Chapter 1
Jacks
The ice bucket weighed four thousand pounds.
Okay, maybe not four thousand, but my arms were screaming as I hoisted it onto the bar, biceps straining, sweat beading at my temples. The bucket was overfilled, which was my own fault for trying to save a trip. Chunks were already escaping over the rim, skittering across the floor like frozen refugees.
“Little help here?” I grunted.
Finn didn’t even look up from the drink he was mixing. “You’re the barback. That’s your job, to back the bar.”
“That’s not—that doesn’t even make sense as a sentence—”
“GENTLEMEN!” Benji’s voice rang out with the gravitas of a circus ringmaster. “And that one lady in the corner—hi, Doris!—I present to you my mostdaring drink mix act ever!”
I froze, the ice bucket still clutched to my chest. “Benji, what are you—”
“Oh, shit,” Finn muttered.
I turned in time to see Benji standing on the rubber mat behind the bar, three bottles clutched in his hands, a shaker balanced on his head, and—oh God—a container of craft glitter tucked under his arm.
“For my next trick,” Benji announced to the crowd of regulars who’d gathered to watch, “I will create the Lightning Strike Sparkler—a drink so magnificent, so bedazzling, that it will make the heavens themselves weep with envy!”
“Benji,” Finn said slowly, finally looking up, “why do you have glitter behind my bar?”
“For pizzaz, Finn! The Lightning are playing tonight. We need PIZZAZZ!”
The crowd roared on cue. One old guy at the end of the bar chanted, “Pizzaz! Pizzaz! Pizzaz!” while banging his palm on the wood.
Finn leaned toward Benji and growled, “We need health code compliance—”
“WITNESS ME!” Benji ignored him.
What happened next would be debated in Barbacks lore for years to come.
Benji attempted to flip all three bottles whilesomehow incorporating the shaker from his head and—for reasons that would never be explained—opening the glitter container with his teeth.
The bottles went up.
The shaker went sideways.
And . . .
The glitter went everywhere.
The container’s lid popped off mid-flip, and what could only be described as a nuclear plume of sparkly goodness erupted into the air. It was like a glitter bomb had detonated at ground zero. The stuff fountained upward, caught the air conditioning current, scattered to the four corners of the bar, then descended upon everyone like the world’s most fabulous snowfall.
I was still holding the ice bucket, arms extended, unable to shield myself as ten thousand pieces of glitter rained down on my head, face, shoulders, and into the ice bucket I’d spent five minutes filling and schlepping across the bar.
Finn got blasted from the side, glitter coating one entire half of his body, including a spectacular concentration in his hair that made him look like a punk rock experiment gone wrong.
And Benji—
Benji stood in the epicenter, bottles miraculouslycaught (the bastardactuallycaught them), covered head to toe in sparkle, grinning like he’d been blessed by an ancient pigmy stripper angel.
“MAGNIFICENT!” Benji crowed.
The bar goers cheered.
