"Me?"

"Come on, Helen. Say you heard through the grapevine. They want something edgy and challenging and have room for a full installation of the piece I saw in his workshop."

"I'm going to need Linae's help. I'm no good at espionage."

I sighed. "I guess so. I'm a little worried about Linae, though."

I must have sounded jealous. Helen chided me. "Don't you be like that, Karina. I know what you're thinking, that Linae's going to tempt him into some kind of trouble. She's a flirt, but she wouldn't do that to you, trust me."

"All right. If you say so."

I gave her all the details I could about the ArtiWorks and how to get in touch with Paulina to make arrangements.

In the afternoon I led a tour of the exhibit as usual, and then one right at closing time for what I gathered were new and prospective donors of some kind. It was just a forty-five-minute tour, with an additional fifteen minutes for them to look around at the end.

Tristan was endlessly amused by the people. We stood together in the gift shop, smiling as the crowd headed to the exit. But inside I was laughing about the small comments he would make when they couldn't hear him.

"Blue sweater styled her hair for the occasion, but no one told her the modernist sculpture is at a different Tate," he said. Or, "Look at that fellow's lapels! He needs to get a landing permit to go to Heathrow."

Martindale took us to eat after the group was gone, which I thought was very nice of him. He grilled Tristan a bit during the meal on his graduate program in museum studies. Tristan, I realized, rarely talked about himself when we went to lunch, because I hardly knew anything about his internship or his degree program. Apparently he was thinking of trying to transfer to either City College of New York or Seton Hall but hadn't committed to trying it yet. That led to me and Martindale telling him about New York, since Tristan had never been. I promised to show him around the city if he came to visit, though I couldn't put him up, given that Becky had the bedroom and I couldn't imagine sharing the couch with him. There wasn't even really room for a sleeping bag on the floor.

I was amused to find Martindale also took the Underground to get home. He was amused that I was amused. "They say the measure of a great civilization is not how many of the poor have automobiles, but how many of the well off take public transit," he said after we had waved good-bye to Tristan, who went to a different train line.

The platform was lined with poster ads for Broadway shows, except of course there was no Broadway here. While we stood together, awaiting the train, I debated whether to tell him what I had found in York. While I was dithering, he came right out and asked, though.

"I missed him, but I did see his workshop," I told him. "I made contact with some other glass artists in the area, and we went out to where he's staying, but he wasn't home."

"That is disappointing to go all the way there and come so close."

"Well, I have a plan. I know he's working on a piece that he's been complaining he has nowhere to install."

"Indeed? He has not inquired with me about it."

"Which makes me think he thinks it's really not Tate material. But here's the thing. The folks I'm staying with? I've told you about how they're building an art space on their first floor?"

"You mentioned it, yes."

"I'm trying to get a message to him that they want it for their opening show next month. So, fingers crossed, maybe we can lure him out."

"Well, it's enough for me to know he's working and thinking about showing again. I was quite concerned that perhaps depression or the bottle had gotten to him."

I wasn't sure what to say about that without incriminating myself too much. Martindale had an inkling that I'd broken his heart or something, but I'd never gone into detail. "Far as I can tell, he's poured himself into his work instead," I said.

"That's all to the good, then," he said. "So long as he's saner for it."

That I couldn't speak to.

"Oh, Karina, one other thing I've been meaning to mention. We should book your ticket home. If we wait too long, the fares will get out of control. Mention it to my secretary and she'll handle everything, of course."

"I'll talk to her tomorrow," I promised. The summer had flown by, hadn't it? I could hardly imagine going back home.

When I got to the ArtiWorks, Paulina and Michel were waltzing across the newly sanded floor of the gallery to a song Paulina was singing in some other language. When she saw me, she beckoned me over and they pulled me into a three-way hug, still swaying slightly to the music she could hear in her head.

"It's all thanks to you, Karina! We've heard from an agent for J. B. Lester. He hasn't said yes yet, but it's looking very, very good."

"Agent?" I asked.

"A glassworker named Peter Simpson called, said he was speaking on his behalf," Paulina said. "We're negotiating a bit about fees and the date, but if he doesn't back out, it's going to happen!"

"Great. That's great!" I went up on my tiptoes and they swung me in a circle I was so weightless with glee.

I started training with Vanette that week. I met her at the club and on that first day of formal training we mostly talked. She took copious notes.

"Would you say you liked being a waitress? Did you enjoy it?" she asked. We were sitting in a room in what I thought of as the "backstage" area of the club, near the kitchen, where the members never went, only the staff and submissives.

"I didn't enjoy the low pay or customers who were jerks," I said, "but there were times when the work was satisfying. When you get all the orders right on a big table, it's great. When you swoop down, make every last one of them happy, and you see what a good time they're having, you walk away glowing, knowing you made that happen. Especially when an equally crappy server can have the opposite effect."

"Interesting. So making people happy, that was the best part of it? Did you chitchat with the customers?"

"That was the best part. I often didn't talk to them at all, other than to take their orders. Sometimes the way to make them happy was to be invisible, to get out of the way of them enjoying their food or their booze. Other times you would get the feeling they appreciated a little human interaction. That's why they came out to a bar instead of drinking at home, maybe."

Vanette wrote something on the pad in her lap. She was dressed casually, in black knit pants and a white mock turtleneck with short sleeves, the same charm bracelet as the other night on her bare, narrow wrist.

"We used to have a server here, a man, who had memorized each club member's favorite drink and the way he liked it served," she said. "And he could simply ask if someone wanted the usual and bring it to them unerringly. Even if it was a whole table of them, playing cards or what have you. Does that strike you as exceptional?"

"Not if he was seeing the same guys over and over. You always get to know your regular customers. If he could memorize them all after only being told once? That's a little more special. Had he been a bartender before?"

"I believe he was."

"He'd had practice at it, then. Good skill, though."

"It certainly made the members very happy, and they've been somewhat disgruntled since his departure that none of our current trainees seem to be able to handle doing the same." She seemed to be holding in a sigh.

"With all due respect, Vanette, the other trainees I've seen seem a little more focused on...How do I say this? They seem more there for sex and sex play than anything practical."

"Just so." A smile curved her perfect lips, which were tinted seashell pink today instead of bombshell red. "The term you're looking for is service oriented. There's a difference between submission and service. I think that's why the director was so intrigued by the fact that you barred intercourse. In recent years it has been easy to find sexually adventurous men and women who enjoy being on the receiving end of lots of kinky attention. It hasn't been so easy to find those who want to serve."

"Well, if Damon George is doing most of your recruiting, that's what you're going to get," I said.

She nodded. "He's not our only bird dog, but he is enthusiastic. I do wonder if part of our problem is that the concept of noble service has been lost. The so-called service industries, hospitality, food service, and so on, are now associated with immigrant populations and the disadvantaged. One is expected to move up out of those jobs as soon as possible. No one takes on service as a career unless one is in management, which is the opposite of what we need."

I hadn't expected her to get so philosophical. "That's true in the U.S., too, though I don't think we ever had the concept of noble service. We didn't have the whole Upstairs, Downstairs kind of thing going on."

She grinned at my description of the British class system as a TV drama, but knew exactly what I meant. "True. Which may also be why your branch of the society is much more focused on couples and private parties, while here, the gentlemen's club roots show through."

"You mean in how most of the trainees are women?"

"Among other things. Now, to come to the point. The best submissive is the one who seems to be able to read the dominant's mind. Since these fellows often seem to have, as the expression goes, one-track minds, the girls like Juney don't have to work very hard to make them happy. Although that wasn't the case the other night. I believe you were there for the little incident?"

I held my breath and nodded. I didn't think it was a good idea to let her know James was the sole reason I was here. "The member seemed offended that she had touched him without permission."

"I have to say, I wish more members had Jules's attitude," she said. "And when you think about it, if she had been a male submissive and the dom had been female, they would have been scandalized at the sub being so forward. Juney has been getting away with far too much, but I can hardly blame her when the members themselves allow it. This is why self-discipline is equally as important as discipline. Yes, your dom can rein you in easily enough, but he or she shouldn't have to be doing so constantly. If you had a horse you had to continually put back on the path, even if the horse didn't fight the correction, you'd still be thinking it was a difficult horse."

We were silent a moment while I thought that over. Then I asked, "Can you teach me? To not be too headstrong?"

She tapped her pen against her lips. "Perhaps. The smart horse knows where the rider wants to go and so doesn't have to be told. As I was saying, if you can learn to read their minds, you master yourself before they even have to lift a finger."

"My sister, Jill, used to say that about customers, too. 'Learn to read them,' she told me. 'Figure out how much money they want to spend. If they can't make up their mind on the menu, try to convince them there's something they really want.' And so on. But it was basically the same thing. The thing is, though, sometimes what they want is...to tell you what to do."

"True. With the ones who get off most on being dominant, it's ordering you to do something and seeing you obey that arouses them. Sometimes the odder or more difficult the request, the more excited they become. Other times it is not whether the submissive can succeed in following the order, but in how much they struggle to try, that turns them on."

That sounded like a description of James to a T. "Those are the doms whose praise means the most," I said, "and who are the most fun to please."

Her smile grew wider. "You and I are going to get along so well. Come with me to meet our bartender."

The bartender was a high-strung blond in his midtwenties named Stuart. The bar itself was at the back of one of the town houses, built into a room very similar to the one where I had been interviewed, only this one had fewer bookshelves, and many of the shelves held games. Some of the tables had inlays for backgammon and chess. Stuart and I got along well and he knew many of the members' preferences already. Perfect.

Two nights later I was put to working like a waitress. This time I wore the locked chastity belt but without inserts and a very cute, short dress and apron that left my buttocks exposed. That became my regular outfit on the nights that followed.

Two or three times members wanted me to bend over to have my ass swatted or the like, but when they realized I wore the chastity belt, they lost interest. I quickly became the queen of the refill. All a member had to do was tap his glass as I moved through the room and I would bring him a refresh. I also learned to make ice water magically appear nearby whenever someone was finishing a flogging or other public scene.

I couldn't work every night. I was still helping with the ArtiWorks renovation, which sometimes went until ten or eleven at night, when we would stop for fear that if neighbors complained of noise we could lose our construction permits. Some days I hurried home right after the afternoon tour and then after putting in a few hours painting or sanding or plastering went straight to the club. Meanwhile, Vanette had me teach a group of half a dozen other trainees how to put a glass down without making either a mess or a noise.

One night at the start of my second week, Damon came up to me as I waited at the bar for Stuart to put up an order. "You're making me look very good," he said.

"Excellent." I smiled at him. "Whoever thought helping out my sister was going to come in so handy for me later?"

He smiled in agreement and then rubbed his palm over the exposed globes of my ass. "By the way, I think our friend will be coming back soon."

I tried to play nonchalant, since Stuart was right there. "Oh? How soon?"

"Possibly tomorrow. I will do my best to arrange it so that you two can talk." He kept smiling while he said this, but his expression was a bit frozen. "I'll let you know when I know for sure."

But he didn't come the next night, or the next, and I was starting to worry. I hadn't heard from Helen or Linae either.

I arrived at the club as usual one night and was locking myself into the chastity belt in the dressing room when Vanette appeared.

"When was the last time a member used you for a sexual purpose?" she asked.

"Damon was the only one to go there," I said, "on that first night I was here."

"Hmm." She looked slightly concerned but she said nothing more about it, and I started my shift as usual. Damon didn't seem to be there that night, at least not that early in the evening.

It was drawing close to midnight, which was when Stuart usually went home, when I learned what she was so concerned about. One member whom I thought of in my head as Lord Sideburns, but who I gathered had the actual name or pseudonym of Burns, marched into the gaming room with Vanette in tow.

"Isn't it the rules, my dear, that aside from a submissive's dictum, they're required to perform a minimum of sexual service for us?"

Vanette was looking very proper that night, with a high-collared jacket that buttoned all the way up to the top of her throat. "The minimum is there to ensure we don't pass off people who should merely be employed for a wage, and that people do not pass themselves off for the sake of-"

"I know why it's there. And I would certainly never force someone to do something they truly objected to. But twenty days have gone by since Stuart's last service of any kind," Burns responded.

Stuart blushed to the roots and bowed his head.

"Isn't that true, Stu?"

"It is, sir."

"The rules say the minimum is once per week. It's been nearly three. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I...I've been busy, sir. And no member has demanded it of me."

"Have you offered?"

"No, sir."

Vanette pursed her lips. "If you'd like to have a go at him, sir, it's certainly well within your rights to."

Burns had piqued the interest of everyone in the room, though. "I was thinking, rather, that he needs to be taught a lesson so that he'll not forget to offer himself in the future. I believe it's in the bylaws that withholding sexual favors is punishable by a form of gantlet."

One of the men watching with interest spoke up then. "Gantlet? Of floggers?" he asked.

"That would be right if dear Stuart here had tried to get out of being flogged," Burns said. "It must be a sexual gantlet. All submissives in the house are subject to these rules."

Damn Damon for walking in at that moment. "Indeed, all. I believe Ashley here has been neglecting her sensual duties in favor of practical ones, as well."

"But she's under chastity," the one who had brought up floggers said.

"She can still come." Damon slid a hand up my throat and tilted my face toward the man. "And her mouth is quite available. I believe the minimum for a gantlet is six, am I correct?"

Vanette let out a long breath. "Five, actually. The original rule was for all present, but that became impractical once the club grew in size."

"Five it is," Damon said. "I know Ashley can handle five orgasms in one night. Can't you, dear?"

Eleven.

Run for the Shadows