Ким Харрисон - The Good, The Bad, And The Undead

Face ugly, Glenn broke her hold and fell to the ground. "Go Turn yourself, Tamwood," he rasped, rubbing his neck. "I can take care of myself. This won't be any worse than walking into a good-old-boy's bar in deep Georgia."

"Yeah?" she questioned, pale hand on her cocked hip. "Anyone there want to eat you?"

The Were pack flowed past us and inside. One jerked, doing a double take as he saw me, and I wondered if my stealing that fish was going to be a problem. Music and chatter drifted out, cutting off as the thick door shut. I sighed. It sounded busy. Now we'd probably have to wait for a table.

I offered Glenn a hand up as Ivy opened the door. Glenn refused my help, tucking his anti-itch spell back behind his shirt as he struggled to find his pride, squished under Ivy's boots somewhere. Jenks flitted from me to his shoulder, and Glenn started. "Go sit somewhere else, pixy," he said around a cough.

"Oh, no," Jenks said merrily. "Don't you know a vamp won't touch you if there's a pixy on your shoulder? It's a well-known fact."

Glenn hesitated, and my eyes rolled. What a crock.

We filed in behind Ivy as the Were pack was being led to their table. The place was crowded, not unusual for a work-day. Piscary's had the best pizza in Cincinnati, and they didn't take reservations. The warmth and noise relaxed me, and I took off my coat. The rough-cut, thick support beams seemed to prop up the low ceiling, and a rhythmic stomping to the beat of Sting's "Rehumanize Yourself" filtered down the wide stairs. Past them were wide windows looking out over the black river and the city beyond. A three-story, obscenely expensive motorboat was tied up, the docking lights shining on the name across the bow, solar. Pretty college-age kids moved efficiently about in their skimpy uniforms, some more suggestive than others. Most were bound humans, since the vamp staff traditionally took the less supervised upstairs.

The host's eyebrows rose as he took Glenn in. I could tell he was the host because his shirt was only half undone and his name tag said so. "Table for three? Lighted or non?"

"Lighted," I interjected before Ivy could say different. I didn't want to be upstairs. It sounded rowdy.

"It will be about fifteen minutes, then. You can wait at the bar if you like."

I sighed. Fifteen minutes. It was always fifteen minutes. Fifteen little minutes that dragged to thirty, then forty, and then you were willing to wait ten more so you didn't have to go to the next restaurant and start all over again.

Ivy smiled to show her teeth. Her canines were no bigger than mine were, but sharp like a cat's. "We'll wait here, thanks."

Looking almost enraptured by her smile, the host nodded. His chest, showing beneath his open shirt, was scattered with pale scars. It wasn't what the hosts were wearing at Denny's, but who was I to complain? There was a soft look about him that I didn't like in my men but some women did. "It won't be long," he said, his eyes fixing to mine as he noticed my attention on him. His lips parted suggestively. "Do you want to order now?"

A pizza went by on a tray, and as I jerked my gaze from him, I glanced at Ivy and shrugged. We weren't there for dinner, but why not? It smelled great.

"Yeah," Ivy said. "An extra large. Everything but peppers and onions."

Glenn jerked his attention from what looked like a coven of witches applauding the arrival of their dinner. Eating at Piscary's was an event. "You said we weren't going to stay."

Ivy turned, black swelling within her eyes. "I'm hungry. Is that okay with you?"

"Sure," he muttered.

Immediately Ivy regained her composure. I knew she wouldn't vamp out here. It might start a cascading reaction from the surrounding vampires, and Piscary would lose his A rating on his MPL. "Maybe we can share a table with someone. I'm starved," she said, jiggling her foot.

MPL was short for Mixed Public License. What it meant was a strict enforcement of no blood drawn on the premises. Standard stuff for most places serving alcohol since the Turn. It created a safe zone that we frail "dead means dead" folk needed. If you had too many vamps together and one drew blood, the rest had a tendency to lose control. No problem if everyone's a vampire, but people didn't like it when their loved one's night on the town turned into an eternity in the graveyard. Or worse.

The clubs and nightspots without a MPL existed, but they weren't as popular and didn't make as much money. Humans liked MPL places, since they could safely flirt without someone else's bad decision turning their date into an out of control, bloodthirsty fiend. At least until the privacy of their own bedroom, where they might survive it. And vamps liked it too—it was easier to break the ice when your date wasn't uptight about you breaking his or her skin.

I looked around the semiopen room, seeing only Inderlanders among the patrons. MPL or not, it was obvious Glenn was attracting attention. The music had died, and no one had put in another quarter. Apart from the witches in the corner and the pack of Weres in the back, the downstairs was full of vamps in various levels of sensuality ranging from casual to satin and lace. A good part of the floor was taken up in what looked like a death-day party.

The sudden warm breath on my neck jerked me straight, and it was only Ivy's bothered look that kept me from smacking whoever it was. Spinning, my tart retort died. Swell. Kisten.

The living vamp was Ivy's friend, and I didn't like him. Some of that was because Kist was Piscary's scion, a loose extension of the master vampire who did his daylight work for him. It didn't help that Piscary had once bespelled me against my will through Kist, something I hadn't known was possible at the time. It also didn't help that he was very, very pretty, making him very, very dangerous by my reckoning.

If Ivy was a diva of the dark, then Kist was her consort, and God help me, he looked the part. Short blond hair, blue eyes, and chin holding enough stubble to give his delicate features a more rugged cast made him a sexy bundle of promised fun. He was dressed more conservatively than usual, his biker leather and chains replaced with a tasteful shirt and slacks. His I-should-care-what-you-think-because? attitude remained, though. The lack of biker boots put him a shade taller than me with the heels I had on, and the ageless look of an undead vampire shimmered in him like a promise to be fulfilled. He moved with a catlike confidence, having enough muscle to enjoy running your fingertips over but not so much that it got in the way.

Ivy and he had a past I didn't want to know about, since she had been a very practicing vamp at the time. I was always struck with the impression that if he couldn't have her, he'd be happy with her roommate. Or the girl next door. Or the woman he met on the bus this morning…

"Evening, love," he breathed in a fake English accent, his eyes amused because he had surprised me.

I pushed him back with a finger. "Your accent stinks. Go away until you get it right." But my pulse had increased, and a faint, pleasant tickle from the scar on my neck brought all my proximity alarms into play. Damn it. I'd forgotten about that.

He glanced at Ivy as if for permission, then playfully licked his lips as she frowned her answer. I scowled, thinking I didn't need her help fending him off. Seeing it, she made a puff of exasperated air and pulled Glenn to the bar, enticing Jenks to join them with the promise of a honeyed toddy. The FIB detective glanced at me over his shoulder as he went, knowing something had passed between the three of us but not what.

"Alone at last." Kist shifted to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me and look across the open floor. I could smell leather, though he wasn't wearing any. That I could see, at least.