Read Online Swan Song by Tracey Ward - Free Book Online Page A

“It’s ‘ho, ho, ho.’”
    “Huh?”
    “What you said. It’s not ‘yo ho ho’. You sound like a pirate. Santa—“ I grit my teeth, closing my eyes for a second. “No. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. No Christmas music yet.”
    She’s not listening, her meager attention span already spent. She’s looking past me and grinning like a viper out into the darkened seating area. Either she’s nuts or she’s smiling at someone, and I thought the place was empty except for us. I squint into the shadows so I can see what she’s looking at.
    There’s a man sitting back perfectly shrouded in darkness as though he belongs there. Only the outline of his stocky frame is visible.
    Drew.
    My heart flies in my chest, but I fight to keep my excitement off my face. My sheer, unadulterated pleasure at him being here. Even with the way our last meeting ended, I’m aching to see him. To talk to him, laugh with him, dance with him, stand in a cold, filthy alley with him and feel the weight of his terrifying eyes boring down on me and challenging me. I can’t get the guy out of my head, out from under my skin, and it’s too bad because up until just now, I’d been fairly sure I would never see him again.
    “She’s right, angel,” the shadow speaks up.
    My stomach drops out in instant disappointment. It’s not him. It’s Hal watching his taste on the sly practicing her dance routine.
    The fact that my practice is being used as foreplay on top of my crushed hope makes me shaking angry. “Get out, Hal,” I say severely.
    “What?” he asks indignantly. “I sided with you!”
    “I don’t care. Get out. No spouses, no girlfriends, no boyfriends, no paying customers allowed at rehearsals. You know the rules. Beat it.”
    I hear him chuckle at my anger as he walks through the room toward the side door. He’s heading to the back where the guys are playing poker. That’s their rehearsal. Trading greasy, wrinkled, ripped pieces of green paper back and forth in exchange for lies and empty promises. The same money traded back and forth between the whores for their time and valiant efforts. The same money I get paid in.
    “I’ll come find ya when I’m done here, Daddy,” Clara calls after Hal.
    Her high pitched baby voice is grating on my nerves. She’s doing it on purpose, which only makes it worse. Some men like that childlike attitude, I guess. Personally, I want to slap her silly every time she talks, running around the club pouting at everybody and calling all the men ‘Daddy’.
    “Shut up and get in line, Clara,” I tell her curtly.
    She scowls at me. “You can’t talk to me like that.”
    “Can’t I?”
    “Hal!”
    “Do whatever she says, Clara!” he shouts back, then disappears through the doorway.
    I grin at Clara. “You heard your daddy ,” I tell her, my voice saccharine sweet. “Get in line.”
    She continues to scowl at me, but she goes without protest.
    I get this a lot. Most of the girls working in the club are attached to a gangster in some way, shape, or form. It affords them certain rights. Certain status. As the main attraction of the Cotton Club here in Cicero, I have a certain status all my own. One I earned by myself that doesn’t depend on anyone else. Really what these girls are doing is riding the coattails of power trailing from these men.
    Not me. I own my own status. I’m afforded my own set of rights. I’m a rare female power and sometimes people forget that. Sometimes they have to be reminded.
    “Alright, let’s take it from the to—“
    “Adrian!” Tommy shouts, bursting into the room and making my headache spike.
    I groan inside. This rehearsal will never be allowed to start meaning it will never end and I’ll eventually die on this stage of either agony or old age. “Yeah, Tommy, what?”
    “I got a new girl for ya.”
    He holds open the door for a young woman behind him. She’s looking around nervously like a kitten that wandered into a stranger’s home and