“Even with those pulsing blue lines?”
James’s head snapped up from his laptop bag. “You can see those?”
“Well, yeah… They’re kind of hard to miss. You said you could see them too.”
“Because I’msupernatural. The venom is invisible to humans… itshouldbe to you.” As he spoke, James crossed the room, gaze fixed on my neck. I could imagine the way the mark would pulse beneath my skin with my increased heart rate.
“Maybe Iamturning, but it’s just slow? What else could it mean that I can see it?”
James thumbed the bruise, his brows furrowed in concentration. The spot seemed to heat under his touch, as if my body knew who it belonged to. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. I promise.”
Chapter 4
As suspected,the New Year’s Eve at the bar was incredibly busy. It didn’t start out that way, though. A relaxed dinner shift lulled Kian—our only less-experienced staff member—into a false sense of security. Several hours later when people were swarming the bar, he grew frustrated with himself, despite all of us telling him he needed to take it easy. He needed more time to recover his stamina after the attack a few months ago. I mean, even a hungover Shiloh worked circles around him. When a cocktail shaker fell to the floor behind me, splattering the backs of my jeans with liquid, I spun to make sure he was okay.
Shiloh beat me there. They snatched a towel from the rail, scooping up the ice from the dropped cocktail. “Can you restock the napkins?”
Kian’s attention went to the very full napkin holders, then slid back to Shi. “We don’t need any?—”
“Kian, please just get them. And it might take you a minute. They can get buried sometimes.”
I bit back a grin; not because he was beginning to falter, but because The Great Napkin Escape was something of a rite of passage at Liz’s. On one of my first shifts, it had been Dani who halted me in my fuming state and sent me for cocktail stirrers wedidn’t need to save me from losing my shit in front of customers. Then, months ago, I’d offered Shi that very same out when they’d become stressed.
The smile at the memory faded all too quickly. Not that long ago, I thought Dani was dead… only for her to try to kill James and me.
Again.
After I’d plunged a knife into her side, she’d vanished. I had no idea if she was dead or alive, and I didn’t know which was worse.
“They’re right, Kian,” I interjected, sliding a tray of shots over the counter. “You can never have too many napkins on a night like this.”
Flustered, Kian dropped his half-mixed cocktail into a dish basin and rushed down the hallway. When Shi caught me staring, they blushed and began remixing the unfinished drink.
They hadn’t said much to me since they left that morning. To be fair, Liz’s had been so busy that we didn’t get a chance to say much of anything that wasn’t order-related. By the time midnight rolled around, everyone had their drinks and were crowded around the TV to watch the ball drop in New York City.
James leaned against the entry that led to the hallway. To everyone else, he seemed calm, cool, and collected. No one but me would have noticed the rigid set of his jaw or the way his eyes darted between me and Shiloh all night. If they’d divulged anything to him on the drive, he hadn’t repeated it to me. The twohadseemed more comfortable with each other this evening, but I had no doubt that my vampire was still beating himself up over kissing Shi without permission.
I strolled over to James as the countdown started. With my arms around him, he finally relaxed. He guided me in for a brief kiss with a hand in my hair, and the clock struck midnight. Icould taste him on my tongue, and I stole a moment to press my lips to his one more time.
“Happy New Year, love,” he whispered, before returning to the office.
I stared after him, feeling like I was being watched. When I turned to my right, Shiloh wrenched their attention away. Returning to the bar, Kian elbowed me to get my attention. “What’s that all about?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said, a plan beginning to form in my mind. Someone approached the bar and ordered a margarita—a drink that he still needed some practice making. “You want to take this one?”
He reached for the wrong bottle and offered me a bashful smile when I swapped it for the correct one. As much as I wanted to take over myself, he wouldn’t learn if I did so every time. Instead, I stood back and watched. It took him a while, but the customer gave him the seal of approval in the end.
Still, his shoulders fell and he slumped against the bar. “Am I ever going to get it right?”
“You will. It took me years to master the perfect margarita—and I still get people who send it back.” I cleared some empty glasses from the bar. “It’s not skinny enough, or it’stooskinny. They want Tajin but not too much Tajin. Or, my personal favorite: ‘I don’t like tequila. Can you make it with vodka instead?’” That, at least, got him laughing.
After we closed that night, I pulled another one of Dani’s moves. Kian had tapped out the second we locked the doors—unwillingly, I might add. We all noticed the signs of him being in pain long before Hannah arrived to pick him up. She’d had a long day of classes, and the threat of her coming in herself and dragging him out seemed to scare Kian into going home without further complaint.
I was closing down the register, and Shiloh was wiping down tables. As I stacked the receipts and stapled them together, I caught their attention. “Could you take these back to James?”
They were immediately suspicious. “Something wrong with your legs?”
“You’re welcome to inspect them if you want,” I offered with a lewd smile. Cue that beautiful blush. I loved this time of night, when the three of us had the bar to ourselves. “James really enjoyed your attention last night. I thought you two might like some alone time.”
