New York City, 1925

"Where are the eggs?"

Maryanne dug through the cloth shopping bag that had been dumped on the splintering kitchen table. "I thought I asked you to buy some eggs for dinner? So we can actually eat something before we leave for the theater?"

Ivy shrugged, flipping open a box from the department store and tossing the tissue paper aside. "Well, these ended up being a little more expensive than I expected."

Maryanne glared at her roommate across their one room flat. "Are you telling me that you forwent food for a new pair of silk stockings?"

Sinking into a nearby chair, Ivy peeled the old pair off her shins. "There was a hole in the toe and a couple obvious runs up my old pair. What did you expect me to do? Go bare legged?"

"Better than going hungry!"

Ivy gave her friend a calming simper as she smoothed the new fabric over her calves. "What's one more notch in our belts going to hurt, hmm? Besides, you know we can find a way to get food without using our hard-earned money."

Biting into their last apple with a spiteful crunch, Maryanne rolled her eyes and moved towards the gramophone by the open window. Among the cramped tenement buildings of Brooklyn, it was the nicest thing they owned and they treated it like a holy relic. Maryanne set the needle down on a jazz record and focused on fixing the finger curls in her strawberry blonde hair.

Ivy grinned, tugging up the hem of her skirt and admiring her long legs in their cracked mirror. It had been a worthy sacrifice. What was an empty stomach to looking one's best? If she was going to get herself out of that rat hole of a theater and earn a place in a real Broadway show, she would have to cut corners.

Maryanne Maier had something to fall back on. Her large, German family in Duluth, Minnesota wrote her constantly, begging her to return home. She even had a sweetheart who still pined for her even though she had broken things off with him after she hopped a train for New York City.

An orphan, Ivy McKee had been raised in a home for girls up in Bangor, Maine. She had been left on the doorstep as a baby with no note or any personal affect. In high school, she'd had a beau, David, but he was killed in France during the Great War.

All she had was dance. And she would not allow anything to keep her from going as far as she could with it, certainly not an empty stomach.

"Button me up, will yah?" Ivy turned to her friend as they dressed in their costumes, the clock on the wall showing five minutes past six. They were due at the theater in a half an hour. "It's a little loose at the hips."

Maryanne scoffed. "I wonder why... what with you spending all our money on frivolities."

"Frivolities," Ivy mimicked in a nasally tone, tossing her friend a wink. "I'm sorry, Mare. Desperate times, you know..."

Maryanne bit her bottom lip to keep from grinning as she finished the last button at the base of Ivy's neck. "You're lucky I love yah, kid."

"Love you too, sugar."

Ivy meandered to the mirror while Maryanne dug the last of her favorite lipstick out of the tube with a spoon and carefully applied it. Pinching her cheeks, Ivy tried to bring some color into her sallow complexion. Naturally fair, she was looking paler than usual recently. She didn't want to admit that it was from a lack of sleep. It was less frightening to blame their poor diet than her reoccurring nightmares.

Smoothing down her sleek, bobbed hair, she cocked her head to the side and peered out the window. The frantic ding of a fire engine rang through the streets. She perched on her tip toes to spy where it was headed as Maryanne came up beside her.

"What's going on? I thought I smelled smoke," Maryanne commented, pinning her coat on over her costume.

A column of smoke burst from a building at the end of the opposite block. Billowing black into the dusky purple sky, disturbed birds on the next roof rose up in a fury as flames tinged the shattering windows.

"Oh dear God, help those people," Maryanne breathed.

Ivy honed in on the flames, her mind spinning in terror. An unknown dread struck deep in her bones. She shuddered as a vision from one of her dreams tore through her consciousness.

Arrows in flight, sinking into silver armor. Blades held high, bloodied to the hilt. Beautiful ships winged like white birds bursting into flames in a pristine harbor, the water stained red with blood.

"Ivy? Ivy!" Maryanne grasped her shoulders as she stumbled back into her. "Are you alright?"

Alqualondë.

The strange word resonated through her memory like a lullaby from childhood. It made her think of waves shushing against gleaming sand, towers encrusted with pearls and peaceful city streets. But she had never seen such a place in her life. It was like something out of a fairy tale, the kind she never heard as a child because the nuns at the orphanage didn't believe in filling their impressionable brains with pretty lies.

"Ivy!?"

Stirring out of her stupor, Ivy righted herself, gripping Maryanne's forearms and breathing deeply. 

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine."

"No, you're not fine," Maryanne snapped, drawing her over to the kitchen table and lowering her into a chair. "You haven't eaten a thing today I expect."

Ivy's hands were tingling, the hair on the back of her neck pricking. She took a glass of water from Maryanne. "That's not true. I had a cup of coffee and half a Hershey bar this morning."

"I'm not hearing this," Maryanne said with a sigh. "You can't go tonight feeling like this-"

"Oh hush," Ivy cut her off with a forced laugh. She chugged the glass of water and wobbled to her feet. "I'm fine. Besides, we are bound to have a few admirers in the crowd tonight. Maybe we can foist a four course meal out of some stiff in tails and a bow tie."

Maryanne leveled her with a critical stare. Ivy flashed a toothy grin and executed a jaunty box step, swinging her arms like Charlie Chaplin.

"See!" she insisted. "Fit as a fiddle!"

Maryanne jutted out her chin in disbelief. "I still think you're being stupid."

"You're probably right," Ivy replied, buttoning her coat over the layers of glittering tassels that fringed her dance costume. Adjusting her golden head piece, she motioned to the door. "After you, m' lady."

"So stupid."

The hysterical thrum of Manhattan fired the blood in Ivy's veins like a shot of pure adrenaline. The grasping joy of the Lost Generation, disillusioned by dated Victorian ideals and wars fought for pointless treaties, filled the theaters, restaurants and night clubs. It was a new age. Hemlines swung above rouged knees, newly built highways were filled with faster vehicles, prohibition was only a word as liquor flowed like water in the speakeasies.

Maryanne let out a shriek as a swift breeze caught the edge of her skirt and exposed her slip underneath. Giggling, Ivy tried to help her friend neaten her skirts as they paused at the landing of the crowded subway station for the Brooklyn-Manhattan line. Hooking arms, they strode down the sidewalk, ignoring the occasional wolf whistle from the men passing in their three piece suits and cocked hats.

The Gilded Cage Theater in lower Manhattan blinked with white and gold electric lights. Swirls of violet sunset broke the cloud cover over the brick building, the headline giving the name of a new soubrette, an envied darling of the theater owner. The rest of the chorus girls knew she was only a casting couch star, shimmying out of her skivvies for a lead role.

"Thought you two were a lost cause!" Myrtle Brocklehurst yodeled as they strode up to the alley leading to the stage door.

She offered them a cigarette out of a silver case. Maryanne declined but Ivy took one, her nerves still a little frayed from her incident with the fire. Myrtle struck a match and lit it for her. Blowing a ring of smoke from her cherry red pout, Myrtle motioned to a fancy, gold motor car parked across the street. A well dressed, male passenger sat in the back with a chauffeur in a gray uniform at the wheel.

"He's been here for a half an hour, just sitting and waiting for the doors to open," she commented in her west Texan drawl. "You think he would have something better to do. A car like that doesn't come cheap. All that money and nowhere to go."

Ivy smirked. "I'm sure we could find some use for it."

"He's all yours. I've got that oil baron from Houston coming in tonight, the one I met last month. Seems he can't stay away," Myrtle cooed with a bawdy wink.

Ever practical, Maryanne sighed and peered towards the car, sizing up the occupants. "Well. Is he good looking? I can't tell, he's got his face in a newspaper. Must have good eyesight in this bad lighting."

"Who cares?" Ivy chortled, smoke curling from the corners of her mouth. "If the man's paying the bill for dinner and gin, he could look like Lon Chaney and you can count me in."

The three girls laughed. Ivy glanced back at the car as the newspaper fluttered away from the man's face. In the shadows, she could barely make out his features, but he looked right at her. She shivered, flicking the ash from the end of her cigarette. He folded the newspaper and leaned towards the chauffeur who turned in her direction as well.

"Seems we got their attention," Myrtle purred, flouncing her bleach blonde curls under her cloche hat.

"You ladies want this job or not!?" The stage manager stuck his red, pock marked face out of the stage door, waving a clipboard at them. "Places in ten minutes or you're all fired!"

Tossing their smokes to the ground with a few choice words grumbled low for the odious man, the three chorus girls made their way to the door. Ivy paused before slipping inside.

The two men were getting out of the car. It was odd to see the chauffeur walking alongside his employer as they strode purposefully towards the theater. Even with the electric lights in signs and on lampposts, it was hard to get a good look at them. But the way they moved gave Ivy pause.

These were not men out for a night on the town. They were on a mission, like gangsters out to make a hit. She made a mental note not to make a play for their affection after the show. The last thing she wanted was to get involved with a thug from an organized crime family, not while visions of fairy tale massacres hummed in her brain.