“It’s not that bad.” I scanned the bar before I took a seat next to her, not seeing any familiar faces. That was good. They wouldn’t know to stop the bar fight I was keen on instigating. Jimmy would let me get away with a whole lot with a dragon ride on the line, I had no doubt.
“It is absolutely that bad, and you know it. What a stink-faced, weaselly little turd.” She took a sip of her drink, then grimaced spectacularly.
I drummed my knuckles on the bar. “You’re right. It is that bad. He sucks. I’ll start a fight in your honor.”
“I’m starting to understand why you’re prone to them, with associates like that snarl-toothed dong we just had to endure.”
It was hard to hide my glee at Penny’s ill humor. Usually she didn’t let it get to her this badly. She’d probably been happy to pull off a job of her own, for once, and then that dickface Garret had gotten in her way.
“We’ll do another one.” I nudged her with my shoulder. “We’ll take another bounty-hunting gig and handle it without interference. I’ll stand back and let you take point, how’s that?”
She didn’t say anything, but her shoulders lifted a little.
“Reagan.” Trixie sauntered down the bar, a few new tats decorating her chest, merging into the older ink flowing down her arms. The light from the bar sparkled off the stud in her right nostril and her blue hair had been cut at her cheekbones. “Back to cause trouble?”
I made like I was thinking. “Probably. How about a hurricane?”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Going big, huh?”
It wasn’t rare for me to drop by for a hurricane, but hurricanes meant trouble if I planned to stay for a minute. I did love me some trouble. I missed demolishing stuff in the Underworld. In the Brink, you couldn’t just destroy buildings with abandon and rip down walls. People got angry. The best you could do was kick in doors, and even that turned people off. It was very restricting.
“Yeah.” I hooked a thumb at Penny. “She had a bad day. I’m drinking in solidarity.”
A look of warning flared in Trixie’s eyes. “Penny, I can’t have you destroying this bar. I heard about the accident at the Mages’ Guild…”
Penny and Emery had been at the Guild for most of the time since we’d returned from their excursion into the Underworld. She’d only come to NOLA because we were about to start the next phase of the Skirmish of the Worlds, and she wanted to regroup with the Bankses and me.
“What accident at the Guild?” I asked, sending an accusatory look her way. “You didn’t tell me about any accidents.”
“It was nothing. I was just trying out a spell and it backfired.” She downed her drink.
“Leveling a building is what you call backfiring?” Trixie gave her a flat look and walked down to the other end of the bar to make my drink. They had premixed hurricanes for tourists, but those were watered down and kinda lame. I needed the real deal, and Trixie packed a helluva punch in her drinks.
I turned on my barstool to catch Penny’s expression and noticed the mood of the whole bar had quickly changed. Conversations had halted, eyes snapping up and tension curling through the air. This wasn’t because of Penny’s misdeeds.
I felt the newcomer’s presence in the prickles of danger at my back and shivers of warning crawling up my spine. The gush of raw power. The intriguing mystery of a sex life undisclosed.
“Roger.” I gave Penny a brow furrow to tell her we’d return to this conversation, then swiveled in the other direction on my barstool.
The alpha of the North American pack stood framed by the door, broad shoulders nearly spanning from one side to the other. His built torso slimmed down into trim hips before exploding out into powerful thighs. The guy was built like a tank, but he moved forward as deftly as a dancer, lethal grace in every step. He was not a guy you took lightly, unless you’d been in the trenches with him, crawled through hell, and lost any remaining fucks you had to give.
“Bang any pretty ladies lately?” I asked with a grin. Just call me fuck-less.
His dual-colored gaze, one blue eye and one green like a faded dollar bill, swept the area. His attention lingered in two places, and I wondered what he was thinking. Clearly he didn’t like the look of someone in our proximity. Since he’d been taught how to shield his thoughts from me, though, the details remained a mystery.
“Reagan.” He stopped behind the open barstool to my right. His gaze fell on Penny. “Natural Dual-Mage.”
I frowned and pinched my lips. “Since when do you greet her with her magical type?”
“Because of my influence within the Mages’ Guild, the Guild insisted I need a title,” Penny said. “I’ve refused, of course, so they—and now the shifters—are using my magic as a signifier. It’s ridiculous. This is what gave the mages a big head in the first place. Does no one learn from the past? I don’t want this organization to turn out anything like the last one. If we pick titles, we might as well follow up by highlighting people’s levels. That’ll create a hierarchy, which leads to competition and the desire for advancement, which leads to showboating, which leads to greed… It’s a slippery slope, and this is how it starts.”