“What the Hell is wrong with her?” I ask, staring after Briar as she shoves the kid away and storms towards the main building, heading for the gold bathroom sign.
Kenta bends and says a few calm words to the child, who looks like he’s about to start crying, then gently hands him off to the nearest server.
Anger rips through me, heating my veins. I hate all of this. I look around the whimsical, pretty party. The sky is darkening, and the band is starting to fire up. Everywhere around me, billionaires are getting drunk and dancing.
This isn’t what I wanted to do with my life. Never. The reason I joined the army was to protect innocents from people in power. People who hurt others, just because they can. Whether it’s my neighbour getting bullied to the point of breakdown by Briar, or a corrupt police force beating citizens for the fun of it, it all stems from the same place. Evil. It’s evil. And I’m sick of it. I don’t want to protect someone thoughtless and selfish and cruel.
I’ve been on the wrong end of that cruelty for far, far too long to sympathise.
Kenta straightens, and we head towards the bathroom to stand guard by the doors. “Is she… okay?” He asks, lowering his voice. “She’s behaving oddly.”
“No, she’s behaving completely normally. Every single magazine and tabloid and news outlet will tell you so.”
He shoots me a look. “She’s under a lot of stress.”
Typical Kenta. Always the diplomat. “Do you reduce minimum wage workers to tears when you’re stressed?”
He presses his lips together unhappily. “Will Nin be okay?”
I sigh. “She’s dealt with worse in her life. She’s mostly just worried that Briar will tweet about her, or leave a bad review, and she’ll never work again.” Kenta’s jaw clenches. “We negotiated an open-ended contract,” I remind him. “Maybe we should just terminate.”
I expect him to protest, but he says nothing, watching the bathroom door with steel in his eyes. He’s just as pissed off as me.
Glen comes to join us from his perimeter check, and we all stand stupidly outside the bathrooms. Five minutes pass, then ten. A tipsy-looking woman in incredibly high heels tries to squeeze past us, and I politely inform her that the toilets are out of order.
She snorts. “I’m sure. What, is she doing lines in there, or something?”
She totters off, and Kenta checks his watch. “Someone should check on her. She’s been a while.”
“Maybe she’s taking mirror selfies,” I offer. “Or texting her girlfriends about the manicurist who dared to knock a lotion bottle over her twenty-grand designer bedsheets.”
Glen pushes himself off the wall. “I’ll check,” he mutters, heading inside the bathroom. My thoughts go back to Nin. Maybe I should get her a gift basket, or something. A sorry my awful boss made you cry sympathy gift basket. I pull out my phone to make a note.
“CARTER,” Glen roars. My stomach drops. Kenta’s already pushing past me into the bathroom. When I step in behind him, I pull up short.
“Oh my fucking God.”
Briar is sprawled on the floor of a cubicle, her cheek against the tile. Her blonde hair is spilling over the dirty floor, and she’s gasping for breath, every exhale coming out as a moan. Her fingers are clawed and spasming, and there’s makeup running down her face. Glen’s kneeling by her side, a hand on her heaving back. He looks up at us. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
I drop to my knees next to her, sliding my fingers over her throat to find her pulse. It’s thrumming unhealthily fast.
“Glen, get the door. Briar, look at me.” She focuses on me. There’s raw terror in her eyes, and for a moment, it sends me reeling back to another place.
A knife catching the light. Glen’s horrified eyes staring at me.
I shake off the feeling. “Speak.”
She closes her eyes again, curling into herself, panting.
“She has allergies, right?” I ask Kenta, who’s picked up her bag and started rooting through it. “Could it be anaphylaxis?”
“To mould. It shouldn’t be this severe, she’s not prescribed an epi pen.”
“Overdose?” I squeeze her shoulder. “Briar. Open your eyes. Did you take something?”
She shakes her head, still gasping.
“Do you hurt anywhere? Are you hurting, princess?”
Another head shake. I’m starting to panic.
“Did she drink anything?” Kenta asks, still rummaging in her clutch. “Could she have been drugged?”
“A glass of champagne. I didn’t watch it getting poured, she picked it up off a buffet table. I—”
“Wait,” he interrupts me, pulling a tiny pink pill box out of her purse. He flips the lid, examining the contents. “Benzo.”
“Are you having a panic attack?” I ask her, incredulous.
I’ve seen a lot of clients have panic attacks; generally, when someone is in enough danger to require a 24/7 security team, their lives are pretty anxiety-inducing. It would normally be my first guess in a situation like this. But Briar has done absolutely nothing to suggest she’s even capable of feeling nervous, let alone panicky.
She nods jerkily.
“Okay. Okay. Kenta, get her some water. Briar, you’re hyperventilating. Slow down your breathing.”
She rolls her eyes, like yeah, duh.
“Sit.” I help her sit up, propping her up with my shoulder, then take her sweaty hand and put it on my chest, breathing exaggeratedly. “Inhale. Hold it. Then exhale. That’s it. Good girl.”
“I’m…” she chokes, twisting her fingers weakly in the front of my shirt, “Not… a dog.”
“It would probably be easier for you to breathe if you stopped talking back,” I advise. “Come on. Inhale. Hold it. Exhale.”
She glares at me, but tries to do as I say. I breathe with her for the next couple of minutes, and her breaths slowly get smoother and deeper. Eventually, she pushes her hand off me, sitting upright.
“There we are.” I stroke back some hair sticking to her sweaty forehead. “There you are. Can you talk, princess?”
“Yeah,” she rasps, taking the water bottle Kenta offers her. “Thanks.” She tries to open it, but her hands are still shaking. I take it off her and remove the cap.
“This happen a lot?”
“Since I was sixteen. N-not much, anymore.” She closes her eyes. “God. I’m so dizzy.”
My stomach twists. “Let’s get you your meds.” I reach for her pill box, shaking out a tablet, but she shakes her head. “You don’t want it?”
“Makes me feel gross.” She wipes her eyes, smudging mascara onto her cheeks. “S’only for emergencies.”
“You collapsed in a public bathroom. What exactly do you think qualifies as an emergency?”
“Worse than this.” She takes a sip of water, her hand shaking so much she spills droplets onto her silver dress. “I can handle this.”
“Princess, it’s okay. You don’t have to fight through everything. You’re allowed to have some help.” For some reason, I find myself reaching out and taking her hand. Yes, I’m mad at the girl; but I can’t stand to see her like this, shaky and struggling to breathe. Her fingers are cramped up and frozen solid, and I start to slowly massage them, like I can encourage the blood back into her extremities.
She hesitates for a while, her chest heaving, staring at the pill—then gives a tiny nod. Kenta holds it up to her mouth for her, and she swallows it down with a shaky gulp of water, sagging against the wall and closing her eyes. I soon feel the muscles in her hands unclasp and loosen as her breath evens out some more.
“Good girl,” I say, my voice low. “Let’s go home.”
“Don’t call me good girl.” She shakes her head. “Still have interviews.”
Kenta kneels down in front of her. “Sweetheart, you’re sick.”
“I’m not sick.”
“You can barely stand.”
“Th-then I’ll do them sitting down. Find me a lawn chair, or something.” She pushes me off her and forces herself upright. Kenta and I watch, gobsmacked, as she totters over to the mirror, pouts at her smeared makeup, and pulls a mascara wand out of her bag. “God. I look like a fucking raccoon. I didn’t even cry,” she mutters, rubbing under her eyes.
I sit back on my haunches. “Briar, you really should go home and rest. You’re not in any state to go out there and perform.”
“I didn’t hire you to give me health advice,” she bites out. “I hired you to make me feel safe.”
Kenta and I both go still. The reprimand is pretty clear. We found her lying with her head next to a toilet, so scared she couldn’t breathe. We didn’t make her feel safe tonight.
“Briar,” Kenta says softly. “You know that your behaviour will never affect how we do our work. Just because we’re having a disagreement—”
“I don’t want to talk.” She orders. “These meds always knock me out. I have fifteen minutes b-before I’m a zombie, and I have twenty stations left to talk to. C-come on.” She marches out of the bathroom, wobbling slightly in her heels. I go to put an arm around her shoulder, to steady her, and she flinches violently away. “Please don’t touch me.”
I step back. She half-staggers over to the press line, where the camera crews are all set up, and waves to the closest journalist. “I’m ready. Come interview me,” she calls.
For a moment, the guy stares at her in shock; but he recovers smoothly, sticking his microphone in his face. “Miss Briar Saint. You organised this event tonight. Tell me, what does the subject of child homelessness mean to you?”
“I don’t think children should be homeless,” she mutters.
He blinks at her directness. “And yet you’re one of the highest-earning actresses of the year. How do you reconcile your values with your income?”
“I donate my income.”
Irritation crosses the man’s face. “You know, many people are accusing you of using charity events like these as a PR move to boost public opinion. What’s your response to such accusations?”
“Does it matter?” She asks flatly. “Money is money.” A shiver wracks through her body, and Glen puts his jacket over her slim shoulders. She pauses for a second, then turns her face into it, like she’s smelling his cologne. “Thanks,” she says to him, and he just nods, concern tightening his face.
She talks with the guy for a few minutes, then moves on to the next. And the next.
They’re not good interviews. In fact, they’re completely disastrous. Her anxiety picks back up as more and more people surround her. I see her eyes darting through the crowd, like she thinks someone is going to jump out at her. Her breathing gets choppy again—she keeps having to pause in the middle of words to gasp, and her eyes are huge and glazing over with the meds. More than once, she has to ask an interviewer to repeat a question five or six times, because she can’t focus on what they’re saying. It’s torture, watching her fall apart, over and over again, as she struggles to keep her composure.
“Jesus,” I hear a cameraman mutter behind me, as she moves on to the next crew. “This is a charity event. She’s out of her head.”
“I mean, it’ll make good headlines,” the reporter points out. “You get the bit she almost fell?”
I grit my teeth and stride up to Kenta, who’s hovering a step behind Briar, watching her intently. “They think she’s high.”
He winces, putting a hand on her arm. “Briar, I really think we should go.”
“Three more,” she mumbles.
“They think you’re on something,” I tell her flatly.
“I am on something.”
“The headlines tomorrow aren’t going to be pretty.”
She snorts. “They never are, when they’re about me.”
“But—”
She looks up at me. “Don’t you get it? This isn’t about my reputation, it’s about bringing attention to the cause. If I have to look like an idiot in the process, so be it. I’ve looked like an idiot ever since I got into this industry at thirteen. I may as well raise some money while I do it.”
I snap my mouth shut. She makes it through two more interviews before she starts wavering on her feet. Glen grabs at her before she trips and falls, pulling her into his body.
“Okay,” he says softly. “We need to go, lass. You’re barely making sense.”
This time she doesn’t argue, letting us bundle her out of the event and towards the car. Paparazzi spread across the road, shouting at her, snapping pictures. I scowl at them, but she ignores them all, keeping her head high until Kenta pushes her gently into the backseat. The driver starts the car, and she slumps back against the leather upholstery as we pull away from the street.
Before we even hit the road, Glen’s phone rings. He picks it up, then winces. “Hi, Mrs Chen,” he says. I close my eyes. Nin. “Yes, I did hear what happened. I’m very sorry. She’s… having a bad day.” He glances at Briar, who seems to shrink into herself. “Oh, no, I’m sure she wouldn’t do that. Please don’t cry. Yes, I’ll speak to her, if that’s what you want. But really, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”
He spends the rest of the ride soothing Nin while we all sit in awkward silence. When he finally hangs up, Briar rubs a hand over her face. Her cheeks are bright red.
“Jesus. Look. Can you bring her to the house?”
I startle. “What?”
“The house. I want to talk to her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Kenta starts.
She shrugs. “Fine. I’ll go drop in on her, then.”
“You will not,” I growl. “You’re going home.”
She wilts a bit, like she’s too tired to argue the point. “We can Skype, I guess. I need to apologise to her. I’d rather do it face to face.”
The car pulls up in her driveway, and we flank her as she stumbles back inside her house. She kicks off her high heels, slips out of Glen’s jacket, then holds out her hand to me. “Her number, please.”
I frown. “If you’re just calling her to take it out on her some more—”
Her eyes flash. “Give. Me. Her. Number.”
I sigh, texting the contact details to her. She thanks me quietly, then heads into her bedroom and shuts the door.
