Lifting the edge of her shirt sleeve to cover her nose, she wrinkled it. “There are plenty of bars that are better for meeting at.”
Alek placed a hand on her lower back. “But not as isolated.” He maneuvered her away from what looked like a Hag mixing a bottle of black dust with pixie leavings. “Do you know where your mystery man is?”
Lanias, who’d kept her eyes on the prize the entire time, gave a short nod. Walking over to the counter she side-stepped two demons who had a disagreement over a deal of dill weed. Reaching the bar, she gave two short knocks on the counter. Only to come away with a sticky residue on her fingers.
She desperately wished she could scrub her hands with hot water and soap. She settled for using magic to clean and wriggled her fingers feeling some relief from it.
“What will ya be having?” The question came from a hunchback who’d just hobbled to their side of the bar. “We don’t have any more of the human special, and there isn’t any basilisk blood soup until Sunday.”
Lanias felt her stomach tighten and her throat clench at the very idea of eating anything, much less, human from this place. She definitely wouldn’t be drinking from the bottle he’d handed her. She rolled her hand, the Grecian coin appearing between her fingers. And set it down with a click, using her pointer finger she slid it across the counter. “I’m wanting aVoreia.”
The hunchback squinted down at the coin before eyeing her and Alek.
Lanias kept her expression blank, she wasn’t sure what face Alek made, only that when the hunchback looked his way he quickly dropped his eyes.
“Coming right up,” he growled before limping away.
Lanias watched him go. “I hope you didn’t scare him too much.”
“You wound me,” Alek complained, pressing closer to her.
Lanias wanted to ask him if he believed in personal space. Her head was growing dizzy from his alluring smell. She wanted to shove him aside but felt that it would only draw attention, indicating they weren’t together. While she wasn’t afraid of the others in the bar. It wouldn’t be good to bring too much attention to herself especially since she was supposed to be dead.
She offered him a smile full of skepticism. “Name the last time you were actually wounded?”
Leaning his head back, he looked away, his expression now thoughtful. “That’s a hard one.”
“Exactly,” she said, spotting the hunchback just as he returned. Not thinking much of it, she reached out to take the bottle he offered to her. “So, I doubt my words wounded you in the least.”
Just as the tip of her fingers encountered the bottle. Lanias felt a sensation of falling sweep over her. The bottle slipped from her loose grip and smashed on not a cement floor but a wooden one.
Unveiling
LANIAS
Looking down in surprise, she noticed that the floor she was looking at was much cleaner than the one that had been in the bar.
“You’re not Stanthos.”
This statement came from behind her.
Lanias quickly turned around, her eyes landing on a man who leaned against a clean bar table. Looking away from him, she gave the entire bar a once-over. This place was completely different from Cains. It was clean, and the air smelled of fresh wax. Sunlight spilled in from the window. The sound of the ocean outside completely replaced the noise of the city.
Where are we?” she sputtered.
He pushed off the table and straightened, tightening the strings to the black apron he wore and said, “Santorini, Greece.”
He walked around toward what she realized was an entrance to the other side of the counter. She followed his movements with her eyes, taking in his features. He had sea-green eyes with nearly midnight colored hair pulled back in a ponytail. His skin was warm caramel, a five o’clock shadow graced his masculine jaw.
“Santorini,” she repeated. Deciding to go with the flow, she approached the counter with ease. “Are you Roni?”
Not looking up at her as he turned on what she realized to be a stove top, he answered. “Να?.”
Seeing that he wasn’t interested in hiding the truth, she asked, “Are you the one who protects the half-blood Surrems?”
“You’ve asked three questions so far,” he said as he reached up to a copper pan placing it on the stove top.
As the pan heated on the stove, he started gathering ingredients of different kinds from the silver pans that were embedded within the table next to him.
