Chastity snatched it out of her hand. “How could you watch the Yankees at a time like this? We just found out that Tanner is madly in love with Ash.Andwe now have a treasure trove of photos from the Society. There’s gotta be some hints in there somewhere about where we can find Club Onyx.”
Yes!Was Tanner really madly in love with me? It kind of felt like he was. Maybe he’d tucked a love letter into one of my books while I’d been distracted by his houseboy and the cookies.
The only thing standing between me and my happily ever after with Tanner was figuring out his secret. Whatever it was, I was sure we could overcome it together.
I grabbed a stack of photos and started looking for hints. Someone had painstakingly blurred the background of all the photos. Or…almostall of the photos.
“You guys! Look at this!” I put the unblurred photo on the table. It was Tanner and some supermodel walking up the stairs. But I was more focused on the CLUB ONYX sign in the background.
“It exists!” yelled Chastity. “I knew it. God, we’re so close I can practically taste it.”
“I’m more interested in what the hell is going on back there,” said Madison, pointing to the corner of the photo.
I squinted to try to make it out. “It kinda looks like a big helmet?”
“An elephant mask,” said Liz.
“Are you sure?” I tilted my head, but there was no way to tell if it was an elephant or not. He was so far in the background that his head was like the size of my pinky nail.
Liz pulled up a picture on her phone of an unzipped backpack on a linoleum floor. Inside was a big elephant head mask made up of little triangular mirrors. “One of my students was showing this to all his friends. He claimed that this is what all the members wear at Club Onyx during some weird sex ritual.”
I eyed her suspiciously. That felt more like one of her furry fantasies than something they’d do at Club Onyx, but the mask did look pretty fancy.
“What else have you heard?” I asked.
“Oh, all sorts of stuff.” She flipped through her notebook. “I’m pretty sure most of it’s nonsense, but there are a few recurring themes.”
“We need to hear all of it,” said Chastity. “The littlest thing might give us the hint we need to find it.”
“Well, there’s of course the claim that Club Onyx is an elephant-worshiping cult. I don’t buy it, though. If they were furries, I definitely would have heard more about it.”
“Okay,” I said. “What else?”
Liz looked back at her notes and started reading. “Club Onyx is an illegal casino. A man in a minotaur mask chases women through a hedge maze, and if he catches them, then they become his sex slave. They host water balloon fights. One of themembers is a man who never cums so he can just bang you for hours.”
Chastity bit her lip. “How likely is that one to be true?”
“Pretty likely. I’ve heard quite a few stories about him.”
“Yeah, we definitely need to find this place. Sorry…please continue.”
“There’s a rumor that James Hunter is the founder, but I’m not sure I buy that.”
“I would die if James Hunter was a member,” said Chastity. “One time he came to visit Mason at the office and my ovaries nearly exploded just from being in the same room as him.”
“And his wife is so beautiful,” I said. Penny Hunter was basically my idol. She’d grown up in Delaware and had red hair.Realred hair. Not that fake red hair like stupid Sierra. And she’d bagged herself one of the hottest men in New York.
I’d almost gotten to meet her once. Last year, right before the OG Incident happened…I’d found out that the whole time I thought I was talking to Matt on the dating app, I’d actually been talking to Penny. She had been trying to set him up on a blind date. She kinda catfished me, but in the sweetest way possible. I shook my head. No, it wasn’t sweet. Because that had been one of the worst days of my life. All of my incidents were bad. Butthe incident? I’d kill myself if I ever saw Matthew Caldwell again.
“There’s no way James is a member,” I said. “He and Penny are the perfect couple. They wouldn’t join a sex club.”
“Unless they have an open relationship.” Chastity sighed. “A girl can dream. And…I don’t know why I didn’t think about this before! You can just text Penny and ask her about the Society.”
“I don’t have her number.”
“Of course you do. You talked to her for a few days before your date with Matt.”
“Only through the app. Which I immediately deleted after that.”
