didn't have.
If she did, she didn't bother saying anything about them. "It doesn't matter to me what you think of me, but understand this: I'm in a safer spot than you are and I could still get killed for botching this job." She nodded at me as if I couldn't understand I was the job. Her forehead hit mine and we both blinked in unexpected pain.
It didn't make us anything but enemies but along with what she was doing, it slowed down my panic and fury enough to concentrate on what she was saying.
"You've been requested by someone I've never done anything for but take a look at what you're wearing."
My answering nod was more cautious and subdued. I was wearing a school girl uniform I wasn't sure school girls in our country wore anymore. White short sleeved button down with a strange little half bowtie made of the same plaid as the skirt. Knee socks that itched in the overwarm warehouse. No shoes so far. Under the skirt and shirt I wore black lace everything, pushup bra, thong, a garter belt that held up stockings the socks were pulled on over. My makeup was – well, ruined, but before that, extreme.
To me it felt like a very sick fetish. Like maybe the client would prefer me to be eighteen but would pretend I was younger as he played whatever sick games were waiting for me.
That smacked of My kink is kinky and healthy, your kink is weird and wrong. But my kink didn't traffic humans. My kink was, at the very core, under all my protests and screaming, consensual.
Funny time to figure that out.
"I won't do anything for you," she said. "And I will save myself by doing what I'm told to you."
My backside was very familiar with what she was willing to do. "Why are you telling me this?"
She let go of me so fast I staggered back and stood uncertainly, not moving toward her or away. Just waiting.
"Because you can at least mitigate some of what's going to happen." She stopped and stared at me. "You do get the basics, right?"
I snorted. "Yeah, I get it."
She didn't even blink at that. "The new client has tastes in make up. we're using the same makeup on you now so you show up the way he wants you, already ready." She shrugged and spread her hands. "I don't give a fuck if you want to learn to do make up or not, it's not the point. The point is if knowing how to make yourself look the way he wants you to look spares you one beating?" She looked hard at me, clearly meaning the cane and all at once I knew that I had been tested with the cane because that was the favorite implement of 3837 and maybe he was tired of breaking his toys and having to start over with a new one.
Nausea nearly doubled me over. Instead of curling up with it, I put one hand on my stomach and leaned into it. I kept my feet. I looked up at her. "Then… thank you."
She was never going to be an ally. But at least she could stop me from being quite so beaten. That might allow me to do whatever I needed to do to bring down 3837 and Raven a little faster.
Our détente was over. She waited as I picked up the stool and used a makeup wipe on my face so we could start over. This time I watched her every move and paid attention to every product and color. It seemed stupid, but protective coloration was as much a part of going undercover as anything else. She had a point and I needed all the pointers I could get.
