Night Shift (Kate Daniels #6.5)(70)

“Then it’s going to be a long night.” Ian paused and looked away from me. “Go ahead,” he said.

Then I realized he was on the phone. I’d never used those little Bluetooth earphone thingies, and I wasn’t about to. They made you look like you were walking around talking to yourself. Though I could see where they’d come in handy in the monster hunting/supernatural sleuthing business. If I was being chased down by something with six legs and a hankering for people sushi, I know I’d want to be hands free.

“I am from Saint Petersburg.” Yasha made no effort to keep his voice down or to stop Ian from hearing his caller. Apparently the Russian was more interested in talking to me than being considerate of Ian. It sounded like someone was miffed at potentially being stiffed for a surprise party. Since Yasha was our driver and backup, my partner might want to rethink that.

“I’m from a little town called Weird Sisters. It’s in the far western point of North Carolina.”

Yasha cocked an eyebrow. “Weird Sisters?”

“It was named after the three witches in Macbeth, and weird does describe most of the townfolk. It’s on a ley line that magnifies psychic and paranormal energies. I don’t know if there’s anything to that or not, but something attracts people—and non-people—to stop and stay.”

“Is your family people or not-people? My pardon, but I am not a seer, so I cannot tell if you wear glamour or not.”

I smiled. “That’s okay. Me and my family are plain vanilla human.”

“Plain vanilla?”

“Just regular folks. A lot of my family are seers who’ve gone into law enforcement. As long as anyone can remember, there’s been a Fraser as marshal, then sheriff. Right now, my aunt Vicki’s the police chief.”

There’s a hesitation in Ian’s phone conversation. I couldn’t hear anyone speaking on the other end of the line, so it was Ian who did the pausing. Then “Sir, are you there?” said a tinny voice on the other end.

“Yes, I’m here. I heard what you said,” Ian told the caller. “First three clubs on the list have been eliminated.”

My new, and apparently curious, partner had also heard every word I had said, too.

“When I was little, I wanted to be an investigative reporter for our local paper,” I continued to Yasha, talking just a wee bit louder so my partner wouldn’t have to work so hard to eavesdrop. “Protect the prey from the predators in my own way, without becoming a cop. But in a town with more than its fair share of actual psychics, unsolved crimes were gonna be few and far between.” I shrugged. “So I decided it was time for me to leave for good.”

“Little town in mountains sounds nice. Peaceful,” Yasha said almost wistfully. “Why come here?”

I shrugged again. “I wanted to use my journalism degree but all I could get was a job at a seedy tabloid called the Informer. You heard of it?”

The Russian chuckled. “And not in a good way.”

“That’s the place. Only stories like ‘Donald Trump is a werewolf lovechild’ had any hope of making it to the front page. If a story was the truth, great; if not, lies worked just fine. Our readership was gullible as hell and thought everything we printed was the gospel truth anyway.”

Yasha snorted in derision. “No werewolf would have hair like that. Would look foolish.”

“Lucky for me, one of my stories put me in Ms. Sagadraco’s sights. By that point, I’d take any job that’d let me regain some self-respect. When the HSR ladies called me with an offer, I couldn’t resign fast enough.”

Yeah, I’d traded the scent of mountain laurel for diesel fumes, and a ley line running under the mountains for a subway line running under the city, but New York had an energy all its own. The mountains had a heartbeat, a soul. Maybe it was the ley line, running under them, maybe it was something else.

I had the same feeling when I’d arrived in New York. It was alive. The city lived and breathed. It could also devour, but so far, it’d kept its fangs and appetite to itself. I hadn’t been chewed up and spit out in the general direction of the Mason-Dixon Line, so I considered my move north to be a success.



THERE it was, glowing in all its purple-neon glory over a door that was intended to look like something you’d find at one of those medieval-themed places that served dry turkey legs and cheap beer in even cheaper plastic tankards.

Fairy Tails.

Oh Lord.

“Seriously?” I asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Ian replied.

The bouncer was predictably huge and surprisingly human. He was also dressed like the Jolly Green Giant complete with a club that I hoped was as plastic as the tankards inside; though when he set it down to open the door for us, it made a disturbingly solid thud on the sidewalk.

Inside was even more kitschy, if that was possible.

Ian and I were arriving first, to be followed by Mike, Steve, and Elana in a few minutes. Ian said we didn’t want to attract attention by arriving in a group. I had news for my partner—in this place, no one would have noticed.

Fairy Tails looked like the set of a low-budget fantasy movie. Really low. The walls had been painted—badly—to look like castle stone. And every few feet were “torches” made of yellow bulbs and those yellow/red/orange strips of parachute fabric cut to look like flames. There was an air source coming from somewhere that made the flames flap around like the arms of those inflatable tube people you see at used car dealerships. What I assumed was the VIP section had thrones for seating. And yes, behind the bar were the expected plastic tankards and goblets. And to top off the themed experience, the bartenders were Little Red Riding Hood and the Big, Bad Wolf. The guy in the wolf suit was plenty big, but there was nothing little about what was about to pop out the top of Red’s red leather corset. Those couldn’t possibly be real.