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I leaned in close, so as not to be overheard by the mortals surrounding the bar like thirsty wolves. “Do you have anything ‘organic’ back there?”
His eyebrows knitted. “Sorry, you have to buy your weed elsewhere.” He started to go, but I grabbed his arm.
“Not weed. Blood.”
His mouthed formed into an “oh” as the light dawned. “You mean a Bloody Magdalene?”
I nodded at the code word. “Yes, a double, hold the vodka.”
He knelt down in front of a small fridge hidden under the bar. I couldn’t see around his shoulders, but I knew he was pouring blood from a bag into the shaker in his hand. He made a show of adding spices and shaking it before pouring the blood into a highball glass. He even garnished it with a stalk of celery.
“That’ll be fifty bucks,” he said.
“What! That’s highway robbery,” I said.
“Listen, lady, we’re the ones risking having the stuff in stock. You want cheap, you gotta hunt it yourself.”
Glaring, I grabbed my wallet and plunked down a Benjamin. “I need another Shirley Temple. And change.”
He smiled a toothy grin and went to fill the rest of the order. I took a sip and grimaced. Cheap well blood was the worst. Bars like these usually had a deal to get the bottom of the barrel from local blood banks. Luckily, the spices tempered the overly ferric taste of blood. I grumbled to myself about the high price of fast food while he made change.
The bartender slapped two twenties on the bar along with Vinca’s drink. “Hey,” I said. “Ten bucks for a Shirley Temple?”
“No, that was five bucks. The extra five was for the tip you were about to stiff me on.”
“Asshole,” I grumbled as I walked away sixty dollars poorer. It’s not that I’m cheap. It’s just that inflation hurts a lot more when you’re immortal.
I had two choices for getting back to my seat. I could take the long way around and fight the crowd, thus risking spilled blood and grenadine all over my clothes. Or I could cut straight through the dance floor and risk spilled blood and grenadine all over my clothes. I chose the more direct route.
I’d not taken two steps onto the packed dance floor, when I felt a suspicious presence in the vicinity of my ass. A male mortal, decked out in gold lamé, leered at me while grinding his pelvis into my backside. He wore about four gold chains around his neck, an obvious bid to compensate for the tiny member he was jabbing at my ass. There was nothing worse than a horny mortal male.
I speared him with a glare. “Back off, ass**le.”
“Hey, baby, why you hatin’? Give a player some love.”
“Not interested.”
“Damn, girl, that’s cold.” His suburban-thug persona was ridiculous, but his inability to take a hint was downright suicidal.
An opening appeared just next to me in the crowd, so I scooted off before I was tempted to show the player some love in the form of my knee to his nuts. Now I remembered why I usually avoided dance floors.
About halfway through the gyrating mass of humanity, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Annoyed, I swung around ready to teach another ass**le some manners. Vinca’s drink sloshed all over the guy who’d grabbed me. Only, instead of another doughy mortal midsection clad in gold, I faced a nicely toned chest encased in a white tank with a rapidly spreading pink stain.
I looked up to see a familiar, yet annoyed, face. “Hey, don’t you know it’s rude to grab people?” I immediately went on the attack. This freaking mage had to quit following me.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to spill drinks on people?” He countered loud enough to be heard over the music.
“What do you want?” Bodies bumped into us from all sides. I cradled my drink to my chest. There was no way I was letting fifty bucks worth of blood go to waste.
The mage didn’t look too happy to be jostled either. He grabbed my arm and started pulling me back toward the bar. When I dug in my heels, he looked over his shoulder with a frown. I thought about it for a second and shrugged. Time for the mage to answer some questions.
He led me to a door on the other side of the bar. Another bouncer stood here. He was a vamp, but merely nodded when he saw the mage. Not for the first time, I wondered how this guy seemed to move so effortlessly through vampire territory.
The mage led me to a private room. Low black leather couches and steel tables created conversation areas. The music from outside was being piped in through speakers, only at a much less deafening level.
Once he shut the door, I turned on him. “All right, who the hell are you?”
He chuckled. “You don’t mince words, do you, Sabina? I’m Adam Lazarus.” He held out a hand as he came forward. I looked at it as if he was offering me a snake.
I tilted my head and looked at him. “I think I’ll pass.”
He pulled back and frowned. “Do you really think I’d harm you after I saved your ass in L.A.?”
I placed a hand on my hip. “You didn’t save my ass. You merely assisted me, and for that I owe you thanks. But that doesn’t mean I trust you, far from it.”
“Fair enough,” he said. He wandered over to the small bar at the side of the room. From a mini-fridge, he grabbed a beer. He held up the bottle, offering it to me. I ignored him and took a long gulp of my drink, which, thank the gods, had survived the trip from the dance floor.
“In the Bay Area on vacation?” I asked.
His lips twitched at my sarcasm. “Believe me, if I was on vacation, following a bitchy vampire wouldn’t be my first choice,” he said. “As for why I’m following you, the answer is simple. Your family sent me to check up on you.”
I crossed my arms. “Right. Do you really expect me to believe the Dominae would hire a mage to follow me?”
He shook his head. “Not the Dominae. Your Hekate family.”
My stomach dropped. “I don’t have a Hekate family.”
“On the contrary, you have a very large Hekate family.” He sat in one of the armchairs, seeming totally at ease while I felt as tightly wound as concertina wire.
“Nice try. The Hekate side of my family disowned me at birth. So, who really sent you?”
Adam leaned toward me, his expression intense. “The Dominae told you that?”
I was getting a little annoyed with the subject. “Even if they hadn’t, it was pretty obvious since the mages made no effort to contact me.”
Resentment grew in my belly like a poisoned vine. Resentment toward my parents for breaking the rules, resentment toward the Dominae for blaming me for their actions, and resentment toward Adam for reminding me of my red-headed stepchild status.
