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“I didn’t smile.”

“You glowed.”

“That sounds worse.”

“It was unsettlingly wholesome.” She nods once, as if she has settled a legal matter. “Sweet.”

I stop. “What?”

“Sweet. That’s you.”

“My name is Sweet?”

“For here.”

I scrunch my nose. “Is that because of the cardigan?”

“It’s because you look like you’d apologize to a door after walking into it, but your eyes lit up over a corpse on a motorcycle. That’s a special kind of sweet. The kind with a razor blade in the pie.”

I consider that.

Honestly, I’ve been called worse by women with better shoes.

“Sweet,” I test.

It sounds soft. Too soft, maybe. But there is something nice about being named by a woman who looks like she could stitch up a dead man and hex a live one before supper.

“I like it,” I decide.

“Good, because once the brothers hear it, it’ll stick faster than glitter on funeral makeup.”

“The brothers are the Grave Prowlers?”

“The loudest part of them.”

We turn a corner and pass a long window looking down into the side yard. Rows of motorcycles gleam under the cloudy Tennessee light. Men in black cuts stand around smoking, talking, laughing, and watching mourners drift toward the chapel entrance.

Miss Mercy slows.

“All right, Sweet. If you are working here, you need to know who is who before one of them smiles and you think that means safe.”

“I don’t usually think smiles mean safe.”

“Good. That puts you ahead of most women who wander into this building.”

I glance down into the yard.

A large man with a dark beard stands near the chapel steps, still as a headstone while everyone moves around him.

“That’s Hyde,” Miss Mercy says. “President. He runs the Tennessee chapter. If he speaks, you listen. If he asks a question, you answer plain. Don’t flirt with him unless you want the temperature in the room to drop and every woman attached to this club to start measuring you for a shallow grave.”

“I ain’t planning to flirt with the president.”

“Plans change around men in cuts. Remember your plan.”

I nod.

A dark-haired man beside Hyde says something, his face serious, posture sharp.