Chapter 15 #2
“That. Is. Not. The. Point.” I sucked in a deep breath through my nostrils to keep from decking him, annoyed by his jab at my race.
Shifters were more emotional than the average human as a general rule, but he didn’t have to keep rubbing it in.
Unfortunately, taking a breath didn’t help calm my nerves as it only caused me to inhale his musky sandalwood scent.
The sparks raced through my body double-time, and I bit my lip.
“You’re right, of course.” He had the grace to look apologetic. “I suppose I’m going off topic.”
Ya think? I turned my attention to the conversations around us and did my best to ignore my unlikely date.
To my annoyance, no one was talking about anything interesting, and we spent the next twenty minutes crawling at a snail’s pace toward the entrance, Iannis’s hard body pressed against mine.
My traitorous mind wondered if the muscles moving beneath his t-shirt were his, or if they were just part of the illusion.
After all, he’d changed his coloring, outfit and facial features, but his weight-height proportions seemed to be the same…
This is so not helping.
I was saved from my raging hormones by the doorman, who gave us a cursory inspection before allowing us into the bar.
The color scheme on the inside was exactly the same as the outside, with burgundy drapes covering the walls and black, glossy countertops and tables everywhere.
Light music blended with the buzz of chatter as patrons sat and talked, and the aroma of fried foods made my stomach growl.
Iannis led me to the crowded bar, and we somehow managed to find two burgundy and black barstools near the middle. We ordered drinks from the bartender, who served them up along with two menus for us to look at.
I arched a brow as Iannis raised a beer bottle to his lips, tickled by the incongruity of the sight. “Know what you want?” I asked, noticing that he hadn’t touched the menu.
He nodded. “I’m partial to the pork belly donuts and the beer-battered tilapia.”
My jaw dropped. “You’ve been here before?”
He grinned at me, and my stomach flip-flopped.
“You don’t really think I’ve never ventured out into the city, do you?
” he asked, leaning in so he could murmur in my ear.
I shivered as his warm, beer-scented breath tickled my earlobe.
“Perhaps it’s been a while since I’ve been out, but I’m not as stuffy as you might think, Miss Baine. ”
He sat back to enjoy his beer, and I snatched up the menu and began perusing the selection to cover my amazement.
Sure enough, both the donuts and the tilapia were listed on the menu, along with a slew of other things.
I decided on the lamb burger and an order of donuts for myself, and set the menu down so I could focus on the conversations going on around the bar.
“Hey,” Iannis said casually to a pair of young male humans wearing band t-shirts and shredded pants sitting next to us. “You two studying at the Academy?”
“Yeah.” The human closest to us lifted his can of beer in greeting.
He was lean as a whip, and sported a bright blue mohawk, a septum piercing, and a days-old shiner on his right eye.
“Going for an engineering degree, and my buddy here’s doing music.
” He nudged his friend, a muscular guy with shaggy black hair and sunglasses. “How about you?”
Iannis leaned casually against the counter.
“I’m majoring in chemistry, and my girlfriend Nadia’s going to culinary school.
” He snagged me by the waist, and I swallowed a yelp as he drew me onto his lap.
My heart rate skyrocketed as he looped his long, lanky arms around my hips, resting his clasped hands on the tops of my thighs, and my cheeks burned as his lips brushed my cheek before he grinned at the two humans. “She makes a killer lasagna.”
“That’s pretty sweet,” Shaggy Black Hair said, looking me up and down, and I knew he wasn’t just talking about my imagined culinary skills. “My band makes the rounds at a lot of restaurants around here. I could put in a good word if you need one.”
“Thanks.” I smiled sweetly, burying the urge to slam my heel into Iannis’s shin. I had no idea Mr. Ice King would throw himself into his role with such enthusiasm, or I might’ve thought twice about going out with him tonight. “So, how are things going for you two at the Academy?”
“Ugh.” Blue Mohawk rolled his eyes. “Don’t get me started.
You’d think that the Mage’s Guild would stick to their own schools and apprenticeships, but a few of ‘em have been dropping in on the humanities classes at the Academy. They thumb their noses at science or engineering, take the best seats and most of them refuse to work with any of us humans.” He curled his lip.
“They think that magic is the only viable way to accomplish things.”
“Well that’s just stupid,” Iannis chimed in, surprising me.
His muscular thighs shifted beneath me, sending the butterflies in my stomach into a frenzy.
“We have an electrical plant in Solantha that powers most areas of the city, including this building.” He waved an arm to indicate the bulbs hanging down from the ceiling.
I twisted in his lap to look down at him, and he simply stared up at me quizzically as if he couldn’t comprehend the skepticism on my face.
It threw me off balance that he could understand the argument for technology so well, yet not permit much of it in the castle.
Since I couldn’t call him on it, I turned back to the two humans.
“… yeah, and it doesn’t help things that those feckless shifters are always causing trouble, too,” Shaggy Black Hair was saying.
“Excuse me?” I said, a little too sharply, and the humans blinked.
Shaggy scowled at me. “There’ve been a lot of shifter-human fights breaking out on campus recently,” he said. “Some kinda drug’s been going around makin’ em crazy. Now that they’ve finally got a way to get high, they just can’t keep a lid on themselves.”
Blue Mohawk nodded, pointing to the shiner on his face. “Yeah, I got this from a rabbit shifter because I bumped into him in the hallway last week.”
My jaw dropped. “That’s crazy!” Rabbit shifters weren’t known for being particularly aggressive. I couldn’t imagine one getting into a fistfight over a simple accident.
Shaggy gave me the stink eye. “Seems like you’re defending the shifters, pretty lady. Don’t know if that’ll make you very popular around here.”
Iannis tightened his arms around my waist and straightened in his stool. “You’ll have to forgive her – she grew up in Rowanville, and as you know things are different over there.”
The two humans nodded. “I guess so,” Shaggy said suspiciously. “But still, you’d have to be blind not to see what’s been happening these last few days. These violent outbreaks are getting worse.”
Worry began to brew in my gut, and I stiffened. We were going to have to track down the source of these drugs, and soon, or the reputation of shifters as a race would be ruined. I squirmed in Iannis’s lap, suddenly tired of sitting here and making small talk, but he gave my hip a warning squeeze.
“Yeah, and worse, the mages aren’t doing anything about it,” Blue Mohawk added.
Despite his shiner, he seemed more blasé about the whole thing, and simply sighed before taking a long drink from his beer bottle.
“By the time they get around to it, there’ll probably be a civil war or something between humans and shifters.
Lazy bastards are too busy up in their ivory towers, practicing their sacred magic spells, to think about anything else. ”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, raising my glass. I tossed Iannis the stink eye before downing my drink, happy that the hatred had been redirected back to mages again, who were clearly the root of the problem, and not shifters.
“Well, it was nice to meet you guys, but we’re catching a play later tonight with some friends and we’d better get going.” Blue Mohawk slid off his barstool, and Shaggy Black Hair followed suit. “See you around sometime, huh?”
“Yeah, see you.” Iannis lifted his beer to them in salute and took another long pull from it as they walked off.
A mixture of relief and triumph filled my chest as I leaned in to whisper in his ear. “See? I told you things are bad out here. I’m not the only one who hates mages.”
“Yes, and it seems that, at least in Maintown, mages aren’t the only ones who are hated.” He grinned at me.
Heat scalded the tips of my ears. “That’s not fair,” I said hotly.
He held up a long-fingered hand. “I know, I know,” he said. “All of this talk about drugs and shifters is alarming. It will be looked into.”
The gravity of his voice and expression settled me – this was the Iannis I knew. But before I could open my mouth, the bartender finally returned with our food.
“Thank Magorah,” I groaned, hopping back onto my own stool so I could grab my lamb burger. I bit into it, and closed my eyes as the rich flavors burst across my tongue. I’d forgotten how hungry I was.
We ate in silence, Iannis calmly eating his tilapia as I wolfed down my burger.
I finished the thing in less than five minutes, and was about to start in on my donuts when a brunette in a slinky black dress inserted herself between us.
She leaned her bare shoulders against the counter, smelling of perfume and stale sweat, and I wrinkled my nose.
“Hey sugar,” she said in a high, breathy voice, batting her long lashes at Iannis. “Care to have a drink with me?”
Iannis arched his blond brows, his pale eyes running up and down her body in a way that made my blood boil. “I –”
“We’ve got a play to catch,” I snapped, sliding off my barstool. The girl glared at me, and I gave her a smile that was both sweet and deadly as I snatched Iannis’s hand and pulled him off his own barstool. “Sorry, sweetheart, but go and pick on someone else’s guy.”
“‘Someone else’s guy’?” Iannis murmured as I dragged him out of the club, his voice tinged with amusement. “I thought we’d established that I wasn’t your male and you weren’t my female.”
“You are for the purposes of this outing,” I retorted, tossing his words right back into his face as I hailed a cab.
My fingers tightened around his, and for reasons best not examined, I didn’t let go until we were safely headed back to the palace.
Maybe I hated it there, but within those walls at least I understood the territory and rules between us.