Page 1 of Great Service from Top to Bottom

CHAPTER 1

“Kitten, we have a problem,” Zee said, moments after poofing into the kitchen in the middle of the lunch service.

A server stood on Zee’s tail, screamed, and flung the two plates of spaghetti bolognese he’d been carrying into the air. To be fair, not many people expect a seven-foot demon with prehensile tail and jagged wings to appear in front of them.

Time slowed and my horror mounted as the plates crested above our heads.

Chef Étrange sprouted extra arms—octopus shifter—and reached up to collect the flying plates. And that would have been fine, had Zee not yanked his tail out of harm’s way and flung himself backwards, flapping his wings to steady himself.

Humans have a saying—like a bull in a china shop—to indicate someone who is loud and chaotic, and I’m human, so I know these things. But as I watched chaos unspool around Zee, I figured like a demon in a kitchen also applied.

Zee’s flapping wings knocked several prepared plates from the sideboard. They crashed to the floor, raining Caesar salad across shiny tiles. Cherry tomatoes boinged.

“Look out!” one of the staff yelled, ducking under a spinning bread knife.

Zee winced and clapped his wings closed, trying to smoosh all of his dramatic self into a smaller space, but the sudden blast of air his closing wings produced knocked a stack of bread rolls in all directions. After that, more screaming erupted, a few pans banged like cymbals, someone yelled, and another staff member blasted a fire extinguisher onto the base of a column of flames I hadn’t seen ignite.

The entire whirlwind was over in less than five seconds, leaving the kitchen staff traumatized and Chef Étrange wearing the spaghetti.

“Fuck.” Zee puffed a sigh and planted his fists on his hips. “That escalated real fast.”

“Maybe use the door next time?” I suggested, picking a piece of spaghetti off my shoulder. Miraculously, I’d remained mostly clean. Usually, if there was any sign of dirt, blood, body fluids, or grime, I ended up smothered in it. But not this time. The kitchen might take some cleaning though.

Despite his dramatic entrance, I smiled. It had been a few days since I’d last seen him. We’d been busy managing the hotel, but I’d begun to wonder if he’d also been avoiding me.

He looked good too, in his patchwork pants with exaggerated stitching, and skimpy little vest that did nothing to hide his ripped physique or his provocative arrow tattoo.

“I would have, but this is an emergency—ooh, mac and cheese.” Zee swiped a bowl of mac and cheese off the sideboard and stuffed a forkful into his mouth. “Thish-sho-good,” he garbled, oblivious to the stunned silence. “Thish-like-the-besht.” He pointed his fork at the bowl, and made sure everyone saw the dish of mac and cheese while he made appreciative groaning noises, that weren’t all that different from the appreciative groaning noises he made when he had me pinned to a wall.

“What emergency?” I prompted, stepping over a few rolling potatoes and guiding Zee toward the back of the kitchen, toward the short stairwell that would take us into the back corridor and eventually the foyer.

“Huh?” Zee looked up from his mac and cheese, still shoveling it in. “Oh, right. Ugh, it’s really bad. The worst. I can’t . . . There aren’t words. I’ll fucking show you.” He hurried ahead, taking three stair risers in a single bound. “Prepare yourself, Kitten. We’ve seen some shit, but this is horrifying.”

We had seen some terrible things, such as Zee being kidnapped and taken to the in-between realm where he’d been drained of energy and left to die. We’d also seen Reynard’s severed finger, a dead protestor, plus multiple dead demons. Then there had been the whole pets-in-pies fiasco and the splattered general. And we’d only been open four weeks.

Whatever awaited me, it had to be bad for him to be so agitated. Although the mac and cheese had clearly helped calm him.

We hurried through the back hall and into the lobby, where Madame Matase greeted some guests, and others milled around happily, oblivious to whatever crisis awaited me. I jogged to keep up with Zee’s long-legged pace as he burst through the bar doors, into the bar.

Was it another corpse? An interdimensional beast laying waste to the place, or maybe even Gideon Cain? But as I entered the bar, the jukebox played a tinkling tune, a few people sat at the tables, Tom Collins was wiping down the gleaming bartop, looking classy in his burgundy dinner jacket, and Zee’s repaired dancing pole gleamed onstage.

Everything seemed fine.

What was I missing?

Zee sat at the bar, dumped his empty bowl on the bartop, and fluttered a hand toward Tom Collins.

“Er . . .” I wasn’t getting it. Where was the horrifying emergency?

“What drinks may I serve you this fine San Francisco morning?” Tom Collins beamed.

I blinked at Tom, then Zee.

“See!” Zee said, eyes wide.

I did not, in fact, see anything wrong. “Morning, Tom, erm⁠—”

Zee huffed, and shook his two-tone purple and black hair about his horns. “Tom, what specials have you got?”