Club Nexus (Ivy Granger, Psychic Detective) by E.J. Stevens Page A

were off limits to all
but royalty and their trusted staff.  Lowly club employees, such as myself,
didn’t make it past the velvet rope.
    Not that a silly rope barrier would have kept me from the
sweet embrace of one of the Winter Court’s icy, private booths.  No, the true
deterrents were the heavily armed guards—a griffin with a razor sharp beak and
a boggart with a particularly nasty disposition, even for one of my dark fae
brethren.  I sighed and pushed the lock of hair from my face, tucking it behind
one of my pointy, blue ears.
    I was proud of my pointy ears, slender figure, and unusual
seven foot height, for these things marked me as highborn fae.  What I wasn’t
so keen on was my current living situation.  Once upon a time, I’d graced the
halls of the Winter Court in finery spun from spider silk, my hair pinned up
with late blooming roses, strands of ice crystals around my neck.  Now I was
bedecked in an unflattering uniform, and had to bear drunken pickup lines from
lowly light fae while serving my enemies drinks and cleaning up their messes.  Oh,
how the mighty had fallen.
    I’d been tricked into an unfavorable bargain that left me
with no alternative but to work off my debt here at Club Nexus as little more
than a slave.
    The man who’d tricked me, a notorious Seelie fae named Puck,
was little more than a pimp.  He used a number of underhanded methods to hold
sway over a variety of races: vamps, demons, humans, and fae.  Puck ran girls
through this club for sex, blood, and sport.  I suppose I should count myself
lucky that he’d been enamored by the idea of having an Unseelie bartender who
could chill drinks with her very breath, but my position as a servant still
rankled.
    It was a predicament that should not have befallen one of
the highborn.  I gripped the dishrag tight, the dirty remains of spilled drinks
dribbling down my wrist.  I grimaced at the foul liquid and tossed the rag into
a bucket of soapy water.  Sulking wouldn’t free me from this foul job, but an
ear in the right place just might.
    I turned my attention to Puck, who had walked in moments
before and now had his head tilted close to the ear of a vampire.  They made an
unlikely pair, the towheaded faerie with his smiling cherubic face and the
fanged vampire coated in the dust of the grave.  With the fangs of a vampire
mere inches from his jugular one might worry for Puck’s safety, if you didn’t
know who he really was.
    No matter his appearance, Puck was no angel; his kind was
worse than any demon.  He was a trickster who thrived on chaos and the thrill
of cheating others out of all they had, whether that meant parting them from
their money, their blood, or their souls.
    I moved toward the two on the pretense of feeding the small
faerie who provided illumination from within a glass lantern further down the
bar.  I placed a scoop of honey inside a trough cut into the base of the
lantern and listened.
    “In the market for a short or tall ten pints?” Puck asked. 
“Had a new shipment of Ice in this week, so your drink can come feisty or
sedate.  Take your pick.”
    My ears pricked at the mention of Ice—in the Winter Court we
had over three thousand words for ice—but I realized that Puck was only discussing
the drug he dealt to his special clientele.  The drug was used to subdue humans,
and was especially useful to vampires who wanted new blood slaves without the
bother of convincing the mortals fairly.  Not that seducing humans while using
glamour to make themselves irresistible would be considered fair to most
mortals, but it was a game we fae could understand.  But the act of drugging
their victims senseless seemed like cheating.
    I wrinkled my nose and turned away.  I disliked vampires and
the street names for what Puck was selling.  “Ten pints” was slang for humans,
since that was the quantity of blood in an average adult and “Ice” was the
black market drug that numbed the minds of its users.