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“You okay being here?” I asked quietly.
“This is for food,” she said, snagging a tortilla chip from a communal bowl. “Sanctuary means no Sup drama.”
“Correct,” Connor said and passed the little bowl to me, then did the same with the others.
“Salsa?” Lulu asked, eyeing it warily.
“Hot sauce,” Alexei said. “Be careful with it.”
“And it’sAlexeisaying that,” Connor said. “So be careful.” Then he pointed to an old-fashioned menu over the bar, with little plastic letters that clipped into slots. Options were limited. Burrito. Taco. Torta. Tamale. Menudo. I glanced around at the other tables, curious about the bestseller, and found a lot of people hunched over plates, and very devoted to their food.
A woman came over, her skin the palest shade of green, her hair and eyes dark. She put down four bottles. Dark liquid, no labels.
“House root beer,” Connor said. “It’s exceptional.”
“Know whatcha want?” the waitress asked. Sup she may have been, but her accent was one hundred percent Wisconsin.
“Special,” Alexei said. “Burn me up.”
“Same,” Connor said, then looked at me, brows lifted.
“Oh, do I get to order for myself?” I asked with a smile.
“Only if you hurry up,” he said, smile teasing.
“Special,” I said. “I don’t want the full burn.”
She snorted. “How much?”
“Light slap?” I asked, and she nodded, scribbled.
“Lightweight,” Alexei muttered.
“No,” I said, unashamed, “I just like to taste my food. It’s not a competition.”
“Burn me up,” Lulu told the waitress, eschewing the bowl of hot sauce and pouring it from the bottle directly onto a chip. She crunched in, and her eyes watered immediately. And she smiled like a woman deeply satisfied.
“So you do have some good qualities,” Alexei said. “Good to know.”
She presented her middle finger, prepared another chip.
I munched one without sauce, looked around. The sheerdiversity of bodies was amazing; I’d never seen so many different types of Sups gathered in one place.
“Thanks for bringing me here,” I told Connor. “I’d have hated to miss out on this.”
“You’re very welcome.”
The waitress brought a round tray of shot glasses filled to the brim with cloudy green liquid. She managed to slap them on the table single-handedly without spilling a drop. Alexei slid one across to each of us.
“Wolfsbane,” he said, and lifted his glass, waited for each of us to do the same.
“Is this... poison?” Lulu asked, head tilted as she studied it.
“Only slightly,” Connor said with a smile and drank.
“See you on the other side,” I told Lulu and did the same.
It was like drinking a novel. A story with a beginning, middle, and end, with conflict along the way. And the faint aftertaste of wintergreen. There was no alcohol in it; the potency, I guessed, came from herbs and bitters. And it was very definitely potent.
