"I look amazing."
I hated how she used my bedroom vanity to apply her makeup, but grudginly admitted she did look amazing (maybe even a little hotter than I'd ever looked in my skintight satin harlequin suit - or not). poured into tight leather leggings and a loose, sheer sleeveless, button-down white artist's smock spattered with bloodlike red paint...or maybe it was real blood. This made me shiver. Mr. J didn't hesitate to kill, but he didn't revel in the blood. We had a real psychopath on our hands here! I decided to lock my door at night. If Puddin' wanted to cuddle...well, I'd just give him an extra key.
"Aren't you cold?" I asked her, staring at her upper half (she had that smock unbuttoned practically down to there, and she wasn't wearing a bra with it - if you squinted you could even see the outline of her full breasts through the fabric). What was she, a criminal or a hooker?
"Don't look at me like I'm such a slut, Harleeen. You know you look fairly hot yourself, strutting around looking pretty in your clown-girl costume that fits like a second skin....You're like the magician's assistant - something pretty with no other purpose than to distract."
"He uses me for more than distractions," I parried back, but she scoffed, flipping her dark hair with her hand and sashaying out.
She rode beside us on her black Vespa, refusing the Chucklemobile (if he ever knew I called it that, he'd murder me - especially if the tabloids got ahold of it) and I actually felt kind of jealous of her sassy freedom.
She'd been to Wayne Manor before, that was obvious, because she'd found us some secret entrance and smuggled us through. Mr. J walked through the house like he owned it, even when we ran into Bruce Wayne's ever-present butler.
"Cut Grandpa loose," The Artist whispered, and I almost felt a kinship with her. Could we actually be friends? But then I saw the way she looked at Puddin', how she was younger and smarter and maybe even sexier than me...and I hated her, more than the tenth-grade slut who stole my boyfriend back in high school, or the snotty plastic who ran the counter at my favorite lingerie store and looked at me like I was scum just because I'd been in Arkham a few times.
I expected Alfred to run, or call the cops, but he just calmly looked at us.
"Wish to speak to Master Bruce, do you?"
"Of course," The Artist answered before Puddin' even got a word out, and I knew he was mad.
"He's in the main dining room. I'll escort you there."
Why was he being so civil?
Bruce Wayne was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair, talking animatedly to a younger, more handsome man who looked so familiar...but I couldn't place it at all. Mr. J's hand automatically went to his gun, but Mr. Wayne stood up.
"Don't shoot, Joker," he warned.
He laughed his beautifully sexy crazy laugh, and cocked the trigger anyway, pointing the gun up at the chandelier and shooting to distract them as The Artist slipped off to raid the house, but she saw the face of Bruce Wayne's dinner companion and fled, jumping out a window.
"Don't come back...ever," Bruce Wayne told my angel, who only laughed in his face and grabbed my hand (take that, Artist!) We jumped out the window together, and I clung tight to him, sharing his purple parachute covered in dead smiley faces and loving being so close to his body, in his arms. Her skills may have been impressive, but after tonight, she was getting the boot.
"What was that?" he roared at The Artist when we got back to the old Chuckles Funtime Factory that was the current residence (my brilliant genius had hideouts like this all over Gotham, places where smiles and laughter had happened that were now dilapidated and abandoned, empty of happy noises. Every time the cops uncovered one, we just moved on to another. He's so clever!)
"I hired you to do a job, sweets. We had a plan. I'm not happy when my plans don't work...."
"I used to date Dick Grayson."