She rolls her eyes in exaggeration. “You know, seduction reconnaissance. Don’t tell me you’ve never done that before in all your years.”
I look upwards while shrugging and staying quiet.
“Oh, come on, Lay,” she rolls her eyes even harder. “What have you been up to the last ten years if not getting laid occasionally?”
I just turn my eyes on her directly. “Studying with the best techs and mages in the world to figure out how to get revenge on my family. And when that didn’t work out, or well, when I forgave them instead, I just sort of kept to myself.” I pause. “You know the rest since I got back in touch with Sabra last year. I never had time for women or relationships.”
“Oh.” She frowns like this information surprises her. “I just assumed you were out there living it up.” Then she looks me up and down with an assessing gaze. She reaches over and undoes the top two buttons of my shirt. Her fingers fuss with the collar. My beast leaps at even this small brush of her fingertips against my skin. “Look aloof when we get in there. Turn down anyone who asks you to dance unless you see me signal that it’s her.”
“Oh yeah? And how will you know who it is?”
“I’ll know when I see her.”
“How? Is there something about spirits that makes them stand out?—”
She rolls her eyes at my question. “Look, you’ll be the hottest guy in there, and I know women. Human women will approach you differently than a goddess would. They won’t have the sameconfidence and will play these coy little games. Ammit won’t bother with any of that. Just watch me for the signal.”
Does she know that from personal experience with goddesses? What hasshebeen up to for the last ten years? I know better than to ask right now. She was confident when I first met her in that forest, but now she’s different. She’s incandescent with this surety in everything she does.
Except around the dickhead professor. I frown at the memory.
“That’s perfect,” Phoenix grins at me while studying my expression. “Just keep looking broody like that. Women eat that shit up.”
I roll my eyes at her assessment, and she claps me on the shoulder as we get to the front of the line. “Here we go, champ.”
The bouncer asks for the cover charge, but Phoenix just leans in close to him. “You want to let us in for free.”
He stumbles over himself as he leans over to pull back the velvet rope immediately.
“Remember,” she breathes in my ear as we pass through the door and into the pounding music.
“I know, I know, watch for the signal. Wait, what exactly is the signal going to be?”
But we’re already through the entrance and into the club proper. She walks away from me as if she’s never met me before in her life.
I get it—we’re going incognito to catch a predator. Still, I don’t like losing sight of her in the sea of writhing bodies and strobing lights that pulse with the music.
I head for the bar while trying to keep track of Phoenix amid the crowd of people. If I can’t find her in all this chaos, how the hell am I supposed to know what this mysterious signal is? Oh well. Now that she’s told me what to watch out for, maybe I canidentify Ammit myself anyway. Plus, I know that even if I can’t see her, Phoenix will be watching me.
A couple moves away from the bar right as I approach. I slide onto one of the empty stools. Unlike my brother Remus, I never found much point in human alcohol, so I don’t know what to order when the bartender yells over the music and asks what I want.
I just repeat the last order I heard someone give. “Whiskey and coke.”
He nods and disappears into the crush of people waiting for drinks. Before my order arrives, a woman smoothly seats herself beside me on the neighboring stool.
She chatters at me in Romanian while angling her barely covered chest toward me. Eventually she asks me to dance. I’ve always been good with languages, and this is just another variation of an old one I knew millennia ago.
I gently tell her in Romanian that no, I’m not interested. She looks offended and flings her hair extensions in my face as she swings off the stool to walk away in a huff.
My drink finally comes and I sip it slowly. It burns my throat a little going down. I look around the space as my eyes adjust to the darkness of the club. Lights swirl from several points in the ceiling. I can feel the bass of the speakers thumping up through the floor and into my chest.
As I’m doing a slow scan of the room, I spot eyes on me from across the huge, square bartop. Phoenix gives me a quick wave before looking like a completely disinterested stranger again. Ah, so that’s the plan. The bar is in the center of the club, with people packing in on all sides around us.
The night stretches on. The club gets wilder and more crowded with each passing hour. The lines stretching out from the bartop get longer and longer as more people shout for the six bartenders’ attention.
I keep sipping my first drink slowly and turn down woman after woman who asks with varying levels of confidence if I want to dance with them. The ones with giggling packs of friends around them are easy to turn down. I don’t even have to glance across the bartop at Phoenix for those. Same with the women who are all but shaking with nerves as they approach.
There are only a few that I need to sneak a peek at Phoenix to double-check. One is a woman with dyed blonde hair and a blinding white smile. “Come dance with me,” she all but orders as she reaches out and puts a hand on my bicep. She certainly isn’t lacking in confidence.
