Darling - K. Ancrum Page 0,42

give me orders anymore.”

“Fine,” Peter snapped, finally addressing her directly. “Do what you want. Just keep Darling safe and hidden. So fucking stubborn.” He tossed the compact back on the vanity as all the drag queens watched in scandalized silence.

Peter pointed at the door. Curly reached over and patted Wendy on the shoulder one last time and then followed Nibs out into the restaurant. Tinkerbelle squeezed Ominotago’s hand and glanced up at Peter with a blank look that Wendy finally understood was fear, before following his instructions, as well.

Peter pulled another card out of thin air and handed it to the queen whose makeup he’d taken. “Thank you for letting me use your things, sweetheart. I’m sorry for not asking beforehand,” he said in the gentle voice Wendy hadn’t heard since he was hugging her after her kidnapping. “If you bring this to Elim Wig and Beauty and hand it to the cashier, he’ll let you take one thing from the store for free. Any price, any grade of hair, all for you.”

Just like Wendy had, the queen melted, and then she took the card from Peter.

“He’s good for it, too,” the queen wearing the feathered tights said as she ringed her eyes in iridescent green-and-blue shadow. She had spent the entire interaction focused on her costume, while the other drag queens had been watching the children hash out the details of avoiding the detective.

Peter wove in between the other queens to reach the corner where the queen in feathered tights was sitting. He pressed a quick kiss to the side of her face, over the feathers she had glued down. “Good luck tonight, Bella. I’ll be watching you,” he said sweetly.

Peter spared one more irritated glance at Ominotago before following Nibs, Curly, and Tinkerbelle out into the restaurant.

The instant he was out of the room, one of the waitresses who had stripped down entirely to street clothes crammed a baseball cap over his short hair and declared, “I do not like him at all.”

“I don’t, either, girl,” the drag queen in gingham scoffed. “He gives me the creeps.”

“He’s not all bad,” the queen named Bella said. “He tips crazy well, and if you’re nice to him, he brings you gifts.”

“I don’t need gifts from that man,” the waitress replied, raising an eyebrow and cocking his hip. “I buy my own shit. See you bitches tomorrow.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder, rolled up one leg of his pants, and clipped it so it wouldn’t get in the way of his bike chain. “Your makeup is fucked up,” he said to Wendy on his way out the door. “Dorothy will give you a hand.”

Wendy looked over to the vanity.

The drag queen in gingham—Dorothy—waved a hand, so Wendy went to go sit next to her.

Ominotago pulled out a chair and settled into it, looking at her watch. “I’m giving this about twenty minutes before I check on the other guys. I’m not leaving them in some stranger’s kitchen.”

“Were you crying, darling?” Dorothy asked, with a generous amount of sarcasm.

Wendy started for a moment before realizing “darling” was just being used as an endearment; this person didn’t know Peter’s nickname for her or that it was her last name.

“I’ve had a hard night,” Wendy said quietly. “You don’t have to help me with this or anything. I don’t want to get in the way of you getting ready.”

Dorothy threw her head back and laughed, showing a gold tooth in the back of her mouth. “Oh, I like this one. She’s polite.”

Up close Wendy could see the cracks in the plaster. Dorothy was older than Wendy had thought, and her makeup was significantly complex. Her face was pulled back with what looked like tape or pins of some kind and tucked into her wig cap. Her chin had to have been waxed to be this smooth this late at night. She had obvious highlighter dusted onto her cheekbones, but a much more subtle, expensive looking highlighter smoothed over the bridge of her nose, onto the sides of her jaw, and over her clavicle. Her lipstick was three different shades from the same color family layered from dark to light, creating the illusion of much fuller lips. It was like seeing a pointillism painting from a distance and knowing it was made up of dots, then leaning in close and realizing the dots were actually Rubik’s Cubes, painstakingly arranged to form a much larger picture. Wendy was impressed.

“I like this one better,” said