10. Dana
dana
. . .
“I can’t do this,” I groaned, burying my face in my arms on the polished surface of the heavy antique desk.
“You can and you will,” Ren said smoothly, her tattooed hand running along my shoulders before she wheeled my chair aside to give herself access to my keyboard. “I never realised how much of this shit Cherie did. How did she find time to sleep?”
I peeked up at her from between my arms, it was a sentiment I often had. How did she do it all?
“At least you have access to the accounts for ordering now, right?”
“Yep, I’ll take care of it. Now, to help Juniper, let me see if I can make any sense of these inventory reports.” Ren ran a hand through her short hair as she crouched to get a better look at the screen.
Gratitude poured through me as I vacated my chair, nudging her into it. “Thanks.”
If I’d been doing this on my own, it would’ve taken hours. Instead, we’d drunk a couple of beers while we combed through the filing cabinets looking for Cherie’s missing will and were already well into trying to put out the fire that was the club’s finances.
I was damn near sure I remembered her meeting with a lawyer to have a new one drawn up shortly before she’d passed, but when I’d called our usual firm, they didn’t have any paperwork for me. It was a stressful time; I could’ve easily been misremembering in my shock and grief.
As if losing my life partner wasn’t enough, I’d also been saddled with her absolutely insane workload—with no instructions for what the hell I was supposed to do—and with my first-of-the-month deadline from Garrett looming… We were fucked.
So fucked.
“I’m not going to let you do this alone, Dana. We’re coven. Family .”
In the months since our sire died, I’d really come to understand what that word meant to my coven. I don’t know why I half expected them to disappear after the funeral, but they didn’t. It wasn't just a promise for right now, for good times. It was a promise for forever .
My throat tightened at the thought of losing any of them.
Losing Cherie had nearly destroyed me, but the idea that Ren, Elsie, or Juniper could be next? It was… terrifying. To distract myself, I opened my emails on my phone, leaning against the desk while Ren typed away at the computer.
I scrolled through job applications for the bartending posting I’d forgotten to close now that we’d hired Vi, making a mental note to sign into my Monstra account and mark the position as filled—as if I needed yet another small task to add to the never-ending list.
Junk emails phishing for my bank account data, promotions from the company we used to print our flyers, and… a notice from our insurance company about our upcoming renewal. I clicked the message, scanning it quickly.
“Our building is up for renewal.”
“And?” Ren asked distractedly, her fingers flying over the keys. “You know we haven’t done monthly inventory in five months, right?”
“Fuck,” I muttered. “We’ll have to haul everyone in to get it done.”
We’d let a lot of things slip while Cherie was sick, but I didn’t realize just how much. It was my fault, but it still felt a little unfair to have to play catch-up.
“ Fuck is right.” Ren sighed. “What do we have to do?”
“Just need to submit a copy of our lease or the deed to the club, and they’ll auto-renew. Otherwise, we default.”
“And when is this due?”
“Ninety days. But Garrett…”
“We have time, Dana. Let’s just tackle one crisis at a time, okay?”
I set my phone on the desk, opening the lower drawer to thumb through the documents inside.
“Even if I can’t find the will, the deed should be around here somewhere, right? I didn’t see anything in the safe or safety deposit box.”
“Probably,” Ren said noncommittally. “I’ll schedule that inventory then, maybe in a couple of weeks? After Valentine’s Day?”
I nodded, my brow furrowing as I got to the end of the files, closing one drawer to open the next. “Sounds like a plan.”
Ren worked in silence except for the click of the keys as I riffled through more paperwork, dread beginning to coil in my stomach. My vision tunnelled as the anxiety got worse. Drawer after drawer with no deed to be found.
At some point, Ren got up to help me look, and Juniper joined in on the effort after she appeared in the doorway and asked what we were doing.
“Any luck?” Ren called with a sigh, her hair standing up on end where she’d repeatedly run her hands through it.
“Nada,” Juniper sighed herself from where she thumbed through the tall filing cabinet for the third time.
I glanced up at the clock with a loud curse. “I know she must’ve put it around here somewhere.”
“Honestly, D… I don’t remember seeing it,” Ren said, her eyes following mine. “I’ll go get us some dinner before the club opens. Pizza okay?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah,” Juniper muttered. “Listen, are we sure she didn’t have another safety deposit box or something?”
I rubbed my hands over my face. “I’m positive. Her records are pretty… Well, I wouldn’t say clear, but…”
She flipped her long, copper ponytail off her shoulder, pulling out another file folder. “It has to be here then. I doubt Cherie would’ve just hid the deed to our home somewhere we’d never find it.”
“Exactly,” Ren agreed. “Worry less about that and more about how I’m supposed to run a bar when no one has any idea what we have in stock.”
“Shut up, Ren. She’s doing her fucking best.”
“Yeah, yeah… I’ll be back,” she huffed, her patience threadbare as she offered a wave.
“You are doing a good job, for the record.” Juniper said hotly, closing the drawer with enough force that it popped back at her. “You know how she gets; she hates when things don’t go her way.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said weakly.
Part of me knew she was right; Ren needed order, a trait that’d caused nearly nonstop fighting between her and Cherie.
Now that our coven was only the four of us, though, I needed to rely on her more than ever. That meant working with Ren’s penchant for military order instead of against it.
As the second eldest when Cherie passed, I’d sort of become the de facto family head. Even though I hadn’t sired any of the vampires in our little family, I was still responsible. What I hadn’t considered in our tearful bedside goodbye was the insurmountable amount of stress responsibility for three others would bring.
I’d reclaimed my spot at the computer ages ago, but no matter how many bank statements, bookkeeping records, or files I opened on Cherie’s computer, I still couldn’t find the document I was looking for. Not to mention, our taxes were due soon, and I had absolutely no idea how to file them. I made sure the bills were getting paid each month, and that was about it—I was our head of security, for fuck’s sake, not a goddamn accountant.
That space between my shoulder blades was aching again, the muscles tight as I lifted my arms above my head and arched my back, futilely trying to alleviate the pressure.
It was my own fault. I’d been hunched over at my desk like a shrimp for days instead of upright against the back of the ergonomic chair.
Fucking insurance. Fucking inventory. Fucking dipshit useless brother-in-law who was trying to steal my fucking club and make my entire coven homeless.
God, I needed a day off.
“Shit,” Juniper hissed, her eyes on the clock when I looked up from my screen. “I’m supposed to be getting Mars fitted for the diamonds number.”
“Go on,” I said, waving her away. “I’ll keep at it for a little while longer.”
She came close for a quick kiss against my temple.
“I know I’m usually the last person to be optimistic, Dana, but it’ll work out.”
“Thanks, baby girl,” I murmured softly, giving her hip a gentle squeeze. “I love you.”
Juniper’s cherry cola lips quirked into a smile before catching mine in a brief kiss. “I love you.”
The little numbers on the screen turned blurry again as I returned my focus to my spreadsheet.
On top of this new issue of the missing deed—something that in theory I should be able to resolve by going down to city hall if the building was purchased after 1820, if my quick online search was accurate—I still needed to figure out how to make the business survive with less than twenty-five percent of our income.
No matter what I did, I just couldn’t see a way to grow the club’s profits. An increase in the admission fee would only exclude more casual clients. Raising the membership fee would piss off regulars, who were the heart and soul of the business. An uptick in drink prices was… I mean, it was viable but would hardly make a dent in the grand scheme of things.
Usually, I would’ve just tapped into the coven’s savings account for something like this. But the lawyer I’d contacted had strictly advised against accessing those funds—large withdrawals could come back to bite us in the ass if Garrett really did decide to take us to court for the contents of Cherie’s estate.
That was the thing about paper records—whoever had the proof, even if it was a dirty, underhanded lie , was who’d be successful in court.
So, we needed to increase our monthly income and quickly , or the coven wouldn’t just lose the club but our home too. A bit of an oversight on our part to tie our living situation to the building where we did business, but we never considered that Cherie wouldn’t be here to keep things running smoothly.
Fuck me, that couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it happen.
Not after Cherie put her trust in me. She believed I could do this… that meant I had to.
I’d stepped up to make sure our family was taken care of, that her legacy meant something . That wasn’t going to end because Garrett was throwing some fucking hissy fit over what he thought he was owed.
The part that made me seethe was it wasn’t like the bar was in the red. We were the most popular club in the Lower City—hell, one of the most popular in the entire country . But attendance had slipped a little in the last couple of weeks, and social media engagement had stuttered since our last show changeover.
It wasn’t enough for us to be good . We needed to be the best if we were going to buy ourselves enough time to get that dickhead Garrett off our backs.
I tabbed through the numbers again—attendance, the average amount customers spent at the bar, the house fees from the girls. It was… Good. Steady, even. But it wasn’t growing .
I didn’t realize I was scowling until Vi knocked on the door, leaning hard against the frame with two plates balanced precariously over one arm.
“Whoa, that computer must really be hurting your feelings.”
I leaned away from the screen, face twitching into a smile at the gentle rasp of her voice. “Just looking at it too long. What’s up?”
She nodded to the plates, stacked with pizza, a pair of sodas tucked under her arm. “Thought you might be hungry.”
“Don’t you usually eat with the girls?”
Vi batted her long eyelashes at me playfully. “I’m so sorry, Dana, do you have another date?”
“Not if you’re offering,” I joked, pushing away from the computer and leaning back in my chair to look at her with a roguish grin.
She snorted a laugh, and fuck if that wasn’t stupidly charming.
“Don’t get too excited, boss. Come on, the pizza will be cold.”
“Yeah, okay. Have a seat.”
Vi threw herself into the chair opposite my desk, setting the plates between us. My office—Cherie’s old office—wasn’t spacious thanks to the army of filing cabinets that lined the walls. It turned out that a couple hundred years could turn anyone into a pack rat. There was hardly enough room for an L-shaped desk with my computer and printer, and the chair, usually occupied by Elsie or Juniper, sat at an angle across from mine.
I shoved a stack of overflowing folders secured with thick elastics out of the way, making space for the two of us to eat.
I preferred my old office. This one felt cold without Cherie sipping a Malbec to the sound of Miles Davis. Tomb-like as it collected dust, waiting for someone who was never coming back.
“So…” the human asked conversationally, popping the tab of her cola with a fizzy hiss. “What has you scowling at your computer like it threatened your mom?”
I hesitated, unsure of how much I should reveal to someone outside our coven. But as I looked into Vi’s deep brown eyes, I couldn’t help myself as all the anxiety and frustration burst out of me between vicious bites of pizza.
“My wife’s brother is trying to take the club out from under us while her will is missing,” I explained, watching her eyebrows disappear behind her bluntly cut bangs. “We can either fork over a fuckload of money—” I nodded appreciatively as she opened my drink, sliding it toward me, “—or the fucking prick is going to sell the club.”
“Can he really do that?”
“He’s her next of kin. Without a written will, he can do whatever the fuck he wants.”
Vi swore loudly, shaking her head.
“Okay, so how can I help? What do we need to do?”
“That's the problem,” I sighed, grabbing a tissue from the box beside my monitor to wipe the corner of my mouth. “I can’t figure out how to increase our attendance, and if we can’t get more bodies, we’ll need to raise prices, but if we raise prices, we risk the business we already have and?—”
“Dana,” Vi said softly, reaching across the surface of the table to catch my hand in her warm fingers. “Breathe. Valentine’s Day is coming up?—”
I laughed bitterly. “Not exactly a strip club’s best night, Vi.”
“Yeah, but we’re not a strip club. We’re a sex club,” she said, tilting her head to the side with a thoughtful hum. “A sex club that caters to clientele that’ve had more than enough stuffy Hallmark holiday dinner-like dates, right?”
A second slice of pizza stalled halfway to my mouth. “Well, yeah… I guess so.”
“We don’t have a lot of time, so it doesn’t have to be anything, like, crazy.” Vi turned in her seat, swiping some paper out of my printer and a pen from the World’s Greatest Boss mug sitting on my desk. “An ad campaign, mostly on social media, since traditional advertising would mean planning more in advance. We would offer, say, a one-night-only package where non-members get two entries at a slightly discounted rate.”
“Get more people in the door,” I said, tossing the pizza down onto the plate. “Okay, so that solves one problem, but if it’s a discounted rate we’d need?—”
“Hey, I’m not done.” She shoved the plate closer to me as she smoothed the paper down, her hand moving in quick, decisive strokes as the silhouette of a retro pinup girl began to take shape. “We have Elsie pose for something like this and send it to your most active members—they see her all the time and will be expecting it. Plus, she’s always a draw for them. And then something like this…” She sketched another pose under the first, the shapes of two women artfully suggestive as she continued to add careful lines. “To the least active members to get them excited to come back. Then we need to address the average ticket.”
“I… Uh… Right?”
Where the fuck is this coming from?
“A couple of custom cocktails with inexpensive but premium-feeling garnishes that allow us to hike up the cost like a smoking cloche, some rosemary, or whatever—and a deal on full bottles of champagne. The markup is high, and they’re so beautiful on a table that they’ll really set the mood. We should give them the option to pre-buy a bottle at a discount with their tickets so they’re already half-drunk before they have to actually order anything.”
“Vi—”
“And, in my fantasy land, we manage to find a caterer with some time to supply some light snacks and desserts. Get people in early for the stage show, keep them here late enjoying playtime.” By the time she was finished, our lunch was cold, and she’d filled four pages of notes, pushing them toward me along with the pen. “Or something like that.”
I blinked, silence stretching between us as I looked from the notes to the life-saving genius seated across the desk.
Even with the discounted ticket cost, the add-ons she’d proposed would earn us a healthy profit.
It was fucking brilliant.
It was exactly what I needed.
Maybe I needed a girl— this girl—to walk into my club and fix things.
“This is a really good plan, Vi.”
“I know,” she said, puffing her chest with a cocky little smile. “I worked in marketing until I got laid off last year.”
“I… You w hat ?” I asked. It wasn’t that it was shocking that she’d been successful before coming to us; it was that she’d never mentioned it before. I usually would’ve found out from her resume, but because we’d done a live audition…
Fuck me, I always did like the smart ones.
“Yeah, I might not be doing it anymore, but I still have ideas all the time. If this works, then I have a ton more for the club, actually.”
“Listen—don’t take this the wrong way, but why the hell are you bartending? It sort of seems—” Like a fucking waste of your time.
So why did the thought of Vi leaving to go work at some big-shot firm downtown make me feel sick to my stomach?
“Honestly,” she said, taking her time to chew a cold bite of pizza. “At first, I was totally against it. It felt like taking a step backwards since I bartended to put myself through college, but… The job market is shit, and my mom is sick, so I gotta do what I gotta do. You know?”
“Your mom?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged, not quite meeting my eyes. “Cancer. My sibling is in nursing school, so it isn’t like she has a pile of money to help with either. So I stepped up.”
The light from the beaded chintz lamp seemed to touch her in an entirely new way, her eyes molten in its warm glow.
“I understand what it’s like to have to take on responsibility for other people,” I said softly, catching her hand in mine. “Thank you for helping me take care of mine, Vi.”
She smiled, her eyes lingering on where we touched. “Thank you for the same, I guess.”
I glanced at the calendar on the wall behind her. “We only have a week.”
“It’s a quick turnaround, sure. But everyone at O is crazy talented; it’ll be a breeze.”
Reluctantly, I let go of her hand, picking up her discarded pen to grab a fresh sheet of paper, writing a quick checklist of what would need to be done.
“Looks like you have your work cut out for you,” Vi said, standing as she grabbed her plates. “I’ll let you get to it.”
My eyes flicked to hers, energy crackling between us as I hesitated, my throat tight. For the first time since Garrett had visited us, I didn’t feel like the world was about to topple over. It was disorienting.
“Thank you,” I whispered, clutching the pen hard to stop myself from grabbing her. No matter what I thought could happen between us, I was still Vi’s boss.
There were some lines I shouldn’t cross.
Like she’d read my thoughts, Vi’s eyes moved between mine, her cheeks pinking as she whispered, “It’s my pleasure, boss.”
I ignored the way boss on her tongue made my skin prickle and nodded toward the door, leaning away to break the spell.
“It’s time for us to get to work.”