Chapter 8 Criss
CRISS
The Silver Fang Tavern was exactly what Criss needed on a night like this: loud, warm, and full of people who expected nothing from him except that he'd buy a round and tell a good story.
Maeve Cross ran the kind of bar that didn't apologize for itself.
Stone walls, low ceilings, a massive firepit in the center that threw heat and amber light across rough-hewn tables and mismatched chairs.
The whole place smelled like woodsmoke, whiskey, and the pine tar Maeve used on the floorboards to keep them from rotting.
Antlers and old weapons hung on the walls alongside framed photographs of Hollow Oak's history, and the jukebox in the corner played whatever Maeve decided it would play, which tonight was blues guitar and something with a fiddle that Criss didn't recognize but liked anyway.
Maeve herself was behind the bar, short black hair pushed back from her face, sleeves rolled up on forearms corded with lean muscle.
She had the build and bearing of a woman who'd thrown people out of this bar with her own hands and would do it again without hesitation.
Lioness shifter, council guard, Callum's cousin, and the only person in Hollow Oak who scared Criss more than Kieran did. Not that he'd ever say that out loud.
"Holt." She set a whiskey in front of him without being asked. "You look restless."
"I look fantastic, Maeve. As always."
"You look like a man who's trying too hard to seem relaxed." She braced both hands on the bar and studied him with those sharp dark eyes. "What did Kieran do now?"
"Nothing. Can't a man just want a drink and some company?"
"A man, sure. You, specifically, only come here when you're avoiding something." She tapped the bar once. "First one's on the house. After that, you pay like everyone else."
The storm had rolled in about an hour ago, and it had the particular viciousness of a system that wasn't planning to move on anytime soon.
Rain hammered the tavern's tin roof in a constant roar, and every time someone opened the front door, wind drove sheets of water across the entryway.
The crowd had thickened as people gave up on getting home dry and settled in instead, filling booths and pulling chairs around the firepit.
Criss was two whiskeys in and doing fine.
Better than fine. He'd found a spot at the bar with good sightlines to the room, the fire, and the door, and he'd spent the last half hour talking to a pair of fae women who worked at the learning center and laughed at everything he said.
One of them had green hair that shifted shades when she moved, and the other kept touching his forearm when she talked, light deliberate contact that was an invitation he'd normally accept without thinking.
He was charming. He was funny. He was exactly where he wanted to be.
And he was bored out of his mind.
The green-haired fae was telling him something about a class she taught on elemental theory, and he was nodding in the right places and making the right sounds, but his attention kept sliding away from her like water off glass.
His tiger was restless, that same unfocused alertness that had been plaguing him since the night at the Griddle & Grind, and no amount of whiskey or pretty company seemed to settle it.
He blamed the weather. Storms made shifters edgy. Everyone knew that.
"You're not listening," the green-haired fae said, not unkindly.
"I absolutely am. Elemental theory. Fascinating stuff."
"I stopped talking about elemental theory two minutes ago. I was asking if you wanted to get out of here."
Criss looked at her. She was beautiful, direct, and clearly interested. Six months ago, he would have said yes before she finished the sentence. Three months ago, same. Even three days ago, probably.
"Rain check?" he said, and the surprise on her face almost matched his own.
She shrugged with the easy grace of someone who had other options and left with her friend to find a table closer to the fire.
Criss watched them go and took another sip of whiskey, trying to locate the part of his brain that had just turned down an open invitation from an attractive woman and ask it what the hell it thought it was doing.
Maeve materialized in front of him. "Did you just say no to Lina?"
"I said rain check. There's a difference."
"There really isn't." Maeve poured herself a short glass of something dark and leaned against the back counter.
"Two months you've been in my bar. I've watched you flirt with everything that moves.
And tonight, with a woman who actually wanted to go home with you, you blinked. " She took a sip. "Interesting."
"It's not interesting. I'm just not in the mood."
"You're always in the mood. It's your defining characteristic."
Before Criss could respond with something clever enough to deflect, the tavern door swung open and the storm blew in along with the woman who'd been living rent-free in his head for two days.
Stephanie Ward stepped inside looking like she'd walked through a river to get here.
Her dark curls were soaked and clinging to her neck and jaw, her canvas jacket darkened with rain, and her boots left wet prints on Maeve's pine-tarred floor.
She had a leather bag slung across her body that she held close with one hand, protecting whatever was inside, and her hazel eyes swept the room with the same quick, cataloguing precision he remembered from the café.
She looked exhausted. Mud on her jeans, a smear of something across her left cheek that might have been dirt or might have been clay, and the slightly unfocused expression of someone who'd been working too long and thinking too hard.
She also looked, in the amber firelight of the Silver Fang, like the most striking woman Criss had ever seen in his life, and he resented that observation immediately.
She spotted the fire and made a straight line for it, pulling off her jacket as she walked and draping it over the back of an empty chair near the pit. Underneath, she wore a fitted thermal that was damp enough to cling to her frame, and the tool belt was gone.
Maeve followed his gaze. "That's Stephanie Ward."
"I know who she is."
"She's been coming here for years. Good tipper. Doesn't start fights. Unlike some people." Maeve collected his empty glass. "You want another, or are you about to go do something stupid?"
"Both."
"That's what I thought." She poured the whiskey and slid it across. "She's here to work, Criss. Not to be hunted."
"Nobody's hunting anyone. I'm being social."
"You're being you. Which is the same thing."
He took the whiskey and left the bar before Maeve could say anything else that was accurate and annoying.
The firepit was the social center of the Silver Fang, surrounded by a loose ring of chairs and low tables where people settled in when the weather got bad and the night got long.
Stephanie had claimed a chair close to the flames, hands extended toward the heat, steam rising from her damp sleeves.
Someone had already set a drink in front of her, a dark beer in a heavy glass, and she picked it up and took a long pull like she'd been thinking about that exact sip for hours.
Criss dropped into the chair beside her. Not across from her, not hovering. Beside. Close enough to talk without shouting over the rain and the jukebox, but not so close she'd feel cornered.
"If you're about to try a line," she said without looking at him, "I should warn you I've had a very long two days and my tolerance for charm is at an all-time low."
"No line. Just a chair by the fire." He stretched his legs toward the heat and took a sip of his whiskey. "Rough day?"
She glanced at him sideways. Those hazel eyes were sharper up close, the gold flecks catching the firelight like something geological. "Why do you care?"
"I don't, particularly. But you've got mud in your hair and you look like you lost a fight with the weather, so I figured either you had a story or you needed someone to not ask about it. I can do either."
She looked at him with deep contemplation on which response would be less exhausting before she took another sip of her beer and looked back at the fire.
"I'm working on a site outside of town. Archaeological excavation.
The rain's been destroying my progress faster than I can make it.
" She pushed a wet curl off her forehead with the back of her wrist. "I spent ten hours out there today trying to recover what yesterday's storm buried, and then tonight's storm buried it again. So here I am."
"Drinking your feelings at Maeve's bar like the rest of us."
"I'm drying off. The drinking is secondary."
"Sure it is." He let a beat pass, keeping his eyes on the fire instead of on her, giving her the space to either keep talking or shut him out. "What kind of site?"
"The kind I can't discuss with civilians."
"I'm hardly a civilian. I'm a Holt. My family's been part of this town's history whether I like it or not."
That got her attention. She turned to face him more fully, and the firelight threw warm shadows across her face, catching the freckle-like flecks of gold in her eyes and the streak of dried clay along her cheekbone. "You're Kieran's cousin."
"Guilty."
"Kieran I respect. I've read his name in the council records."
"Ouch."
"It wasn't meant to be an insult. It was meant to be a fact." But the corner of her mouth twitched, just barely, and Criss felt it like a small victory. "The site is sensitive, and I'm not authorized to share details outside the council liaison. That's not personal."
"Everything's personal. But I'll take it." He finished his whiskey and set the glass on the table between them. "For what it's worth, I hope the weather cooperates. You seem like someone who takes her work seriously."
"I do."
"Good. The world needs more people who give a damn about something."
She studied him for a moment with that direct, assessing gaze, and he could feel her recategorizing him in real time, shifting him from one mental file to another. Not all the way out of whatever box she'd put him in at the Griddle & Grind, but further than he'd been five minutes ago.
The fire cracked and sent a shower of embers spiraling toward the ceiling.
The rain hammered the roof. The jukebox shifted to something low and slow with a bassline that vibrated through the floorboards, and the tavern felt smaller, warmer, the kind of place where bad decisions were forgiven before they were even made.
Stephanie set her empty glass on the table next to his. "Buy me another one of these," she said, "and tell me something about yourself that isn't designed to impress me."
Criss looked at her. The firelight in her eyes. The challenge in her voice. The way she held herself like a woman who could walk out at any moment and wanted him to know it.
His tiger went absolutely still.
"Deal," he said, and went to get the drinks.