by Quirah Casey
I fixed Lobrooke’s CDA problem with my charming personality. Yeah, right. I basically threatened a shit-ton of people, threw my weight around, and kicked some asses. Now the law answers to me. The Chöąt Defense Agency may enforce the law, and the Synod may make it, but nothing happens in this town without my seal of approval. The CDA understands that and abides by it, trying to avoid the heat of the higher-ups that I have in my back pocket.
I’ve built an empire here all on my own, and the townspeople are my loyal subjects.
So I’m shocked to see a CDA agent sitting at my bar. Sure, every now and then agents drop in, but only the ones that I have on my personal payroll. This man isn’t an agent I recognize, but it’s clear that he works for the CDA. It’s in the way he holds himself, the way his eyes continually dart around the room, inspecting it, looking for trouble. I can feel the power radiating from him, sense the strength of his presence even from across the room, and that throws me off even more.
I make my way to the bar, sitting next to the agent and turning to look at him. I know he feels my eyes on him from the way his shoulders tighten. He keeps his gaze straight ahead for another few seconds before finally turning to look at me, his sharp, near-black eyes meeting mine. He’s a handsome man, his dark hair curling just below his ears and his pale skin in stark contrast to his dark features. His presence and smell give him away as a dragon, likely a black one. Most dragons’ features hint at the color of the scales hiding under their human skin.
“You’re a little lost, aren’t you, Agent?” I question, turning toward the bar and gesturing for my bartender, Reit, to pour a couple of shots for me and the agent. I turn to find the man still looking at me, and I raise a brow.
“Not lost.” His voice is deep and gravelly.
“If you’re in my club, you must be.”
“I’m here for pleasure, not business.” He says it with a straight face, and his posture doesn’t shift, but I still know he’s lying. I like to think I have a knack for spotting lies. I’m certainly a professional at telling them.
“I see,” I respond. Reit places a line of shots in front of us. “Drink up then, Agent. It’s on the house. Or it could be on me, if you’re really here for pleasure.” I place my hand on his thigh, feeling him tense. He’s definitely here for work. There’s not a doubt in my mind.
“Really, that isn’t necessary,” he says. His hand wraps around the shot glass, but he doesn’t bring it to his mouth.
“Maybe not, but the shots are.” I remove my hand from his thigh, grabbing a glass and throwing it back. There’s a slight burn in my throat as the liquor goes down smoothly. “If you’re really here for pleasure, then you need a little something to drink, to loosen you up.” I run my tongue over my lips to catch the excess liquid as I watch the agent. It’s clear that he doesn’t want to drink, but I can tell he knows I’m testing him by the way his lips tighten at the corner of his mouth.
His dark eyes meet mine, and he finally brings the shot to his mouth, wincing slightly as the liquor goes down.
“What the fuck was that?” he demands as I push another shot in his direction.
“A trade secret.”
Really, it’s zhidkiy yad, an alcohol so potent that it’s illegal in America and nearly impossible to get your hands on. Unless you know the right people, of course. One shot would kill a human, and two could kill some chöąts. “One more, Agent.” I place the shot in his hand, leaving him with no choice but to drink it.
I take two more shots myself before continuing my interrogation.
“What’s your name?”
He studies me, his shoulders relaxing slightly. Still, his eyes remain on guard.
“Blaine Levitsky.”
“Any den affiliations?” Most dragons belong to a den, a group that operates like a family, flying together on a regular basis and taking care of each other. The palha, or leader, is responsible for the members, who are known as wyryns. The secondary leaders, who fall right under the palha in ranking, are known as tabes, the head tabe being the second in command. Most dens don’t allow agents in—they don’t want to risk CDA infiltration.
Levitsky shakes his head. “No, I’m a loner, I’m afraid.”
“So you’re here alone tonight?” I ask him, scanning the crowd for other agents in the mass of bodies. I come up empty in my search, but the club is really too packed to pick individuals out of the crowd. I turn back to the agent, studying his face.
“All by myself. Like I said, I’m here for pleasure, not business.”
“You can say that as much as you want, but I don’t believe it.” Levitsky opens his mouth to argue, but I continue, silencing him. “You’re new to town, to the local CDA. They love having fresh faces; they can throw them into places like my club and not worry about them being recognized. They probably just opened some new case against me and that’s what you’re working on. Do you really expect me to believe that you’re in my club for pleasure, not because the CDA is creating some bogus case against me and wanted to get the new guy involved?”
The agent shifts on his barstool, raising a brow of his own. “The only people this paranoid are the ones who are guilty of something.”
I shake my head, slightly amused that he’s sticking to his story. “Let's not play games. You know who I am, Agent Levitsky, which means you know that there are always people trying to set me up.”
“I think you think you’re more important than you are.”
I can’t help it, I let out a laugh. “You know what, I think I like you, Levitsky. You’re a pretty damn good liar. Just not good enough.”
I don’t hear his response as I’m distracted by a familiar presence. My back stiffens, the rest of the room fading out.
There’s no fucking w—
“Well, hello there, Pudding. I told you I’d see you later.” The annoying, arrogant accent comes from my other side. Where there was once an empty barstool, there’s now a cocky, golden, English asshole with a smirk on his face as he watches me. My body temperature rises and my fists clench. “Who’s your friend there?” he asks casually, nodding to the agent, who is watching us, his dark eyes alight with curiosity.
There aren’t many rules at The Lair, but violence is not tolerated. If anyone has a dispute, they have to take care of it on their own time, on another property. It’s a rule that even I have to follow if I want to maintain the respect and trust of my club-goers. It also helps to keep the law as far from The Lair as possible. I can’t just attack this London guy now, especially not with a CDA agent sitting right next to me, watching us like we’re a sideshow.
“London,” I say, composing myself. “I wish I could say it was nice see you, but that’d be a lie.”
“You still haven’t introduced me to your friend, love! How rude of you.” He reaches over me to hold his hand out to the agent, who examines the outstretched hand for a second before shaking it. “I’m London. And you are…?”
“Blaine Levitsky,” the agent says, looking a bit startled by London and his introduction.
London just smiles as he pulls his hand back. “I’m parched. Where is the barkeep?” He shakes his head, a mock frown on his face. “What bad service. Barkeep! Yoo-hoo, barkeep!” He continues to call for Reit like a lunatic. He’s drawing attention.
“Hell.” I grit my teeth and gesture for Reit so London will shut the hell up. London starts rattling off an order to the bartender as I look around the club for something to get rid of the agent. I need him to go before I rip London’s head off.
From across the room, Alana, one of the club’s dancers, meets my eyes, and I tilt my head in indication for her to come over. She approaches, swaying her hips so provocatively that I wonder who the effort is really for, the club-goers or me.
“Yes?” she asks, moving right to my side, just shy of touching me. She bites her lip as her eyes linger on me.
“I need for you to take care of this agent here, give him a real nice show,” I tell her, placing my hand o
n Levitsky’s shoulder. Alana’s face falls. Yeah, she definitely thought I wanted her for myself tonight.
I look at the agent, finding his mouth hanging slightly open, but there’s no interest in his eyes. Most people are attracted to Alana, with her fuchsia hair, innocent blue eyes, and mermaid beauty, but it’s clear that the agent isn’t interested.
“Ah, Alana isn’t your type.” I snag the arm of a passing male dancer. “Nico, maybe?” I ask, watching as the agent’s eyes travel over the imp from head to toe, from his mahogany hair to his mischievous, green eyes and slender body. I don’t miss the spark of interest in the agent’s eyes and the way he sits up just a bit straighter. “Nico, Agent Levitsky here is in need of some entertainment.”
“Well, of course he is.” Nico’s eyes travel over the agent, and his lips turn up into a smirk as I let go of his arm. “A big man like you must need a lot of entertainment to keep you… happy.” His eyes drop to the agent’s crotch before he grabs his hand. Levitsky’s eyes take on a slightly glazed look. It’s evident that the imp is working some seduction magic, but Nico’s not that powerful. His spell wouldn’t work unless there was already some attraction on the agent’s part.
“Come on.” Nico drags the agent away despite his weak attempts to refuse.
The second Levitsky is out of sight, I turn back to London, whose gold eyes sparkle with amusement as he sips from a glass.
“Do you have a death wish?” I ask him.
“Not at the moment.” He slides a glass toward me. “I ordered you a drink.”
“No fucking thanks,” I grit out. He could have easily poisoned it while my back was turned. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
“Well, Pudding, I came to introduce myself. I didn’t get to do it properly the other night, what with you trying to kill me. I’m London Stendahl.” He extends his hand to me, and I glare at it until he drops it.
“You stole something that was mine.” I’m careful about my words in the packed club.
He shrugs, continuing to sip from his drink. “It wasn’t hard to do. Much easier than I thought it was going to be.” He finally downs the drink, slamming it onto the bar when he’s done. “But that’s all in the past now.” He leans forward, his body heat warming my skin. “I was thinking that maybe we could be friends, leave all the anger and blood in the past?”
“And people say I’m insane? You must be out of your fucking mind if you think I’m going to forgive and forget what you did. It sounds to me like you regret putting yourself on my bad side, and now you’re trying to mend fences. Well, that’s too fucking bad, because once you cross me, you’ll be lucky if you’re still alive by the end of the month.”
London’s lips turn up into that patronizing smile again as he takes my untouched drink and finishes it in seconds. “You think I’m afraid of you? I don’t think so. Maybe I was afraid of you before I met you, when I thought the rumors of you being the most dangerous being on the planet were true. Now I think you’re just a little girl, playing assassin and spreading rumors to up your street cred.”
I grit my teeth, refusing to let my anger consume me. Not here, not now. “If that were true, you wouldn’t have needed a second person to shoot me from behind so you could get away.”
“What can I say? We came over-prepared.” London shrugs. “We expected so much better.”
I feel my claws start to emerge as my skin ripples with the appearance of scales, and I let my siem form consume me. A flash of gold hair catches my attention, and my blood starts to boil as I see the woman from the other night, the one who shot me, watching us. When her eyes meet mine, she smiles, and then she merges into the crowd, where I lose sight of her.
“Well, it looks like I’ve got to jet, Pudding. I really thought we were going to make more progress today.” I turn my attention back to London and watch as he slaps foreign bills on the counter. He catches my eye and winks. “See you later.”
He turns away, heading toward the exit, and I follow, prepared for a fight—maybe even a deadly one this time. If he thinks I’m just going to let him go, he’s even crazier than he seems. I keep my eye on him, cursing when someone bumps into me and averts my gaze.
“Fuck.” I push through the crowd, rushing to the exit, but it’s too late. There’s not a trace of London or his female companion when I push the door open. “Damn it!” I throw my fist into the side of the building, listening to the crack of crumbling brick.
I take my phone out of my pocket, hitting the speed dial for Mel.
“Hello?”
“I need you to find out everything you can on Blaine Levitsky and London Stendahl.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“London Stendahl is the palha of the Stendahl den, which is based in London.”
Of fucking course he is. Mel’s words don’t surprise me the slightest bit—not the fact that London is apparently the head of a den, nor that he shares his name with his city. Judging by the power I felt emanating from him, he has to be at least a handful of centuries old. At some point, he probably renamed himself, like most chöąts do after they grow tired of their given names. One vamp I know, who was born in the 1700s, changed her name from Victoria to Atoria, feeling that it made her seem more modern. Which reminds me…
“Mel, call Atoria and see if she knows anything about Stendahl. You know she has connections in London.”
Mel nods before looking back down at the papers in front of her, her lips pursing into a frown. “He has a sister named Paris.”
“Oh, great.” My mind flashes to the blonde I saw. She almost looked like a valkyrie with her long, golden hair, but I know all of the valkyries personally, and she’s not one of them. “I bet the bitch who shot me was his sister.”
“Probably. I pulled up the security footage from the other night, and from what I could tell, they looked a lot alike.”
“They’ll look more alike when I beat their faces in with a sledgehammer.”
Mel’s nose wrinkles. “You’re so dramatic sometimes.”
“Say that after you’ve taken four shots to the shoulder and two to the chest and then get left in a dirty alley.”
“We've discussed how you bring these things upon yourself. The jobs you take are too dangerous.”
“It’s not like I have a choice in the jobs I take.” Before I fucked up and got tangled in another person’s mess, I used to do the jobs I wanted, when I wanted, but now… “Let’s move on.” I don’t want to think about a decades-old problem that I won’t be getting out of anytime soon. At least I still get paid to do this shit, but I know that’s only so my employer can make it seem like I have a choice. I gesture to the other folder that Mel has closed in front of her. “Tell me about the agent.”
Mel pauses, frowning, before she sighs and flips the file open, though she clearly already knows what it holds. “Blaine Levitsky, 387 years old, high-ranking officer, has been with the CDA for all of the 200 years since it was established. He’s turned down multiple promotions because he wants to remain a field agent.” She flips to another page. “He was just relocated to Lobrooke—he was in Siberia for the last decade and a half.” Her eyes continue to scan the papers, and then she cringes.
“What?”
Her hands slowly brush over the paper, and I can tell she’s hesitating, stalling to figure out how to give me bad news without pissing me off.
“Just say it, Mel.”
“His partner is Feliks Alenin.”
Of fucking course it is.
Feliks Alenin has been after me and my den since I moved here almost a century ago. He was a big part of the corruption going on in the CDA, and he still is. The only reason I’ve yet to chop his head off is because he’s smart enough not to come near me without witnesses, and because I don’t have the time to carry out a hit that won’t earn me any money. I’m too busy.
“If I didn’t already know that Levitsky was after me, then I definitely do now. Look at who his fucking partner is.”
“Alenin kn
ows that the CDA doesn’t have jurisdiction where you’re involved because of your connections,” Mel reasons. “I think it’s just a coincidence that the new guy got stuck with him.”
I shake my head. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Reach out to our contacts at the CDA. Make sure they haven’t launched some kind of coup to take us down.”
“Your paranoia is going to drive you crazier than you already are.”
“No, it’s going to keep us from winding up in prison.”
Mel sighs, watching me as I move to the door. “Where are you going?”
“To do some research.”
♛
My first stop is Fran’s Franchise, a magic and knickknack shop owned by an old and powerful witch named Fran, who already lived in Lobrooke long before I came to town. The woman has to be old as dirt, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by her flawless, wrinkle-free skin and thick black hair. Once you look into her pale blue eyes, though, which are so light that her irises nearly blend in with the whites around them, you can instantly recognize the power and wisdom that comes only from surviving many years of struggle. Anyone who’s done all they can to survive, even when it’s cost them almost everything, instantly gets my respect.
The shop’s bell dings as I walk in, and Fran turns to look at me, her dark hair whirling behind her. She smiles when she sees it's me, putting down the blue stone she was fiddling with. “Blue, I haven’t seen you in here lately! Any of your gems or wards causing problems?” Fran’s responsible for all of my property protection wards, as well as the enchanted charms engraved into the back of my neck for personal protection.
“No, ma’am. I need some information.”
She smiles at that. “I should have known. I figured you’d be in soon, or I’d have called you myself. There have been some people looking into you.”
My brows raise and Fran tilts her head.