2. Chapter 2
Maddie
Maddie
By midnight, I had learned the trick of Obsidian wasn’t surviving the place—it was letting it breathe around you without swallowing your head whole.
The bass moved up through the soles of my boots in a slow, dirty pulse.
Crystal flashed purple and gold under the low lights, and the air carried liquor, expensive perfume, and that faint copper scent that never let you forget exactly what some folks came here to drink.
I had a tray balanced on one hand, six blood cocktails trembling ruby-dark in their glasses, and I moved through the floor like I’d been doing it half my life instead of a handful of nights.
It helped that I had waited tables since I was old enough to tell when a customer wanted flirting, silence, or a quick hand with a coffee refill before he worked himself into a complaint.
Men were men no matter the setting, and women with power tended to expect the same thing from service staff whether they wore a wolf’s grin, a witch’s rings, or a vampire’s old-money boredom.
Obsidian just wrapped all that up in silk and fangs and made it prettier.
“Your smoked old fashioned, and your Black Velvet,” I said, setting two glasses before a pair of vampires seated deep in one of the curved leather booths. “And this one’s yours, sugar.”
The last glass went to a demon whose skin in human glamour still held a little too much heat, his eyes a little too bright as he took the blood cocktail from me.
He let his stare drag from my mouth to my chest and lower, not bothering to hide it.
I’d dealt with worse at Pearl’s from men in oil-stained caps and wedding bands.
At least here the predators usually had the decency to be honest about it.
“You always serve with a smile,” he said, voice rough as gravel rolled in whiskey, “or am I special?”
I gave him one right back, sweet enough to sting. “Now, honey, if you were special, your tab wouldn’t be so high.”
The two vampires snorted into their drinks. The demon blinked, then laughed, and sure enough he reached into his jacket for a black card embossed with sigils I wasn’t supposed to ask about. I took it from between his fingers before he could make the handoff feel more personal than necessary.
“I’ll close you out in a minute,” I said. “And if you keep being good, I might even bring you another.”
He grinned. “There’s the Texas charm.”
“There’s the payment,” I shot back.
I moved on before he could answer, tray tucked to my hip, boots whispering over the dark floor.
The room was in one of its good moods tonight—hungry but not ugly.
Conversations ran low and intimate under the music.
Bodies leaned together in corners, bargain and appetite blurring into one glossy thing.
Up near the stage, a pair of witches in sleek black dresses watched a human couple dance with the detached focus of women judging a horse at auction.
Near the bar, one of Kyra’s bartenders shook silver over ice while a vampire in a charcoal suit bent close to murmur in a willing donor’s ear, the obsidian pendant at her throat glinting every time she laughed.
I was about halfway to table twelve when a sharp snap of fingers cut through the music on my left.
I stopped because ignoring that kind of thing usually made it worse, then turned with my best professional expression already set in place.
The woman doing the snapping was a witch, maybe fifty if you counted by human standards and impossible to place if you didn’t.
Her hair was wound in a severe twist at the nape of her neck, and enough jewels glittered on her hands to fund a decent used truck back home.
“Yes, ma’am?” I asked.
Her mouth pinched. “We have been waiting.”
I glanced at the untouched glasses on her table, the fresh carafe of water, the appetizer plate that had been delivered all of four minutes ago. “For the second bottle recommendation?”
Her eyes narrowed, not pleased I’d remembered. “Yes.”
I nodded, easy as church. “Then I’d say the merlot if you want something bold, but if you’re having the lamb when the kitchen sends it out, the pinot noir is going to treat you kinder.”
She looked almost disappointed not to have found me fumbling. “And if we wanted blood pairings?”
Her companion, another witch with a mouth painted plum-dark, watched me with open interest.
I shifted the tray to my other hand. “For the O positive reduction on the lamb, dry red. For the sweeter blood flight, I’d lean bourbon neat instead. Cuts the richness better.”
The first woman sat back a little. Not softened exactly, but corrected. “Very well. The pinot.”
“Excellent choice.”
As I turned, the second witch lifted her glass toward me in a small toast. “You’re improving.”
I smiled without showing teeth. “That’s what they tell me.”
I had almost reached the service aisle when a hand touched my arm—light, quick, familiar enough now that I didn’t flinch. Amelia slipped in at my side with the kind of restless grace that made it seem like she’d been assembled from sharp elbows, intent, and caffeine.
“If table six asks for one more impossible substitution, I’m going to salt their threshold and leave them trapped in the bathroom,” she muttered.
I bit back a laugh. “What’d they do?”
“The demon wants the lights lower because he thinks he looks mysterious in shadow. The vampire he’s with wants them brighter because she says she can’t admire herself in his pupils if she can’t see them.” Amelia rolled her eyes so hard it was practically athletic. “I hate rich people.”
“You work in a nest of them.”
“I know. My punishment for past sins.”
Her fingers squeezed my forearm once before she dropped her hand.
It was brief, but there was something easy in it that still surprised me sometimes.
I hadn’t expected to find real friendship this quick in a place like this.
Maybe because Obsidian looked like decadence from the outside, but behind the velvet and polished vice, staff watched out for each other with the efficiency of people who understood danger did not always announce itself first.
“You good?” she asked, green eyes flicking over my face. “You look flushed.”
“It’s hot in here.”
“It’s always hot in here.”
“That soothes me not at all.”
She grinned. “Bohdan’s about to start the demo, by the way. Good luck getting anybody’s attention for the next twenty minutes.”
Right on cue, the music lowered—not cut entirely, just softened until the room seemed to lean toward the center on instinct. Heads turned. Conversations thinned. Even before I looked, I felt the shift move through the floor the way weather ran over open country.
Bohdan stepped onto the low demonstration platform with the elegance of a man who knew every eye would follow and had long ago decided that was only proper.
His suit tonight was black, so deep it drank the purple light; his expression composed, handsome, faintly amused in that way of his that made a person feel both welcomed and assessed.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and his voice carried clean as glass over the room without once becoming loud, “if I might have your attention.”
He waited while the final few murmurs faded. Nearby, one of my tables lifted a finger for a refill, then thought better of interrupting and lowered it again. Smart.
“As always,” Bohdan continued, “Obsidian reminds its patrons that pleasure without consent is merely violence dressed for evening. We do not permit confusion on that point.”
A murmur of agreement moved through the room, low and approving.
He gestured to the equipment arranged on the platform behind him.
The St. Andrew’s cross rose from the floor in polished black iron, tall enough to hold a body open against it like an offering and elegant enough to make the danger look expensive.
The restraint cuffs fixed at wrists and ankles were lined in dark velvet.
On a tray set to one side lay an array of implements—floggers, paddles, a coiled length of rope, a crop with a lacquered handle that flashed under the light.
“Tonight’s demonstration is impact and restraint,” Bohdan said.
“Everything you are about to see has been negotiated in advance. Boundaries have been established. Safe words are in place. Nonverbal signals are in place. Staff monitors are positioned and attentive. If at any time a boundary is crossed, the scene ends. Immediately.”
His amber eyes traveled the crowd, warm only in appearance. “We are not animals here. You will remember that.”
That got a few soft laughs, mostly from species who probably ought to have felt chastened by it.
“Enjoy the education,” he said, and stepped off the platform.
The couple came up from the side stairs a breath later, and the room quieted with a different kind of hunger.
He was beautiful in a way that made beauty feel too flimsy a word for the work.
Tall. Broad across the shoulders. Skin a deep, flawless mahogany that made the black iron behind him shine almost gray by comparison.
His face looked carved with almost mathematical care—high cheekbones, a full mouth, a straight nose, and eyes that caught what little light there was and held it in dark bronze depths.
He wore fitted black trousers low on his hips, no shirt, no jewelry, nothing to distract from the grave authority of his body.
The woman with him was just as arresting.
Her skin was a warm, deep brown that glowed under the stage lights like polished chestnut; her body long and lean and strong in that beautiful, tensile way some women had.
A slip of sheer fabric fell over her from shoulders to mid-thigh, barely there and somehow still more intimate than nudity would’ve been.
Her hair was swept to one side, exposing the clean line of her neck.
She didn’t look frightened. That was what struck me first. She looked open.
Ready. Already a little wrecked by anticipation.