Dangerous Creatures(28)

Rid had been excited about an opening billed as a COUTURE RETAIL EXPERIENCE—until it turned out to be at Connie’s Cat Couture. Maybe Lucille Ball would be fine with it, but Ridley couldn’t stand the thought of being a Cat Couturier. The owner had suggested that Ridley stop by to let Connie the Cat “sniff you and lick you and just love you until you get the hang of her.” Ridley had said she’d rather lick Connie the Cat herself than do any of the above. The owner had told her where she could stick that mouthful of fur, and the conversation had ended pretty abruptly after that.

By the time Rid got the hang of it, there was really only one gig left, and now she was standing on the sidewalk right in front of it.





The Brooklyn Blowout


It was a hair salon, but they didn’t call it that. This was supposed to be a party, or as the brochure said, a “Hair Experience.”

Ridley wouldn’t be a stylist. She’d be a Dry Girl, which as far as she could tell was like a Fly Girl, but with a hair dryer.

“You got this, right?” Necro looked through the stenciled glass, where a row of teased, painted, primped, polished Dry Girls were brandishing not only hair dryers and curling irons but straightening irons and hot rollers, as if they were weapons. “How hard could it be?”

Ridley would have preferred actual weapons.

Necro touched her blue spiky faux-hawk nervously. “I’d better get out of here before they drag me inside and make me look like Taylor Swift.” She began to back away down the sidewalk.

“Necro,” Ridley called after her, on an impulse.

“Yeah?” Necro didn’t look back.

“I thought you hated me. Why are you being so nice?”

Necro turned. “For the record, I do hate you. If you say otherwise to anyone, I’ll kick your butt. I’m only here to get out of sound check, which I hate even more than I do you.” Then she smiled in spite of herself.

“Right.” Ridley smiled back. She turned to face the glass front door.

“Don’t go soft on me, Siren,” Necro called from safely down the street.

“Never,” Ridley said as she went inside.



“Are you telling me I have to put my hands in that?” In the shampoo room, Ridley stood at a row of six sinks, pointing like she’d just seen a snake crawl up and out of the drain. Ten feet away from her, a woman with coarse peroxide curls and dark black roots lay with her head tilted back, into sink number six.

“Her hair?” Delia, the Blowout manager, looked amused. “Yes.”

Ridley sighed. Being a regular person wasn’t starting off well. She had taken the Mortal subway here, and the whole way she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her.

Again.

Maybe that’s what Mortals are like. Maybe they really are just always watching each other.

But Ridley had seen a man standing stock-still on the platform at Broadway Junction, grinning at her through the closing car doors.

Sirens didn’t spook easily, but New York public transportation had proved to be up to the challenge.

Rid shook off the memory and glared back at the waiting customer.

“I’m sorry. Did you mean I had to touch it?” Ridley looked like she was going to be sick. “The skin parts?”

“Her head?” Delia started to laugh. The laughter didn’t make her seem nice, though. She was completely tattooed and wearing a tank top, so the overall effect was more intimidating than even a manager probably needed to be.

“With my bare hands?” Ridley took a step back.

“Have you ever worked in a salon before, Riley?” Now Delia started to look irritated.

“Ridley,” Ridley corrected her.

“Well?” Delia didn’t really seem to care what Ridley’s name was.

Mortals have no manners, Ridley thought. They’re all so rough around the edges.

“Yes,” Ridley lied. “All the time. I just never worked on heads.”

“No heads?”

“That’s right. I worked on—” Ridley tried to think of a less hairy place on the Mortal body. Hair was just so disgusting. She didn’t know why she’d thought she could do this job. Her hair styled itself with the flick of her wrist, like it always had. Another Siren perk. “Feet. I worked on feet. And knees. And elbows. The occasional calf, but only the really smooth ones.”

“Is this one of those shows where the movie star comes out and says it’s a joke?” Delia looked around the shop tiredly.

“Does that happen?” Ridley felt interested for the first time that afternoon.

“You tell me,” Delia said.

She stood there until Ridley walked back to the sink and put not one but two hands into the disgustingly hairy, greasy scalp of a complete stranger and scrubbed. It was horrific, but at least Delia left her alone after that.

When the woman in the chair leaned her head back, Ridley could see up her nose. She yanked harder on the woman’s hair. Let’s just get this over with already.

“Ow! Not so hard!”

“Beauty is pain,” Ridley said.

“You’re a pain,” the woman said, sitting up.

“Well, you’re no beauty.”

“I need to see the manager,” the woman said.