“Hecate, a realm-traveling Nephil, organized a diversion to abduct me and snag Mel. An Empousa, Hecate’s realm-traveling vampire pet, said we can find more information from Elizabeth, a closing-time patron at the Snake Head Lounge. Somehow, this all connects to Callie’s death. Am I missing anything?”
“Your underwear,” Xander said.
I glanced at my lap, and my towel had slipped open. I snickered. “Well, shit, don’t get too excited about that.” I adjusted the towel. “Show me to the closet, sir, so I can dress. Are you ready to go?”
“After a quick shower. I smell like a bonfire.” He stood, placing his tablet on the coffee table, then he led me back to his room to change.
“I look like a clown,” I said, standing before a body-length mirror in his bedroom. Why he had a full-body mirror, don’t ask me. I barely used the bathroom mirror I had in my trailer. Maybe it came with his fancy-ass bedroom set of mahogany. Actually, I don’t know what his bedroom set was made of, because I don’t know stupid shit like that. My job description simply reads, destroy. Whether it’s mahogany or oak or granite or kindling or pebbles. I destroyed without bias.
“You look like a civilized human being for once,” Xander said. “Maybe you should do your hair, too.”
“I splashed some water on it,” I admitted, checking myself out. I was actually pretty pleasant to look at, based on Xander’s mirror. “Also, there’s no way you ever wear this shirt.”
Xander had tree-trunk legs, and his jeans fit me like a parachute. Luckily, the button-down shirt he lent me was an extra-large from the Baby Gap, so it actually fit me.
“With those tattoos covered, the bouncer might actually let you in,” he said, judging my ink for the millionth time in our friendship. Don’t eat burgers or drink alcohol or stain your skin, because your body is the temple of God, blah, blah, blah. “So, you’re welcome for the outfit.” He wore jeans that fit him like a second layer of skin, a muscle-accentuating shirt, and a gold watch. “Oh, and, Joey.”
“Yup,” I said, turning sideways to admire my profile. It had been a while since I’d worn anything other than torn jeans and wife-beaters, or since I’d splashed water over my hair to partly style it.
“No guns allowed in the club. They have wands to check for that stuff.”
I scoffed. “I have runes, my beautiful, bald friend. My guns are invisible unless I draw them.” Not that it mattered, since I hadn’t charged any of the sigils, anyway. Nor did I have inscribed ammunition prepared. My guns were about as magically useful as a stick shaped like a pistol. But why would I avoid a good excuse to annoy Xander for a second?
“Okay,” he said, frowning. “And where do you plan to carry them? Security will make you show anything under a jacket—it’s a high-end bar. Lots of money going through there. They don’t take chances.”
“Stick them in my waistband, like a common gangster.”
Xander sighed.
“It’s times like these I wish I’d have used rings as my focus. They shouldn’t allow nineteen-year-old kids, who spent their life idolizing Deadpool and Frank Castle, to choose how to channel their magic. Fucking guns,” I muttered. “What was I thinking? I can’t even take them into half the places I want to take them. Disneyland. A plane. A fucking high-end bar.”
Xander narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “What do you need a gun for in any of those places?”
“What’s your focus?” I asked.
“Don’t have one.”
“That’s what I thought. So, shut up about it.”
Xander shrugged and sneered. “You brought it up.”
“You ready to go?” I asked, itching to punch something in the face and burn some pent-up anxiety and angst.
He took one last look in the mirror, running his hand over his bald head like it made a damn difference. “Let’s go.”
8
I sat alone at the bar of the Snake Head Lounge, staring inside my glass of half-drunk beer. Xander stood at a high table near the front, having insisted that I wasn’t allowed to drink anything stronger than lager. Little did he know, I’m more efficient when intoxicated. But he’s pretty much the lame mom of our two-man group, so I only argued a little before relenting to his wishes. Luckily, we’d decided to divide and conquer. He would schmooze with the ladies in his section of the bar, and I would engage in awkward banter with the women in my section.
A fool-fucking-proof plan if I ever heard one.
Except for the part where I had mostly avoided the fairer sex since meeting Callie—the better part of a decade—and Xander was about as smooth with women as sandpaper was to wiping ass.
Any one of the many women at the lounge could have been Elizabeth. Xander and I had a lot of stiff, sober conversation to move through—because, as he had instructed, we couldn’t get drunk. The possibility also existed that Elizabeth had decided not to grace the lounge with her presence that night.
I couldn’t think like that, though. I had to try. For Mel. For Callie. If it meant sitting at this bougie bar and drinking overpriced beer while getting rejected by pretentious women to find my girls, then I would be there every single night until I found this Elizabeth.
I checked my phone. Time read just after one in the morning, which meant we had about an hour to locate her. I mentally calculated how many potential Elizabeth’s were present. I didn’t know much beyond basic addition and subtraction, so figuring out the percentage of finding an Elizabeth had no equation behind it. In the end, it equaled how my desire to take a shot was greater now than it was two minutes ago.
How’s that for math?
As I debated the idea of disobeying
