“Only kind I know how to make,” Ty tells her, shifting so he can survey the whole packed establishment behind us.
Ariel sweeps a cold sort of glare from one end of the bar to the next. “A pint of O positive and a shot of AB negative. Body temperature, please.”
Briar doesn’t react to this. She turns and starts making drinks—which involve what I believe are blood bags hung on hooks at the back of the bar. I watch Winter’s mouth drop open.
“You go to bars?” I hear her ask her lover.
“Little seer,” he says, in an indulgent tone that I know by now he only uses for her, “there are very few things I have not done. Surely you know this.”
“How did I not know that there were ...blood bars?” Winter asks.
Ariel orders her a drink. No blood involved. Ty and I order beers, because wolves aren’t fancy.
Then we all stand there, elbows on the bar, pretending that we’re not keeping an eye on the crowd. Though we are. I watch quite a few creatures look from the group of us to the back of the bar, once or twice in rapid succession, and figure they’re checking Ariel’s reflection. Or maybe they’re confirming that the oracle still hasn’t become a vampire herself.
After a while, conversations kick in again. No one in the bar is unaware of the fact that two kings of the valley are here, but the music keeps playing. The pool game resumes in the corner.
The four of us simply ... hang out. And talk about things that don’t end in blood or death or horror.
I’m not pretending that we didn’t fight a battle before this. Or that there aren’t battles yet to be fought later. There’s just something remarkably sweet about standing between Ty’s outstretched legs in an actual bar, having a good time with the oracle and the vampire who have become our friends over the course of this life-altering season.
Real friends.
I know that if I were to say that to Ty, he would immediately dispute it. In all the history of werewolves I’ve ever been told, I’ve heard of alliances made with all kinds of other monsters—human and Kind. But neverfriends.
I think maybe I need to put that on my list of things to change, too. When I’m fully a queen and ready to start making the pack around me the one I want to live in, like you do.
I’m on my third beer and all is right with the world—or at least the little sliver of it that I’m involved in right now—when a golden light appears. One moment it’s appropriately dive bar dim, the next there’s a shimmering golden spotlight.
Once again, everyone in Gold Rush goes quiet. This time, there is a man in the background singing about a black-hole sun, which feels oddly appropriate.
“Are you all ... in a bar?” asks Savi from her little hologram. The sorcery version of a text message.
“Come have a drink,” Winter orders her, sounding as cheerful as a person should on her own third drink. “I can promise you thatwewon’t knock you out for two days.”
I’m still laughing about that one when Savi appears in a humming, extra-golden bit of a light show that has all the creatures in the bar flinching and covering their eyes.
“Is that really necessary?” Ariel asks Savi as she alights before us and aims a beatific smile around at the patrons of the bar.
“How can I say if it’s necessary or not?” she asks mildly. “I do not habitually present myself in establishments of this caliber. For all I know, I was as likely to be greeted by pitchforks as not.”
Ty rolls his eyes. Savi ignores all of us and glides closer to the bar to aim a smile at a glowering Briar. “Surprise me,” she says.
When Briar hands her a drink that smokes and appears to have sharp-toothed guppies in it, all Savi does is thank her. Then she murmurs a few words over the concoction so that the next time I look, it greatly resembles what I’ve always imagined mead might look like.
She sips at her reconstituted drink and then gazes at each one of us over the rim. “I’m fascinated by the fact that you decided to be sopublic. Now, of all times.”
“This is called spontaneity,” I tell her. “You might give it a try.”
Savi runs a finger around the rim of her drink and whispers something. Then she takes her finger, dips it in the drink, and puts it in her mouth. When she pulls it back out from between her lips, something shifts.
Winter and I shiver. Ty growls.
Ariel sighs. “We could simply have stepped outside, sorceress.”
“No need,” Savi says with a laugh. She looks at the rest of us. “We can speak freely. No one here will be able to hear us. To them, it will simply seem as if we’re having an unexciting conversation about whatever it is they think we would be talking about.” When neither Ariel nor Tyler look at all impressed, she lifts a shoulder. “I don’t trust anyone. That’s why I’m still alive, despite the fact that I’ve had enemies hunting me for longer than I care to admit. You would do well to think about these things.”
“I rarely think about anything else,” Ariel retorts.
