by Sierra Cross
“Brett can step in and watch the bar.” His tone clipped. “Now.”
Damn it. He saw the fight.
My boss’s shabby office was a glorified broom closet, but its matte black walls did a decent job muffling the noise from the bar. Except the thumping bass.
Randy threw himself into the office surplus chair and leaned back knitting his fingers. The silence stretched like bad bubble gum. I knew from experience there was nothing for me to do but wait until his anger came spitting out.
“What the hell, Alix?” He ran a hand through his spiky gelled hair. “This is a bar, not a library. You think you’re serving a bunch of monks out there? Boys will be boys.” Ugh, my least fave of the clichés he loved to cycle through when lecturing me.
“I get where you’re coming from.” Not really. “But Emma—”
“Is a grown woman,” he cut me off. “Who can take care of herself.”
I counted to five to check my own anger. “He had his hands on her. That’s over the line.”
“Which is why we have security. Not some little baby bartender who likes to think she’s a bouncer.”
“If I don’t act like a bouncer, who will?” Okay, not the smartest thing to say.
Randy’s face was reddening. Veins pumping on the side of his throat. “Sweetheart, if you’re gonna worry about anybody’s job, worry about your own.”
“Got it,” I said quietly.
“Are you sure? Because you seem confused about what your job is. I pay you to keep the good times flowing, not act like some kind of vigilante superhero. You’re just a bartender.”
I nodded but anger had made me numb. I looked at him and all I could think of was how, in the fluorescent lighting all the grey in his hair shone through, and the bags under his eyes cast long shadows. He couldn’t be more than forty, but tonight he was looking more like a twitchy, grumpy sixty. I couldn’t help but think of the rumors about him. The word was that he’d taken loans from the shady side of the tracks and was having trouble paying them back. The bar was packed night after night, but Randy was always bitching about making ends meet. It didn’t add up.
Much as I hated to admit it, though, he wasn’t entirely wrong about my need to mix it up at work. This wasn’t the first time I’d picked up Tony’s slack. But, “Tonight was dif—”
“No, don’t even. Get clear on what your job is, Alix.” He paused for effect. “Or you won’t have one.” He waved his hand at me. Dismissed. “And I don’t need you behind the bar tonight. Check liquor levels and replenish the stock.”
What? He was banning me from my bar and sending me to that dungeon of a basement? A shiver ran through me at the thought. The only time I’d ever ventured down there was when Emma gave me the new-hire tour, and it totally creeped me out.
I didn’t bother with taking inventory. My bartender brain couldn’t help but keep an active tally of what was low and what wasn’t. Instead, to clear my head, I ducked outside with all the kitchen smokers and stood in what I liked to call Seattle’s liquid air. A fine mist so light it didn’t seem to fall. Other people complained about the rain and the grey and the fog that were hallmarks of this city. But for me, at times like this when I was so riled up I felt like fire ran in my veins, I counted on the weather to calm me.
Like now. I didn’t deserve to be pulled off bar-duty, damn it. All I’d done was defend my friend. And I was a good draw for this place; people came in here to watch me throw the shaker and light myself on fire. I’d always thought Randy appreciated me, that I was a part of something here. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Only when I sensed the action in the bar winding down did I reluctantly head back in for my punishment detail.
I’d have bet a week of tips that the steep, rickety stairs down to the basement violated city building codes. Navigating them in my high-heeled boots was slow and challenging. It was as if all the grace I commanded minutes ago when confronting the ass-grabber had burned off. My no longer blazing fingers scraped across failing mortar grit as I guided my hand down the damp stone wall for balance.
Downing the cobwebs in my path, I made my way to the shelves of vodka. I pulled three bottles of Skyy and three bottles of Stoli. A second trip down these dungeon hell-stairs was not on my agenda. I was arranging the bottles in the most efficient way to carry them in one trip, when my peripheral vision registered movement in the dark corner.
Startled, I flailed backward. Losing my grip on all six bottles. With a sickening crash they toppled to the stone floor, exploding on impact. The crisp smell of alcohol punctured the dank air.
My heart was still thundering, but I saw no one. “Who’s there?” I demanded.
A figure came into view. Not like he stepped out of the shadows…more like he materialized in front of me. Tall. Powerfully built. With short brown hair and a lean angular face covered in bruises and bloody scrapes. I could have drawn that rugged face, and all its battle scars, from memory.
I forced myself to look into his dark, knowing eyes. The eyes that I’d once allowed to see into my deepest grief. “Matt?” My voice came out higher, younger than I expected. “I didn’t think you were ever coming back.”
Chapter Two
“Alexandra…kid, we need to talk.” Matt’s gravelly voice—a voice I hadn’t heard since I was fourteen years old—was low and serious. “I’ve waited over a year for you to come down here. Don’t know how much longer I can hold this form. So listen and don’t interrupt.”
I’d almost forgotten how bossy Matt could be for a ghost. Well, ethereal being anyway. Despite his torn T-shirt and jeans, he had a palpable air of authority, like some kind of rogue commando. The impatient blaze in his eyes would be intimidating, if I didn’t know him. Actually, it still was. But as blown away as I was to see him again, my life had changed since the last time he’d paid me an astral visit. Since then, I’d learned that I had no business interacting with supernatural beings.
“I’m not a kid anymore, Matt,” I said, as firmly as I could. “And I’m not part of your world. Look…you helped me back then, I’ll always be grateful. But I think it would be best if you left now.”
“That’s because you don’t have all the information yet.” He folded his muscular arms, which looked so real and powerful I had to remind myself that they, like the rest of his strapping body, weren’t physically here in the room but in another realm entirely. “Once you’re up to speed on the magical dangers facing our city—”
“Thanks, but I have enough problems to deal with. You know, in the real world.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell Matt that I’d been officially declared magically deficient. Not when he’d always referred to me as “the next coven leader,” after my mother. Instead, I glanced at the shards at my feet and shook my head in despair. Randy was definitely going to make me pay for these broken vodka bottles. Just add it to my tab. “Sorry, but you need to leave me alone, so I can deal with this, okay?”
I started upstairs to get the broom…but didn’t make it past the third step before his form appeared again on the next highest step. Inches between us.
“You have no idea what your real problems are, Alexandra.”
I froze.
Walk right through him, I told myself. You’ve done it before. But Matt’s chiseled face, swathed in desperation, held my full attention. Something had changed there since I last saw him—startling, given that he was incorporeal. In the last ten years, he hadn’t aged one hour. Funny, how I used to think of him as an older guy. Now he looked about my age. The dark purple bruises flowering along his square jaw hadn’t healed. Nor had the bloody gash down his pillowy lower lip—the one part of him that looked incongruously boyish. It was his eyes that had changed.
“I need your help, Alexandra.” His dark eyes, once warm and charming, burned with an urgency that put fear into my heart. “Please.”
Gulp. I’d never heard him plead with me, for anything. I squirmed. His gaze was so intense I was almost ready to do as he asked. But Wonts didn’t
mess with the supernatural. Not unless they had a death wish. “How could I possibly help a…being like you?”
“I need you to go to the cave at Caster’s Park.”
“What?” I stared at him. “There’s no cave at Caster’s Park.” I should know; I spent half my childhood there.
“Come on, kid. Think back.” Matt spoke softly, his gaze zeroing in on me. Damn his confidence, he seemed certain that by sheer force of will, he could make me remember this supposed cave. “You take the Wren Trail all the way to the ravine—”
“No.” His confidence had finally overstepped its bounds. “Trust me, I know that park like I know this bar.” Also? I didn’t like being told to think back. Did he not get how much it hurt me to run through mental home movies of Caster’s Park picnics with Liv and Callie, with my parents? I’d had enough of this trip down memory lane. “Look, even if there was some secret cave there—which there isn’t—I couldn’t help you anyway. I, um…didn’t turn out like my mother.” I swallowed and realized I didn’t have it in me to break the news to Matt that I was a Wont. Telling Callie tonight had broken me. I settled for, “I’m never going to be a coven leader, okay?”
“I don’t have time for your self-doubt, Alexandra.” Even as his stern words came out, his physical form was stuttered with a translucent shimmer and grew transparent. “And neither do you.” He was starting to fade, though I could tell he was fighting it. “You need to get to that cave. As soon as possible. Too many are getting through—”
“News flash, you’re not my boss,” I snipped. “And it’s time you moved into the light. Or whatever that crap is. There, I helped you. You’re welcome.”
He threw his gorgeous head back in frustration. And as if the exertion sapped the rest of his strength, he disappeared.
I was standing in the middle of the musty basement alone. A weird energy surrounded me. Like Matt’s emotions got left behind as he disappeared. Or maybe it was just my own long-unclaimed feelings coming back to haunt me, bad pun intended.
Ten years ago, Matthew Montgomery died in the same bus crash that stole my parents lives. That’s how it was reported, anyway.
Before the accident, he’d been part of the crew of colossally tall, super-fit men who’d show up at coven picnics. “Family friends” is how the news stories described them, but even as a child I knew they were the coven’s guardians. Men from magicborn bloodlines who worked with my mother’s coven, though I wasn’t clear on the details. Guardians were just always around.
A few days after the funerals was the first time Matt came to me—when I was crying so hard I could barely breathe. He looked exactly as he did right now, and said the only words that ever comforted me. “Kid, you have every right to be sad and angry. Cry. Let it all out.”
Matt understood what that kind of loss felt like. And how awkwardly the rest of the world handled others’ grief. In the twilight between waking and sleeping, he’d come to me and was the only person—or person-like being—that ever made any sense. He’d explained to me that he wasn’t really dead or a ghost; his physical body was merely trapped in a realm called the Void. But “ghost” was still the easiest way for me to think of him.
In the midst of my grief, he was the only one I could be real with. Liv and Callie’s relatives had whisked them off to distant cities. Aunt Jenn could barely say my mother’s name without choking up. Her sister’s loss hit her hard—in addition to thrusting upon her an orphan teenager who needed food, shelter, comfort—and her only recourse was throwing herself into her career days, nights, and weekends to support us. As the months passed, my other friends—while initially sympathetic—got tired of me moping around and pulled back. Aunt Jenn even transferred me to a new school “for a fresh start” but for a time that move left me even more alone. There were days when it seemed the only one I talked to was Matt.
I’d thought of him as stern and gruff, but looking back, he was incredibly patient and gentle with a headstrong teenage girl who wanted to rail at the world that stole her parents from her. He listened. He never once told me to get over it. I had the sense he wasn’t over it himself. In the lonely afternoon hours between school and Aunt Jenn’s returning from work, Matt would have me slide the living room couch toward the wall so he could teach me martial arts moves. The physical challenge distracted me momentarily from my pain, and over months of us shadow-sparring in the cozy, dust-lit living room, as rain pounded the skylight above our heads, I honed my fighting instincts.
They would stay a part of me forever.
In a different sense than the way he’d protected my mother’s coven, Matt became my protector too. My guardian. But when I closed the door to magic at age fourteen, I had to close the door on him, too.
A deluge of grief threatened to flood me. And on each layer of emotion was a memory swimming up to the surface. Unwept tears welled up in my eyes as pain began to drown me. And so I did what I’d always done: I shut that shit down. The pain roiled in my bones, shifting to anger. That’s better. Much better.
I heard someone yell down the stairs. “You okay? Who the heck were you talking to down there?”
Crap. I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand, hoping to erase any evidence of the afore-banished tears. I grabbed another set of vodka bottles and scurried up the stairs to the kitchen.
Emma was waiting there with a worried look on her face. “I heard a horrible crash and then you taking about…a cave?”
“A couple of bottles fell off the shelf. It’s so dark down there.” I let out a laugh. “I was just saying that our stockroom feels more like a cave.”
She tilted her head questioningly. “Who were you saying it to?”
“Myself?”
“I think your self-imposed solitary confinement has warped you, girlfriend.”
I gave another half-hearted chuckle. If she only knew.
Thankfully, Emma changed the subject. “Hey, I’m sorry about earlier. You did a nice thing for me.”
“Right, nice.” Yeah, like costing someone two hundred bucks is really what friends do. “I’m going to cover that tab. And the tip too.”
“No way, not taking your money.” Her delicate, heart-shaped face turned serious. “I appreciate you looking out for me. We all do.” I was about to tell her Randy didn’t see it that way when she added, “Wait staff is all going to grab some breakfast at Thirteen Coins after we close up. Come with? It’ll be fun.”
Ooh, now that was a first. The wait staff at Sanctum were thick as thieves, almost conspiratorial. Though respected for our skills, we bartenders mostly kept to the outer orbit of their social order. The idea of being part of the gang for an evening appealed to me. But after the fight, seeing ghosts, and having my job threatened, I didn’t have the energy to chew food. Much less hold myself upright and have a conversation. “I don’t know, Ems.”
“Oh, come on. Sharon just gave the last customers the boot. We’re all pitching in for clean up.” Emma grinned. “Besides we have some plans we really want to talk to you about.”
Plans? What kind of plans? Was it possible my sticking up for Emma, rather than being career suicide, had opened doors for me with the crew? (Not that it would have mattered; I’d have done it either way.) I forced myself to rally. “Okay, why not? I’ll hang out a little while…” I pulled my tips from the jar and quickly took out two hundred. As Emma swept past I handed it to her. “But only if you take this.”
“Hey, Alix, you don’t have to do that,” she said seriously, but I could tell from the hungry way her eyes focused on the money that she wanted it. I didn’t want to part with it myself, but she was a single mom working two jobs to keep things together. When I didn’t take my hand back, she took the cash and stuffed it in her apron pocket.
The wait staff must have really wanted to get out of here and on to Thirteen Coins. They were buzzing through the place, sponging, sweeping, and mopping everything in their path, like the proverbial white tornado.
As for me, two more trips downsta
irs and I’d be done with the restocking. Despite the shift from hell, Emma’s invite had rescued my mood. I caught myself humming on the last trip back upstairs.
Then Randy came out from his office—and right away I could tell this wasn’t going to be good. He was all puffed up and looking self-important.
“Hold up people,” he said, and perched on a bar stool. The wait staff stopped mid sweep and listened. “Your buddy Alix has a surprise for you. She wants you all to leave early.” What the hell? “She’s going to finish cleaning up for you.” The staff exchange confused looks as my blood boiled. “By herself.”
I swallowed a lump of anger the size of Texas and struggled to keep my voice even. “Randy, I get it. I screwed up. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry’s only words, Alix. Cleaning the kitchen’s a meaningful gesture.”
Punching you in the face would be a meaningful gesture.
“Come on…” I tried to appeal to the room, but no one would catch my eye. “It’ll take me three hours to do this on my own.”
“That’ll be good time to think. You know, get clear on what your job is. “His face was so smug. He knew he wasn’t just humiliating me but pitting me against the wait staff. He’d said I had to clean up alone. If they helped me, they’d be defying him.
“I am clear on my job. I’m a bartender. The best one you’ve got.” My anger had taken point and I knew what came out next would be bad. But I felt powerless to stop it. “I make you tons of money. People pay to see me—”
“Speaking of money.” He talked over me, as usual. “It’ll be a hundred and fifty for the mess you left in basement. And that’s wholesale rates.”
I just stared at him.
“Come on, fork it over.” He thrust out his palm and waited. “And another thirty for the highball glasses.”
As I dug in my pocket, I caught Sharon’s eye and she looked away. The whole room averted its gaze, like this was too awkward to bear. I peeled off the bills one after another. What I had left after handing him the money was thirty bucks.
