“Dave, do you honestly think I’d be claiming something the size of Metallica’s tour bus was under the city if I wasn’t sure? Especially when it’s something that’s supposedly been extinct for centuries? It’s a real dragon, I’m absolutely certain, and the assholes want it awake and doing their bidding. I want to stop them. Now, where are they?”

“I don’t know.” Catching the sudden darkness in my eyes, Dave raised his hands, palms out, and protested, “I don’t! If I knew, I’d tell you. You’ve got enough credit, and hell, you think I want these people chopping up the staff? Kitty’s going to be back from her tour any day now. I let my sister’s kid get sliced and diced, I’m a dead man walking—and that doesn’t get into the cost of training replacements for all my girls. I honestly don’t know, Verity.”

I could argue with him, or I could let it go. At the end of the day, arguing with him was just going to make him less likely to do what I was about to ask. “Fine. But since I just gave you a whole bunch of really good information, and you’re not giving me anything I didn’t already know, I get to ask you for a favor.”

Dave’s brief-lived smile faded, replaced by a wounded pout. “Confirmation wasn’t good enough for you?”

“Not this time. I need you to close down for the night, and stay closed until we’ve managed to stop this snake cult. It shouldn’t take long. We’re closing in on the dragon’s location, and now that I have copies of their runes, Dad should hopefully be able to tell me something useful about the rituals they’re likely to be using to conceal themselves.”

“What the hell do you want me to do that for?”

“Until you do, everyone here is basically just walking around with a giant target painted on top of the tacky uniform!” I pointed toward the door. “They already went after Carol. What’s going to stop them from following the rest of the girls home? I need time to stop this, Dave, and I need to do it without being constantly worried that my coworkers are about to become Sacrifice McNuggets.”

“Fine,” said Dave, looking disgusted. “I’ll close for the night, and we can discuss whether I’ll be staying closed for the rest of the week. The week! No longer than that. I have a business to run here, and I’m not going to go bankrupt because of some stupid snake cult.”

“Thanks, Dave.” I flashed a quick smile in his direction. “Do you want me to help you clear the club?”

“I’ll just have somebody pull the fire alarm. That’ll clear things out fast enough, and it’s better than giving people a reason to talk shit about the health inspector closing us down.” Dave adjusted his sunglasses. “Now get out of here and go save the world, will you? All this talking with no nudity is giving me a headache.”

“I’m on it.” I turned and left the office. The darks clicked on before I was three steps down the hall, and shadows thick as tar pooled across the floor once more. I kept walking. That was my second mistake … and by that point, although I didn’t really know it yet, I was just about out of leeway.

Twenty-three

“There’s no such thing as fighting dirty. There’s fighting like you want to live, and fighting like you want to die. If you’ve got anything to live for—anything at all—I suggest you try the first way. The people you love will thank you for it.”

–Alice Healy

The dressing room of Dave’s Fish and Strips, a club for discerning gentlemen

TRUE TO HIS WORD, Dave pulled the fire alarm about five minutes after I reached my locker, sending the sirens wailing through the building. It was loud even before the DJ killed the sound system, and then it became practically deafening. I’ve known actual sirens who would’ve been proud to make that kind of racket. (Not all sirens are into the whole “sitting on rocky atolls luring sailors to their death” gig. At least one is making a pretty good living as a pop singer. She calls herself “Emerald Green,” pretends her hair is dyed that particular shade of seaweed, and refuses to book gigs in coastal cities unless they’re purely acoustic. Nature isn’t always destiny.)

The other female members of the wait staff began pouring into the dressing room. The uniforms Dave insisted on meant that they were already practically naked, which you’d think would make the process of getting dressed go faster for them, but no such luck. Even with the fire alarm screaming bloody murder in the background, they mobbed the mirror, taking their time fixing their makeup, adjusting their assets, and, of course, bitching loudly about the sudden closure robbing them of half a shift’s tips. Several glared at me while they gossiped, making it clear that they’d noticed how my visit to the manager ended conveniently right before the alarm went off.

I looked calmly back, making no effort to defend myself—or to hide the various weapons waiting to be concealed under my street clothes. One by one, the other waitresses looked away, and their preparations for departure got a lot faster after that. None of them had the guts to accuse me to my face, possibly out of fear that doing so would get their actual guts an introduction to the floor. I ducked my head and went back to adjusting my thigh holster, trying not to think about what that meant. Dave was right. I’d been seen too frequently with Dominic, and people were starting to question my loyalties.

I took my time changing out of my uniform, double and triple-checking the snaps on every holster and the placement of every knife as I pulled my street clothes on. I was dressing for war, and it was time I started taking that seriously. I needed to be on the move sooner, rather than later, but I didn’t want to leave until Ryan got back to the bar, and that meant I had time to make sure that I was doing things right for a change. After this, it was going to be corpses and carnage until the snake cult was no longer a part of the picture. They’d killed too many girls. This needed to end.

The last of the waitresses teemed out of the room, moving in a cloud of hairspray, sticky glitter, and cheap perfume. A locker slammed. I looked up again, only to find Candy glaring at me much more openly than any of the others had dared.

“I hope you realize that I was planning to get paid tonight,” she snarled.

“The snake cult went for Carol,” I replied, too annoyed by the accusation in her tone to sugarcoat things. She recoiled, looking like I’d slapped her. I pulled my shirt on over my head, continuing, “Two of them got bitten by her hair. Dominic’s getting the bodies now, so we can look them over to see if there’s anything that tells us where they’re operating. Unless you think your tips are more important than the lives of your coworkers, I suggest you drop the attitude.”