Not just anyone could take the private elevator to the second floor. One had to be a member of the health club, and membership was tightly controlled and extremely expensive. Only the wealthiest and most influential men had a membership card.

Oh, and me.

The magnetic stripe on the back of the card didn’t work when I swiped it through the card reader. No surprise there. I’d had it in my wallet for several months, and I doubt the magnetic signature stored on the card had lasted more than a couple of days. I hit the intercom button on the console.

“Executive Priority,” said a cheerful young woman’s voice. “This is Billie, and how may I serve you?”

Thomas glanced at me and arched an eyebrow, mouthing the words, Serve you?

“You’ll see,” I muttered to him. I addressed the intercom. “My card seems to have stopped working. Harry Dresden and guest, please.”

“One moment, sir,” Billie said. She was back within a few seconds. “I apologize for the problem with your membership card, sir. I’m opening the elevator for you now.”

True to her word, the elevator opened, and Thomas and I got in.

It opened onto the main area of Executive Priority.

“You’re kidding me,” Thomas said. “Since when do you go to the gym?”

It looked pretty typically gymlike from here. Lots and lots of exercise machines and weight benches and dumbbells and mirrors; static bikes and treadmills stood in neatly dressed ranks. They’d paid some madman who thought he was a decorator a lot of money to make the place look hip and unique. Maybe it’s my lack of fashion sense talking, but I thought they should have held out for one of those gorillas who has learned to paint. The results would have been of similar quality, and they could have paid in fresh produce.

Here and there men, mostly white, mostly over forty, suffered through a variety of physical activities. Beside each and every one of them was a personal trainer coaching, supporting, helping.

The trainers were all women, none of them older than their late twenties. They all wore ridiculously brief jogging shorts so tight that it had to be some kind of minor miracle that allowed the blood to keep flowing through the girls’ legs. They all wore T-shirts with the gym’s logo printed on them, also tight—and every single woman there had the kind of body that made her outfit look fantastic. No gym in the world had that many gorgeous girls in its employ.

“Ah,” Thomas said after a moment of looking around. “This isn’t a typical health club, is it?”

“Welcome to the most health-conscious brothel in the history of mankind,” I told him.

Thomas whistled quietly through his teeth, surveying the place. “I’d heard that the Velvet Room had been retooled. This is it?”

“Yeah,” I said.

A brown-haired girl jiggled over to us, her mouth spread in a beauty-contest smile, and for a second I thought her shirt was about to explode under the tension. Bright gold lettering over her left breast read, BILLIE.