Wait—shit.
Shit shit shit shit.
“Gotta take a piss—need anything from the bar?” I ask Roth, darting my eyes to where Nyx is struggling in Thane’s hold across the room. He waves me off before making an offhand comment in response to whatever the fuck these assholes are talking about now. And because he’stheRoth Kovacs, they all hang off his every word like it’s gospel as I slip away.
I move through the crowd, dodging groping hands and glancing fingers as quickly as I can without drawing any more attention to myself than usual. I get there just in time to hear Nyx trying to talk him down. “Thane, hey, hey it’s okay—it’s okay, we’ll get you home.”
Fucking Fate, what’s he done now? I grab his shoulder and wrench him away from where he’s pinned her against the wall.
“Thane, you have to let her go.”
“Killian?”
“I’m here, I have you.”
“I want to go home, Kill?—”
“Okay man, let me go get the keys?—”
“She was gonna help us get home and now she’s never gonna help me and I don’t wanna to be lost anymore, Kill, I’m so tired of being lost—” he rambles, slumping and leaning into me.
“I think he’s overdosing,” Nyx’s breathless voice comes from behind me as I grip his face in my hands and check his pupils.
“What did you take, dude?”
“I only took half ‘cause I thought you’d wanna try some for the next batch—” he slurs, handing me a silver case of glass vials. The tainted magic swirling inside is dangerously unrefined, and when I find out who made this, whoever gave it to him, they’ll never find what’s left of the bodies.
“Come on, we gotta go,” I say, throwing his arm over my shoulder and looking for a way through the crowd that minimizes the chances someone will see how fucked up he is.
“This way,” Nyx says as she appears from Thane’s other side, looking nothing like the girl who just came all overbothmy friend’s fingers in the last forty-eight hours. Fuck, of all the people to see him like this, it had to be her.
I shove her off. “I got it, just go back to dancing or whatever?—”
“Killian,” she grabs my shirt to stop me and points across the room. “there’s a hallway right off the bar, they usually have a break room or something down there. Come on,” She takes off, and as loathe as I am to involve her any more than she already is, one look at Thane barely clinging to consciousness makes the decision for me. Hugging the edge of the dance floor, she weaves through the crowd like a snake through the grass, and by some fucking miracle, no one stops us, no one gawks, gropes, or gets in the way. She nods to the man behind the bar who waves like they’re old friends, which I know for a fact is impossible because we’ve made sure she doesn’thaveany friends.
“Down here,” she says over her shoulder, and sure enough a nondescript door appears when we round the corner. It opens when she jiggles the handle, revealing an empty stockroom. Thane stumbles and she quickly reaches out to support his other side, leading us between two shelves that smell like dirty dishrags and chemicals. I prop him against the wall, but a moment later his eyes roll to the back of his head and he collapses. She swoops to break his fall so the idiot doesn’t brain himself on the concrete floor, and ends up trapped beneath his weight with his face in her crotch.
She sighs and tilts her head back against the wall. “So, this is fun.”
I can’t help but snicker as I join her on the floor on his other side.
“Is he going to be okay?” she asks, putting the back of her hand to his clammy forehead while I check the pulse in his wrist.
“He’s a big boy, he’ll be fine.”He fucking better be.
“What did he take?”
“I don’t know, but whenever I find out who made it I’ll rip their spine out through their throat.”
She stares at me blankly, before shaking her head. “Still not used to that shit.”
“What, causal violence?”
“The fact that it’s actually a possibility for you people.”
“You people? What do you mean,youpeople?”
“… Are you seriously quotingTropic Thunderto me right now?”
