I said Kitty changed the place after Dave left. I never said she made it classy.

“—and now, my beloved guests, if you would put your hands together for our sweet sugarplums, our cancan belles, our Freakshow dancers, the Scarionettes!” Kitty finished our introduction with a flourish, her heels hitting the floor with gunshot precision as she walked off the main stage half a step ahead of the opening curtain. Floodlights splashed down from the rafters, revealing eleven dancers in corsets and short ruffled skirts, all frozen in perfect clockwork doll poses as we waited for the music to begin.

The tapping of an unseen conductor’s baton echoed from the speakers, catching the attention of those patrons who had learned to ignore Kitty’s posturing in favor of sucking down cocktails while they waited for the floorshow to begin. Then Emilie Autumn’s “I Know Where You Sleep” blasted out, and we started to dance.

Kitty was being generous when she called the floorshow’s first number a “cancan.” I’ve danced the cancan, although never professionally, and while it does involve a lot of girls hiking their skirts to heaven, they’re usually doing it wearing outfits that look less like they came from the remainder bin at Hot Topic. Still, it was athletic, enthusiastic, and involved cute girls in high heels and corsets bouncing up and down for five minutes without stopping for air, which was more than sufficient for our clientele.

We whirled and spun around the stage, kicking, prancing, thrusting our chests out, and somehow managing to look like we were both classier and naughtier than your average stripper. A lot of the credit for that goes to my choreography, if I do say so myself. My specialty is Latin ballroom, which is all about pouring a whole lot of sexy into a very small amount of suggestive.

Off to one side of the stage, a chorus girl was deviating from the routine to snatch dollar bills from a leering man in a baseball jersey. Okay, so maybe the transition from stripper to dancer was still a work in process for some of my coworkers. I was happy to work with them as much as I had to, since failure might mean going back to cocktail waitressing. Any amount of coaching our slower learners was worth it if it meant I could avoid that particular fate. Even if I had to do my coaching in a corset.

The nicest thing about working in a bar with aspirations of growing up to be a burlesque joint: I might have to shake my tail feathers if I wanted to bring home a paycheck, but the rotation of the acts and the solo numbers in-between meant that I was only on stage once every ninety minutes during the busy periods.

I congratulated the rest of the chorus as they stampeded off the stage, narrowly avoiding the snake dancer who was shoving her way up the backstage steps with a large wicker basket in her arms. The basket hissed companionably as it passed me. I hissed back, trying to keep my tone respectful. It never pays to piss off a wadjet.

The main room was packed with bodies by the time I stripped off my chorus girl outfit—trading it for a much more demure lacy blouse-and-petticoat combination, and yes, moments like that are the only times when I miss the tacky little uniforms Dave used to make us wear—and pushed my way out of the dressing room into the crowd. A few men leered in my direction, but none of them made a move toward me. Proof that men of any sentient species can be taught.

Also proof that having a bad-ass tanuki bouncer who sometimes fills in behind the bar can work wonders for the female employees of a place like the Freakshow. I waded my way through bodies to the bar, where luck, timing, and the willingness to cut people off won me an open stool. The man I’d ducked under to get the seat glared at me. I flashed a bright smile and blew him a kiss, then turned my attention to the bartender currently mixing drinks for my side of the room.

“Ryan, I require something so horrifically alcoholic that it makes livers tremble with fear and run for their lives when its name is uttered,” I said solemnly.

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Or I could get you a martini glass filled with club soda and garnished with something that makes it look like you’re actually drinking liquor for a change. That way when you left the bar, you might not fall off the nearest available rooftop.”

I grinned. “That sounds good. Let’s do that.”

“Why am I not surprised?” asked Ryan—but he was laughing as he said it, and he kept laughing as he moved to get me my drink. A woman bellied up to the bar next to me, giving his ass an appreciative look. Now, I’m happy to admit that Ryan has a fantastic rear end. He not only works out, he’s a therianthrope, a shapeshifter who gets his connection to the wild side through magic and genetics, not a curse-turned-infection. Plus, how many six-five half-Japanese hotties do you find on the street, even in Manhattan? Ryan was prime man-flesh on the hoof.

There was one small complication: “His girlfriend works here,” I informed the woman, blithely.

She turned the measuring look she’d been applying to Ryan’s ass on me, expression clearly telegraphing my failure to live up to whatever rating system she was using. “Oh, really?”

“Yes, really,” I said, stung. I may be short, but five-two is a respectable height, and I don’t have any unpleasant birth defects, or share my little sister’s taste in clothes. I’m a natural blonde, even though my particular line of work means I have to keep my hair cut Mia Farrow-short, and spending three hours a day at dance practice has guaranteed me the kind of figure that stops salsa judges in their tracks. Sure, I was covered in glitter and wearing what looked like Victorian underwear, but there are a lot of men who’d find that a plus. Ryan among them: Istas believes in glitter and petticoats the way some people believe in God.

The woman sniffed. “I’ll take my chances.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Uh-huh.” There was a moment when I considered abandoning my efforts to warn her, but quite honestly, a little snottiness wasn’t enough to earn her a broken arm. Maybe a sprain or something. “I’m not the girlfriend in question. She is.” I indicated Istas, who was bussing tables on the other side of the room. She was dressed in her gothic Lolita best, a fashion statement that didn’t stand out nearly as much as it used to now that the whole club was done in steampunk-meets-Hot Topic circus style. “Just a friendly warning. She’s the jealous type.”

“She should be,” said the woman, giving Ryan’s ass one more approving glance. Then, with a final sneering look at me, she turned and blended back into the crowd.