The thumping techno was almost too loud, even for the packed Miami Beach dance club.“What a leather stink?” Captain Jack Sparrow asked her.Bailey Castillo leaned across the table to hear him better. “What?”“I said,” he shouted, “do you want another drink?”“Sure.” Bailey, dressed at Cat Woman, sat at the small, round cocktail table beside her best friend Ana Perez, who wore a sexy green Poison Ivy costume, and Ana’s newest fetish, the dark-haired Emilio Something, dressed as Captain Jack, who had been tossing hundred dollar bills around all night and who didn’t do anything for a living, but whose father was in “imports.” R-i-i-i-i-ght.Emilio stood up and headed for the bar, holding his plastic cutlass close against his thigh to avoid banging people. Ana slid her chair closer to Bailey’s, which was thumping beneath her with the bass of the music. “Isn’t he hot?” Ana shouted into Bailey’s ear.Bailey smiled and nodded. Ana always fell for the same type—dark, showy Latinos with lots of money, or who pretended to have lots of money. She loved Ana, but the poor woman had the worst taste in men. They always wound up being either total players, complete fakers, or now and then, involved in illegal things no one wanted to think about. This one smelled like the second type. Hopefully not the third.He did have connections, though, which is what scared her. You had to be somebody or know somebody to get into Club Estrella, the most exclusive club in South Beach, especially tonight. Halloween was one of the busiest nights of the year for the local clubs, especially this year, since it was Saturday night. Everyone was out in costume, competing to win free drinks, bottles of champagne, and other goodies at all the area watering holes. She wished they’d just stayed at the Dunes. She felt like a fish out of water in this ritzy, members-only club where hardly anyone was in costume. Boring rich people.“I think that guy over there likes you,” Ana said, nodding slightly to the left.Bailey glanced over, trying not to be obvious. A guy in a Batman costume—Retro TV Batman, not Sexy Dark Knight Batman. He wasn’t exactly rocking the spandex. But she shouldn’t talk—she had her own queen-size curves and her own challenges maximizing her assets and minimizing her liabilities.Of course, considering she was currently displaying those assets in a skin-tight black Cat Woman costume, it might be hard to deter her Bat-nemesis over there.“Purrrr-fect,” she said.Ana giggled. “You know, I bet he’s a rich investment banker or something. You could do worse.”“You know I don’t care about that. I’m going to make my own money once I graduate.”“I know, El cerebro, but really—you study too much. You need to get out more. Just a date, you don’t have to marry the guy. Let him take you to dinner, out for a nice night on the town.” She waggled her eyebrows in mock flirtation. “Maybe un polvo, you know, like normal people.”Emilio came back carrying three drinks pressed together in his hands and placed them down on the table. Emilio had gotten them in and bought the last two rounds of Gray Goose and champagne Flirtinis. They hadn’t even known him until tonight—he’d been at the last bar they were at, the Dunes, a local place for regular, working people like Bailey and Ana. He’d found Ana five minutes after they’d walked in like a heat-seeking missile, and five minutes after the first Flirtini, Ana was in love and naming their future children.Bailey smiled and said thank you. Ana gave Emilio a big, wet kiss. Bailey sighed and looked the other way.Right at Batman.Dammit.He took that as his cue and came over.“Hey, pretty kitty. I couldn’t help but notice that fate has brought us here, two halves of the perfect whole. Want to dance?”She smiled, but not sincerely. “Um, no thank you. I’m not really into dancing.”“And yet you go to a dance club?”She picked up her glass. “I like to drink.” She wanted to smack herself. What a stupid thing to say.“Well, let me buy you another one, then.”“No thanks. I’m with my friends.”She didn’t like the look in his eyes. He was perfectly pleasant, perfectly polite, but something in the way he looked at her gave her that I pull wings off of flies and kick puppies vibe.“I don’t see any friends…you mean those two?” He pointed over to the exit, where Poison Ivy and Captain Jack were disappearing past the huge, tuxedoed bouncers and out the double doors.Bailey sighed. She hated when Ana ditched out on her. But never mind. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. Once, she’d tried to tell Ana she could do better, but it had pissed her off and they didn’t talk for weeks. As best friends since the fifth grade, she decided it wasn’t her place to get in the way of Ana’s pursuit of happiness, or her pursuit of a mansion on the Intercoastal Waterway, whichever. It was simply Bailey’s job to be there when the dirty rotten snakes she dated finally showed their spots—or scales, whatever—and hold Ana’s hand and pass her tissues while commiserating over coconut flan at Puerto Sagua and complaining about what a rotten, horrible waste of a human being the guy was.She sighed. At least Ana got laid.She looked back at Batman. And shuddered. She decided she really didn’t need to get laid. Not even tonight.Tonight, her first night of being “between jobs,” as they said, since Doug “The Douchebag” Duchene had fired her earlier that afternoon from her accounting clerk job, for no reason other than he was a stupid moron and was afraid she’d notice he was incapable of basic math. “Excuse me; I have to go to the ladies’ room,” she said.At least Batman wasn’t weird enough to follow her. She headed toward the ladies room alcove near the bar, wondering how she was going to get from there to the exit without being seen.