The Blonde and the Bootlegger: A Percy Jackson story

The Palace Theater

Annabeth P.O.V

I knew I wasn't supposed to leave Montauk but I didn't think going into New York for the night would do any harm.
Luke called me and told me that he had tickets for the opening night of Salomé at the Palace Theater and I agreed to go with him.
"Wow, look at you," Luke said when he picked me up, "You look like a Princess."
I was wearing a pink beaded evening frock and a crown of wax flowers.

"Thanks," I replied, blushing.
The curtain rose and we were transported back in time to Judaea around the time of Christ. Aphrodite Love played the role of Salomé, the bored, beautiful Judaean Princess who experiments with the cruelty her beauty and sexual allure can inflict. Her co-star was Tristan McLean as John the Baptist, the fiery but doomed Christian martyr.
McLean, an exceptionally handsome man despite the pale, wild, bedraggled appearance the costume and makeup people had given him, was dragged on stage by two guards. He denounced the sinful queen Herodias, Salomé's mother, for marrying her dead husband's brother, the Tetrarch Herod. Love, who was lounging on a chaise on the palace's terrace, hears his words and is overcome with lust. She wore a white evening dress with a silver pattern that reminded me of butterfly wings and a crown of red roses in her hair.