Pale Carnations -ch. 4 Update 4- -mutt Jeff- ... -

Jeff finally stopped shuffling. He fanned the cards—a perfect spread of kings and sevens, all dead hands—and then scooped them into a single pile. “Pretty thing, ain’t she? Bit of a screamer, though. Not the fun kind. The legal kind.”

I picked up the photograph and slid it back into my pocket. “The club wants her ready for the main event. No more ‘private exhibitions.’”

The door closed behind me, and the hallway smelled of bleach and roses. Somewhere deeper in the club, a piano struck up a lazy, familiar tune. And beneath it, just barely, I could hear the sound of someone crying—not loud, not desperate. Just the quiet, practiced sob of someone who’d already folded. Pale Carnations -Ch. 4 Update 4- -Mutt Jeff- ...

“Club wants a lot of things.” Jeff stood, slow, his joints popping like distant gunfire. He loomed, not tall, but wide—a bulldog in a stained vest. “But you tell them this: Mutt Jeff delivers what he’s paid for. And what he ain’t paid for stays in the back room. Under the floorboards.”

I didn’t move.

I reached out, slow, and drew from the middle. The Queen of Hearts. Her painted smile was the same as the girl’s in the photograph. The same hollow fold.

He tilted his head, and a grin cracked his face like dry earth. “You here to threaten me, or to ask me how I train ‘em for that round?” Jeff finally stopped shuffling

“The kind that gets a venue shut down,” I replied.