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“You know the owner, right? Rafe?” He pointed his beer at Gideon before taking another drink. “You need to talk him into opening this place on Monday nights. I think most people could use a drink after dealing with Monday bullshit.”
Ryder fought a grin as he watched laughter sparkle in Gideon’s eyes. Yeah, Gideon knew Rafe. The sexy, sweet vampire had their boss wrapped around his little finger most of the time. Not that Gideon was the type to take advantage.
“I’ll mention it to him when I see him next,” Gideon murmured. “Have you known Fox long?”
Maddox placed his beer on the table and shook his head. “We haven’t actually met in person yet. Witches, you gotta be careful. Too many of them are shady as shit. But he seems like a nice guy, and he’s apparently studying under Zelda, so you know he’s gotta be good. We’re taking it slow. Online chats.” Maddox sat up and grinned. “He’s got one of those overprotective boyfriends, right?”
Now that was the biggest understatement he’d heard in a while.
Gideon giggled. “His boyfriend?” He rocked into Ryder and relaxed. “Yeah, I’d say Fox’s boyfriend is a bit overprotective. But Fox is wonderful. Very sweet, honest guy.”
Maddox smiled, but his eyes narrowed. “And he’s friends with vampires. That’s pretty cool and different. Most of us don’t go around with other witches, let alone vampires.”
Ryder cleared his throat to keep from choking. It sounded as though Fox hadn’t been exactly forthcoming in the details of exactly who he was and theclanhe was part of. Fox was more than a witch who was friends with some vampires. He was part of the most powerful vampire clan in North America. That carried with it a lot of fucking weight.
And maybe that was why he hadn’t told Maddox. Because he was trying to make some friends based on his own merits and not on the family he essentially married into.
“But Fox said that you’re part of a coven?” Gideon asked, thankfully letting the whole Varik Clan thing slide by.
Maddox nodded. “It’s a small one. Just the four of us. We met online and kind of stuck together at first because we’re all guys. You know…” His voice trailed off, and he stared at his beer. Ryder got it. Fox had said that male witches were incredibly rare. There were old stories about the sons born to witches being killed off at birth, and there were other stories that the gene wasn’t passed to boys. Whatever the truth was, witches were predominantly female, and they viewed the few male witches that existed as outcasts and pariahs.
“That’s cool. So, do you all specialize in something different? Like your friend?”
“There’s a lot of overlap between some of us, though we often go about things differently. But yeah, Sky.” Maddox paused and rolled his eyes. “Sky is definitely different.” Something caught his attention across the club, and he sighed. “Speaking of different.”
He and Gideon gazed in the direction Maddox motioned and instantly spotted a short, blond man in black leather pants that looked as if they’d been spray-painted onto his somewhat curvy body, a white shirt, and a shiny gold vest. This was Skylar?The necromancer?
The witch was nothing like Ryder had been expecting when he’d heard the term necromancer. He might have been thinking someone dressed all in black with stringy black hair, black fingernails, seeming to have crawled out of a grave. This man…this man could have been the pot of gold at the end of Gideon’s perpetual rainbow.
In his right hand was a bright-blue drink with a paper umbrella and a piece of fruit sticking out of the top. Ryder didn’t even know the bartenders at Phoenix could make something like that. The second he spotted them, he enthusiastically waved, a huge grin on his face as he hurried over to their booth.
“Whoever thought of midweek drinking is a fucking genius!” the newcomer announced as he joined their table.
“Fucking Mondays, right?” Maddox scoffed.
The man in gold shrugged one shoulder. “My actual Monday wasn’t bad, but yesterday and today were total pains in the ass. Why do they always want to go out to the cemetery right after a rain, and it’s going to be a slog through three inches of mud?”
Maddox leaned closer to the one he’d called Sky and sniffed his drink. “What is that?”
Sky bumped his shoulder against Maddox, pushing him. “I asked for a sea breeze, and the bartender—God love him—didn’t even get it remotely close. Not that I’m complaining. I appreciate his enthusiasm. This is like ninety percent alcohol and a kiss of pineapple juice.”
“Let me try it.”
“Hell, no! Go try your luck and order your own.”
Maddox glared at his friend, his brown eyes going golden while he reached out and tapped the side of Sky’s glass with his index finger. In a blink, the drink went from blue to clear.
“Oh, my God! What did you do?” Sky demanded. He took a sip of his drink and choked. Had his friend turned it into poison? Ryder’s heart leaped into his throat and he was planting his hands on the seat to slide out, even though he wasn’t sure how to deal with quarreling witches other than to toss them from the club.
“Water! You asshole! You turned my beautiful drink into water.”
Just as Ryder’s heart was climbing up his throat, Sky dipped two fingers into his drink that was now water and drew a circle on the table next to Maddox’s beer bottle and knocked on the surface once.
A small black hand with long, spidery fingers and knobby knuckles reached out of the circle and briefly patted the surface of the table before locating the bottle. The second it touched the cool glass, it wrapped those bony fingers around the bottle and yanked it down into the circle as if Sky had opened up a portal.
The only thing to rip Ryder’s eyes from that horrific sight was the panicked cry from Gideon as he climbed to his feet in the booth and practically crawled on top of him.
“Idiot! You’re freaking out the vampires!” Maddox complained, hitting Sky on the shoulder. Ryder did not miss that Maddox was paler. He hadn’t made a single grab to save the remains of his beer.
