Fractured flame firebird.., p.2
Fractured Flame (Firebird Uncaged Book 1), page 2
So while I wasn’t strictly nocturnal—not like a vampire, who might actually burn up on a sunny day—I tended to feel more energized in the darker hours and spaces of the world. The blacker the night, the more magic would come from just a glimmer of light. The more power would be available at my fingertips. To feel that little tingle all around me in the dark, the hum of potential in every breath I drew—it was better than ten cups of coffee.
A bitch still needs her coffee, though, I thought as I walked over to the espresso machine. Yet another perk of the job.
The phone rang before I could get the machine going, and I cursed Baz under my breath. The owner of the club was literally ancient, a djinn with an irrational hatred of mobile phones. Even though that technology had been around long before I’d been born, it still felt new and scary to someone so old—and genies were known to get trapped in small objects, right?
Baz wasn’t too keen on the antique landline, either, but someone had convinced him he couldn’t run a business without it.
It all worked out for the dancers, because making customers check their phones at the door meant they couldn’t slyly take free pictures. I just wished I didn’t have to walk across the floor every time the damn thing rang.
I pressed the phone to my ear and stuck my finger through the curly cord that was probably older than my grandparents. “Hello. You’ve reached Bawdy Baz’s Bits and Bats.” Like every time I said it, I tried not to cringe. Baz cared deeply about his corny names, and messing them up was about the only thing he’d ever gotten mad at me for. “How can I help you?”
“Darcy? Is that you?” My roommate’s voice came through sounding hoarse and frantic, unusual for her normally cheerful self.
“Nope, definitely not me,” I said automatically. “What’s wrong with your voice? You sound like you’ve been smoking, or screaming . . . Please tell me Noah didn’t set our place on fire.” Becca’s son was a sweet kid, but he was still a kid, and all kids were disasters waiting to happen in my experience.
“No . . .” Becca coughed. “I’m just running . . . He needed me to help him with something, so I had to go into the city.” She coughed again, and I frowned.
The combination of her frantic tone and slow, careful words made me think she was hiding something.
Becca was fae, so she couldn’t lie. Not straight out, at least. She could tell half-truths and manipulate implications and connotations all day long, and she was damn good at it. But we’d become friends while living together for the past year, and that made it easy for me to recognize her tells, even over the phone.
“You went into DC to—”
“Yes,” she cut me off, the sneaky thing, answering only the first part of a question I was now sure she didn’t want to face. “Look, I’m just calling because I’m going to be late.”
She sounded annoyed with me now, and it took me off guard. Becca normally had much more patience with me than most people, which was one of the many reasons I liked her.
“Okay, sorry . . .” I started.
She let out another cough before asking, “Can you get someone to cover my first set?”
“Sure. But it sounds like you should maybe just take the night off, Bex. Are your lungs even still inside your body? If you cough them up, I’ll have to hunt them down, and it’d be way easier to just share my tips with you tonight.”
She was quiet for a second, and I wished I could see her to gauge whether I’d pissed her off further or made her smile. Becca was one of the few people who could always make me smile, and I wasn’t very good at reciprocating.
Eventually, she said, “I’m fine, Dumbo. Just cover for me. I can’t afford to lose this job. Not now.”
Her voice seemed a little more relaxed, and hearing it made my tight chest relax a little in turn. Even so, she hung up the phone before I could tell her that no one would fire her tonight for anything—Baz had told me yesterday he’d be taking today off.
Luckily, Baz’s absence meant I still had my phone on me when normally I would have dropped it in my locker first thing. I pulled it out and sent a quick text to Etty, our other roommate, asking her to wrangle Becca into bed and give her some tea if she showed up at home.
Etty sent back an incomprehensible string of emojis, as usual, and I figured I’d done the best I could.
My instincts were telling me to go find Becca and take care of her myself, at least to get her settled. I still had enough time before my shift, too. But with more assassins possibly out to get me, the best thing I could do for anyone I cared about today was to stay the fuck away.
I went back over to the espresso machine and made myself a double shot. The drink sent a good amount of warm, fuzzy excitement through my bones as I started prepping the bar.
Truth be told, I loved this job, despite having ended up here by accident. As a career bodyguard who’d failed so spectacularly last year I’d been blacklisted by everyone in the business, I’d suddenly found myself with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and an empty bank account.
My aunts and uncles had blown up my phone, jumping on the opportunity to offer to send me to medical school so I could finally make something of myself and help people the only way they thought was respectable. And even now, a part of me felt guilty for refusing to do that.
But all I’d wanted was to disappear, spend my days in the darkness where I wouldn’t have to face anyone who knew me or cared who I was. No expectations. No disappointment. No unwinnable battles to fight against death.
Only a world of delicious boozy concoctions and patrons who needed healing of a different kind. A world full of laughter and lust, fantasy and indulgence, camaraderie and friendship. All the things I’d never been allowed, never allowed myself—still didn’t fully allow myself even now.
Bringing other people into that world and watching the smiles it put on their faces, the lightness it brought to their souls, the cash it put in my pocket… It was comfortable in a way I’d never felt before.
Today, though, a pit was forming deeper in my gut with every lemon I slid my knife through, every sprig of herb I picked and washed and dried.
The expectation that another killer would come for me tonight made my new world feel invaded by the old one. And instead of new recipes for drinks buzzing around in my brain, I found myself planning for ways to keep the next assassin alive long enough to get some answers out of them.
A couple hours into my shift, no assassin had appeared, and I found myself wishing the night would get crazy enough that I could practice my knife-throwing without scaring the customers away.
“So, you like assholes?”
The words came out of my mouth almost compulsively as I polished my twentieth shot glass for the twentieth time, my mind grasping out for anything to distract me from obsessing over the woman I’d killed earlier.
The quiet guy sitting at my bar jerked a little at my question, like a teenager caught looking at porn. But when he turned his gaze to me from the bare ass gyrating in his direction on stage, I could tell he’d remembered where he was. A nearly empty strip club, in which the bartender had so little to do she could give him all the special attention in the world.
“Is that . . . an offer?” he asked. He looked even more terrified now.
Feeling like a child with a new toy on a rainy Sunday, I smiled brightly and held up my favorite bottle of rum. “Of course! It’s called a Flaming Asshole, and it’s my special tonight.”
He let out a breath, though his face was still tense. Relieved, yet skeptical. I shrugged. I knew the drink was famous for tasting like—well, like ass. But I had tweaked the recipe and made it delicious.
“I promise it’ll be tasty. Probably not as tasty as hers, but . . .”
That made him smile, and I savored his amusement far more than was probably healthy. He even gave me a nervous laugh. Not that this was an impressive feat, since I could always get the men in the club to laugh. Well, the human men, at least. The craziest, dirtiest, nuttiest shit could come out of my mouth and they would either think it was hilarious or just ignore me.
Not for the first time, I wondered why I hadn’t figured this out sooner. My life had been hell when the odd dick joke had either brought on judgmental glares or sexual harassment.
“I’m Darcy, by the way,” I said, plastering the smile back on my face. “And you should be drinking something, or the ladies in here might think you’re a cop.”
No human would want to be suspected of coppery in a place like this. Not that anything illegal went down in here, as far as I knew. It was a strip club, not a brothel. But it was an inter-species strip club, which made it a target for haters of every nasty variety. And after all the unjust arrests and violence human cops had caused in places like this over the last twenty years, their particular brand of trigger-happy paranoia was unofficially very unwelcome.
“Alright. Give me your best shot,” Mr. Asshole said after a moment of hesitation.
“It is a shot!” I replied with genuine excitement, surprised by the pun.
My face fell when I turned to grab a glass and spotted Becca’s golden, glittery head of hair resting on the bar a few seats down. The shining strands magically stretched out over the wet surface, slowly shifting and floating towards me, drawn to my movement. I sighed, disappointed to see Etty hadn’t managed to keep her from showing up.
“Becca,” I called to the head buried under the ethereal mane.
She was normally so playful and energetic at work that it was disorienting to see her like this. It was a slow night, though, and some customers did love dramatics. Even after how awful she’d sounded on the phone, I expected her to pop up any moment with an exasperated sigh, whining in a baby voice about how no one wanted to play with her. But she only groaned softly.
“Bex—girl, are you okay?”
Her hands slid up to the surface of the bar, fingertips turning red as she struggled to push herself up. When her head finally lifted, I noticed a sheen of sweat on her face and neck. Her makeup was running, her teeth chattering.
Damn, she looked even worse than she’d sounded over the phone. What could she possibly be hoping to achieve showing up like this? It wasn’t like she was working for wages; if she couldn’t sell dances, she’d get nothing—especially on a slow night like tonight. And if Baz were here, he’d be more likely to fire her for trying to dance in this state than for staying home.
I sighed again, leaving Mr. Asshole to fend for himself while I moved to whip up a tonic for Becca.
Elderflower liqueur, dry Prosecco, and a spoonful of habanero-infused honey. I stirred it gently, leaving out the ice, and finished it with a sprig of charred thyme. It never hurt to make these things taste nice. Though I had to admit, the ingredients were more for my own fun than anything else. All that really mattered was the next step.
Gently, the backs of my fingers rested against the sides of the cool glass. My palms opened outward, casting invisible nets into the dark atmosphere and absorbing some of the tiny glimmers of magic that existed all around me. They crawled through my skin, through my blood, through my bone as I thought feel-better thoughts, and then into the tonic they sank.
The club’s door opened just as I was finishing up, and the unexpected flash of bright neon lights outside made my heart jump. With my fingers still on the glass, I looked up to see a man walk in I hadn’t seen here before. And I kept looking at him when he conspicuously kept his oversized coat on, coolly brushing past Mitch the bouncer when he offered to take it. How many weapons could he be hiding under there? I wondered, and my heart raced faster.
His eyes met mine for a moment as he made his way over to the stage, and I felt heat pulse through my veins. I bit my lip hard and looked down at Becca’s tonic, taking my hands away from the glass as I mentally kicked myself. Yeah, the guy was sexy as hell—skin the color of summer, wide-set cheekbones, dark eyes, and hair that was just the right level of messy. But I saw attractive men all the time, so that probably wasn’t why my dumb body suddenly wanted to throw down with him. Could it be because my paranoia had me thinking he was an assassin sent to kill me, and of course I was fucked up enough that this turned me on? I ran a hand over my face and groaned. This was a new low for me.
With a long breath in and out, I turned back to my roommate and slid the drink in front of her. Then I gave her head a little poke, and she slowly lifted it. “Here you go, Bex. Drink this, and then go home. Seriously. You need to rest, and if you keep dancing tonight you’ll scare away your regulars.”
As her lips wrapped around the straw, she stared at me with dull eyes and gave me a little salute.
“Aye aye, Captain?” a man called from the other side of the bar.
My head snapped back around to see Mr. Asshole looking at me with a cute, lopsided smile. Yet another sexy guy, case in point.
I must have seemed confused, because his head bobbed toward Becca and he continued, “Do you run this ship?”
“Only sometimes. The real man in charge is Baz. Bawdy Baz,” I amended, hating myself for saying it. My corny boss would love this awkward man with the pirate jokes at my bar. “But he’s off for the night. Are you here to see him? Is that why you’re sitting here, staring at my bottles of booze instead of the ladies?”
“I’m here with a friend.” His smoke-gray eyes shifted over to the plush curtain hiding the private dance area, and I could tell by his tense jaw and clipped words how uncomfortable he felt. “This . . . isn’t really my scene.”
Ugh. The reluctant voyeurs were always the worst. Especially the humans. I could never tell whether it was the nakedness or the otherness of the women in the club that set them on edge. Either way, the implications were not nice.
“I’ll try not to take offense at that if you try to have a little fun,” I shot back at him. “For your friend’s sake. Now turn around and watch the show while I make your drink.”
As I gestured to the stage, I took the opportunity to make eye contact with Etty, who also danced here, across the floor. Maybe the emojis she’d sent me earlier had meant something along the lines of: “No Darcy, I will not keep Becca home no matter how sick she is.”
I was a little bitter, yeah, but it wouldn’t be the first time Etty had done something for no reason other than to piss me off.
She whispered something in the ear of my possible assassin, whose lap she’d been sitting in, and then promptly glided up to the bar.
Her velvety, dark-brown skin looked almost completely black in the dimmed light of the club, yet somehow it still glittered. And in her next-to-nothing thong and seven-inch heels, she seemed to embody an actual goddess as she walked toward me. Luckily, she had been roommates with me and Becca for long enough that I’d already done battle with the small feeling of envy that popped into my throat every time I looked at her. And I at least liked to think I’d won.
She veered toward Mr. Asshole, swaying her hips and reaching out to run her fingers through his sandy hair—probably thinking I wanted her to take him off my hands.
His eyes widened in panic, and he froze.
“Ey, hands off!” I snapped at Etty playfully. “This one’s mine.” Then I began pouring his drink, casting my eyes down as I said, “But I think Becca could use some lovin’.”
Etty raised her eyebrows at me. “What? She seemed fine when she—”
Becca groaned and lifted her hot mess of a head up again, and Etty swore. She moved over to our shimmering, pale, sweaty blond friend at the other end of the bar, immediately beginning to fuss over her, pushing her hair away from her face and rubbing her back. Judging by the jerkiness of Becca’s movements as she reacted, my tonic was already starting to help.
Okay, so either Etty hadn’t been paying attention earlier, or Becca had done a good job of hiding how sick she was. This whole thing was fucking weird, and the Guardian-trained part of me wanted to clear the club of everyone right now so we could get to the bottom of it.
But that would be ridiculous. I was no longer in a work environment where a colleague acting strange was cause for that much concern. Normal people acted nuts sometimes—even ones I knew and liked.
Forcing a smile, I put the final touch on Mr. Asshole’s drink—a layer of overproof rum topping small pours of orange liqueur, banana liqueur, and cinnamon vodka. Then I produced a flame from my fingertip and lit it on fire, instructing him to please blow it out before enjoying. I briefly toyed with the idea of infusing a bit of lust into the beverage, just to mess with him, but something stopped me.
The way he was acting towards the half-naked women around him would normally annoy me—because how dare he not feel comfortable around my beautiful friends? But this man’s discomfort felt different. He hadn’t been looking at anyone here with disdain, or pity. It seemed more like anxiety to me. Like he knew he was the problem, and not us.
And I know exactly how that feels.
He downed my concoction in one shot, and after subtly licking his lips, he said, “That tastes a lot more like bananas foster than asshole.” With a shrug, he added, “The orange is a nice touch.”
I was about to thank him when his friend reappeared and slid in next to him, a wide grin plastered on his face.
“You missed out, buddy! When that one shifts, she’s got at least five more tits on her!” He whistled and downed the Old Fashioned he’d left perspiring on my bar during his dance.
To his credit, Mr. Asshole froze up again with his mouth slightly agape, then closed it with determination and nodded slowly. As his friend dragged him out of his seat, he slipped a twenty from his pocket and nodded at me in what looked like both thanks and apology.
They made off to sit at the stage, and I chuckled to myself. Our resident werewolf, Laura, had become an expert in partially shifting to accentuate all the bits men loved, and I thought it was absolutely genius.
