Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
The first thing I notice is the bartender’s smile, all melted, soft, and liquid-dangerous, something sparkling in her eyes like she just knows as I lift the lip of the bottle of cider to my own mouth.
The second is the flecks of blood peeking out from under her collar.
The blood is light and muted, unclear enough in the dark lighting of this dive bar, which is glowing only with the neon lights of a few spare novelty signs, that most who didn’t know to check probably wouldn’t see it.
Even if they did, people see what they want. They’d sooner assume it’s syrup leftover and spilled from some fruity cocktail than evidence of what goes on in the back of this bar after hours.
But I know what I came here for.
And so does she.
“Alley. Twenty minutes,” she says when she slides my receipt and my card back, her breath a ghost against my ear. I bite back a shiver when the barely-there touch of her fingers grazes against my wrist as I cradle the almost empty glass in front of me.
“But I thought… ?” My eyes flick toward what I was told was the entrance to the backrooms, a few still dark-lit lounges with mismatched futons and carpets, wine and candles perfuming the air. A private, secret place to engage in your darker impulses without risk of being seen.
She hasn’t moved her hand from my wrists, and her grip tightens, the sharp edges of her nails pressing ever-so-slightly into my bare skin.
“Alley,” she repeats in a low voice, some warning in it. “Leave your purse. You’ll be back.”
There’s no suppressing the shiver that results from that while she smirks and walks away.
On edge and restless already, I down the last dredges of my whiskey and look around. The bar is quiet tonight, quieter than I’d expected based on my friend’s quiet description, but then, I am here on a Thursday night, hoping to avoid a larger crowd by design. It’s doubtful I’d run into anyone else I know here; a friend from college I hooked up with a few times aside, it’s not such a popular place to begin with, considered sort of dingy and out of the way unless you know what it really is. It has, by reports, a special crowd that does fill up the house on busier nights, but the goosebumps threatening my skin at the thought of being caught are unlikely to be necessary.