"Maybe you at a stretch. You're seriously dating a god, and every paranormal with a TV knows it thanks to that show you were on. And you've made sculptures for the Jinx Dating Agency as a result."
"Mmhmm. They're sponsoring my next gallery opening too. It pays to know people, Clara."
"Yeah, I'm starting to think that."
"Anyway, I was told that the best room for hooking up with women is the Rainbow Room."
I raised an eyebrow. "Inventive."
"That's what Danny said when I brought him here. Apparently, it wasn't meant to be the queer space."
"But rainbows attract us," I responded.
"That's exactly what Danny said. And Thor laughed at it as well. Apparently, the gods are much the same."
I laughed. She was probably right about that if they really were just people who happened to have obtained immortality and godhood. People tended to only want the same few things no matter where they came from. "Lead the way. I hope you don't mind dancing the night away in the Rainbow Room."
"Of course not. I'm taken no matter which room I'm dancing in." She headed down a corridor, and we entered a bar that looked nothing like I expected it to.
There were rainbows, but they were mostly caused by the reflections off the crystal lights, and it was beautiful.
"Drink first?" she asked.
"What's good?"
"Everything. Didn't you hear who runs the place? It's got the best of everything behind the bar."
"No doubt for the best of prices too," I responded.
She shrugged. "Some things are worth paying for." She caught the attention of the bartender while I looked at the menu.
"A virgin mojito," I said.
Daisy didn't even skip a beat, used to the fact that I didn't drink when I was at a place like this. I'd seen too many friends get poured into cabs to want to be one of them while at university, and it had put me off.
"Coming up." She flashed a smile at the bartender and quickly had our drinks in hand so we could head through to the dance floor.
The music was louder here, making the blood pump in my ears in response. I took a sip of my mojito, enjoying the combination of lime and mint, even if it didn't come with the buzz of alcoholic rum.
All around us, people danced. Alone, with their friends, or with someone else. It gave the room an inviting and intimidating edge at the same time.
I scanned the room, locking eyes with a gorgeous woman whose hair appeared to be light blue under the flickering lights of the dance floor. There was something familiar about her, but I knew that was my imagination. I wasn't going to know very many people here, not when the guest list was as exclusive as Daisy said it was. Probably more so if the man in charge was a god.
I pulled my gaze away and drank down more of the mojito. It was too soon to get fixated on one person, especially when tonight was about getting over my ex. As much as I wanted to believe what I'd told Daisy about Clemmy, it wasn't quite as simple as that.
So I was going to go through with the age-old wisdom of how to get over someone, and I was going to get under someone else.
Chapter 2
HEL
The bar was busier than it had any right to be, and I was seriously tempted to suggest to Hades that he put in better crowd control. How was a goddess meant to get a drink when there were people making out in front of the bar?
"Excuse me," I muttered as I pushed past a couple who I was reasonably sure were doing something that they shouldn't be doing in public, only to come up short when I spotted Persephone heading towards me in a black dress covered in flowers. It was exactly the kind of thing I'd expect my friend to wear.
"Hel," she said, leaning in to kiss me on each cheek as I returned the favour. She might be nauseatingly in love, but she was still one of my oldest friends. Though old was relative. To me it had been several hundred years, but that was less than half of her life.
"I didn't expect to see you," I said. "I thought you'd still be in the God Realm shacked up with Hades now you're back together."
