by Lena North
“You ditched me so you could have sex with her?” I asked for clarification, needing to make sure that I'd heard what I'd heard.
“Eighteen,” he retorted. “And a boy. She called and was pretty graphic in what we were going to do, so yeah. I did. And I'm sorry.”
Huh. It had been a dumb thing to do, but it wasn't like we'd been a couple back then, so it wasn't as if he'd cheated on me. Exactly. He'd been an ass, but now I at least knew why.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he echoed.
“Boy,” Dad barked, and Jack winced as he turned slowly. “You not trying to get in my daughter's pants back then is not a thing that makes me unhappy.”
Of course, Dad would see it like that.
“Dad,” I murmured.
He put his palm in my hand with a flourish that was not as much Clint E as it was Beyonce, but he kept his eyes on Jackson. And then he was suddenly grinning in a weirdly smug way.
“We're good for now. Stay out of Kitty's pants, and we'll stay good also in the future.”
“Biff –”
“We're leaving,” Dad announced cheerfully.
“Jackson,” I said as they moved toward the door, and he turned. “Who says I wouldn't have... provided that service?”
Both men froze, and Dad wheezed out something, but my eyes locked with Jack's. His wolf must have been close to the surface because the blue deepened and a yellow glitter started to form.
“Guess you'll never know now,” I added breezily and wondered what the heck I was doing, flirting with a wolf right in front of my Dad.
“Jesus,” Jack muttered. “You gotta know what you just said hurts more than the pimples you put on my butt.”
“I know,” I said with a grin. “Have a good time working with Dad, Jackson. Guess I'll see you around.”
“Yeah,” he sighed.
They left, and I stared at the door, completely unable to stop a ridiculous giggle to make its way up my throat.
I was so not a giggly girl, but that had been suh-weet.
Although, I hoped for Melissa Moose's sake that we didn't meet in the produce section of the supermarket any time soon. She would not look good with bananas shoved up her nostrils.
Janie and Grandpa joined me in the kitchen when a car started up outside. Janie's mouth was a thin line, and she went straight for the coffee maker, but Grandpa Hunter sat down opposite me.
“That was an okay apology, wasn't it?” he asked but didn't wait for a reply. “It was. Yes indeed. I took back my offer to lend him my briefs, but I shouldn't have done that. Not when he apologized so nicely.”
He nodded with great satisfaction and the garment on his head bobbed a little together with his gray tufts of hair.
“Was Jackson angry?” I asked, wondering how the heck they had managed to get him to apologize at all.
Gramps misunderstood.
“Sadly, no. He wasn't upset at all and just growled that he doesn't use underwear and kept glaring at your father.”
I froze. Jackson Vik-Hansen was apparently going commando.
Yowza.
“He's careless,” Gramps went on.
Careless was not one of the words stumbling around in my head at that exact moment, although I wasn't going to share that, so I grinned at him instead.
He smiled back at me and explained, “It's important to keep your private parts warm, to ensure your reproductive abilities.”
My grin faltered a little, and I blinked. Then I blinked again.
“You're not planning to, um, reproduce anytime soon, are you?” I asked.
“You never know,” he replied.
You could have heard a needle drop in the kitchen, but then Janie put the pot back into the coffee maker with a rather unnecessary force. I couldn't for the life of me stop staring at my grandfather. His wrinkled face was serious, but there was a twinkle in his slightly faded blue eyes. The ash gray hair was a little too long, and I suddenly noticed a faint shadow on his jaw. Had he started to grow a goatee? At his age?
“They want my genes,” he shared.
“Who?” Janie and I asked in unison, completely flabbergasted.
“Becky at the community center. Maybe Maria too.”
“Buh...” I wheezed out.
The thought of Becky, who was four years older than me, wanting to do the mattress mambo with the man sitting in front of me with a pair of briefs on his head was disturbing on so many levels.
“Don't you think you're a little...” I tried frantically to come up with an alternative word to old because he was, but I didn't want to throw it in his face. After a few desperate seconds, I settled for, “Seasoned?”
Janie had still not said a word, but she suddenly started laughing.
“What?” I asked
“Seasoned, and also well done,” she chuckled, shook her head a little and turned back to the sink. “Not going to happen.”
“We have plans,” Gramps said coolly and tapped his temple in a gesture that made him look like a crazier old coot than usual, which likely wasn't the effect he'd aimed for.
I almost squealed with relief when my phone started ringing.
“Heey!” I shouted without even looking who it was.
“That bad, huh?” Joel said with a chuckle. “Listen, Kitty. No time to talk now, but a buddy said they're looking for a bartender at Tiaso's.”
“Tia-what?”
“Tiaso's. Biker bar just south of the city.”
Say, what?
“You think I should apply for a job as a bartender?” I asked slowly, wondering if he'd gone insane.
Or maybe not. I had no experience being on that side of the bar, but if it were a biker place, then they'd mostly order beers or various shots. I could handle that. Maybe.
“It'll be fun. Ask if you get an employee discount.”
“Wh –”
“Gotta go, sweetie. Hot date,” Joel cut me off and disconnected.
I stared at the phone for a few seconds, and then I keyed in the name Tiaso's to see where the place was located.
“Kitty,” Janie said in an infuriatingly patronizing voice.
I made my mind up immediately to get that goddamned job.
“Janie,” I said, mimicking the tone of her voice.
“Your father will not be happy,” she informed me, sounding as if this was a secret on par with the whereabouts of the holy grail.
“He might get away with yelling at Jackson, but I'm an adult,” I said haughtily.
Our gazes held and then Grandma Hazel walked in.
She surveyed the scene, narrowed her eyes, and asked, “What's going on?”
“Kitty's going to be a bartender, and I'm thinking about procreating,” Gramps answered cheerfully. “Janie is just a bit surprised.”
“Fantastic!” Grandma Hazel squealed and slapped her hands together a couple of times in a sudden, and ridiculous, applaud. “Do you get an employee discount?”
She'd wisely ignored the procreation part.
“I don't even have the job yet,” I murmured,
“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Go get it. Tell them I'll be a regular.”
I looked at my purple haired grandmother in her hippiesque dress which showed off her skinny-wrinkly arms, and the fact that cleavage was something one should cherish in one's youth because it went south with age. Far south.
I tried to picture her in a biker bar. I couldn't do it.
“I'll do that,” I said instead. “My car died, can I borrow yours?”
She grinned happily and wiggled the keys in front of me, and when I saw the endless optimism in her warm, brown eyes, I couldn't hold my laughter back. Then I winked at Grandpa, got into the gigantic, pink car and drove down the mountain.
Tiaso's was undoubtedly a biker bar. This was evident from the long line of cruisers outside, although if someone didn't get it, then they could also just look at the orange neon sign in the window, alternately flashing the words “Biker” and
“Bar.”
I didn't stop to reflect on the wisdom in walking through the black door with another flashing sign that said, “Enter here,” and I probably should have.
Inside, it was dark and smelled of beer, sweat, and motor-oil.
Yup. It was a biker bar alright.
The man behind the bar smiled widely at me in a way I thought was a little too enthusiastic but running for the hills seemed like a wimpy thing to do, so I walked up to him and smiled back.
“Well, hello there, little girl,” the man said
He was tall and had probably been muscular a long, long time ago. Now he was fat. And bald, although he had a surprisingly thick and slightly curly beard. He looked friendly, though, and his eyes were happy.
“Hey,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
“Do you dance?” he asked weirdly.
I blinked, and he tilted his head toward the side a couple of times.
There was a small stage with a backdrop of red velvet.
And a pole.
Holy shit.
“Not really,” I said.
My dad would blow a gasket if I got a job as a stripper, I thought. I also had zero desire to take my clothes off in front of an audience, and sub-zero desire when the audience would be the type of clientele scattered around the bar. They were Dad's age, more or less, and had the customary biker-attire of jeans, tees and leather vests. None of them were skinny, and all of them had some kind of facial hair.
“You sure?” the man asked.
I made a few deliberately awkward moves, entirely out of sync with Stairway to Heaven which was playing rather loudly.
“Shit,” the man muttered.
“Heard you're looking for a bartender,” I said with a smile that I hoped conveyed professionalism and not stripperesque sluttiness.
“Yeah?” he said and seemed to perk up. “You any good at that?”
“No clue,” I said honestly because he'd figure out my lack of experience quick enough. Then I added calmly, “But I've been drunk plenty of times.”
He watched me in silence and then a broad grin spread on his face.
“Fair enough,” he said to my surprise, leaned behind the bar to pull out a bag. “Go put this on and get to it. I need a break.”
A quick glance into the bag revealed something that seemed just slightly bigger than a handkerchief.
Well, crap.
“You still interested, girl?” the man chuckled.
“My name's Kitty,” I said. “And I'll let you know by the end of the evening.”
“Fair enough,” he said again. “I'm Silenus. If you don't drink on the job and get through tonight without shoving a knife into someone's hand, then you have a job.”
Chapter Five
The naked troll
“It was a goddamned handkerchief,” I moaned. “Apparently one of the giants was sad about the loss of his puppy a few years back and drowned his sorrows with barrel after barrel of beer at Tiaso's. Forgot his hankie.”
I'd been describing the thing Silenus had given me to wear, and Joel started laughing. I saw nothing humorous in this because the stupid thing had apparently become the mandatory uniform for all female bartenders at the bar. Which would be me.
The reason it was me was mainly the huge stack of bills Silenus had handed me at the end of the evening, saying that it was my share of the tips. I'd looked at the money, not entirely sure where it all had come from because the place had been half empty and most patrons had ordered the highly predictable beer and shot. Then I made a quick calculation in my head, grinned at Silenus and told him I wanted the job.
It wasn’t actually that I wanted the job, as much as I needed the job. My landlord liked having a wolf in the building, and especially one related to Sheriff Brown, but he was unhappy about not getting paid. After some massive sucking up on my part, we'd made the deal that he'd hold the place for me for a month, after which I would have to give him the rent for three months in advance to get the place back. I hadn't seriously thought I'd manage, but if tips like the ones I got at my first night kept coming, I actually had a chance.
Elsa was either sympathetic to my situation, or kind enough to hold back her laughter.
“How do you even wear a handkerchief?” she asked instead.
“I altered it a little,” I told her and grinned with satisfaction when I thought about the tear I'd made in one corner of the bright red piece of satin. “Cut one corner so I could tie it behind my neck. Tied two corners behind my back and the last one hung low enough to cover my crotch. Looked like a huge bib.”
“Pretty sure it didn't,” Joel snorted.
“Is it a regular place, or are there others?” Elsa cut in, and it was a relevant question.
According to the latest count, the world was mostly populated with regular humans. The term mostly was a slight exaggeration since the regular community was estimated to be fifty-four percent, but the universally agreed deal was that as long as the regulars were in the majority, we wouldn't confirm the existence of any others. As long as the regulars could vote to put restrictions on our kind, we'd just keep our mouths shut about it and let the regulars believe whatever the heck made them sleep well at night.
We could probably have told people about the unicorns, fairies or angels. Those guys had been very, very good at public relations. There was no way in hell anyone would tell anyone about werewolves or zombies, who had failed miserably at communicating the good deeds they did for everyone. It would probably freak the general population out to know that more than eighty percent of the staff at any police station was some kind of shifter. It was mostly wolves, or bears, though, with the odd puma here and there. The big cats usually preferred federal work, which dad numerously and scornfully had explained was solely due to the fact that they liked the “faggedy-suits” and the “assclown-haircuts." My dad was a jeans and tee man, who let his hair fall as it may after a shower, needless to say.
It would also not in any way be a good thing to share that virtually all teachers were zombies, although I suspected that to most high school students, this would actually not come as a major surprise.
“There are others in the bar,” I said. “Some wolves. I spotted two fairies and a goblin. There's something else too, but I have no clue what it is. Its scent was like; I don't know… booze?”
“It's a bar,” Joel said, and that was a reasonable observation.
It wasn't what I'd meant, though, so I tried again. “Not like that, Joel. It doesn’t smell like old beer. It wasn't icky. It was a scent of laughter and partying. Like drunken, hilarious times. It smelled like… fun?”
Elsa was frowning again, and I turned to her.
“Do you know what it is?”
“Might,” she said slowly. “I'll come check it out.”
Any shifter would have a good nose, even a half-blood like me, but unicorns had a unique ability to scent others and knew immediately what type of other they were. They also read auras, which meant someone like Elsa knew way too much about people, including how everyone honestly felt about anyone they’d ever met. She was scream-out-loud frustratingly discreet about it, though.
“Please do,” I said, but felt the need to add, in case they hadn't understood, “You're going to look massively out of place in Tiaso's.”
Elsa just shrugged daintily, which made her silvery dreads bounce a little, and murmured, “I won't mind.”
Joel apparently minded and threw a rolled-up paper napkin straight in my face, and snapped, “Bikers like Disney princesses, Kitty. Like, a lot.”
“That's what I'm afraid of,” I shot back.
“Don't go there,” Elsa warned us.
Elsa's cousin was so dull he could put people to sleep just by breathing in their presence, which meant he was often mistaken for a zombie, but he wasn't a teacher at all. He was in the movie business, and Elsa didn't talk to him anymore. Not since the movie we weren't allowed to mention had hit the theaters.
I'd tri
ed to tell Elsa that her cousin had used her looks and her name, but he'd at least not put her dreadlocks in the movie or made the princess a unicorn. Elsa wasn't budging. Joel had mumbled something about knowing a guy called Shrek and how he didn't have any problems with the movie he'd been put in, but that only made Elsa round on him, flaring her nostrils.
We'd both immediately, and wisely, started sharing how much we hated that dick-cousin of hers. Elsa was sweet, but when she was in her unicorn shape, she was friggin’ big. I also found out early in our friendship that her two hind hooves could put one extremely uncomfortable bruise on each of your butt cheeks.
I was about to say something soothing when my eyes locked on a man walking down the street.
Did I say walking?
I meant sauntering.
No, stalking.
No, meandering.
No -
“Wow…”
Elsa had apparently seen tall, dark and handsome moving along the street as if he owned it. And the surrounding blocks. And the city. And -
“What?” Joel asked.
“Who is that?” I whispered reverently.
The man suddenly slowed down as if he'd heard my silent question through the window and across the street, and looked at me over his shoulder. As our eyes held, he grinned, and when he did, a golden glitter appeared in his black eyes. Then he turned and kept walking around the corner.
“Holy moly,” I murmured.
“On a pogo stick,” Elsa added.
“What,” Joel snapped impatiently. “Good looking dude passing by, and you start drooling?”
“That was perfection,” I murmured, still a little dazed by what I'd seen. “I wonder who he is.”
“The question is, what he is,” Elsa murmured.
“Get a grip you two,” Joel ordered.
I was about to protest when a middle-aged, slightly overweight couple came walking right outside the coffee shop window. They suddenly stopped, and the man put both his hands on the woman's butt. Or, mostly on her hips since his arms were kind of short and he didn't reach all the way around her. Then they kissed.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“I know,” Joel said. “They're too old. Why don't they just get a room.”
