Stella

My left fourth toe is bleeding. I can feel the pinky nail digging in deeper with every step. Fucking, fucking, fucking Louboutins! Why’d I ever covet these? Portable torture devices is what they are! I retreat to the staging area as gracefully as I can. I need to find a cotton ball, a wad of toilet paper—something to stuff between my toes.

Someone taps me between the shoulder blades. I jump, but it’s just Mary. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you! This is Alicia!”

I nod at a plump redhead, decked out in the now-familiar uniform. “Stella.”

“Karen dropped out. She’s the alternate.”

Alternate...?

Alicia takes a tray, holding it gingerly in both hands. “You guys have done this before? Catering, I mean?”

I nod. “Here and there.” Mary grabs an empty tray and spins it. Guess she has, too.

“So this really is a cater-waiter gig?” Alicia tries to balance her tray in one hand. It tilts dangerously, and she steadies it with her hip. “I kind of thought...I mean, all those questions at the interview, and the whole gag order deal....”

Mary shrugs. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Personally, I think it’s a test.”

“A test?”

“How we do under pressure.” She exchanges her empty tray for a loaded one. “Maybe this is the CIA. Gonna make us all Mata Haris.”

Questions? An interview? The CIA? So...the others don’t know? I corner Alicia before she can leave. “What did they tell you? When you, uh....” I grasp for the right question. “When you applied?”

“I mean, not much. She said I could have everything she had. Y’know, if I got the job.” A napkin falls off Alicia’s tray. She bends to grab it, and loses everything. Bruschetta splatters the floor and the tablecloth. “Fuck! I need this gig!” She kicks at the mess, spreading it around. “Think anyone saw?”

“No.” I shove a fresh tray into her hands. “Go ahead. I’ll deal with this.”

So...someone pushed the others to apply? Must’ve been one of the girls on her way out: Klara, Shazia, or Anne.

Guess that’s how they keep the secret: hints passed from friend to friend. Information on a need-to-know basis. A competition so intense, so intriguing, the winners won’t think of turning down the prize. And me... I’m the one who knows too much. The enemy being kept close. Even this chance to bond seems contrived. They’re showing me who’ll go down hardest, if I squeal.

I look up. Cameras, three of them: one by the kitchen, one by the chandelier, and a third at the exit. Shit. This is bad. This is really—

“Not going to warn them?”

Katrina’s lounging in the doorframe, one leg kicked up behind her. She pushes off with her heel and saunters my way. “Those poor, innocent waifs, being seduced by... What did you call us?” She claps her hands together, loud enough that I startle and step back. “That’s right: human traffickers.”

“Think they’d believe me?”

“You didn’t even try.” She smirks. “Remember that. You’re one of us now. In it to your eyeballs.”

I narrow my eyes. “I could still—”

“Oh, no, you couldn’t.” As if on cue, the lights dim. “Looks like you’re all out of time.”

In the ballroom, the music swells and dies. A ripple of excitement sweeps the crowd, muted oohs and aahs. Heels click and skitter behind me: Mary and Alicia are back.

“All right! So, this is the final hurdle!” Katrina wheels one of the tables aside to reveal a small, whitewashed door. “You have exactly nine minutes to make yourselves ready to join the party as guests.” She herds us into what turns out to be a pantry, converted to a makeshift dressing room. “Naturally, any one of you identified as...the help...will be shown the door. So pay attention to detail! Dresses are along that wall; cosmetics in the red boxes. Don’t keep me waiting.”

“Guess this one’s mine.” Alicia lifts a sweeping emerald gown from its hanger. “I’m supposed to slip under the radar in this?”

I reach for mine: a floating, clinging white thing, adorned with glittering crystals. “Nope. You’re supposed to stand out.”

“Huh? But she said—”

“When’s the last time you ate out?” I shake my hair out, raking my nails through it to loosen the kinks.

Alicia pauses mid-wriggle, skirt already halfway down her thighs. “I don’t know—last week?”

“What did the waiter look like?”

“I don’t know. Tall, maybe? Sort of skinny? I wasn’t really—oh. Oh.”

Mary’s already dressed and pinning up her hair. “Yeah. As long as you didn’t do anything weird out there, you’ll be fine. You didn’t, did you?”

“Not that I know of.”

Five minutes left. I repaint my lips frosty peach and brush some bronzer under my cheekbones. There’s not much I can do about my nails, so I grab a beaded white purse off the shelf. Guess I can...curl them under. I doubt they’d let me go, even if I did get caught, but it’d be just plain embarrassing to get busted here, after three years sneaking by as the Countess.