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As I approached my car, half bathed in misty lamplight, I saw a male figure off to my right, sauntering in my direction. An adrenal surge shot through my body. It was possible I knew the guy, but it was just as possible I didn’t. I casually pulled my keychain out of my jacket pocket and fit the tip of my index finger to the tube of personal-protection spray that dangled there. A gay man could never be too careful. Especially at night. Most especially around places that served alcohol.

The dark figure continued to stroll toward me. I walked more briskly and kept my peripheral vision trained on him. My breathing was sharp and shallow now. The flee-or-fight moment had almost arrived.

And then I heard a surprisingly mellow “Hello. I hope I didn’t scare you.”

My head jerked to the right as my hand tightened on the keychain. I stared.

Somewhere in the near distance, a drip-drip-drip of moisture matched the beating of my heart.

It was the tall man, the one I’d been looking for. One word came out of my mouth:

“You.” It sounded cracked in the middle.

“What about me?”

A car alarm went off at the far north end of the parking lot. The man’s gaze didn’t leave my face for a second.

“We had to come into town this weekend,” he said, maybe giving me a chance to gather my wits and find my voice. “Well, my husband had to. He’s working on a project for the university’s history department.” As relaxed as an old friend, he leaned against my car and smiled. “I came along because I figured you might want to talk to me.”

Shadows cast by a scraggly sapling shifted over the man’s striking features. His nose seemed to have been broken at least once. “What made you think that?” I asked, nearly mesmerized.

He smiled, creasing his cheeks. “You know why. What you
don’t
know is how much I sympathize with your concern.”

“How…how did you know where to find me? You don’t even know my name.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He took a step forward and extended his hand. “We never did introduce ourselves. I’m Jackson Spey.”

Only vaguely did I realize he hadn’t answered my question. I took his hand—it was large and cool and slightly rough, like the rest of him—and, as his grip tightened, a tremor crawled up my arm. Softly, my breath caught.

“David Ocho,” I managed to say. “What did you do to my friends?”

There. The question was out. No preface, no delicate snuffling around to get a better sense of him, no careful broaching of subjects like voodoo and witchcraft. I simply, suddenly, certainly knew he’d somehow engineered what had befallen the Hunt Club.

“What is it you think I did?” Jackson leaned against my car again, hands in pockets and long legs crossed, as a breeze stirred his hair.

Briefly, my eyes moved up to it. He had remarkably pretty hair for such an intimidating man with such a husky voice. It was wavy and collar-length, with subtle, variegated highlights running through the dominant bronze-brown.

“I think you—” I stopped myself. A good way to determine if he was in fact behind this would be to let
him
tell
me
what was wrong. “No,” I said. “I want to hear it from you.

For all I know, your being here tonight is nothing more than coincidence. Maybe you’ve seen my friends over the past month, or your husband has, and that’s how you know what’s going on with them. Maybe, when you spotted me, you decided to embark on some sick, vicious ego-trip by pretending you’re responsible for—”

“David,” Jackson said in a measured voice. After studying me for a moment, he slowly shook his head. “This isn’t a game. I haven’t seen your friends. Nobody I know has seen your friends.”

I fancied he was inviting the light to cling to his leather jacket, as if its soft gleam meant I should pay close attention to him. “Why should I believe you? I don’t know you from Adam.”

Sighing, he scratched at his forehead. “Because I’m telling the truth. I haven’t seen the rash. Nobody’s told me about it.” He slipped his hand back in his pocket. “But I know it’s there. And I know most people can’t see it. And I know who
can
see it.”

The concrete seemed to dissolve beneath my feet. I didn’t exactly feel dizzy, but my head felt more liquid than solid. “How?” I whispered.

“There’s no point in going into it. You wouldn’t understand. Not in the time we have. Contact a man named Helmut Auerbach if you’re genuinely interested. He lives here.”

“Then at least tell me why you did whatever the hell you did. And how it can be reversed.”

Jackson pursed his lips and stared at his feet as he tapped his boots together.

“Does it have to do with my friends hitting on your husband?”

One side of his mouth tilted, and he laughed inaudibly, his shoulders hitching. “No.

I’ve seen him hit on by men
and
women. He’s had to watch the same thing happen to me.

We’re more or less used to it.”

“More or less.”

He turned his eyes up to my face. “Yes. Depending on how aggressive the come-on is, how much disrespect is involved.”

“But surely you can both handle yourselves. Most people between nine and ninety have to deal with that kind of shit once in a while.”

“Of course we can handle ourselves. More to the point, nobody can come between us.”

“Then why did you react the way you did to Jake, Fallon, and Todd?”

Jackson studied me a moment. “Maybe I needed a cause. I’ve been ridiculously happy since last summer. It’s made me complacent. When I heard your friends verbally pissing on people, and then when they swarmed Adin, I decided it was time to spread some of my joy around.”

I craned toward him. “
Joy
? You’ve spread misery!” I clapped my hand to my forehead. Not just because I couldn’t believe what he’d said, but because I couldn’t believe I was giving this whole nutty business any credence whatsoever. There I was, standing in an ordinary strip-mall parking lot in flyover country, treating some rough-around-the-edges guy like a goddamned wonder-worker.

“Misery is an overstatement,” said the rough-cut guy named Jackson. “What’s afflicted those men doesn’t impede their daily functioning. They have no infection. They feel no pain. And only a handful of people can see what’s on their skin.” A smile, slow and broad and rather engaging, crossed his face. “If, that is, it’s really there.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off.

“Besides, everyone will benefit in the end. That’s my intention, anyway. That’s where the joy comes in.” He stood up from my car.

“But…you don’t get it,” I said, gaping at him. “They
are
miserable. They have to look in the mirror every day and see what amounts to third-degree burns staring back at them. They have to suffer the humiliation of men they find attractive treating them like freaks.”

His smile returned for a moment. “That depends entirely on whom they find attractive.”

I couldn’t be bothered trying to decipher more of his enigmatic bullshit. “Okay, listen. With all due respect, I just want this ordeal to be over with. Tell me how your…whatever the fuck it is can be undone.”

Jackson pulled his hands, and keys, from his pockets. “Kind of the same way Sleeping Beauty was awakened. Except your friends can’t be as passive as she was. I strongly suggest you keep that to yourself, by the way. If those men try to influence the outcome of this noble endeavor by second-guessing it, they could
really
mess things up for themselves.” Another, smaller smile appeared as Jackson said quite pleasantly, “It was nice to meet you, David. I have to go now. Adin and I are catching a movie tonight.”

“Wait!” I lightly grasped his arm as he turned away. The scuffed leather, which seemed to suit him perfectly, felt slick and feral beneath my fingers. I caught a whiff of its heady aroma. “Sleeping Beauty is a fairy tale. She was put to sleep through—”

Jackson lifted his keychain and lightly shook it. But I didn’t hear the sound of jingling keys. With a low chuckle, Jackson turned away and headed back across the parking lot.

All I’d heard was the faint, combined laughter of Jake, Fallon, and Todd.

Chapter Five

Screaming Mimi’s was more fun than a barrel of cabana boys. Then again, Fallon thought, maybe not. It was a different kind of fun.

Seeking out the shadows, he claimed a small table at the rear of the room. It probably wasn’t necessary—there was only one guy here who even remotely appealed to him, and that was the bouncer—but it didn’t hurt to take precautions. Besides, he didn’t want Tyler to see him.

As Fallon, along with Todd and Jake, had discovered last night, David Ocho’s wild theory wasn’t so wild after all. This much was now certain: Only the men they found attractive found
them
ugly. Nobody else so much as looked at them funny.

Fallon sat through both sets as he nursed two diluted drinks. Four queens each did two routines. There was enough variety in their performances to please the crowd, and the mostly-hetero couples were easy to please. Fal wondered if Tyler worked on the non-drag nights, which were devoted to other forms of entertainment—magic tricks, juggling and acrobatics, stand-up comedy—provided by men dressed up like women. But Tyler had never mentioned it.

His first song, the Nina Simone, was by most standards pathetically bad. Then Fallon realized that even as he shook his head in dismay, he was smiling. Other people were smiling too. It occurred to him Tyler’s boss might’ve hired and kept him on for just that reason: A muscular man trying to slink and strut around the stage in drag was, well,
amusing
. Tyler Burke provided comic relief.

“Tell Mama” was better. A lot better. Fallon watched in amazement and with growing pride as Ty immersed himself in the song and mimicked some of the moves he’d picked up from his coach. He still had all the grace of a buffalo in heat, but there was a spirited power in his performance—and, no doubt about it, a screwy kind of sex appeal.

This wasn’t a man who felt most naturally himself when he was glammed up for the stage. This was a man who loved being a man and was merely doing a job to the best of his ability.

When Tyler’s performance ended, a nicely built, nicely dressed thirty-something businessman-type hustled toward him as he headed for the backstage door. Fallon craned his neck to see what was going on. Within seconds, one of the bouncers was there too.

Some quiet negotiation took place. The audience member handed Ty something and returned to his table, where he apparently had been sitting alone. The bouncer quickly cupped Ty’s neck and went back to his station at the end of the bar. As he passed the lone man at the table, he cast the guy an unmistakably nasty look.

So, there was more evidence of Tyler’s benefit to the club: Some people saw irresistible sex appeal in a super-masculine guy tricked out as a woman.

Fallon settled back into his seat, troubled by the feeling that had just bit into him.

Jealousy.

* * * *

Nine-thirty. The Stage Right Academy had been open for an hour…but Tyler wasn’t there. Fallon had checked his appointment schedule before he’d left his apartment. It was part of his routine, and never had he erred in recording or checking the order of his clients for any given day. Today, Monday, Tyler Burke was supposed to receive Fallon’s undivided attention and expert guidance from nine to ten-thirty. Normally, he’d be coming out of the dressing room about now.

Fallon left Runway Room Two, jogged down two corridors to the entrance, and again checked the parking lot. Ty wasn’t there. As Fallon reentered the building, he pulled his cell from pants pocket to give Tyler another call.

“Fallon!”

Cursing, he wheeled back around the corner he’d just turned.

A tall man dressed in faded jeans and a simple blue V-neck sweater strode toward him. Fallon frowned, trying to place him. Not a friend or client or coworker, not somebody from the front office. He stood still, peering at the guy.

And soon noticed the vaguely familiar cap of wavy black hair, untrained by any product and stirred into charming disarray by the morning breeze, and then noticed the pearl-gray eyes ringed by dark lashes…and then saw the livid slash-mark of a scar.

“Tyler?”

Yeah, it was Tyler. And holy hell, he looked something like a dream come true. Lips still parted, Fallon stared.

Ty laid a hand on Fallon’s upper arm. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t call from home because I overslept—had some late fares last night—and when I got in the car, I realized I hadn’t charged my cell.”

“I didn’t recognize you at first.”

Ty lifted his arms as he glanced down at himself. “You told me to wear street clothes.” He uttered a tense laugh. “I suppose it
is
a pretty drastic change.”

“Yeah.” Fallon couldn’t stop ogling him, couldn’t ignore the fluttery feeling in his midsection. “Uh…you want to get started? Or would you rather reschedule?”

Indecisively, that dove-soft gaze moved over Fallon’s face. “I’d like to use what time I have left. If you don’t mind.”

“No! No, I don’t mind. You’re the boss.” Fallon not only felt relieved, he felt a bit giddy. “I was at Mimi’s on Saturday night,” he said as they walked to the runway room.

“Saw both your sets. The second one was really good, Ty.”

The compliment drew a blush. “All I did was apply what you taught me.” He glanced at Fallon. “How come you didn’t stop backstage to say hi? Were you with a date or something?”

“No, I was alone. I’m not seeing anyone right now.” Fallon opened the door to Runway Room Two and ushered Ty inside. Damn, he looked fine—dark and rugged and perfectly put together. Fallon found it hard to breathe. “I didn’t want you to know I was there because I didn’t want to make you self-conscious. And then there was something strange going on between you and a customer and one of the bouncers.”

They sat in a couple of chairs near the control-panel table. Ty, normally eager to get to work, didn’t mention practicing. Fallon didn’t push the issue. He was more than happy to spend their time this way.

Ty seemed uneasy. He repeatedly ran a hand over his right thigh. “Yeah, it
was
kind of awkward. That customer’s been hitting on me for the past three weeks. And Rick, the bouncer, seems to have a crush on me too.” He shot Fallon a nervous smile and immediately withdrew it.