The club never truly sleeps.
Even when the music fades between sets, even when the crowd thins and the air grows thick with the cloying scent of sweat and expensive perfume, something inside the Canterbury always stays awake. It is a living thing—watching, waiting, humming a low, electric frequency beneath the floorboards.
Amelia feels it the moment she and Iris step through the back entrance.
The bass is already vibrating through the heavy walls, a steady, subterranean pulse that settles deep into Amelia’s bones. Colored lights sweep across the ceiling in slow, hypnotic arcs of violet and gold. The smell of high-end alcohol, fresh citrus, and something sharp and metallic lingers in the air, a scent she has come to associate with both a paycheck and a prison.
Another night. Another
