Her tongue played with the tip of one of her elongated canines. “You really never were cut out for this life, were you?”
“No fucking shit.”
She sighed. “Ravaric, I wish I’d been born an alpha.” She shook her head. “Well, do you want to know your next test or not?”
* * *
Some annoying remix of a pop song blasted through the club, the bass reverberating through my horns and giving me a headache.
I couldn’t believe I used to come to places like this every weekend.
And I also couldn’t believe my dad wanted me slinging bruum.
Collecting payments was at least grunt work. This was lower than that. This was the kind of shit you needed to do before you could even be considered for grunt work.
I took out a roll of vaporleaf and lit it, taking a deep inhale and leaning against the wall in the hallway leading to the bathrooms.
Cut Glasswas owned by us, and the cops on this beat were on our payroll. But we still kept up the facade of illegality, or the dumbass college kids here on spring break would get suspicious. Buying drugs had to be enough of a secret to be fun, but not so much they couldn’t find us.
A group of three elves came up, nervous, fidgeting, and looking around.
“Hey, um…”
I rolled my eyes and shrugged the backpack off my shoulders, opening it just enough for them to see the neat rows of foil packets inside.
“A gram each?” I asked flatly.
They whispered among themselves before answering. “Y-yeah.”
“Three hundred.”
“Runics?” one of them asked.
I stared at them blankly. This couldn’t be their first time buying bruum, was it? “No, merfolk scales.”
When their faces blanched, I scoffed. “Of course I mean runics.”
They let out a few mirthless chuckles and took out their wallets, looking about as obvious as it got, and slipped me the cash.
Holding the vaporleaf roll between my teeth, I counted the money slowly in front of them, watching them sweat and shift on their feet. They coughed and looked around like they were about to get caught.
Oh yeah, this was their first time. Maybe it was a little mean to make them squirm, but I needed something to do to entertain myself.
All accounted for, I put away the money and handed them the packets. “Have a good night.”
They thanked me and walked past to go to the bathroom, when one of them stopped and pointed towards the vaporleaf.
“You should quit, you know. That stuff’s bad for you.”
Fucking elves.
* * *
I’d started the night with thirty grams and was down to ten. If this was literally all I had to do, I supposed it wasn’t too bad. My dad could have chosen something a lot more insidious.
But then Toru showed up with another bag.
I groaned, cracking my neck and standing up straight from where I’d been slouching against the wall.
