“Phew, sorry about that,” said Frankie. “Ocelot always gets a little uptight on nights like these. Ah! Raven! I’m so excited that you’re here at Club Onyx. Who’s your friend?”
“Frankie, meet Chastity. You two are gonna love each other.” How could they not? They were practically the same person. Tall, beautiful, and super outgoing. They both would have been blonde too if Chastity wasn’t wearing that bubblegum wig.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you.” Chastity gave her a big hug, apparently not feeling at all awkward about the fact that she was only wearing lingerie.
“This is probably a dumb question,” I said, “But what are the Onyxies? And how many dudes is Ocelot gonna make us bang tonight?”
Frankie laughed. “Come with me. I’ll explain everything.” We followed behind her and she kept talking. “The Onyxies are like the Oscars of the Society. We give awards to all of our best members. You know how there are always a few girls in the background who hand the awards out and guide winners to the green room? Yeah, that’s what you two will be doing. Ocelot’s girlfriend was going to do it, but apparently she and her friend got stuck on a plane. And before that he thought we had lost the Onyxies. Turns out one of the warehouse guys had just confused them for sex toys.”
Ocelot has a girlfriend?That didn’t seem right. But the rest of the evening was starting to make more sense. Like Ocelot’s ridiculous $250K bid. He didn’t want to gangbang us - he was just in a hurry and didn’t have time for a bidding war.
Now that I knew I was safe, I could only think about one thing: Had Tanner really wifey-zoned me?
“Are you here at Club Onyx very often?” I asked Frankie as we continued down a never-ending hallway.
“Yeah. Ocelot seems to have an endless supply of work for me. There’s always some wish to plan or new members to vet or a new room to set up.” She pointed to one of the many doors that lined that hallway. Each door was identical - a big heavy slab with a tablet set in the wall next to it.
“What’s in these rooms?” asked Chastity.
“It depends. The little symbols on the screens are hints about what you might find inside.”
“So what does this one stand for?” Chastity pointed to a door marked with an eggplant emoji.
“Ocelot would kill me if I revealed such a secret.” She sounded dead serious.
But there wasn’t that much to reveal. Because as we passed it, we could hear loud moaning through the closed door. Someone was definitely getting pounded in there. Sexually. Chastity and I both looked at each other. I’m pretty sure I looked horrified. But therewas a look of pure glee on her face. She was probably making a mental note to go back to the eggplant emoji room later tonight.
“Hot damn,” she mouthed silently to me.
“Ah, here we are,” Frankie said. “But we weren’t at a door. It was just a solid wall… Until she pulled on a candlestick and the wall slid away.
Another secret door!
This one didn’t lead to a secret closet like my bookshelf. Instead it led to the back of a stage. Stagehands dressed in all black moved walls and taped down wires and wheeled racks of clothes around. Frankie plucked two dresses off a rack and handed them to us. “Let’s hope they fit.”
I’d had quite enough of prancing around in my lingerie, so I slid into the dress as fast as humanly possible. It fit like a glove. And so did the gloves that matched it. They were so freaking silky. For years I’d been wishing that opera-length gloves would make a comeback. There was nothing better than always having a nice germ barrier on my hands.
Frankie smoothed a few spots on our dresses and then handed us a sheet of paper from her clipboard. “Here are your stage instructions. Nothing too complicated. Any questions before I go?”
“Just one thing. Does Ryder come here often?” I was proud of myself for remembering to use his Society name. I’d meant to ask her about Tanner back in the hallway right after I asked ifshe was here a lot, but we’d gotten totally sidetracked by all that talk about the secret rooms.
“I meant questions about the instructions. Haven’t I told you that I’m not going to dish on Ryder?”
“But we’re getting kind of serious…”
“Really?”
She looked so freaking surprised. Which kind of answered my question of whether or not he was still banging tons of girls in the Society.Fricking frick!“Yes,” I said, trying not to sound deflated.
“Hmm. Okay. Come see me after the show and I’ll spill the tea. And believe me…there’sa lotof tea.”
“As in…he’s banged a lot of girls?”
Frankie laughed. “After the show. Gotta run!”
“Wait!”
She turned around.
