We snake through the room till we eventually reach the bar. “Lafayette!” Sterling calls down the bartop, leaning on the worn wood. “Two beers please?” I don’t know how the bartender hears him over the heavy music, it’s so loud in here that my skull is practically splitting in two. I knew vampires had powerful senses, but seeing it in person is another thing—how they pick up on everything I so easily miss.
I let my eyes roam over the crowd as we wait for our drinks. The bar is busy, so many bodies moving in rhythm with each other as they dance and laugh and drink the night away. In the far corner there’s a band playing—a group of leather-clad, tattooed males not unlike the ones I’ve come to know in my short time with the Blood Order. Females dance on either side of the stage, barely clothed and grinding on metal poles reaching from the ground up to the ceiling. I watch them move to the music, entranced in the hypnotic way they are able to match their bodies to the beat.
The music is something heavy, distorted, with insane amounts of screaming—so at odds with their mesmerizing movement. It’s unlike anything I’ve heard from my father’s collection back home, but I find it oddly intriguing. I let the beat move through my body and find myself rocking to the rhythm in no time. When I let my head swivel back towards the bar, Sterling is grinning at me.
“What?” I ask on a breathy exhale. Without even trying, my cheeks pinch with the grin growing across my lips.
“Nothing, you just—” He puts his arm around me, bringing me in close so I can hear him clearer. “You look very much in your element here. I didn’t expect you to fit in so naturally.”
“You think this is my first time here?” I shout back, a haughty edge in my tone.
His eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
“I told you.” I shake my head, laughing. “I snuck out to visit while I was under my father’s watch. That’s why he . . .” I trail off, the joke dying on my tongue. Sterling noticed the grief creeping in, his own smile fading.
“Here we are!” A voice startles me as we both turn to the sound of two beers slamming down on the bartop. Bubbly, amber liquid sloshes over the rim of the bottles, coating the dark glass. I look up at the bartender, blinking a couple times as I try to place why he looks so familiar to me.
“High Quarter!” he shouts, throwing his hands up and grinning ear to ear. “I was hoping I’d see you around here again. I wasn’t able to track you down the other night and make sure you were good getting home!”
And then it rushes back to me. Sterling had called him Lafayette. He was the bartender here the night I was attacked by that wraith. My body goes cold as I stare him down, a rush of emotions flooding me. He was so kind that night—and again tonight. But all I can see, can hear, can feel are memories of that awful wraith. Of Lafayette’s name lacing its way through my brain as I desperately hoped I’d be able to get away from the male and find his help.
“I heard there was some sort of disturbance close by that night. I’ve been nervous ever since that you’d somehow gotten caught up in it,” he continues, clearly missing the horror surely written in my features. He knows. He must know. What I did to that male. What my father exiled me for. The power I’m still to this very second trying to concealinside me. My mind spirals, running through every possible outcome of what will happen once Aamon finds out. Once Andras knows, if he doesn't already.
“So, did you?”
I realize there’s been several moments of conversation between Lafayette and Sterling. Things I’ve missed over the pounding music and my racing thoughts.
“What?” I ask, shaking my head and swallowing hard.
“Did you make it home okay that night?”
“Yeah,” I say, forcing shallow breaths into my lungs. Either he doesn’t know the truth or he’s playing dumb for some gods-forsaken reason. I wave my hand in the air, lifting the beer to my lips and taking a swig to ground myself. “Yeah, I got home fine.”
Because I don’t know what else to say. Because I don’t know how to admit in this bar full of Arcane-touched that I, a Watcher, killed one of their own. That I trailed the gruesome evidence through the streets once I’d blacked out. That I returned home only to be forsaken by my own father and discarded like a piece of trash. Only to end up here, back in the same position I’d been in just a few short nights ago.
Lafayette nods, but I can tell he senses something from me. His eyes narrow, the silver of his eyebrow piercing glinting in the lights behind the bar. “Well, my offer still stands, High Quarter. You need anything, you know where to find me, okay?”
I nod, trying to avoid his gaze. Sterling is acutely aware of the shift in my demeanor too, and between the two of them, I feel entirely too vulnerable. Lafayette opens his mouth to say something else, but the door to the bar opens with a bang, and the rest of the Blood Order members that were with us on the outskirts of the city stroll in.
The patrons of the bar roar in approval, swallowing the gaggle of males and urging them into the fold. Lafayette turns his attention away from the door, fixing Sterling with a hard look.
“Burial night,” is all Sterling offers.
Lafayette nods as if that's all the explanation he needs. “I’ll grab a round for everyone.” He flashes a kind smile my way before striding down the length of the bar to prepare drinks.
Sterling swipes both beers into his hands and nods for me to follow him. I do, hot on his feet as the intensity in the bar picks up. He leads us around the outskirts of the crowd, to the back corner of the room where a section of beaten up couches and oversized chairs wait. I look around, amazed to find such an open amount of seating in such a crowded place.
Sterling slips easily into the alcove, setting our beers down on a low table in the center. I move to follow but a hand wraps around my arm, holding me in place.
“Blood Order only,” a male warns in a deep, rough voice. I look up, into the hard, dead eyes of a broad shoulderedmale. His grip is firm, his face rigid. He’s unforgiving, and I quickly retreat out of reflex.
“Julian, she’s with us,” Sterling calls out. He sounds irritated, his words clipped.
“Sorry, Sterling, but you don’t have the authority to clear her. She needs the Alpha’s or Aamon’s say-so to gain access.”
Sterling bristles. “Are you fucking with me, Julian? Let her in.”
“No can do,” he responds coolly, tightening his hold on my arm. I’m about to open my mouth to say it’s fine, but Sterling doesn't let up.
