Helluva Luxe by Natalie Essary Page B

lace-up had to be cut from her foot. But beforehand, the twisted ankle looked damn good through a camera.
    Her stockings were ripped. Her sheath soaked through with black water. Wet hair plastered across her pale skin. She had a broken cigarette in her hand that was still smoldering, and those purple eyes of hers were on fire. Probably because nobody was helping her.
    You’re damn right Kendol grabbed his camera.
    Can you blame the guy?
    He and his sister had Lily packed in ice and on a plane to LA before the negatives were dry. I’m sure she was crocked those first few days. Kendol’s always been a mobile pharmacy. Who the hell knows when she actually made it to a hospital to get her ankle checked out. Kendol’s assistant called the Luxe two days later to let Zayzl know that Lily wouldn’t be back anytime soon, because she was scheduled for the second half of her shoot. The shoot that was never planned in the first place. We didn’t even get a phone call from Lily herself. It was all cleverly orchestrated.
    And Ash came undone.
    To this day, I still don’t know what all she got mixed up in while Lily was gone. She started drinking a lot more than I’d ever known her to drink. Almost immediately. And her attitude was scaring the shit out of the entire staff. She wasn’t mean, of course. Just unapproachable. Watching her self-destruct was a real bitch, and I was scared it was only a matter of time before she wrecked the booth.
    Zayzl was holding his breath, waiting for exactly that.
    He and Ash started fighting for sport. Whittled it down to an art form, actually. They were like two big open wounds, armed with shakers of salt. It made me nuts. I don’t know how we held onto our crowd. Any other bar would’ve gone belly-up with all the bad mojo flying around.
    Then one night, when I’d decided things couldn’t get any lousier, a purple Escalade rolled up at the door and Lily got out.
    Not the Lily I knew. This one was different.
    Her ankle healed. She wasn’t moving very quickly, but I think the outfit was at fault. She was wearing some scraps of PVC that might have passed as a dress as long as she didn’t try to sit down. She had a tan, for crying out loud, and gold hair extensions to make a mermaid jealous. The didactic duo had given her a wicked makeover.
    The room turned like the tide when she walked in. By that point, everybody had seen the infamous Kendol Strike photographs and heard the tale of Lily’s great discovery. They all wanted a piece of her, more than ever. But she smiled politely and pushed her way forward. I knew who she was looking for.
    The booth was dark. Ash was up there somewhere, in theory, on auto-pilot and whatever else she’d swallowed. I’d seen her right before the doors opened, and she clearly hadn’t slept or showered with any enthusiasm in a long time. I think she might have even been wearing a flannel shirt. No offense, Salem.
    Lily walked right by the booth and came straight for my bar. She crooked a finger at me and leaned over as if she wasn’t being eyed by a huge crowd. “Where is she?” she said.
    “Hello to you, too, sis. How you been?”
    “Didn’t you get my message, Rorke?”
    “Ash is up in the booth,” Zayzl said. He had a nasty leer on his face, and he’d appeared out of nowhere, like a good villain should. “You ought to have a look-see, gorgeous. But I wouldn’t poke the tiger, if I were you.”
    I considered punching him in the mouth.
    Lily just stared at him.
    Zayzl nodded and reached to take her hand. He still had that stupid look on his face, so I grabbed one of my girls to fill in and hopped the bar to follow them. I had a feeling I was about to bust up a fight that had been brewing for a long time.
    Zayzl stepped aside at the bottom of the stairs to the DJ booth and let Lily go up alone. I put myself between them. She stopped at the doorway, staring into the dark. I heard her whisper something, and Ash appeared in front of the board like a