Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
Cecilia tucked her serving tray beneath her arm and leaned her hip against the edge of the bar as she waited for the bartender to hand over two cheap bottles of alcoholic synthblood. The Lush was hot and humid as bodies crammed together between high tables and the dance floor.
She’d thought that perhaps the recent high profile murder that happened on the premises might deter business, not increase it. She was wrong. They’d been packed nearly every night since management and the authorities had given them the all-clear to reopen.
The old adage that all publicity was good publicity was true, she supposed, especially when it came to bloodshed in a vampire bar.
The upside for her was that the tips were great. The downside was that her best friend and fellow server had abandoned her to marry a vampire across the continent, which sucked out what little fun the job still possessed.
Without Dahlia, working in The Lush was an endless grind of abysmal dance music, grasping hands, spilled synth, and grueling late nights.
It was also a lot more dangerous. In theory, anyway.
Cecilia brushed a sweaty lock of hair away from her forehead with her gloved forearm.
She had to be careful to keep her hands clean, which wasn’t easy on the best of nights.
It was especially difficult when they were way past capacity and she had to dodge guests sloshing synth and regular alcohol every which way.
She offered the bartender a chipper grin when he plunked two warmed bottles on the bar in front of her.
He looked as miserable as she felt, but there was no time to commiserate.
Even if they could’ve heard each other over the thumping bass, it was her personal philosophy that a bright attitude could solve most of life’s problems.
Except, perhaps, the one she had with upper management.
Duke, the new sole owner of The Lush, watched her from his seat at the opposite end of the bar. Once, he’d been the handsome, aloof older brother of Devon, the vampire who ran the bar — terribly — but with his death, Duke had returned to San Francisco to take over.
And, according to rumor, to find out what happened to his brother. She didn’t know the man well enough to say whether he was motivated by sentimentality. With Duke it was hard to tell what mattered more: making money or solving his brother’s disappearance.
Either way, it was best to avoid him.
Dahlia had warned her that he might come sniffing around her old apartment, and since everyone knew they were best friends, there was a very real possibility he’d ask Cecilia questions.
Dahlia made her swear to tell her if he made any threats or she felt unsafe. Of course, Cecilia promised she would.
She wouldn’t, obviously, but a white lie was a small price to pay to give Dahlia peace of mind.
Cecilia wasn’t scared of Duke. If she was, they’d have a bigger problem than any potential threats. Knowing her, she’d probably want to sleep with him.
She’d never told Dahlia that was the main reason she’d insisted they apply to work at the bar in the first place. They shared almost everything, but there were some things not even childhood best friends needed to know — like how Cecilia, notorious scaredy-cat, liked fear a little too much.
For a while, the thrill of working in a dangerous vampire bar had set her blood on fire. Five years in and now without her best friend, the shine had come off the proverbial apple in a major way.
Cecilia’s feet, pinched by the narrow toe and diabolical heel of the shoes all the female servers were forced to wear, screamed with discomfort as she made her final rounds for the night.
She deposited warm bottles with a smile, demurred when a vampire casually asked how much a sip of her would cost, and did her best to skirt Duke’s seat at the bar without looking too obvious.
By the time her shift ended, she was sweaty and exhausted.
Knowing how different the temperature was outside, she shrugged on her pale pink coat over her skimpy black dress and slung her bag over her shoulder.
A long shower and a microwave dinner were in her future, and just about the only things that could motivate her to make the trek home.
Pausing by the back door, she checked her phone. A message from Dahlia lit up the screen. It was a picture of her brand new car, courtesy of her cousin Tomas. Blood red and way too fast for her best friend’s less than stellar driving skills, it was a sight to behold.
Needs a bumper sticker, she replied. Maybe ‘honk if you bite’?
Dahlia replied almost instantly. I was thinking ‘My husband is my passenger princess.’
Shouldering open the door, Cecilia snorted.
San Francisco’s cool night air kissed her damp skin as she stepped into the dark alley behind the bar.
She’d switched her heels out for a glittery pair of sneakers, which were essential when one never knew what was in the ever-present puddles and piles of detritus found there.
Good choice, she typed out. I’m sure Felix will enjoy that. Probably too much, actually.
Dahlia sent an evil-looking emoji before she asked, Are you headed home?
Just left the bar. Can’t wait for my feast of frozen mac n’ cheese. I might even get real wild and break out the fudge bar I’ve been saving. The squeaky hinges of the old door alerted her to someone else exiting, prompting her to begin walking as she typed.
Dahlia’s response popped up just as the sound of someone clearing their throat made her turn.
Duke stood in the dull glow cast by the employee entrance sign above the door. Blond, ruggedly handsome, and dead-eyed, he watched her with a flat, calculating look that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
“Oh, hi,” she greeted, fingers flexing around her phone. “Did you need something?”
She doubted he was there to ask her about next weekend’s schedule, but a girl could hope.
Duke watched her for a moment, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “You headed home?”
It occurred to her that she ought to lie. The smart thing would be to say she was headed to her boyfriend’s house, or maybe to her second job. Letting him think she would be missed if she suddenly didn’t turn up was the best survival strategy when dealing with vampires on the hunt.
But Cecilia had never been a good liar, and she was even worse at keeping her mouth shut.
“Yep!” she chirped. “I’m gonna make some dinner and hit the sack. My feet are killing me after tonight’s rush.”
Her boss stepped away from the door. She’d never been particularly intimidated by him before. Sure, he was a little scary, but he’d always been so uninterested in the staff that he seemed… safe certainly wasn’t the right word. Unlikely to care enough to hurt her was probably closer to the truth.
But he wasn’t uninterested now.
Cecilia edged toward the opening of the alleyway in what she hoped was a natural-looking movement.
Her heart rate jumped as she ran the numbers on how likely she was to survive if he got his hands on her, as she always did when a vampire stalked her down a dark alley.
It was a depressingly frequent occurrence.
Well, it used to be, anyway.
She’d known for a long time that there was something wrong with her. Some crossed wire or misaligned axle that linked up arousal to fear. Even at that moment, when Duke began advancing on her, she felt the rush of it down her spine and between her thighs.
Gods knew she wasn’t attracted to Duke, of all people, but the threat of him… Yeah, that was enough to get her fucked up engine going.
“You live close by, right?” Duke offered her a stilted smile full of fang. “We haven’t gotten a chance to talk yet. How about I walk you home?”
Cecilia knew the interrogation was coming, but she expected it to be contained within the relative safety of the bar, not whatever this was.
“Dawn’s pretty close,” she informed him, chuckling nervously. “We should just schedule a chat for my next shift.”
And that’ll give me more time to think of what to say besides ‘I’m glad your brother’s dead and he’s been turned into goo.’
She didn’t know for sure that Devon was goo, but she’d seen enough true crime documentaries to think it was a fair possibility. Another likely scenario was he’d been tucked into a barrel and chucked into the Bay. She preferred the goo, though.
Dust to dust, slime to slime, shithead. You shouldn’t have fucked with my best friend.
“There’s plenty of time,” he replied, laying his hand on the small of her back. Her spine stiffened one vertebrae at a time as he guided her out of the alley and onto the sidewalk.
San Francisco was a daytime city, to be sure, with a population that leaned more toward arrants and elves than nocturnal folk. Despite that, the streets were never completely empty even in the wee hours of the morning.
People passed by them on the narrow sidewalk, their heads down and their steps quick — a necessity when traversing San Francisco’s notoriously bouncy streets.
The rumor was that they’d been saturated with magic during the catastrophic event that razed the city in 1906, and it’d taken her and Dahlia a full month to stop looking like fools whenever they stepped outside.
Now city life and all its quirks came naturally to them.
The only thing Cecilia had never quite gotten used to was the way strangers pretended like they couldn’t see each other.
No one waved or nodded or said good morning.
Everyone existed in their own little bubble as they walked as quickly as they could down the street.
A sub-ideal quirk for a woman being walked to her doom.
“So, uh,” she began, “what did you want to talk about?”
“You’re friends with Dahlia, right?”
Cecilia tensed. She knew it was coming and she still couldn’t stop the instinctive response to freeze up when her best friend was mentioned.