Five to Love Him (Phoenix Immortal: Hive #1)

3. LEOPOLD

three

“W ow, this place! Am I right? Leo, say I’m right.”

Ezra chuckled. I said, “You’re right, Tate. What even is this style?”

The Dazzle blended red, black, and velvet as if the interior designer had been a drag queen in love with true crime. Skulls watched us from nooks in the rough wall, and yes, right above Tate’s head there hung a chime made of knucklebones, fake knucklebones hopefully, but then this was the secret underground. Tate and I, we were the minority here.

I planted my butt on the chair upholstered with red velvet and sporting tassels. The table’s grain stood out like callouses under my finger, but it was clean, spotless. In its center, a fake wax LED candle shimmered.

“Right, what is this style?” Tate echoed, turning his curiosity on Ezra. “Explain it to us, Ez. Be our guide.”

Ezra shrugged. “Dunno. But the owner is a lernean, so creepy and morbid sound about right.”

“A lernean, learnean…” Tate almost reached for the notebook in his bag. I could see his fingers twitch.

“A creature that dwells in fresh water, mostly bogs. They can perceive things that happen in the bog from great distances away and have traditionally worked as morticians and undertakers, given they can dehydrate a corpse faster than an air fryer.”

Ezra snorted laughter. “That what they teach you at St. Auguste? That lerneans are like air fryers?”

I shrugged. “No, but I thought it was an apt comparison.”

The black-haired server came back with three menus and handed me mine last with a bright smile.

“If nothing on there is to your liking, our boss can be persuaded to make you something special.”

“Uh, I must daiquiri,” Tate said.

“Then it falls to me to margarita,” Ezra replied.

So they had developed couples’ speech already. If I spent too much time with them, my ears would start to bleed. I skimmed the menu. It was several pages of drinks, ordered by type of booze, followed by a small selection of food. I liked a cocktail, didn’t like an overabundance of choices.

I looked at the server. He was handsome, the fringes of his black hair falling into his blue eyes.

“I’ll have something special, please.”

His eyes widened. “But what?”

I shrugged. “Just surprise me.”

“Strawberry daiquiri for him and strawberry margarita for me,” Ezra said.

The server wrote that down but barely glanced at them.

“What do you like? We’d want to surprise you with something you like. If you tell us a favorite liquor, we’ll tell Coral, the bartender, and they—he will do the rest.”

Was he not a native speaker? He had no accent that I could hear, but his syntax was off.

“I guess I like rum. Everyone likes rum. Not too sweet but fruity.”

He nodded eagerly. He had a cute boyish smile, and the hair gave him the illusion of a boyish look too. He was lean and tall with long fingers and tidy nails.

“We can do that. Fruit and rum, not sweet.”

And he was off.

“That was weird,” Tate said before leaning over to Ezra, who had moved his chair closer to Tate while the guy had been taking our order. “What is he? Do you know?”

“Well, going by the carbon copy over there behind the bar, that’s a hive.”

“A hive!” Tate blurted before slapping a hand over his mouth, eyes going wide. “I always wanted to see a hive,” he added when he’d calmed down.

“Always? Until a few months ago, you didn’t know they existed.” Ezra smiled at Tate in the most indulgent way. It made me wonder all over again what was taking them so long. The chemistry was clearly there. They lived together. They ordered drinks for each other and had a silly story involving organic produce. By rights, they should be married.

Tate made a moue. “And whose fault is that? You could have told me sooner. Way sooner.”

Ezra shrugged. “Didn’t want to freak you out.” He glanced at me. “How about you? Have a strange roommate too?”

“Nah, I live alone. I just…I almost drowned when I was seventeen. I would have, but someone saved me and called an ambulance for me, only everyone kept telling me there was no one there, that I’d made it out of the frozen water by myself. I still remember how my clothes dragged me down. How my limbs locked. I didn’t make it out of that lake by myself.”

Ezra’s eyes narrowed. “Humans don’t do well in cold water. Or in any water. It does seem unlikely.”

Tate elbowed him. “Hey, pool boy. You told me my butterfly stroke had improved.”

“It has. But in case you hadn’t noticed, you have legs, and those aren’t made for water.”

“He’s right,” I said. “I should have drowned but I didn’t. I’ve been trying to understand that ever since, and a normal explanation wasn’t to be had, so I started looking. I ended up going to the Moonlight Diner one night.”

Ezra gasped. “That’s a—wow. Some PI work. I’m actually impressed.”

“I guess.” I shot him a lazy grin. “I thought it was a front for sex work.”

“Wait, the Moonlight is that safe place, right? The one under protection by that boogeyman character?”

“Shh. The Black Shuck isn’t a character, but yes, the Moonlight is safe. He won’t allow violence there.” Ezra looked at me. “I told Tate already, but if you’re ever in trouble, go there and call help. Why did you think there was sex work happening there? It’s a family diner.”

“There was a guy on a laptop being all busy, a bouncer-type dude who was trying not to stand out, and everyone was really good-looking. It matched the conversations I’d been overhearing at the time as well. Don’t judge me.”

“Oh, Ez doesn’t judge. Do you?”

“Yeah, I do. Just because there’s good-looking people there…seriously. So what did you do then? Ask what the hourly rate was?”

I shrugged. “I walked out. There was a cab parked in some alley a few steps away from there. I opened the door, and some guy with tentacles was all over another guy. I sort of screamed, and then the bouncer from the Moonlight was just there. It was so stupid, really. I didn’t think there was anything at all to the people talking about the cab conspiracy online.”

“There’s a cab conspiracy?” Tate asked. I’d never mentioned that to him before given we’d gotten stuck talking about tentacles and how you’d hide sucker marks.

“Not anymore. I told the Hawthorne people about that and, well, they are good at deleting stuff fast.”

Ezra folded his hands in front of him. “That keeps all of us safe, you know. Especially people who can’t pass. Your instructor is a chimera, right? Can you imagine what a bunch of scared humans can do to someone like that?”

“He discussed that with us,” Tate said. “At length and in detail.”

Ezra hummed. “Still, I do wonder how they picked up on the cabs.”

Tate nodded. “Me too. I mean, who are these online people looking for conspiracies anyway? A bunch of incels who live in their mothers’ basements and have the spare time to watch and follow cabs? No offense, Leo.”

“I’m not an incel.” I really, really wasn’t, but I couldn’t fully deny that I ticked at least some of the boxes, however clichéd.

Ezra put a hand on Tate’s shoulder. “My roomie has a nose for that kind of thing.”

Tate snorted. “I don’t. The chemicals ruined my sense of smell. But Leo doesn’t work. He just sits at home and thinks about tentacles all day.”

I groaned. “Well, apparently, I have to go and find a job now.”

“You are looking for work?” the cute server asked. He’d appeared without me noticing, easily balancing a tray with our drinks and small glass bowls with salted nuts and crackers.

“Forgot about the supernatural hearing,” I said.

“You were not whispering, and we were right here,” the server said. “We made sure Coral made you something tasty. It has blueberry and mint in it.”

He placed the glass in front of me. The drink was opaque, purple, and a sprig of fresh mint along with lemon peel had been arranged atop the froth like some small work of art.

“Looks good. Thanks.”

“And the daiquiri and margarita of course. We also brought nuts.”

He put everything on the table. And then didn’t leave. He was still looking at me.

“Uh, thanks,” I repeated. I caught Ezra and Tate exchanging a look.

“Please taste it. If you don’t like it, Coral will make you something else.”

I shrugged and took a sip. “Whoa. Nope. Whatever it is, it’s good.”

He beamed. “Please enjoy.” And off he went.

I turned to look after him and found that the twin behind the bar was looking my way, totally catching me…staring after himself? I knew that a hive was one being split into however many bodies, but Instructor Arick hadn’t had a definitive answer about whether the individual bodies had any sense of self at all or whether it was really just one consciousness. Hives didn’t disclose much information about themselves, that was what Arick had said.

Then again, I’d wondered whether maybe they just didn’t know how. I sure had wanted to explain to Gran about dropping out of college because almost drowning had haunted me all this time, but she hadn’t been able to understand. She’d tried, but she simply couldn’t relate.

“That was weird, right?” Tate said. “Oh, did the hive just flirt with Leo?”

“No one ever flirts with me,” I said, revealing one of the truths of my existence.

“Smile sometimes,” Ezra said. “I hear it increases the likelihood of being talked to.”

Tate gasped. “I told him that too! See, Leo? Smile sometimes so people are being tricked into thinking you’re nice and not a big old misanthrope.”

“Hurts my cheeks. Might get me all wrinkly and ruin my chances of being discovered as a model.”

It was satisfying to watch Ezra, master of water, nearly snort his cocktail all over the place.