CHAPTER SEVEN
Myra
My shift seemed to last forever.
My mind was too overwhelmed with the clusterfuck that was my current situation to function well, and it showed.
I’d made a mess of nearly every order I’d taken and narrowly survived the backlash.
My bravado could only get me so far; even I knew that.
To say that I had been pushed to my limit, courtesy of the fancy fairy, was an understatement.
The thought of allying with him to secure my ticket home made my insides boil, but though I loathed having to go along with his little plan, I could see no way out of it.
My desire to return—to claim my vengeance and clear my name—along with the binding nature of a fae bargain left me properly screwed, as far as I could tell.
By the time my next break came, all I wanted to do was run away and hope he would never find me, but I knew better than that. Instead, I stood in the alley outside the kitchen, leaned against the brick wall of the bar, and stared at the text he’d sent me.
Meet at the old fountain in the center of Demon’s Horn. 11pm sharp. Wear something sexy.
“Wear something sexy,” I muttered under my breath as I scoffed at the directive.
“That definitely was not part of the deal.” For the next couple of minutes, a glorious scenario played out in my mind in which I told Yael off in award-winning fashion, leaving him humbled and speechless.
I grinned at the thought until I remembered who I was dealing with.
Unlike so many other pretty faces, that one came with a brain and a tongue as dangerous as mine that would never have been cowed by the fictitious dressing-down I’d just given him.
At best, he’d have been remotely fazed, but even that seemed like a stretch because it would require him to actually care about me or my feelings.
Using my near-drowning to leverage me into a deal had firmly established that that was far from the case.
I let out a frustrated sigh just before Ravi pushed the side door open and stepped out in the dark of the night.
He wiped his hands down his white apron streaked with stains and pulled out a cigarette case.
“You seem off tonight,” he said as he put a hand-rolled to his lips and lit it. “Something going on?”
“Always,” I said with a sigh. “But you should be proud of me. I didn’t shank the werewolf who grabbed my ass as I walked by earlier.”
“Impressive. Does he know he narrowly escaped death?”
“I think he got the point when I broke a beer stein over his head and threatened him with a glass shard.”
“That does have a way of making a statement,” he replied with the cigarette pinched between his lips.
“But that happens to you constantly here, and it doesn’t normally break your stride.
I can tell something else is bothering you.
” He exhaled a plume of smoke into the air. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Did I? Not really, but Ravi had been dealing with tricky fae for longer than I’d been alive. If anyone might know a way to get me out of my mess, it was him. He’d been doing it since he found me in the Playground. I hoped this time wouldn’t prove different.
“Random question for you: what do you know about deals with the fae?”
He looked at me over his hand as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth again. “I know never to make one,” he said in a cautious tone, “and nothing about that question feels random, so I suggest you tell me why you asked it.”
“It’s nothing, really—”
“What have you done, Myra?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
He eyed me with a healthy dose of suspicion, those warm brown eyes silently trying to pry the answer from me. “Then why are you asking me this oddly specific question in the alley with no one else around?”
“You just asked me what was going on! It’s not like I waited for you to come out here so I could ambush you in private and grill you,” I countered, reaching my hand out in a silent request for a drag.
He handed the cigarette over reluctantly, and I inhaled the sweet herbal mixture of clove, cinnamon, and whatever the hell else he always put in them.
The tension in my shoulders eased within seconds.
“One of the girls from the corner may or may not have gotten herself into a jam with some fae bastard who needs her particular magical skills, and she’s trying to find a way out.
I’m helping because, as much as I enjoy a little drama from time to time, I’d like to keep it out of my neighborhood.
” I passed the cigarette back to him. “Is that all right with you?”
He hesitated before putting it to his mouth, shrewd eyes assessing me.
“Wouldn't Yael be a better person to ask, now that he’s back in the Playground? He’d know far more about it than I would.
” The weight of his wizened stare made me squirm inside but I held firm, not giving anything away.
“Besides, I heard Laney and Sasha talking about you two being a thing now. Is that true?”
“Something like that.”
His whole body tensed at my response, and it wasn’t hard to see the disapproval in his eyes. “What does that mean?” he asked, quirking a brow.
“It means there’s nothing to tell. It’s new, and we haven’t exactly put a label on it.”
“I find that interesting, given the rather vivid conversation we had after your shift on the day I hired him. What was it you said to me?” He looked to the air above as though searching for the exact phrasing I’d used that night. “Something about mutilation, if memory serves.”
“I said I’d cut his dick off and serve it as tomorrow’s special if you didn’t get rid of him.”
A rare and mischievous smile spread across his face.
“Yes… that was it.” But as quickly as it had come, his jovial expression slipped away, leaving a stern scowl in its place.
“So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that you started seeing him the second he returned unexpectedly. The only thing you loathe more than him is being wrong, and I’m not sure you’d survive that long enough to date him. ”
“Someone once told me that hating someone wasn’t a deterrent to fucking them,” I said, leaning forward in challenge. “I hate him just as much as I always have, Ravi. I’m just channeling it in a more useful way now.”
“Useful or self-destructive?” he countered. “Because I cannot think of anything good that could come of this ‘relationship’.”
“That’s because you don’t know everything about it.” Like how it was going to get me back to the Deep.
“If you two are so close all of a sudden, then perhaps you should ask him about this fae deal. Your reluctance to have this conversation with him has my mind spinning with possible reasons as to why you have not.”
“Well,” I said, letting irritation spill into my tone, “I was hoping not to have to spell this out for you, Ravi, but you seem hell-bent on it, so I will. The first, most obvious reason is that, when we’re together, there generally isn’t a whole lot of talking going on.
The second is that I don’t trust him enough. ”
“But you trust him enough to sleep with him—”
“You don’t need a ton of trust for that.”
“So it seems.” He drew in a mouthful of smoke and exhaled it slowly, angling it up toward the darkening sky as though he were asking it how much to tell me—or for the patience to deal with me in general.
“Bargaining with the fae is a perilous endeavor, but you already know that; I’m sure your friend has mentioned as much.
Part of what makes it so dangerous is the power that binds the pact itself.
I know of no magic that can undo it, but that’s not to say it doesn’t exist.” My disappointment was impossible to hide.
“However, given that the magic that binds it comes from the fae, I believe it stands to reason that the fae who bartered the deal could undo it. I have heard rumors of this, but nothing I can validate personally.”
“Wait,” I said, my mind reeling, “you’re saying that the fae could let her out of the deal if he wanted to?”
“Or was forced to. Potentially. But why would he if he was motivated enough to strike a bargain in the first place? The fae are many things, but impulsive isn’t one of them. Whatever drove him to barter in the first place must be of great importance—as important as whatever magic she possesses.”
As important as whatever magic she possesses…
My brain screeched to a halt as a dark realization slammed into me; one that might be the solution to my predicament.
One that pondered whether the very magic that Yael was so desperate to use in his endeavor could be the same magic that might get me out of my deal with him.
It was totally plausible that I could use the Siren’s Song to not only compel him and force him to rescind the bargain we’d struck, but also to make him send me home.
I smiled devilishly at the thought. He was the one who wanted the power of the Siren’s Song. And he was most definitely about to get it.
“Thanks for your help, Ravi,” I said as I ripped the back door open. “Oh, and I need to leave around ten tonight.”
“But your shift isn’t over until midnight!”
I stopped in the doorway to look back and smile at him. “And I appreciate you letting me leave early… so I can go help my friend. She’ll appreciate it too, I’m sure.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then swallowed and let out a breath of resignation. “Go, then. But I will not be dealing with the fallout from Sasha and Laney. And you’re scrubbing the floors after hours tomorrow night as penance.”
“You know I won’t.”
“I do know that,” he said, flicking his cigarette butt at the adjacent building. “I just said it to feel like I have some measure of control over this circus.”
“You do,” I countered as he followed me inside, “just not over me.” I gave him a wink before I ducked back into the kitchen, the sound of his grumbled swearing only fueling my optimism.
By night’s end, I’d not only be free of Yael.
I’d be free of the Devil’s Playground, too.