Page 40 of Witchy Chick

“It will be nice to see what you’re like when you’re not so uptight.”

“I’m supposed to be uptight when I’m drinking with the Council’s Teeth.”

“But you’re always uptight,” he said, pouring another drink from a different bottle and pushing one shot glass towards me. “Next round.”

It was golden instead of clear. “Scotch?”

“Something like that.”

I rolled my eyes then threw the drink back. I didn’t choke on that one, so that was an improvement, but the bar was starting to glow with a rosy hue, and the man across from me was starting to look practically attractive.

I blinked at him and shook my head. “No way.”

“No way what?” he rumbled as he poured another drink and pushed mine over the table towards me. This one was the color of ink.

“No way am I going to think you’re hot.”

“Women always think I’m hot. That you don’t is extremely weird.” He threw back his ink drink and slammed the glass on the table.

Right. He couldn’t get ahead of me. I threw back the ink, and it was actually incredibly delicious, like blackberry liquor with a pleasant licorice aftertaste.

“That one is good,” I said, pointing at the bottle of dark liquid. “I thought it was ink, but it’s blackberries.”

“It’s also more potent than everything else put together. Would you like another?”

I nodded, and he filled up my glass with the blackberry liquor then filled his own. He held up his glass, and I copied him then we threw them back at the same time. When I put down my glass, the world was absolutely beautiful, particularly the man sitting across from me.

I grinned at him. “How beautiful am I?”

“You are the total summation of all possible beauty,” he said with a slow nod.

I nodded. “You too. We should’ve just started with the blackberry liquor.”

A woman came up to our table, her smile sharp as daggers, but she wasn’t looking at me. All her attention and hungry focus was on the man across from me. “News spreads fast when the Council’s Teeth is letting people touch him.”

I blinked at her while I tried to figure out why she seemed so familiar, then I realized that she was the woman in the photos. She’d slept with my husband!

I lunged at her, but a strong arm blocked me, holding me back easily while the beautiful man with face tattoos gave me a warning frown. What? I was supposed to sit here and be polite to the woman who had destroyed my marriage?

“What’s this? You brought your little wife out in public? I can see why you make a point to keep her home. Such bad manners,” the woman said, staring at me with something cold and cruel in her eyes.

“Wife?” I said, completely bewildered. Wasn’t she talking to Teeth? I looked at him while his hand gripped my shoulder, arm a bar across my chest. It felt possessive. I covered his hand with mine and tried to understand what was going on. She was hitting on Teeth. Right. That was fine because she hadn’t actually had an affair with my husband, just his twin brother.

“I’m fine. Sorry. Just the liquor,” I said, trying to smile at Teeth.

“Are you fine?” the woman said, looking me up and down. “Only because Peregrine’s keeping all the predators from chasing the pretty red flag wrapped around your absolute stupidity.”

“Claire, enough,” he growled.

She gave him a sharp smile. “Enough? You destroyed our alliance for this nothing, and you think I should be satisfied with a light insult?” She smiled at me, but her eyes were so very, very cold while she spat the words. “You’re going to die, and I’m going to revel in that death.”

I stared at her, so vicious and cruel, almost painfully beautiful, but icy cold. So cold. “You’re also going to die. Everyone dies. And I’m not going to care at all.”

She bared her teeth, and her eyes went pale. She swung her hand around, fingers curled into claws, burning blue lines coming out of the ends.

She hit an invisible barrier and went flying back, hitting a table and two people, knocking them all over like bowling pins. We’d never gone bowling as a family. We should do that.

I swung my head back to the man sitting in the booth across from me. “Why do you have indigestion?” I asked.