his hands now grazing down her back, lower—
He didn’t react fast enough, didn’t seem to realize that the click in the forearm of her suit meant all was not well.
By the time the small needle punctured his neck, by the time he grunted in surprise, she’d leapt off him.
“You—” he started.
Stopped.
In the pure dark, she couldn’t see, but she could hear as his breath left him in a rush and his powerful body fell back onto the mattress. Unconscious.
Selina scooped up her helmet, setting it on her head but opting to keep the lenses away.
It had been an unspoken promise of trust—not to look.
So she didn’t. Even as she opened the bedroom window and vanished into the night.
Harley’s hideout in an abandoned underground subway station was precisely the sort of place Selina would have imagined for her: chaotic, colorful, and stocked with various weapons.
It seemed that the circus was the prevalent theme. Amid the various worn pieces of furniture were vibrant old posters of fire-eaters and tightrope walkers, strands of lights strung up across the vaulted stone space, and what seemed to be an old red-yellow-and-blue-striped tent canvas had been converted into a curtain to conceal a tiny bathroom in the far back of the round chamber.
Selina didn’t even know what she was doing here. It was past three, and they were likely asleep, but…She needed to talk. To someone. Anyone.
The thought of returning home to her apartment, to pacing across the immaculate floors for the remainder of the night, had been irritating enough that instead of heading north, she’d come here.
Ivy had answered thirty seconds after Selina knocked on the dented metal door.
Her red hair was up in a messy bun, black-rimmed glasses were perched on her pert, freckled nose, and an old sweatshirt with faded letters that read Plants Are People! dangled off one shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
Selina had leaned against the grimy doorframe. “Can’t a girl say hi?”
“At three-fifteen in the morning?” But Ivy beckoned her in, glancing around the dripping dark of the old train tunnel.
Selina surveyed the space again, noting the desk against one wall, full of piles of those little circus-ball bombs. Some were only half formed, left in pieces beneath a magnifying glass and light. On the desk chair, Harley’s bandolier of throwing knives draped to the floor.
“She’s certainly got the madcap villain’s lair down,” Selina observed.
“She views this as the ultimate form of self-expression.” Ivy waved a hand toward a vine-covered table shoved against a poster of a lion tamer. The table was covered in papers, books, and—plants. “That’s the only self-expression I’m allowed to have here,” she said, chuckling. “The only place Harley isn’t allowed to ‘decorate.’ ”
The plants shimmered and writhed under the sunlamps humming above them. “Your pets?”
“My friends,” Ivy said, padding over to the table and smiling at the seven potted plants. “Elizabeth, Emma, Fanny, Catherine, Anne, Marianne, and Elinor.”
Selina’s brows crossed beneath her helmet. “You named them after Austen heroines?”
Ivy beamed as bright as the twinkling lights strung overhead. “You’re my new favorite person. No one ever gets the reference—even Harley asked me what the hell I was talking about.”
Selina slid the lenses of her helmet up as she studied the seven plants. “I’m more of a Brontë girl.”
Ivy waved a hand. “Ugh, Mr. Rochester is gross. Darcy all the way.”
Selina grinned, nodding her concession. “Why are you up, anyway?”
Ivy pointed to the laptop half buried among the papers and books on the table. “Working.”
“Where’s Harley?” No sign of her in this underground circus.
Ivy slid into the swivel chair in front of the table and twirled around. “Don’t know. She left a few hours ago in a hurry. Hasn’t come back since.” Worry darkened her eyes. “But she does that a lot. I try not to pry.”
It seemed like Ivy never wanted to pry, to push Harley. Silence fell, and Ivy stared up at her. Waiting.
Selina blew out a breath. “I may or may not have made out with someone I shouldn’t have.”
Ivy grinned rather wickedly. “Oh, do tell.” Selina knew the woman was well aware of who it had been.
Selina paced across the worn, star-flecked blue carpet, past the three large mallets leaning against the red velvet fainting couch. “It just…happened. I don’t know.”
“Was it good?”
Selina sighed at the vaulted stone ceiling. “Yes. God, yes.”
Ivy scanned her from head to toe. “So you came here to tell me all the steamy details?”
“I came here…I don’t even know.” She glanced toward the metal door. “I should