The windows of The Yellow Rose were a light at the end of a tunnel. So many floating lanterns above a night horizon in what had once been the southern panhandle of the American state of Texas.

Buckeye Wheeler shifted her mail truck into second gear and cornered onto the dirt road that led her to the house of Lust. It was the last stop on her route for the night and her shoulders drooped in relief. The Rose had a solid reputation; she could probably even leave her pistol in the cab.

A guard shack sat to the left of the drive, but the man inside shot her a wave without bothering to stop her or even stand. Her truck was a familiar enough sight in this part of The Vice.

Hers wasn’t the only vehicle in the cleared lot next to the two-story Victorian. There were two meat-haulers, both armored, which meant their owners had money. The larger passenger sedan looked like it might even have solar.

Alongside the fancier transports was a pair of horses hitched to the bare-bones chassis of a truck, well over a hundred years old. Fat fenders and a smiling grille amid a patchwork of paint, but those were the sort that held up.

Buckeye rolled up next to three more horses—these saddled and tied up to a rail—and cut her engine. A man sat on the tailgate of the horse-drawn truck, the orange firefly of a lit cigarette buzzing around his face. She didn’t recognize him, but he gave her a nod when she stepped out into the night.

Her boot soles gritted hardpacked earth on the way to the double doors on the back of the mail truck. People might have called it a ‘panel delivery’ back in the day, but that would have been before the Delineation. Nostalgia from her grandparents’ time. Another world.

Four variously-sized envelopes and a thin square package about the length of her forearm made up the last of her deliveries for the next three days. The moon was rising over a dust cloud in the east—she was exceedingly late—but after this, Buckeye could take a day of rest before she had to head back to the post.

Louder music than usual bumped and hooted from The Rose, its security shutters rolled up, windows open to the starry sky and flat nothing of the surrounding land. Laughter and boozy song—and a variety of other sounds from the upstairs rooms—bubbled into the mix as she mounted warped wood steps to the wide, wraparound porch.

Functional LED lamps flanked the front entrance, which stood ajar behind a screen door to reveal a brightly-painted entry. Buckeye made an impressed face at all this: The Rose had to be doing even better than she’d thought for fancy shit like that.

She rapped on the aluminum door frame with her knuckles and called out in a carrying voice over the music, “Maggie! Maggie B!” Tiny moths battered the porchlights while she stood, waiting.

From deeper in the house, a feminine voice echoed in relay. “Mags! Mags! Someone’s at the door yellin’ for ya!” There was a muffled crash, and a round of swearing from some other person. Buckeye snorted amusement.

An interior door opened, flooding even more raucous noise out into the hall that ran alongside the stairs. A familiar form swung into view and hollered back into the room she’d just left.

“You’re gonna be yellin’ for me in about a minute!” the woman lobbed back. “And get your feet off that fuckin’ table! It’s about a jillion years old. It’s gonna turn to dust if you even look at it funny.”

Attention and brassy voice turned to the mail carrier hovering outside the door. “Hey! Bucks!” A grin split the woman’s face. “Didn’t think you were gonna make it tonight.”

Maggie Bone, right arm of The Yellow Rose, came to the front door and pushed it open. Buckeye stepped out of the way.

“Overheated south of Plume Wash. It was either wait it out or waste water. And that was at noon, so …” She shrugged, letting the obvious speak for itself. Pulled the package out from under her arm and paired it with the envelopes before handing the lot off to the other woman.

Maggie’s bosom threatened a full attack from over the top of a grommeted leather corset while she flipped through the mail, gleaning whatever she could without opening anything in front of Buckeye. Dark reddish-brown hair sat half atop the woman’s head, and half hanging in ringlets onto exposed shoulders, the kind of fussy style a person could only get away with working in a house of Lust.

Rest of us gotta get filthy.

Fancy hair and fuck-me clothes were just a distraction, though. An affect the woman enjoyed. Anyone smart enough to survive in this part of The Vice knew better than to try pulling an ounce of shit on Miss Maggie Bone. Plump curves concealed an armature of wrought iron and fucking barbed wire.

“So what’s all goin’ on tonight?” asked Buckeye, nodding to the din in the background.

“Oh, you ain’t heard?” Maggie looked up from the mail, brows lifted. “Rhoda’s retiring. This here’s my first night in charge of The Rose. We’re havin’ ourselves a little celebration.” The woman’s smile curled.

“Miss Rhoda’s hanging it up?”

“Yup,” said Maggie. “Decided she was too old and too tired. Gonna go live in New Francisco with her family. And I don’t know if you know this”—she tilted her head forward, conspiratorial—“but Rhoda’s kids own the fucking Poppy, so she’s gonna be sittin’ fat and happy for the rest of her life.”

Buckeye fairly gaped. There were houses of Sloth everywhere, but if money was no object, The Poppy served the best highs anywhere in the VT. At least according to its reputation.

“Well congratulations!” Buckeye said, thrusting out a hand. Maggie shifted her parcel to the other arm and they clasped palms, pumping a couple times up and down in festive warmth.

“Thanks!” Her smile was bright. “This your last stop? I hope?”

“It sure is.”

“You ain’t got anywhere else to be, why don’t you come on in?” Maggie said, stepping aside from the doorway. “Use the bathroom. Wash some of the road dust off you. Have a drink.” The last offer came with a glitter of mischief from green eyes.

Buckeye’s feet hurt from pushing pedals. Her ass hurt from sitting in that driver’s seat for hours. A clean face and a tall glass sounded real good right then. She looked over her shoulder at her truck. It was locked.

She nodded at the newest proprietor of The Yellow Rose. “Yeah, all right,” she said, twitching a grin of her own. “I think I will.”

“Some fine lookin’ ass here tonight,” Maggie said, leaning in as Buckeye closed the screen behind her. “You ain’t gotta work here to have yourself a good time, Bucks. Just sayin’.”

The woman slapped her on the rump and Buckeye laughed and headed for the powder room at the end of the hall.

An ancient light switch clacked on the wall, just inside the door of the little room, which Buckeye shut behind her. Two bulbs blinked to life, more luxury above a flaking mirror. She leaned her palms on the sink and turned her reflection this way and that.

Maggie hadn’t been suggesting a clean-up for no reason. Yellowish dust powdered her cheeks and forehead, the shoulders of her carrier shirt. Wind had blasted all the shorter strands of her hair loose from the tie that held it back, and it stood out from her face in a crazy dark brown fringe.

She cranked the cold tap just long enough to catch a handful of water to splash over her face. No call to let it run and take advantage of hospitality. Even the scant amount she allowed herself was a cool relief on her skin. She managed to rub most of the dirt away from her face and neck, and smoothed the wild hair back into place.

After an assessing frown in the mirror, Buckeye tugged the tie loose from her hair and stuffed it into the hip pocket of her britches. Fuck it. She didn’t have to work there to have a good time, did she? And Lust wasn’t her poison, anyway.

Maggie was thumping back down the stairs, sans mail, just as Buckeye re-entered the hall.

“Hey, there you are,” the other woman said. “Ready to forget about your route for a while?”

Buckeye grinned. “Sure am.”

The Vice’s newest madame pushed open the door into noise and gathered an arm around her mail carrier’s shoulders. They stepped into the parlor, and the woman rose up into her glory.

“Hey, you rowdy sons o’ bitches! Look who I found on our doorstep!”

Buckeye waved to the crowded room, a twang of nerves hitting her at the sight of so many. It had been a while since she’d been around a group this size.

“Bucks is gonna celebrate with us!” Maggie said. “Someone get her a drink!”

Cheers and raised glasses rippled around the room. A few of The Rose’s employees called out her name, including one man who boomed out, “Wheeler!” from behind a short bar in the back corner. She thought she remembered him being a hand, and not one of the rentbodies.

Maggie swiped a waiting glass from an end table and raised her voice again, jubilant.

“The vices always sell!” she cheered.

“The vices always sell!” More liquid salutes as the crowd chanted back The Vice Territories’ motto in a boisterous chorus.

The woman landed a couple more slaps on Buckeye’s shoulder, and then moved off again to play bawdy hostess. She was already pointing and making some crack to a john sitting with a blonde on his lap. His trick was trying to sneak a hand into his pants, and Buckeye got the impression he wasn’t ready to go on the clock just yet.

She shook her head and made her way across the room to the man behind the bar. He was already pulling out a glass, long dreadlocks falling in front of his shoulder as he did.

“Hey, Wheeler,” he said. “You finally let Miss Maggie drag you in here, eh?”

Buckeye was embarrassed she couldn’t remember the man’s name, but didn’t want to ask. “Yeah. Big news about Rhoda, huh? She deserves it, though. As many years as she put into this place.”

“And Maggie deserves it, too.” He nodded at the woman, who was leaning down, one foot on the edge of a chair, arms folded over a knee to talk to a man with a silver moustache. “You want a beer?”

“Please.”

She took in the other hands holding glasses in the crowd. Tabletops where more cups waited. The only way Maggie Bone was probably getting away with it was she didn’t appear to be selling the alcohol. Only serving it for a party, and even that could get you into a nebulous area with the enforcers. If she took a dime for it, the Gluttonous would be all over her. They didn’t start selling sex, and the Lustful didn’t start selling liquor. When all seven of the Vices avoided stepping on each other’s toes, everyone had a good time.

“Here you go.”

When Buckeye looked back, something about the several earrings in the man’s dark earlobe jarred her memory. His name was …

“Thanks, Cyrus.” She took the beer and raised the glass. Received a nod in return as he bent to rummage beneath the bar.

She stepped aside and found a wooden hutch about rib-high to lean on and sip her drink, back to the wall.

The parlor of The Yellow Rose maintained a high, rolling boil of lewd and lazy chaos. Tricks of all genders teased and laughed with johns. They bounced on knees, massaged shoulders, copped indiscreet feels.

An ancient record player—the sort that had a crank to keep it wound and an enormous floral bell, worth a small fortune—spun out something old-timey and swinging, from the early 2020s, if Buckeye had to guess. Some of the last recorded music, probably, but The Rose had an old-fashioned vibe about it, so it still managed to fit.

She took another deep swallow of beer, and by god did it taste better than road dust. Her head began to nod to the beat. Watching other people cut loose had some of the tension leaking out of her.

A petite woman wearing what looked very much like a cleverly-arranged—and scant—configuration of grommeted seat belts stood from the arm of an upholstered chair. She grinned at the man sitting there and offered her hand, which he took and got to his feet. His eyes bounced with the cheeks of her ass as she hauled his hand over her shoulder and led him up a staircase on the exterior wall.

Buckeye had never been in The Rose’s parlor but, judging by the bannistered mezzanine lined with doors above everyone’s heads on the back wall, these stairs led to the rooms where the business of the house went on. The muffled thumping she could hear during pauses in the music was probably also a clue. She sipped from her glass again, working to hide the hint of red coming to her face.

Just because this was The Vice didn’t mean she’d been a patron of every sort of house. Buckeye had found time for a man or three over the years, but Houses of Risk were more her speed. Fucking was way less of a thrill, for her, at least. She winced at the thought of her empty purse out in the truck, useless to anyone but her.

“Hey there, Postie.”

Buckeye’s jaw tightened at the slang. And at the man who’d slid alongside her.

“Skinner.” She drank, avoiding his eyes.

“Aww, you don’t have to be formal,” he said. “Call me Leo.”

She tucked the arm not holding her glass across her chest, not even about to get familiar with Leopold Skinner.

Tall, dark, and oily, he was the likely reason Maggie was getting away with serving booze at all. The man was way too suave and sleek looking for the VT. His was the kind of face dumb young people sighed over until they got to know him better. He was the regional enforcer for The Gluttonous.

He was also Maggie’s beau.

What the boisterous, friendly woman saw in him other than the smoldering face was beyond Buckeye. And how the two had arranged it, considering Maggie Bone had been an employee of The Rose until now, with other cocks to warm, was also a mystery.

“You don’t seem like you’re enjoying yourself yet,” he said, ignoring the bristly expression she’d pointed at him.

“I was.” She wedged into the corner between the wall and the hutch, glaring Maggie’s way as though the other woman would feel the burn of her eyes, turn her head, and see what Skinner was up to.

The man leaned on the wall next to her. His next words came lower, closer. “I can think of about, hmm … three things that would make your night better.” A knuckle grazed her folded arm, just above the elbow.

Buckeye jerked back to slap him.

“Leo!” Maggie’s voice disintegrated their confrontation. Her call carried from across the room. “C’mere and tell Brother Caleb what happened to you in the Vegas ruins last year!”

The man flowed away from the wall, and Buckeye, as though nothing had happened. Slid with a Devil’s smile toward the seated Covvie Maggie was trying to entertain.

Buckeye sneered at the whole thing. Miss Bone, sadly oblivious. Skinner, a snake in snake’s clothing. And the fucking Covvie sprawled on a tufted couch, a pretty rentboy nuzzling his ear.

Hypocrites. People from New Covenant demonized everyone in The Vice Territories. Called them all ‘sinners’. But boy did they scurry under the wall like a bunch of rats in the night, popping up in every House, just as eager for good times as any normal person. What this ‘Brother Caleb’ would be doing with that cute, shirtless trick later was ten kinds of illegal in the shiny, clean nightmare back East. The clergy were the worst. He would go back and pretend he’d never even heard of The Rose. Call all the Vicers animals and perverts.

A single, wooden chair opened up next to the stairs, still far enough away from Skinner, and Buckeye shoved herself out of the corner to commandeer it. She set her glass on a tiny end table within arm’s reach. Blinked when a half-naked ass landed on her lap.

“Hey, Bucks,” the redhead drawled, leaning in to smack a kiss on her temple.

“Hey, Scylla,” Buckeye answered back with an even more knowing tone. The curvy woman flirted without mercy—or subtlety—every time she happened to be the one answering the door when Buckeye showed up with mail.

The postal carrier let her arms slip around the corset-drawn waist and locked her grip at the wrist. One of these days she’d work up the courage to accept one of Scylla’s relentless offers to go upstairs. Find out if all the rumors about women and tongues were true. Tonight she could just be friendly and enjoy the soft flesh leaning back on her shoulder.

“See, I got you this much closer to the stairs.” The woman teased fingers through Buckeye’s hair with a smirk.

“That’s only because this seat is the furthest from Skinner right now.”

Brother Caleb laughed, a nasal sound, and drew their eyes. Scylla made a small hiss of derision. “Fucking Skinner.”

“I don’t know what she sees in him,” said Buckeye.

“Must be something. Mags always has a reason.”

“She gonna be a good boss, you think?” Buckeye looked at the side of the woman’s face, heart shaped and sorely tempting.

“I think so.” They watched Maggie B slap her palms together, punctuating some joke at which she cackled just as loud as any of her audience. “Miss Rhoda knew what she was doin’. I’m sure she picked right.”

A man stepped past the new madame, heading toward the bar, possibly one of the johns. He didn’t need to pay for it. Not with those shoulders, that scruff of dirty blond stubble. Blue eyes that could stop a truck. But some people had certain things they wanted. Places like The Yellow Rose had all those things.

He caught her staring and cocked a smile.

“He’s lookin’ at you.” Scylla wriggled with mischief. Grabbed up one of Buckeye’s hands and smashed it to her breast. Arched her back with a snicker for the good-looking stranger.

The man chuckled and turned to Cyrus. Asked for a beer of his own.

“You’re a pain in my ass,” Buckeye said, dragging her hand away from a freckled tit and giving the trick a playful jostle of her knee.

The woman giggled, a throaty sound, and leaned in to whisper. “I’ll get you up to my room one of these days, Buckeye Wheeler. And when I do, you’re gonna come so hard for me all the envelopes in your truck’ll come unglued.”

With a nip of teeth at Buckeye’s ear, Scylla lifted herself up and sauntered toward the bar, hips switching to break necks as she went to chat up Mr. Handsome. The mail carrier downed another healthy swig of her drink and shook her head to clear out about a hundred images.

“Maggie!”

Buckeye swiveled in the direction of the holler to see a dark-haired woman’s upper half angling out of the furthest door on the mezzanine. She wore a choker made of antique can pull tabs laced through with leather, but was otherwise topless.

“Mags!”

The madame held up a hand to pause conversation with the Covvie, yelling like everyone else over the music. “Yeah, Dayrene?”

“Can you come up here, please?”

“What do you need?”

“I need you to come up here.” It was a sing-song series of words that rose at the end. Whatever was going on, Dayrene didn’t want to talk about it in front of the crowd.

Maggie gave a tiny head shake and eye roll, and then said something quiet that made the Covvie laugh. When she rounded the end of the bannister to head upstairs, the woman gave Buckeye a couple whacks on the shoulder.

“Good to see you takin’ a load off, Bucks.”

The owner of The Rose thumped up the stairs just as a new song changed up the beat. A few of the tricks exclaimed at what must have been a familiar favorite and, right away, three of them leaped up to dance. Two managed to pull their johns into the open center of the room, and Buckeye smiled to see who knew what they were doing and who was just going along with it.

She didn’t know this song, but the hook of it ground in a sultry way. The lustworkers took full advantage of an opportunity to sell; hips rolling and backs arching everywhere. Against their partners, against each other. Solo and beckoning to a reluctant and still-sitting companion.

“You don’t work here, do you?”

Buckeye sucked in a breath. Dragged her eyes up tan trousers and a shirt about as white as shirts got in this dusty part of the world. Mr. Handsome had materialized to the left of her chair while she’d been paying attention to the dancers.

“I sure don’t.” She grabbed her glass and swallowed down the last of her beer, anything to keep her from sitting there staring at him like an idiot.

“Good.” He quirked a smile down at her and pulled a hand out of his pocket. Offered it, palm up. “Dance with me?”

The urge to reiterate that she did not work there rose up, but Buckeye stomped it down. He’d heard her plain as day.

Shit, Wheeler. Ain’t every day attractive men want to put their hands on you. Not with your job.

If there was any nonsense showing on his face, she couldn’t find any. “All right.” Buckeye took the hand and stood. “I warn you now, though, I’m not that great at it.”

“I bet you’re fine.” Because, of course, he was reassuring as well as edible.

He tugged her by the arm in among the others and whirled her close. Her left arm ended up folded over her middle, fingers laced with his right hand, and her back to his chest. The man wasted no time dipping into the rhythm, and with his arm wrapped around her this way, Buckeye could only follow and try not to step on his boots.

She was sure eyes were on her, even though they weren’t. There were barely-dressed rentbodies all over the room; no one would look twice at a mail carrier in a plain shirt and britches. Her cheeks were heating anyway, though, with moving hips at her backside and the scent of male goodness curling in around her shoulders.

Just before the threshold of awkward, he let go and spun her out to the length of his extended arm. Pulled again and let the momentum carry her back to face him. Now the one arm was around her waist, the other dangling at his side. Respectful: he wasn’t trying to cage her. She didn’t mind when their thighs dovetailed together.

Blue eyes were almost too much to look at, but their mirth was contagious.

“I’m Buckeye,” she said as they moved. “And I’m not going to run around here calling you ‘Mr. Handsome’ all night. What’s your name?”

He grinned at her. “August. But I don’t mind ‘Mr. Handsome’ too much.”

Her face was hot until the end of the song. The tune that followed was something slow, and Buckeye was not ready for that with this man, dimpled smile be damned.

“I, uh … I think I’m gonna see if Cyrus’ll let me have another beer,” she said, untangling herself from his arm.

“Well thanks for the dance. Buckeye.” His eyes glinted amusement as she slipped away to the bar.

He’d made her name sound like a suggestion. Something way more at home in The Yellow Rose than she was. She wasn’t even that thirsty, there just needed to be some space between her and impulsive decisions.

Cyrus gave her a knowing smirk, mopping a rag among his array of bottles as she got close. “Makin’ friends, Bucks?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m makin’. What’s this guy doin’ if he ain’t here to see a trick?” And then, because she didn’t want to look like a liar, she nodded at an upturned glass. “Can I get one more?”

Even with the windows open, Miss Maggie’s parlor had grown too hot for her liking. Buckeye took her drink and slipped back through the door to the entry hall, out onto the porch without anyone paying her any mind.

She leaned on the porch railing and her eyes went to the sky.

The old song always came to her when she stared up into the glittering black. Some line about stars being big and bright, back when there was a Texas. Her father had told her the dense cluster of lights was called the Milky Way. The dust wasn’t blowing right now, and Buckeye could see it clear, and in brilliant focus, a ragged cosmic scar tearing across the sky.

Her gaze drifted to her truck and she made a face. Took a sip of her beer.

If she could travel alone around dangerous, empty regions of The Vice just to do her job, her only protection her wits and a handful of small weapons, why the fuck did she get so nervous around men? The reasonably undamaged ones like this August left her blurting out stupid things, and the rest of them seem to be an assortment of irritating versions of—

“Now that I seen you dance, I’m gonna make that four things I can think of.”

Skinner.

She rolled her eyes, but he’d come up on the other side of her at the railing, so he didn’t see. There was a tug on the glass in her left hand, and Buckeye turned her head to see him lifting it, taking a long draw before setting it on the top of the porch rail on his other side.

Her mouth went into a line. “What do you want, Skinner?”

He leaned an elbow on the railing and gave her a smile so confident she wanted to pistol whip him unconscious. “I’m just tryin’ to figure out why you’re all alone on the porch when there’s comp’ny to be had inside.”

“Think I’ve had about enough ‘company’ for one evening,” she said. Nerves in her fingers were getting twitchy. “Shouldn’t you be more worried about what Maggie’s doin’ than some letter hauler you don’t hardly know?”

The man slid closer and his voice was smooth as glass. “Mags has her own business to conduct.” Fingertips traced over the bones in her wrist. “But you’re done workin’ for the day. Ain’t you.”

This guy had a set of brass ones, she’d give him that.

“I’m not interested, Skinner.”

She moved to take her hand back, to shove off and just head for her truck, but a spider’s touch became a grip. A yank. He snapped her to him, her shoulders colliding with his chest. Then the railing was in her ribs and his hands were pinning hers down to the top of it, stretched out on either side.

“Yes you are.” His voice was a rasp at her ear and set all her fine hairs standing on end. “I can smell it on you. I know exactly what you’re interested in.” He pressed in at her back, and there was most certainly an erect cock wedging against her tailbone. “And it ain’t pretty smiles and blue eyes back there.”

“I said, fuck off!”

Buckeye bent a knee and stomped her boot sole onto his right shin. The enforcer swore and made a grab for her hair, but the elbow of her freed right arm arced up and back, connecting with flesh and bone. It didn’t crunch how she’d hoped, but it did cause a satisfying grunt of pain, and now the rest of her was loose to spin around.

The screen door creaked open and a second imposing figure stepped out of the house, only feet away. Skinner had a hand to his nose and murder in dark eyes, but the other man stepped toward them.

“The woman told you to fuck off,” said August. “Or you wanna fight both of us? Looks like she’s doin’ a damn fine job already.”

Skinner looked from August to Buckeye and back again. Ends of his hair had fallen in disarray over his forehead. He straightened and glared poison at both of them.

“Y’all two better not come back here alone,” he said. “Neither one of you.” He strode off around the side of the porch, perhaps to enter the house again from the back.

Buckeye let out a long breath. The remaining man approached, cautious.

“You all right?”

She eyed the house as though the spurned Skinner would come storming back out of it, vengeful. It was paranoia, though. The man was a sleaze and a coward, but he wasn’t an idiot. Any sort of incident at The Rose, and the Lustful would be demanding his enforcer bands. He wasn’t going to jeopardize a hard-won job like that.

“I’ll live,” she answered at last, leaning her backside up against the rail and folding her arms over her chest.

As August came near, he chuckled. “I, uh … I came out here to tell you … you ain’t as bad a dancer as you think. But it sounds like to me you’ve had about enough compliments from men for one night.”

She could tell he was trying to diffuse the riotous tension in the air under the porch, but Buckeye just didn’t have it in her to be polite anymore. Compliments? Hell, men altogether. Should have never accepted the invitation to go inside in the first place.

“You been real nice, August,” she said, beginning her excuses as he joined her at the rail, “and I did have a good time dancing. Haven’t done that in a long time.” Buckeye gave him a tired smile. “I just … don’t think I know how to handle people. Even if they’re polite and fun.” She hoped it was a graceful and civil enough way to make her excuses and get to the truck.

The smile he gave her back was its own kind of sad. The blond man shook his head. “I’m real sorry, Bucks.”

She looked over at him in the dim light. Squinted.

“For what?”

A flash of motion.

Pain, needle sharp, in the side of her neck.

“This.”

Something was inside her. Thin. Precise. Spreading.

She wanted to screech, to bolt, but her eyes rolled back.

Arms caught her as she slid to the ground, which melted before she got there.

The stars she saw were not in the Milky Way.