@flamesofavernus || plotted starter
Dust settled easy during rainy days, turning boulevards into strips of reflected neons while steam billowed up from the cooling asphalt in transient waves. It had a way of sanding down Los Angeles, bleeding traffic lights red and green into the city’s underbelly while skyscrapers reached for the clouds in their opulent magnificence, dotted with constellations of fancy windows.
All of them overpriced.
In one of the city’s brighter arteries was a place that one did not simply stumble into. It found you, chose you, weighed you and decided whether you belonged. Tonight, in specific, looked like a night of summons, vetted by a fellow whose watch alone cost more than a single man’s first apartment.
Now, Astaria shouldn’t have arrived unchaperoned, but perhaps the dress she’d swiped from her last victim’s mistress held a price tag high enough to pass for persuasive.
Weaving her way through the teeming place, Astaria managed herself a seat at the bar in a very nowhere-in-particular sort of place. Off to the side, practically swallowed by the crowd.
The air inside was heady with ozone from the storm, brand perfume and the faint smoke of something sweet and expensive curled in the atmosphere. Floor-to-ceiling windows held the night like a live picture show, overlooking this breathtaking view outside of swaying palm trees and the rise and fall of the surging tide. Plush seats curved into intimate alcoves, velvet the colour of sin, and ambers tinted skins in this gilded glow.
When the strobing lights dimmed and the booming music fell into silence, all heads were drawn to the stage where a single spotlight invited the attention. Slow, smouldering blues began to play, the humdrum of voices barely rose above the music until it quieted.
Bated breaths, clean stage, a pole and a cage.
This wasn’t just any night club owned by some highborn fellow with more cash than sense to his name.
Astaria found herself in a strip club.
