I returned his smile and swiped my drink from Dara’s tray when she returned to our table. Alex shoved aside her straw and took a healthy gulp. She chuckled as I sucked down half of mine in the same amount of time. “Looks like we’ll need another round soon,” Alex called, even though Dara had already turned away. “And add two shots of tequila!”
“Slow down, little banshee,” Flynn said to Alex.
Alex rolled her eyes and exchanged a conspiratorial glance with me behind his back. My cheeks burned with guilt—if she’d known I was two ahead of her, she wouldn’t think it was so funny.
I sipped my drink, determined to do exactly as Flynn advised, especially because my head was already starting to swim. I needed to slow down if I wanted to stay in this zone of pleasant, numbing buzz without toppling over the edge into crazy, drunken Jemmieland. “So,” I said to Flynn, leaning close so he could hear me over the pulse and pound of the music, “I heard you finally got that old 1938 Crocker road-worthy. Are you going to show it off at the festival?”
Hearing my interest in his dearest love, Flynn’s eyes lit up, but before he could answer, the library doors began to open and the entire Schoolhouse turned their attention in that direction.
The doors creaked and scraped as they swung wide, heavy and loud. The library had always held my fascination—and fear. Ever since I was a child, it had seemed like a forbidden world separate from my own, where magic was a beast tamed by grown-ups, easily unleashed if someone misbehaved. For me, even setting foot in that room was likely to end badly, so I’d never tried. Though I was older now, far from being a kid anymore, my dread of the library had only increased—because now Crowe commanded it.
“Tell you about it later,” Flynn said over his shoulder as he hurried from the table.
Crowe was the first out the double doors. From where I sat, he stood in profile when he paused in the hallway to scan the bar. A lock of his black hair hung rogue over his forehead. He was clad entirely in black, save for the trio of cuts hanging from a leather cord around his neck.
All eyes were on him. At six foot three, he towered over most, but it was more than his height that made him stand out, even to kindled who couldn’t sense Crowe’s magic the way I could.
Crowe was the kind of person who didn’t need to demand respect—it was automatically given to him.
“Oh, great,” Alex muttered next to me. “He does look pissed.”
And he did. He looked really, really pissed. I didn’t even have to see the whole of his face to know it. The tendons in his arms stood out sharply, clenched just like his fists. His jaw flexed, teeth grinding. I wanted to shrink the way he swelled, and disappear into a puff of dust beneath the table. If I had that ability, I’d probably try to use it.
Flynn settled in behind Crowe, on his right, and curiously enough, on his left was Old Lady Jane Vetrov, clad in a patchwork dress and motorcycle boots, and wearing a black bandanna over her long white hair. Jane was stuffed to the gills with omnias magic that ran in the Vetrov family and made her Hawthorne’s resident psychic, the best of the best. And weirdest of the weird, if you asked me. But that was probably just a side effect of having access to the Undercurrent, what drecks called the spirit world. Old Lady Jane wasn’t a Devil. She kept herself on neutral ground, believing that her gift belonged to everyone, and therefore owed allegiance to no one club or family.
Seeing her in the Schoolhouse, with Crowe of all people, was rather uncharacteristic.
She rose to the tips of her pointy boots and whispered something into his ear, and he acknowledged her with a shift of his chin. She nodded, squeezed his arm—protected from her powerful clairvoyant touch by the thick sleeve of his motorcycle jacket—and headed for the bar.
Crowe’s best friend, Hardy Warwick, took up the spot vacated by Jane and, like a pack of wolves, the three men faced the room together. “Gunnar still hasn’t turned up,” Crowe announced. “I don’t know where he’s tucked himself this time, but if any of you come across him, tell him to sober up and get his ass to the festival tomorrow. I need him.”
Ah, Gunnar. He and I had shared a few wild nights at the Schoolhouse in the past, seeing as he could drink me under the table as easily as breathing. His arma magic enabled him to forge weapons out of anything—mud, a pile of rocks, a handful of drinking straws—and I guess Crowe thought that was pretty important for the festival, which made me wonder what exactly he thought was going to go down.
I didn’t have much time to ponder that, though, because that was the moment the president of the Devils’ League noticed me. If Alex was a pearl, then her brother was obsidian. Black volcanic glass. Pretty and shiny, quick to cut. As our eyes met, it all came back, his hands and his mouth, and then the moment I realized he had used me as a momentary distraction. I hunched in my seat, once again wishing I could disappear.
The jukebox switched albums, and something loud and bass-heavy started up, allowing me to pretend that the thumping in my chest was the music and not my traitorous heart.
Crowe started toward us, and I took a long draw from my drink, hoping the burn of the alcohol would override the other burn sinking lower and lower in my gut.
“Alex,” Crowe said when he reached the table. He shed his jacket and hung it on a hook nailed to the side of the booth. He leaned over and kissed Alex’s cheek, then slid into the booth beside me. Hardy slid in on the other side of Alex, effectively trapping us between them. Flynn grabbed his drink and leaned against a nearby post.
“Hey, Jemmie,” Crowe said. “What are you drinking?”
I concentrated on enunciating my consonants as I said, “None of your damn business.”
He reached over, grabbed my glass, and drained what was left of my drink in one gulp. “Tom Collins.”
“Hey!” I said.
Hardy chuckled. I scowled at him, but it only made him laugh harder, sharpening the lines of his cheekbones.
I waved at Dara as she passed. “Can I get another Tom Collins, please?”
“No, Dara,” Crowe said. “She can’t.” He didn’t take his eyes off me. “You reek of whiskey, Jem.”
I turned to him, glad that the heady burn in my gut had formed into something useful: anger. “Bullshit.” But my cheeks were also burning—and probably bright pink.
“Dara, how many drinks have you served Jemmie already tonight?”
The waitress shifted her weight from one foot to the other, biting her bottom lip.
“It’s okay,” said Crowe. “You won’t get in trouble. Just tell me.”
“Three,” she said quietly.
“That’s totally not true,” I snapped, but Crowe ignored me.
“And how long has she been here?” he asked.
“’Bout twenty minutes,” Dara replied, throwing me an apologetic look.
“She’s done for tonight,” he said over me.
“No, I’m not, Dara,” I said, my throat tight. With Crowe next to me, all the magic inside him was pressing on my senses, making my entire body ping with alarm and dizziness. It was going to take another drink at least to tamp that down. “You were supposhed to bring ush shots of tequila anyway.”
Dammit. I’d slurred my words. Crowe’s brow pinched with disapproval.
“Dara,” Crowe said. “Jemmie is done if I say she’s done.”
Dara gave him a quick nod before scurrying away. Next to me, Alex heaved a disappointed sigh. I clenched my jaw, so the next words that came out of my mouth were ground between my teeth like grain beneath a pestle. “Why are you such an asshole, Crowe?”
At least I hadn’t slurred it.
Everyone within earshot fell silent. It was the kind of quiet that comes before a storm hits, an eerie stillness charged with anticipation. The table was almost buzzing with it, everyone wondering how Crowe would react.
Crowe smiled and pretended I didn’t just call him an asshole in front of everyone. “Last time you drank here,” he said, “you ended up puking all over our bathroom. Or did you forget already?”
Worse than Crowe yelling was Crowe chastising.