“I know my moans, honey.” He batted his lashes and moved on.
I headed into the long gallery that housed the Pacific Canada and Treasures of the BC Coast exhibits whose tanks showcased good Canadian fish from various national habitats. A string quartet with members of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra played a lively little number as written by a long-dead white guy, and the servers were polished in crisp black-and-white, carrying trays with exquisitely plated high-end appetizers. The lights were low, but inviting. Everything was in impeccable taste.
Oh, and there was my mother.
Giving a chin nod to the octopi chilling in their tank, I headed for her.
Talia was surrounded by her usual group of Untainted Party hotshots, Mundane business leaders, and men who wanted into her pants. I’d never seen her accept any of those offers and I was happier not knowing. For a woman in her early fifties, my mother could have easily passed for a decade younger. We shared our dark hair and pale complexions, but she had gray eyes where mine were dark brown like my dad’s. Despite her questionable fashion choices for her only child, she was always impeccably turned out. Tonight she wore a knee-length lace dress in the palest mauve with a pencil skirt fit. Her chin-length bobbed hair was razor straight with nary a strand out of place.
“Hi, Mom.” I dutifully air-kissed her cheek, forgoing the use of her first name in front of the general public. One of our many negotiations.
She swept a cool gaze over me. I couldn’t tell if the momentary flash was approval for my look or a warning. “Darling, how lovely.”
A familiar-looking gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair in a bespoke navy suit flashed a toothpaste commercial smile that complimented his relaxed stance. Probably a performer of some type. “Talia, you couldn’t possibly have a grown daughter.”
My mother speared him with a dazzling smile. “Thank you, Daniel. You’re too kind. And it’s wonderful you were able to get away from prepping your upcoming trial to support these kids.”
Ah. That’s why I recognized him. Daniel Hughes was a well-known local criminal defense attorney and often on TV.
“We should chat,” he said. “I heard something that might interest you.”
She placed her hand on his sleeve. “How about you get me a drink first? I’m absolutely parched.”
He strode off to do her bidding, Talia watching him with an assessing look. When I’d said she didn’t play games, I’d meant with me. In her professional life, the woman was a shark, but she was so good that she could tear into a person’s soft underbelly and they’d present their own intestines as a gift.
“May I have a moment of your time?” I smiled apologetically at everyone while I pulled her away.
“Five minutes, Ashira. This is a work night for me.”
“What do you know about a Star of David tattoo?” I watched for the tiniest sign of guilt or knowledge but she frowned.
“A tattoo? Really?” She turned me around, examining me for the offending mark. “I hope you at least got it somewhere you could cover up.”
Yeah, my clit. It could do with some communing with the divine.
“I didn’t get one.” Willingly.
“Then what are you going on about? Honestly.”
“Talia,” I said through gritted teeth, “did you tattoo me at some point in my life? Did Dad?”
She peered into my eyes. “Are you high?”
What was it with mothers automatically jumping to that assumption?
“Geez, Mother.” As the full moon brought out the werewolf, so my mother brought out my raging fifteen-year-old self. It was a toss-up as to which was more dangerous, though at least werewolves were fictional.
I plucked a glass of Chardonnay off a passing waiter’s tray. Booze. Thank gawd.
“Smile, ladies.”
On cue, Talia and I pasted on our “happy family” faces.
Satisfied, the photographer wandered off in search of his next victims.
“Joshua!” Talia motioned some dude around my age over. “Keep smiling,” she murmured. “Make a good impression.”
“Tattoo: yes? Or no?” I took a healthy slug of wine.
“Of course not.” She adjusted the neckline of my dress.
She may not have been lying, but she was still annoying. I brushed her hands off and unleashed my sweetest smile, the one I’d practiced in the mirror until Priya had signed off on it.
“Less tooth, darling,” Talia said.
I knocked back the rest of the white wine and had exchanged it for a second glass by the time Josh reached us.
Talia did the introductions then moved off, quickly swallowed up by another group clamoring for the usual appointments, dinners, drinks at the club, and even tennis games. My mother handled all requests with unparalleled aplomb courtesy of some freaky social butterfly genetics.
Josh Millstein was perfectly attractive with his blond hair and green eyes, perfectly dressed in a stylish trendy suit, and made perfectly correct conversation, asking about me before making some self-deprecating joke about working at a hedge fund.
I’d have been fooled into believing that he was enjoying himself if I wasn’t a cynical bitch trained to assess people’s smallest movements. Every time Josh lifted his highball to take a sip, his eyes darted left to a blonde woman in a nearby group. Game, set, and match.
Josh was a dude pressured into a meeting and looking to score elsewhere, an easy-to-read book, not a fascinating puzzle. All the better to wrap this up quickly.
“Give it three more minutes,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
I took his arm, twisting it to see the face of his Phillipe Patek watch. “In three minutes, we can part. You can move in on the blonde and I can consider my duties to my mother discharged for the evening.”
“I wasn’t–”
“Sure, you were. Don’t care.” There was a certain freedom in not giving a damn about most social interactions.
Suddenly there was a lot more interest when he checked me out. “What if I don’t want to go?”
“You do. You want a woman like that.”
“And what kind of woman is that?”
I finished my second drink but there was nowhere to put the glass so I twirled the stem between my fingers, studying the other woman. Pretty with a too-bright smile that had an undertone of brittle to it, she laughed with a loud, bird-like twitter at a joke the one man in her crowd had made. “Put it this way, if her life was a horror flick, there’d be credit kill written all over her.”
Josh laughed. “And which horror movie woman are you?”
I smiled. With definitely too many teeth. “The last one standing who sent the bad guy to Hell. Now, as our time is up, you’ll have to excuse me. I have a man to find.”
“Lucky man.”
I winked at him. “I’m the lucky one.”
That much was true seeing as the “man” in question was Jack Daniel’s. Chardonnay was kiddie punch peddled to chicks who couldn’t handle decent booze. Or who believed the myth that they couldn’t.
Extricating myself from Josh, who beelined for the blonde as expected, I pressed through the crowd to the large Exploration Gallery at the back of the aquarium which was Nefesh territory this evening, and let out a happy sigh, bathed in the spill of soft purple light from the jellyfish tanks. Talia and I had spent many a rainy day at the aquarium when Dad was out of town on “business,” and while I loved the entire place, this room was my favorite.
And now it was underwater. Light filtered down through magic waves that rolled from one side of the ceiling to the other to crash and break against the wall without spilling a drop on the guests.
An unmanned ice bar was set up to my right, lined with icy stalagmites fused in deep turquoise and silver. Their tips morphed into chilled shot glasses that rapidly filled with liquid. Whenever someone snapped a glass free, the stalagmite grew a new one.
I’d never share this with my mother, but no matter how much money Mundanes threw at an e
vent, they could never compete with Nefesh productions. Even some of the younger Untainted Party members in the previous gallery looked longingly this way.
Tempting as the shots looked, I bypassed them for a bar serving highballs and ordered two fingers’ worth of Gentleman Jack with three ice cubes and a splash of water. Exactly the way Sinatra drank it back in the day.
It was a work night for me as well.
Talia had footed the bill for my ticket plus dropped that dress off along with an envelope that contained my taxi and drink allowance. She’d stopped bitching about me spending it on alcohol after I’d shown up with a purse full of juice boxes to some Untainted Party event. Because really, being around her crowd generally required a gentle buzz to keep me from punching people over their racist politics, their judgments on my chosen “profession” instead of following in my esteemed mother’s footsteps, or the inevitable “Talia, you can’t possibly have a daughter that age,” that left me dying to tell them to pucker up a bit more because there was still some ass left to kiss.
Drink in hand, I made my way to my favorite tank containing a myriad of small, translucent jellies floating languidly. The anger that had been stoking for hours eased into a warm radiance.
My mother had no clue about the tattoo and my father was no longer around to ask. I’d exhausted the obvious, but that was to be expected. Where did I go from here? Narrowing down when I’d been tattooed would help to find the who. Old photos were pointless because even as a toddler I’d had a full head of hair and if the tattoo already existed, it would be hidden.
I really didn’t want any of the hospital staff to be behind this, and especially not Dr. Zhang, the surgeon who’d operated on my leg. He’d been emblematic of everything positive and healing at a time when all color had leached from my life. He couldn’t have betrayed me like that. I crossed my fingers that I could strike him off as a suspect, but I had to pursue this hospital angle.
It was better than a dead end. I toasted the jellies with my highball.
“A woman with a back that would make a goddess weep and a taste for whiskey untainted by Coke. A rare dichotomy.” The low smoky voice curled through me, all illicit decadence.
I grinned evilly, turning to the speaker with my glass extended. “If you start right now, you might be able to blame the fact that you hit on me on you ‘drinking your boozy heart out.’”
The gobsmacked look on Levi Montefiore’s face was priceless.
“Why are you wearing that dress?” He waved his hand at it.
Even with the shoes that raised me a couple inches above my five-eight height, he towered over me by a good four inches and a skyscraper’s worth of arrogance.
“I left my sackcloth and ashes at home. Sorry to disappoint. You drinking yourself out of total humiliation? No?” I shrugged and finished the whiskey before thrusting the glass into his hands. “Do a woman a mitzvah and take this away while you troll for the night’s entertainment elsewhere.”
Levi handed the glass off to someone else. Not even a waiter. Just some random person perfectly happy to do his bidding. That was the way of the world for the Head of House Pacifica.
To be fair, he played to his strengths. His black hair was cut slightly longer on top than the sides, swept away from his face in a classic side part that emphasized the slash of his cheekbones and a jawline sharp enough to cut. Much like the words that came out of his unfairly full and sensuous lips.
Odes had been written to his ice-blue eyes and of their unknowable depths that changed from the deepest navy to a mercurial storm. Granted those odes were inked on bathroom stalls in glittery pen, but exist they did. I liked to add disclaimers to them in thick marker and ground those flights of fancy in cold, hard truth.
I was one of the few breathing humans who didn’t go into a dead faint at his proximity, though I did often wish for someone to kill me when I was around him.
Combined with the gunmetal suit that hugged his long, leanly muscled frame to perfection and made me reconsider my stance on Josh’s tailoring, Levi exuded effortless power–and ego. It didn’t hurt that he’d invented some virtual reality tech when he was in his early twenties and sold his company for a sum that would have made even an ogre reasonably attractive in the eyes of many.
People had been waiting to see what the boy wonder would do next, but no one could have predicted he’d challenge the previous Head of House Pacifica for its leadership.
Or that he’d win.
Pursing those lips that rumor had it were almost as talented as his fingers, Levi regarded me with a suspicion usually reserved for small unattended packages in airports. “Are you undercover?”
“In a floor-length ‘come fuck me’ red dress with no visible panty line?”
His eyes flicked to my ass, then away dismissively.
I counted to ten in my head, visualizing pushing him into the jellies and watching them sting him to death. “If I was, would you declare this gala Nefesh territory and mess up my case?”
“If you didn’t have the right to work it, then yeah. In a heartbeat.”
There it was. Levi’s absolute refusal to recognize that not everything was as black-and-white as House rules made it out to be, and the reason I hoped Charlotte Rose’s Rogue status didn’t end up penalizing me in addition to her.
“The husband was Nefesh,” I said, “but his wife, my client, who he was cheating on, was Mundane. I had every right to get proof of his infidelity.” It was pointless to fight Levi, but that job last month could have opened the door to better gigs for me had I not been sidelined.
He refused a honey goat cheese and raspberry phyllo cup from a polite server. “It’s too dangerous for Mundanes to go after Nefesh.”
Having never met a goat cheese appy I didn’t like, I accepted one. “Mundanes are dangerous, too. We have these things called guns. They kill people. No magic required.” Hot damn, these puppies were good. I licked goat cheese off my lip. “And here’s another revelation. While we were both assholes when we were younger, the difference is that I grew out of it.”
Levi’s eyes darkened, the corners tightening, but when a couple called out a greeting, he had his charismatic smile in place. He dropped it as soon as they moved on. “No, the difference is, I became responsible for an entire community while you kept thinking you should be allowed to do whatever you want.”
Whatever I want? I couldn’t remember the last time I hadn’t conducted myself according to someone else’s rules, fighting to be taken seriously, fighting to make a name for myself when it felt some days like the entire deck was stacked against me.
Anger rose up hot and thick enough to taste, wiping away all leftover raspberry sweetness. The room swam, the perfume and cologne cloying in this packed space. My heart pounded in my ears but I choked down my retort. Were our respective statuses represented via totem pole carving, I would be the poor schmuck on the bottom just trying to hang on, while Levi, as House Head, would be the capricious god up top plotting how to complicate my life yet again.
I stomped off, zigzagging to try and get through the press of people, but he followed. “Go away, Levi. I’m not in the mood for your insults.”
“You’re flushed and clearly dizzy. Maybe rethink your plan to become a functioning alcoholic,” he said wryly. He grasped my elbow, propelling me through the crowd to the exit.
They parted like the Red Sea for Moses. Just once I’d like to see this guy break a sweat.
The cold night air brought everything into a sharp clarity, but I remained lightheaded and goosebumps dotted my skin. Colored lanterns cast warm, inviting pools of light in the darkness but they did nothing for the actual freezing temperature.
The chatter back in the aquarium faded to a dull buzz, since all the sane people had opted to stay inside. Holding the skirt of my dress with one hand, I lurched over to the viewing platform high above the dolphin pool, keeping to the shadows.
Levi strolled behind me, heat rolling off him.
Head bow
ed, I stopped in the middle of the platform, gripped the cold metal railing, and flinched because I’d caught a jagged part of the railing’s seams. I tried to speak, tried to move, but I was paralyzed. My insides twisted, radiating a stabbing pain that built and built and then burst like a supernova, hot and sharp.
Fire blazed through my body, a searing agony that lit up every nerve ending. Had I not been clutching the railing, I’d have fallen because my legs had turned to Jell-O. There was a mild tug and then a punch that felt like a multi-armed giant was bashing its way out from inside my skull.
Violent shudders wracked me from head to toe and I screamed, but no sound came out.
A tiny drop of blood beaded on my finger. I sucked down a harsh breath, mesmerized by that drop that was so red and earthy.
“Ash.” Levi’s irises were no longer merely blue but the electric wild skies after a storm. They practically glowed and, between them and the glare of the moon, I had to look away. The overpowering smell of the saltwater from the dolphin pool below made me gag, but was tempered by the mild musky sandalwood scent of Levi’s cologne.
“You’re not having a seizure, are you?” he said.
Why did he have to be such a dick?
From one blink to the next, the bloody smear on my finger morphed into a solid shaft about eight inches long with a bulbous end that I instinctively jabbed Levi back with.
“Did you just–that’s–that’s a dildo,” Levi stuttered. “You hit me with a magic dildo?”
We both stared at the offending item in my hand.
“It’s a sword,” I said.
“It’s a fucking cock that you conjured up,” he growled. “You’re Nefesh?” His expression darkened in fury.
Maybe I was actually unconscious and all this was some kind of fever dream?
“As if,” I said. “I thought I’d liven up this snoozefest with a giant dick. The sword, I mean. Not you. I’ve been carrying it in my dress this whole time waiting for the right moment to spring it. Hilarious, huh?”
Okay, as lies went it was admittedly somewhere between “the check is in the mail” and “I won’t come in your mouth” for believability, but logic and coherent reasoning had fled in the face of the weaponized penis.
Blood & Ash: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 1) Page 4