CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Myra
When I’d woken in the middle of the night, scared and screaming, patting my body down for wounds that existed only in my nightmares, I’d grabbed my phone and texted Yael that I needed to talk—that something had happened after he left.
I hated that I needed to confide in him, but I was short on options, and I knew that regardless of how our deal would ultimately end, he was invested in keeping me alive for the time being, and it looked like I needed some help with that.
But once again, he hadn’t answered.
I spent the whole day at the bar waiting for Yael to barge through the door and tell me he’d disappeared through another portal before demanding an explanation for my text, or at least message or call—especially given his vow to better keep me in the loop—but by the tail end of the dinner rush, I hadn’t heard a word.
Irritated and fighting back the niggling feeling that he was up to something despite our conversation the previous night, I kept my head down and did what I needed to do in the meantime; serve a bunch of drunken assholes, uptight bitches, and the crew at table seven that eyed me up every time I walked by.
“Order’s up for seven,” Curtis called out when I pushed through the swinging doors.
“Those guys give me the creeps,” Laney replied as she dropped off the dirties she’d just cleared by the dishwasher. “They keep staring at Myra and me.”
“You need me to deal with it?” Curtis asked as he wiped off the chef’s knife in his hand.
I grabbed the plates off the shelf and balanced them on my arms before turning to leave. “I can handle them. No need to get your ass beat on our accounts, big guy.”
“I’d be fine—”
“If your shifter abilities actually worked, you would. Without them, you’d be broken,” I countered as I backed toward the double doors. “Sweet and chivalrous, but broken all the same.”
“Then maybe I should go,” Ravi said, looking up from the steak he was searing. “I won’t have that problem.”
“It’s fine. I said I’d handle it.” I turned to leave, but I could feel his piercing stare on my back as I did.
“I don’t want a repeat of last time, Myra—”
“If you’ll recall, I didn’t start that fight,” I argued as I lingered in the doorway.
“I wasn’t talking about the fight.” The subtext of his comment pinned me in place, and the trauma from the previous night hit me like a sledgehammer. While everyone else stared at us with confusion furrowing their brows, Ravi and I had a silent conversation with our expressions.
Are you all right, bitiya?
I’m fine. Just let me do this.
It’s okay if you’re frightened.
“How about I go throw these down on their table, and you come running if you hear screams, okay?” His brown eyes narrowed, but he gave a tight nod of approval. “Great. Glad we’ve got that all sorted.”
Before anyone else could object or ask questions, I spun through the doors into the bar area and across the room to the booth in the far corner where the creepy quartet sat waiting and watching.
For a second, I saw the faces of the men who’d attacked me the night before staring back.
No, I whispered to myself as I took a deep breath.
“Here you go,” I said as I started dishing out plates, trying not to lean too close to any of them.
The four of them had gone eerily quiet while I served them, which put me on edge, given recent events.
With one plate left, I looked over to see the guy to my right with the shaggy brown hair and fuckboy smile eyeing my tits when he thought I wouldn’t notice.
“You got plans tonight?” he asked as I placed his dinner down in front of him.
I gestured to the serving area around me. “You’re looking at ‘em.”
That fucking smile that likely made the girls swoon beamed at my dry response. “I meant after. You can’t work all night—not here, anyway.”
“I would if it got me out of this conversation,” I countered, dropping four rolls of silverware down on the table. When I moved to walk away, he caught me by my wrist, and I dropped my gaze dramatically to where he was touching me, then back to him. But his smile never faltered.
“Come out with me and the boys. There’s a party on the wrong side of the tracks. It’ll be fun.”
“Pretty sure I’m not welcome in Demon’s Horn,” I replied, pulling out of his grip.
“You are if you’re with us.”
“Which is the other problem with your proposal.”
“Aw, c’mon. What could possibly happen?”
“I don’t know… gang rape? Mutilation? Ritual sacrifice?
Any number of things I have no intention of being a part of.
” He opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off, using the strategy that women everywhere loathed.
“My boyfriend wouldn’t be very happy either, and given who he is and his standing with the fae, I don’t think you want to piss him off. ”
“Is that so?” He leaned back in the booth and folded his arms behind his head. “And who’s this fairy badass I should be worried about?”
“Yael Kristoris.”
Fuckboy and the others shared a look in silence before erupting in collective laughter. “Yael Kristoris?” he repeated between hysterical outbursts. “That’s your boyfriend?”
“He is. And don’t let that pretty-boy face fool you. It’s just a beautiful decoration to cover up his murderous nature. You don’t want a front row seat to what he can do.”
“Oh, we’re well aware of what he can do,” he replied as he wiped his eyes with the back of his tree-trunk arm. “We got a glimpse of it last night.”
“Not sure you’d like who he did it with, though,” another male at the table added as he laughed.
Anger brewed deep in my chest as their amusement with their inside joke grew. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I asked as I palmed a knife from the table.
The shifter slammed his hand down on mine, pinning it against the weathered wood.
“It means we saw your boy with his hands full of a sexy redhead’s ass.
” His words hit me like a slug to the chest and I faltered back a step.
“They looked awfully cozy tucked away together in the shadows of that alley in Demon’s Horn—and he sure as hell wasn’t acting like he had a girlfriend. ”
I pulled my hand away without the knife and tried to fix my face while my mind was a jumbled mess of thoughts, like what the fuck was Yael doing playing grab-ass with some chick while I was fighting for my life, and why couldn’t he respond to my text?
The longer I remained silent, the harder the four of them laughed, which made my blood boil.
Fucking fae bastard.
“If you want to get back at him,” fuckboy said as he turned his attention to his dinner, “you know where we’ll be.”
Dismissed by the crew of shifters who’d made a fool of me, I walked back to the kitchen, passing Laney and Sasha and their barrage of questions along the way.
I couldn’t bring myself to open my mouth for fear of the banshee scream that would escape.
I was fuming by the time I reached Ravi’s office and locked myself in so I could attempt to calm down.
There were few things I hated more than feeling small and foolish, and that table of thugs had done both in a matter of minutes.
I had been reduced to the clueless girlfriend of a philandering fae asshole who was out fucking everything in town while I waited, helpless, for him to need me.
I’d never felt more pathetic in my life.
“Fuck you, Yael,” I muttered to myself as I pulled out my phone and turned it off.
I stormed out of the room to find Laney and Sasha standing just outside. “Are you okay?” the former asked, her tone wrapped in concern.
Swallowing back my embarrassment-driven rage, I nodded. “I let those assholes at table seven get to me. I’m good now. Just do me a favor and take them anything they need. I don’t want to start another brawl if I can help it.”
“I’ll take your tables,” Sasha said. “You can run the bar tonight.” She walked away before I could even argue.
Laney placed a gentle hand on my shoulder and gave a light squeeze.
“It’ll be okay, Myra. We’ve got your back.
” Something in my chest tightened as she smiled at me.
Her delicate features held a strength I had never noticed before, and I wondered if I’d underestimated the sprite. “Come out when you’re ready.”
I watched her square her shoulders, grab her trays, and push her way through the double doors like she was heading into battle—which wasn’t a terrible analogy for The Riff Raff some nights.
But that night in particular had been a siege of sorts that I wasn’t at all prepared for.
Emotional bombs had breached my defenses on too many fronts to count, and all I wanted to do was go home and lick my wounds.
But after what they’d done, I couldn’t leave the girls alone.
Instead, I waved off Ravi’s worried expression and marched back out into the front-of-house, mentally prepared for whatever bullshit came my way because, for once, I didn’t feel like I had to face it alone.
“Are you coming?” Laney asked as she gathered her things from Ravi’s office.
“Coming where?”
She frowned at me. “My birthday party at Balls Deep—glow bowling? It’s tonight, remember?”
Right. That.
“Ummm… I have to close up, and I’m not sure when I’ll be done.”
“Oh, c’mon, Myra. That’ll take you thirty minutes tops,” Sasha said as she bulldozed past me to grab her purse. “You can make it.”
“Yeah, okay. Maybe I can swing by.”
The girls shared a look, then walked past me.
“I hope we see you there,” Laney called to me as they walked out the kitchen door with Curtis, which made me feel like an even bigger piece of shit.
Why she wanted me there so badly was beyond me—I was hardly the life of the party—but knowing she did was a strange truth to swallow. It went down like a hunk of dry potato.
“Are you not going with the others?” Ravi asked as he pushed past me into his office.
I shook my head. “I said I’d close tonight.”
“You should go, for Laney’s sake if nothing else, though you could use a fun distraction.”
“But—”
“I’ll close up for you,” he insisted as I stood there in silence, searching for an argument that didn’t involve Yael and some sketchy guys from Argo’s part of town, but found none. “Myra.” He bent down to look me in my eyes. “Go. Please. You need this.”
“I need drunk co-workers throwing big balls down a wooden runway?”
“Fun, bitiya,” he countered with a gentle confidence I rarely saw from him. “You need fun… and friends. I think you’ll find both there.”
Fun and friends; two luxuries I hadn’t afforded myself since I washed up on the rocks in the Playground.
The former I didn’t realize existed there, and the latter was something I never thought I’d have again, because friendship was built on trust, and trust had nearly gotten me killed.
Aside from Ravi, I wasn’t sure I could let anyone get that close to me ever again.
But there was a cost to that level of isolation, and standing in his office, weathering his stare, I realized that I was getting tired of paying it.
“Okay,” I said with a heavy sigh, “I’ll go.
But if I stab someone before the night’s over, that’s on you.
Can you live with that?” A playful smile was his only response.
“All right… just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
” I pulled my jacket off the hook and threw it on.
“Hopefully, we’ll all see you tomorrow.”
“I look forward to it,” he replied as he followed me into the kitchen. “I’ll drive you over. Make sure someone accompanies you home.”
Not wanting to argue, I stepped out into the alley and climbed into Ravi’s van, headed to Balls Deep and possibly the distraction I needed to escape whatever unwanted feelings came flooding in whenever I thought of Yael and the redhead in the shadows.
Strobing lights assaulted me the second I walked into the darkened building, and I knew right then I’d made a mistake.
The moment of weakness that had led me to agree to go glow bowling faded the second I spotted our motley crew beneath a sparkling disco ball, arms up and screaming as Curtis threw a neon ball down the wooden lane.
“Oh, fuck no,” I muttered under my breath as I turned to leave.
But it was too late—I’d already been spotted.
As if she’d teleported herself, Laney appeared out of nowhere in front of me, grinning like a homicidal maniac. “You came! I can’t believe you came!”
“I did,” I replied, turning on my heels, “and now I’m leaving.”
“You can’t!” she argued as she maneuvered herself into the doorway, blocking my exit. “You haven’t even had a turn yet.”
“I’ll survive.”
“But we just ordered drinks! And Ravi sent those deep fried cheesy things you like just for you. Can’t you stay for just one game?” Wide doe eyes stared at me beseechingly, and I wondered if I’d ever seen anything more pitiful in my life. “Pleeeease?”
I considered her plea for a moment as I looked at Sasha and Curtis, who now stood staring at us.
It wasn’t that I cared what they thought, but did I really want to hear about how Myra the Wicked had ruined Laney’s birthday every day until I made my way back to the sea?
No. No, I did not. So instead of shoving her out of the way and bolting from Balls Deep like a sane individual, I took a deep, dramatic breath to prolong her suspense, swallowed my pride, and begrudgingly agreed.
“Oh my god, really?” she asked as she threw her arms wide, preparing to hug me.
I quickly stepped out of hugging radius to dodge her unwelcome display of affection. “But there will be rules,” I said, holding her at bay with a raised palm, “and rule number one is no touching.”
Her disappointment was plain, but she recovered quickly. “Okay. Got it. What's rule number two?”
“Rule number two is, if at any time my drink is empty, I bail.”
She nodded so seriously that I half expected her to whip out a note pad and jot it down just in case. “No empties. Understood. Anything else?”
“Yes. No talking or asking about Yael. The second his name is uttered, I’m gone.”
She looked at Sasha, who was now dancing on the raised platform as if it were a stage as she sang as loud as the blaring music, and swallowed hard. “Is something going on with him?”
“That feels a lot like asking about him, Laney—”
“You’re right,” she said in a panic. “No talking or asking about him. Deal.”
I sighed hard, the bitter sting of defeat coursing through me. “All right, then…” I glanced down at my empty hand before leveling my gaze on her. “Guess you’d better get me a drink ASAP.”