“It’s almost three am on a Saturday night,” Malcolm pointed out. “Nobody knows.”
Still, I hedged. The vibe of this place was rough. “This doesn’t seem like a place we want to go if—”
“It’s the only place we can go,” Gray retorted, wincing as he spoke. He’d only woken up about five minutes ago and was still feeling woozy. “Come on.”
“I’ll just tiptoe in for a beer and a look-see,” Z slurred, opening his door. “Make sure no Pinnacle pinheads are around.”
“None of you can walk in there without me. You’ll be obliterated,” Gray barked. “Help me up.” Evan wrapped Gray’s arm around his neck and guided him out of the van and up the crumbling sidewalk as the other guys got out too. Then he shifted Gray’s arm over to Malcolm’s shoulders and stepped back.
“I’m gonna stay and keep working on this spell for Andros if that’s okay. It’s gonna take me awhile,” Evan glanced around at all of us.
I nodded.
“I’ll stay too,” Z offered.
But I shook my head. “No. You’re way too drunk. You wouldn’t even be a good lookout right now.”
“I’ll come back and be a lookout,” Malcolm offered.
I nodded at that, hating that we needed it. But it was better than leaving Evan’s back unprotected. I didn’t like leaving Andros in the van at all, but he was too damn heavy to carry inside. Even if he’d been human and not stone, it would have been a struggle.
I looked over at him one more time, worry surging in my gut. He might have been stone, but I didn’t know if it made him invulnerable. Evan would just have to be fast. “Sounds good.” I slid on the zebra heels once more and climbed out of the van. Malcolm and Z flanked me, as though they were expecting bad things. But after our heist, facing my stepfather and then vampires, magical bikers seemed tame.
Z pushed open the door and we entered the space. It was crowded, nearly full, and there was hardly space to walk between the tables. It wasn’t all grizzled men with long beards either. Half the people looked like they’d just come in from work at the energy plant—lots of magicals worked in hydro power plants. There were also some seriously hot young guys in jeans and tight t-shirts dancing with girls on a makeshift dance floor toward the back, where they’d shoved their tables aside.
Just like in the movies, the sight of our little group brought everything in the bar to a halt. People froze and mad-dogged us, or so Matthew would have said. He loved old-school words. I just tossed on the haughty glare I’d perfected at my many magical prep schools and met every single pair of hostile eyes with a dagger in my gaze.
Gray ignored everyone and had Malcolm drag him toward the bar, where a huge man, probably seven feet tall, stood wiping a shot glass that looked like a thimble in his damn hands. The hulking guy was bald and had a thick lip and broken nose. An iridescent magical scar wrapped around his neck almost like a noose mark. And his brown eyes examined us, not coldly like everyone else, but with interest.
“Cotton,” Gray said respectfully, pushing away from Malcolm to stand on his own two feet before extending a hand. “Good to see you.”
Cotton slowly put down his shot glass and clomped toward Gray. The entire bar watched with bated breath, clearly wanting to know what their leader would do.
I only knew what he didn’t do. He didn’t extend his hand.
What the hell? Who was Cotton? Why was he pissed at Gray?
“Oh, for God’s sake, Dad, Gray’s hurt,” a teenage girl with hair as brightly-colored as a bomb pop pushed through the group of dancers and stalked toward the bar. Her hair was wavy and bright red near her skull, shifting sharply to a bright blue, then pink, then purple at the tips, which fell mid-chest. It was a damn good dye job. She wore a black leather tank top and a leather skirt and the same boots I’d worn my first day at MAD, which instantly made me like her. Her dark eyeliner reminded me of Tia a little, but her plump lips and the beauty mark on her chin made me think more of a pinup girl.
“Come on to the back,” she jerked her head to the side as her eyes roamed over the guys and me. When she saw my outfit, her eyebrow quirked.
“This was a dare,” I told her, gesturing at the tube top.
“Sucks to be you,” she replied as she led the way toward a door with a porthole window in the top of it.
“You have no idea.” I grinned.
Her smile back cemented our friendship then and there. I didn’t know how I knew we’d click; I just knew. “I’m Lysa,” she said. “With a y not an i.”
“Hayley. With two y’s,” I gave her my real name since she knew Gray’s.
She grinned at my smart-assery before holding open the door that led to a back room filled with shelves of liquor bottles and potions of all shapes and sizes. A couple liquor bottles even glowed, showing that they’d been infused with spells of some sort.
We all crowded in, but let Gray lean against the butcher block table in the center of the room. The table was empty save for a few towels near one end and some strange ball of green thread next to it. I stood near the right side, near a couple of crates. Lysa came to stand beside me. “So, what’s going down?” she asked casually.
Cotton stomped into the room before I could answer. “Mr. Mars, you’re lucky my daughter has a bleeding heart. I’m pretty sure I told you last time that I saw you I’d mop the floor with your brains.”
“Oh, he doesn’t have any, you’d be disappointed,” Z quipped. “He’d be a better vacuum. Cause he sucks.”
I shot the idiot a glare while Lysa snorted. Malcolm put a hand on Z’s shoulder and pulled him backward, shutting him up with a pointed look.
Cotton just ignored him, which was, honestly, the best strategy when it came to Z sometimes. “What the hell are you doing in my bar?” he barked.
Gray turned and displayed the wound on his back. His gangster-style Kordell-guise polo still had the collar popped but the right half was drenched in blood. “Vampire scratch,” he explained. “Got anything for it?”
“Motherfucking—” Cotton lifted Gray’s shirt. The wound had started to blacken around the edges, something I’d never seen before. He glanced around. “Playing games at the Institute?” He shook his head. “You fucking kids and those goddamned dares—this is the second damn time!”
Wait. The second time Gray had been scratched? My eyes flew to the billionaire playboy, but he was still turned away, hunched over the table while Cotton examined his back and muttered, “I should just let you die after what you did—” The big man cut himself off as he stomped around the table, forcing Malcolm to step back a step. “How’d the rest of you idiots manage not to get eaten?”
“You haven’t heard?” My brow furrowed. “City’s on lockdown. Vamps got out of the Pinnacle.”
Cotton’s mouth thinned. “How many?”
“Thirty-ish? Unsure.”
Immediately, Cotton stomped back to the door with the porthole. A shrill whistle issued from his lips and the bar went silent—dead silent—even the music was switched off.
“Vamps. Downtown. Tiny, take five with you. Everyone else, spread the word to the old ladies. Get them into the compound.”