Ian had yanked Finn off the stage and out of sight, but when Ian hit the floor, he was on top of an overly endowed dancer wearing nothing but a vindictive smile. Two bouncers grabbed Ian. Finnegan squealed, giggled, and hightailed it toward the dressing rooms, not stumbling once in the only things she was still wearing. A pair of platform, six-inch heels.
I had a moment of open-mouthed amazement. Where the hell did a leprechaun learn to run in stripper heels?
Ian might have thought of himself as my babysitter, but dammit, the boss had told me he was my partner. Partners backed each other up.
The bouncers were easily double my weight, and while I had a Taser in my purse, I’d only have one chance to use it on one of them. The other no-necks running toward the melee weren’t going to stand by and tap their toes while it recharged.
Right now, the bouncers thought they had the troublemakers. The four shelves of desk flair back at the office told me that Ian could take care of himself, and if he needed help, Yasha and Elana were a hell of a lot more qualified to give it than I was. With a werewolf’s hearing, he was probably already in the building. That problem was taken care of. Finn had vanished behind a curtain, presumably leading to dressing rooms. Even an exhibitionist like Finn was unlikely to run outside while starkers. He’d have to slow down to grab something.
I’d have to catch Finn myself.
The bouncers, if they’d even noticed me at all, didn’t see me as any kind of a threat. And hopefully, between the liquor and the lights, any customer who saw Finnegan the naked leprechaun would talk themselves into believing they’d either had one or five drinks too many, or set up an appointment with their shrink to talk about what it meant to hallucinate a naked leprechaun in a sex club. I was sure it couldn’t have been the first time a naked man had run through Bacchanalia.
I pulled back the curtain and stopped.
Talk about a needle in a haystack.
Either the staff of Bacchanalia was seriously disorganized, or a tornado had just come through here. From what little the boys and girls out front had been wearing, you’d think there couldn’t be so many costumes strewn about.
Sparklies and spangles the likes of which I’d never seen in my life.
There wasn’t a leprechaun to be seen—though when you’re only three foot tall, hiding wouldn’t be difficult in this mess.
This was a dressing room in an exclusive sex club on a Friday night. When the fight started out front, any staff still in here must have run out the back. Considering that there might be a naked leprechaun hiding among the sequins and bugle beads, they’d made the right choice.
A naked leprechaun was many things, but scary wasn’t one of them.
But the man standing across the room from me was.
He wore a dark suit so well tailored it made Alain Moreau look like he shopped off the rack, with a long jacket that was more like a form-fitting frock coat.
He looked human.
But he wasn’t. No human male looked that perfect.
For one, a human couldn’t look that good on their best day. But mainly, it was the way he glided toward me so smoothly it was like he wasn’t using his feet that clued me in.
My seer vision showed me what he really was.
A goblin.
A goblin who dropped his glamour completely as he slowly came toward me.
In a word—wow.
Goblins were mainly nocturnal. They could be out during the day, but their dark eyes were painfully sensitive to sunlight. Goblins were tall, sleek, and sexy. Combine that with darkly seductive—and light-sensitive—eyes and you had a race that took sunglasses to the heights of high fashion. Goblins were gorgeous all by their lonesome, but they took their wardrobes and accessories just as seriously as their tangled court politics. Goblin politics was a full-contact—and often fatal—sport chock-full of seduction, deception, and betrayal.
Goblin hair was dark, often worn long, and the silkiness of it would make a Pantene shampoo model kill from jealousy. Their skin was pale gray, with a silvery sheen, their eyes dark, their ears upswept to a nibbleable point.
And they sported a pair of fangs that weren’t for decorative use only.
With supernaturals that had a tendency to prey on humans, I’d been taught how to act from a young age should I find myself in the presence of one. It all boiled down to one absolute rule—don’t act like prey. But faced with what was quite possibly the hottest creature I’d ever seen in my life, and under the influence of a drug that had essentially evaporated my inhibitions, I suddenly found that rule increasingly difficult to follow.
“Vivienne’s new seer.” The goblin’s voice was a whispered breath against my throat even from several feet away.
So much for being undercover.
“Uh . . . you have me at a disadvantage—”
A slow smile spread across the goblin’s unwholesomely handsome face. “But at least I have you.”