Dangerous Creatures

CHAPTER 12 Hell on High Heels

Hey there, Hot Rod.”

Ridley used the term loosely, and for once, she wasn’t talking about Link, who was busily rehearsing imaginary drum solos back at the apartment.

She was talking to Nerd Warrior Nick.

At least, according to his name tag.

It had taken her two hours to find the nearest Nerdworld in Brooklyn, which was where Necro had told her to go for a fast, free job search. This particular Nerd Warrior, which was apparently what you called the inhabitants of Nerdworld, looked more Nerd than Warrior.

“Are you talking to me?” Nerd Warrior Nick swallowed, taking in Ridley’s red leather jumpsuit, head to toe. It was a serious eyeful. Rid smiled, satisfied. Score another point for robot-ninja-assassins.

Somewhere in Gatlin, the ladies of the DAR were turning over in their future plastic-flower-covered graves.

Ridley pointed at Nerd Warrior Nick’s chest with one long, red fingernail. “I need you to show me how to work this thing.”

“What thing?” He swallowed. Then he seemed to remember he was standing behind a long table full of the latest and greatest Nerdworld gadgets. “You mean, a tablet?”

Ridley nodded. “Yeah. The little square thing.”

“To be honest, it’s actually more of a rectangle.” Nick pushed his glasses up against his eyes.

“Are you kidding me?” She blinked at him. “Honey, if I say it’s a circle, it’s a circle. You got that?”

“Wh—what can I help you with? Seven-inch? Nine-inch? Memory upgrades? Are you in the market for a—”

Ridley sighed. “I’m thinking I might need a job.”

“Printing job?” He looked confused. “The tablet can wirelessly connect to almost any—”

“Nick.” Ridley shook her head, edging her way up onto the table until she was sitting all the way atop it, swinging her legs. “I’m talking about a job job.”

“Here?” He swallowed again.

“No, not here. Well, maybe. What is it you do here?”

“Fix computers and tablets and smartphones and—”

“And all the other little square things?”

“Rectangles.” She glared at him the moment he said the word, and he looked down, ashamed. “Yes.”

“No. This is a terrible job.”

“Well, actually—”

“For me,” Ridley said.

Nick looked relieved. “It’s not for everyone.”

Ridley thought about it. “I need something with a little glamour, a little style. Something exceptional. Something that only I could do. Something that would make everyone who ever met me—”

“Proud?”

Ridley looked at Nick like he was insane. “Hate me. In a fit of seething jealous rage.”

Nick stared at her. “Are you still talking to me?”

She smiled, tugging playfully on his incredibly short and unevenly cut hair. Nobody should pay for that haircut. There really wasn’t much to tug on. Still. She’d worked with less before. “Why don’t you fire up that little squ—rectangle of yours and find me what I’m looking for, Smarty-Pants?”

He was searching JOB EXCEPTIONAL GLAMOUR STYLE NEW YORK CITY before Ridley had to unwrap a single lollipop.

There was persuasion, and then there was Persuasion. Sometimes it was even more satisfying for Ridley to remember she didn’t need magic to be powerful.

She just needed red leather.

It felt good to be back in the game.

Nerd Warrior Nick had been a faithful soldier to the end, and now it was time for Ridley to cash in on his valiant Googling.

Even if that should be a made-up word.

“You don’t have to do this,” Necro said. She couldn’t even imagine going into a place like the one they were standing in front of.

“Yes, I do.” Ridley took a deep breath. “I can do this.”

Necro had been kind enough to walk Ridley to work, saying, “This I gotta see with my own eyes.” Now they both stared up at the sign over the door. Yesterday, it had seemed like the right thing to do. That was three phone interviews, one sleepless night, two pieces of pie—strawberry rhubarb and triple berry—and ten outfit changes ago.

Today, Rid wasn’t so sure.

Apparently, to get a job you needed to have had other jobs. It had taken Ridley a few phone calls until she figured out how to say the things people most wanted to hear, which was usually her specialty. She didn’t think of it as lying, not exactly. She thought of it more as charades. You had to pretend to be the kind of person who got jobs, to get a job. What was that jobbish-workery-going-on-elevators sort of person like?

Ridley learned everything the hard way. She learned that when people ask you to pick one word to describe yourself, you don’t say perfect. You also don’t say hot. After two misfires, Rid went with persuasive. While it didn’t exactly seem to persuade anyone, it wasn’t a conversation stopper, either.

Lesson learned.

She had also learned to apply for jobs Sirens could do in their sleep, for starters. She came close to getting a position as a SKILLED COSMETIC TECHNICIAN, but it turned out to be a gig applying makeup to corpses at a run-down funeral parlor in the Bronx, and Ridley had had enough close calls with the Otherworld as it was.

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.

“Crybaby.” Ridley threw her a towel. “Dry yourself off.”

The stupid cow of a woman stared at her.

“What?” Ridley snapped. “Do you need an invitation? You’re dripping water all over the floor.”

The woman shook her head, muttering, and began to towel off her wet hair.

“Back to the chair,” Ridley said. She tried to remember the lines she was supposed to recite as she took her client back to the Drying Chair, but she gave up. “Time for a hairy experience, lady.”

The woman made it to the chair and kept on going right out the door. It was a real bummer, because Ridley had to pay the store back for the blowout, which was almost forty bucks. She was going to lose money on this job if she didn’t figure something out, fast.

“Beauty is pain,” Delia said as Ridley cleaned up her station.

“Am I fired?” Ridley asked. She hoped the answer was yes.

“I haven’t decided.” Now Delia was back to looking amused.

It’s hard to keep up with her, Ridley thought.

“I really hated that lady. She’s been stiffing me on my tip for years,” Delia said. “And she does have one nasty scalp.” She started laughing to herself. “Hairy experience,” she said. Now she was spluttering so hard she was howling, even spitting a little around the edge of her mouth. At least Ridley couldn’t see up her nose.

Mortals really were nauseating.

Ridley didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry, but it didn’t matter. By the time she got home on the very Mortal L train, she’d done both.