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Rather than send another text,I headed straight to Eli’s bar. If I couldn’t handle seeing him one-on-one, we sure as fuck weren’t doing a job together. I’d refuse the job if I had to.
I made my way to the edge of the Marigny which had more or less merged with the quarter. The area between the tourist heavy French Quarter and Frenchmen Street used to be prime biting—or mugging—territory. Now, that space was filled with shops, so the safe area extended to the bars on Frenchmen Street. The whole quarter, the edge of the CBD, and the edge of the Marigny were all included in the area where the police were present. Once you were in the patrolled zone, you were safe.
Getting in or out of patrolled zones required a car—or the willingness to risk a biter.
New Orleans, and mostdraugr-friendly cities, had adjusted to a new reality that meant no more unregulated car services. In New Orleans, if you wanted to get to the patrolled pockets in the Garden District, the Marigny, or Treme, you used the city app to summon a car. The city police would also give lifts if they could, moonlighting as drivers for tips. Driving was a lucrative job, and the drivers’ unions had the power to influence laws in many cities.
During the day, the streetcars were safe, but at night, you paid or you risked your life. Some people still had cars of their own, but owning a car meant walking from building to parking. Only the desperate, the foolish, the poor, or the tourists walked at night.
“Crowe.” The doorman greeted me as I reached the oddly named Bill’s Tavern. He glanced around, expecting either trouble or my friends. When he saw neither, he frowned and said, “Boss didn’t mention any biters hanging around.”
See? Everyone knew what my job was. “I’m just stopping in to see Eli.”
The doorman’s expression went carefully blank. Months ago, the tension between Eli and me had twisted into a fight that most of the staff overheard—and remembered. I couldn’t blame the doorman for the wariness in his expression. I’d given Eli plenty of space the past few months.
All the doorman said was “Go on in.”
“You good on rounds?” I asked, trying to remind him I wasn’t all bad.
The doorman frowned. “Boss takes care of us, Crowe. You’d have to ask him if supply is low.”
I nodded. Eli bought stock of my specialdraugrbullets, despite the cost. He was much like Sera about his employees. Sometimes, with him, I thought it was cultural. He treated them like he was their liege-lord.
And he tried to protect me.
Over the last year, I’d realized that Eli’s request for my help at Bill’s Tavern was a ruse. Eli was strong. I’d seen him throw a rampagingdraugrinto a fence with enough force to shatter stone and bend rebar. Eli was trying to take care of me. He’d probably been doing it far before I noticed. Either way, I still killed monsters there and drank for free.
But, tonight, I wasn’t there to drink.
I walked in, scanning for the fae man who plagued my dreams. He stood behind the polished wooden bar, low bar lights casting a glow over him that highlighted his ethereal beauty. No human was as striking as even the least of the fae. Even the horrifying ones had a strange charm that was undeniably memorable, a trait that was fae-beautiful even if it violated mortal standards for beauty. Eli was far from horrifying. His glamour tamped down some of his beauty, but either it didn’t quite work on witches—or maybe that was myotherblood.
Eli motioned for a bartender, and in a matter of moments, he was around the bar and in front of me. “Geneviève?”
“Eli.”
“Are you injured?” He stared at me, as if he could find the source of the few splatters of blood on my jacket.
“It’s not my blood.” I met his gaze and added, “I fell on a wet corpse.”
“Only you, petit four. Only you.” He shook his head and motioned to his already-crowded bar as if it were a castle, and he was a king. “Come in. Drink with me.”
Something about a faery inviting me to drink had me repressing a shiver. “I thought you were working.”
Eli shrugged in a way that only a man like him could pull off: elegant, careless, and utterly telling all at once. That half-shrug of his was often to avoid discussions—usually for my benefit. “Vodka? Gin? Whisky?” he asked.
“Tequila?”
His answering smile made me remind myself not to flirt. Dealing with someone as fae as Eli had taught me the beauty of nuance. Of course, that led to me over-analyzing everything he did or said for subtle clues and declarations. It made me feel like a fool, but the more I analyzed, the more I realized that Ihadto do so with him.
“We got on well over tequila,” he said, offering me the bluntness that he’d been practicing for me, just as I learned to read his subtlety.
I offered him one of his half-shrugs.
Eli laughed joyously. “Tequila it is, cupcake.”
I went to an empty corner table and watched him. His features were sharp, more cut glass than Roman statue. His mouth made me think of a courtesan’s lips, full and luscious, and somehow vaguely cherry-stained. The worst of it was the energy woven into his very fiber. As a witch, it called to me, whispering promises of magic I could have for my own. If I stared at his hair, strands too dark to be merely black, I could see stars, eternity, a universe I wanted desperately to touch. His skin was no better. I knew from punching him once that electricity to rival my own magic slid through his veins, and the only way I touched him now voluntarily was with more than one layer of material between us.
I swallowed my own surge of desire as he joined me at the table. A part of me wanted to intrude on his mind as I could with the dead. I could, theoretically, do that with living beings, too, but the few times I’d succeeded were sheer accident and left me with a blinding headache.
