Page 71 of Flirting with Darkness

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DARINA

Even I know better than to venture into the basement.

I’m not what one would call careful. My sister says if there’s trouble within thirty miles, I find it—or it finds me, not sure which way it goes.

I’ve always gravitated toward dangerous paths. In my younger days, I was the kid who skated over stair ramps, the girl who smoked weed on the bad boy’s lap.

I’m not dumb. What I am isreckless.

I’ve never seen the point of living a safe, straitlaced life like my sister. Scarlett has been dating the same guy since high school, studied economics, and became an accountant like our father.

I like to enjoy myself, hence why I have taken to hanging out at Night Hall.

The club was built into an opulent mansion in Pacific Heights. I ought to be too poor for it, but I scored an invitation almost a year ago, and the owner took a liking to me. Well, Eochan takes a liking to many twenty-something girls with firm tits. As a businessman, he appreciates that clubs need women like me: pretty, young ones who dance like there’s no tomorrow for hours on end and come back every week.

The delicious cocktails—which are free to me—the hot clientele, and unbelievably sexy atmosphere made Night Hall my regular haunt for the last few months. Plus, I can’t exactly afford to let loose in common venues, and risk running into one of my students while I’m climbing over a stranger to the rhythm of the dj’s beat.

I love this place. It calls to my blood like nowhere else. My weeks meld together, day after day blending in dull monotony, until I get to come here.

I dragged Scarlett to the club once, when Mr. Boring was visiting his parents. She doesn’t get it. My sister and I are fire and water, yet another reminder that though I bear her name and somehow resemble her, one of us was adopted.

As I spy a girl strutting from the staircase leading down to the basement, I bite back a grin. She looks weak. So weak she’s holding on to the railing for dear life, her legs shaking more than a newborn fawn’s.

I don’t miss the faraway look in her eyes, like she’s half dreaming—or very high. Her skin seems clammy, and her red dress is askew, as though she put it back on in a rush.

She was very well fucked.

When they walk down those flights of stairs, they’re completely sober, but everyone I’ve ever seen coming back up from the basement looks exactly like her.

Iamcurious, of course, but I’m not stupid enough to ask—or seek to find out for myself—what goes on under the club. For one, I don’t do hard drugs, and if what happens down there is clean, my name is Madonna. Also, the clientele of Night Hall is filthy rich, to judge by their clothing, their jewelry, their simplepresence. But the men and women exiting the basement? All of them look, well, like me. Normal. If they shop at Nordstrom, it’s in the bargain section. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the deal is, and I’m no prostitute. When I fuck, it’s because I want to.

I rarely want to these days. I’m getting too fussy. The clean-cut type I hang out with at work does nothing for me. The men I dance with here are hot enough, but at twenty-four, I’m getting too old to drop my panties and bend over in the bathroom.

Maybe Scarlett had the right idea, hanging on to the quarterback who popped her cherry. At least she won’t end up alone with thirteen cats—and that seems to be where my path is leading.

“Darina!”

I grin up to a slender, ridiculously hot dark-skinned man with a full head of sleek silver hair—a stylistic choice, as he’s in his late twenties at most.

“Eochan!” I yell back over the music. “Where’s Cissa?”

His partner—an adorable, pint-sized pink-haired beauty, even shorter than me—is never far away.

He grins at his fiancée’s name. “Taking care of a situation downstairs.”

I don’t ask, and he doesn’t expound.

“Have you grabbed a drink yet?”

I shake my head. “I just got here.”

The Philharmonics orchestra has a new, younger conductor, and he has something to prove at his first concert. He had us rehearsing again and again, without breaks. Then I had papers to grade, as I’m professor Harwick’s TA this term. The man is known for doing as little work as possible.

I’m stretching myself thin in terms of workload, while all the while not truly challenging myself on an intellectual level. Music and academics have always come easy to me.

“Remember, your money’s no good here, yes? The new bartender knows, just introduce yourself if you’re served by him.”

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