Page 29 of The Never Queen

“Kings now, actually,” Bash corrects.

She props the heel of her hand on the back of the booth beside him and arches a brow. “Oh yeah? How’d you manage that one?”

“My sparkling personality,” Bash adds.

She snorts and the hoop earrings hanging from her ears swing. She’s buzzed her hair since last we saw her and added a few more tattoos to her forearms. She smells of fried pickles (the Lost Knife specialty) and rose oil and the stale smoke scent of a cigarette burned an hour ago.

Bash smiles up at her. “So how’ve you been? How’s Samantha?”

“She broke up with me.”

“Oh. A pity? Or a relief?”

She shrugs and softens because Bash has that effect on people. “A bit of both, I suppose.”

“Well then you have my sympathy and my congratulations.”

She sets the menus on the table and starts dividing them up. “What’ll you all have to drink?”

“Bourbon,” Pan says.

“Same,” Vane adds.

“Diet Coke,” I say as she takes our orders in a notepad.

“You still have those cloudberry shakes?”

“They’re out of season,” she answers.

Bash bats his eyelashes, then puffs out his bottom lip.

“Oh fine.” She sighs. “I have some on reserve. But it’ll cost you and none of those fucking leaves. Real money.”

“I’ll take one too,” Kas adds.

“Mais,” Pan says.

Maisie goes still.

“Kody here?”

She blinks, her tongue flicking out nervously as her fist goes to her hip. “Suppose he is.”

“Tell him we’d like to see him.”

With a nod, she slips the notepad into the apron tied around her waist. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then she disappears behind the counter.

Pan spreads his arm out behind me on the back of the booth.

“You think Kody will see us?” I ask.

He shrugs, keeping his eyes on the diner and the people inhabiting it. “Now that we know he’s here, if he denies us, it’ll be suspicious.”

“He’ll see us,” Vane says. “He owes me a favor.”

“Oh yeah? What did you do?”

Vane cuts his gaze to me, that one violet eye, and scarred black eye. “You don’t want to know.”