Dead Man’s Deal. Jocelynn Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ didn’t hurt him and I had never hurt him with magic.

      “He’s got my brother,” I whispered in a rough, broken voice. My world was breaking apart around me, but Trixie and Bronx continued to press close.

      “We’ll fix it,” Trixie murmured in my ear, and Bronx’s hand squeezed my shoulder.

      Dropping my hands from my head, I dragged in a deep breath in an attempt to relax the muscles that had tensed throughout my body. The energy dissipated. The soft snap and crackle faded to nothingness and the air seemed less thick. Trixie loosened her grip on me, but remained close.

      Bronx waited for a nod from me before dropping his hand. He looked up at the darkened light fixture above us. “I think we’ve got some spare bulbs in the storage closet. I’ll go get them and the stepladder.”

      “It could have been worse,” Trixie said, drawing our gazes. “It could have been the front window … again.”

      Bronx shook his head as he left the room. I tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage it. Trixie was trying and I appreciated it. “I’ve yet to break the front window. That’s Bronx.”

      Trixie dropped her arms from around me and grinned. “It’s not like you didn’t want to.” She was right. Less than a year ago, a customer Trixie was tattooing had hit on her hard. She was polite but it was obvious that she was becoming uncomfortable with his persistence. Bronx gave the asshole one warning, but he didn’t listen. A minute later, he was flying through the front window.

      Trixie tried to step away from me, but I grabbed her wrist, holding her in place. “Trixie, this is my older brother, Robert,” I started, looking at my brother. He was still pressed against the far wall as if he were trying to sink into the plasterboard rather than be in the same room with me. The fear was gone from his eyes, but so was the easy laughter. “Robert, this is Trixie. She’s a tattoo artist here, and she’s … my girlfriend.” The last two words fumbled from my mouth, but then it was the first time I had ever introduced her as such.

      Trixie shot me a smile before turning to face Robert. She extended a hand toward him and he hesitated before quickly shaking it. “It’s nice to meet someone from Gage’s family.”

      Robert mumbled something that I didn’t quite catch before sinking back against the wall. Trixie turned to me and gave a little roll of her eyes. She wasn’t afraid of me and I loved her for it. Bronx wasn’t afraid of me, and in my own way, I loved him for it, though I was grateful that I didn’t feel the need to kiss him like I needed to kiss Trixie.

      She wrapped her long arms around my neck as she snuggled close. “Get out of here. Your shift’s done. Spend some time catching up with your brother.”

      “I’ll see you later tonight.”

      “You’re stopping by?” she asked, going for innocent, but the wicked light in her eyes ruined it.

      “Oh, yeah. Gonna need to.”

      Trixie gave me one last lingering kiss that managed to put a different kind of tension into my body before gracefully sauntering from the room. I glared at Robert when I saw his eyes following her. My older brother opened his mouth, but I stopped him.

      “Watch what you say or I will give you a reason to be afraid of me,” I warned.

      Robert glared at me. “She’s hot,” he said as if daring me to argue with him.

      I snorted and shook my head. “Yeah, I’ll give you that one. Let me grab my jacket and we can get out of here.”

      “What about the tattoo Reave said you’d work on?”

      Rage flooded my veins once again, but I kept my head this time. It wasn’t as much of a shock as it had been the first time. “I doubt what Reave has planned is something I can slap on in a few minutes. We’ll need to talk and plan. And drink.” The drinking probably wouldn’t help much with the planning, but it would help me from exploding again—safer for all those around.

      Using the dim light from the front window, I walked into the main tattooing room to find that Bronx had already lit some candles and was in the process of setting up the stepladder so he could replace the fluorescent bulbs I had destroyed.

      “I’ll be upstairs in case you need anything,” I announced. I crossed to the far cabinet and knelt down as I pulled it open.

      “You taking the Mordred?” Bronx asked from the stepladder in the center of the room.

      A little shudder racked my frame. “Absolutely not. I need to mellow out, not get stupid. I’ve got a bottle of Jack that should get us through without killing each other.” I may have hated Reave and held no love for the entire Svartálfar race, but by all that was sacred and pure, they knew how to make a damn good whiskey. Mordred was fucking hard to get your hands on if you weren’t Svartálfar and like liquid fire going down, but damn, it was good.

      “I can take your keys to the shop. Protects against intoxicated tattooing,” Bronx offered.

      “Fuck you,” I grumbled with no real venom. The last time Bronx and I had drunk Mordred together, the results were not good. Suffice to say, Bronx had tattooed an incubus, resulting in an outbreak of mass fornication that needed to be stopped.

      I grabbed the liter bottle and stood, shutting the cabinet with my knee as I scooped up my jacket off a nearby chair. “I’ll talk to you guys later.”

      Robert was out in the lobby when I returned, looking as if he wished he had left but was afraid to after my temper tantrum. He followed me out the front door of the parlor, but paused when I started down the alley beside the shop.

      “Where we going?” he demanded, stopped at the mouth of the alley.

      “Somewhere we can talk and drink.” I held up the new bottle and gently shook it back and forth as if trying to tempt him. Or hypnotize him. I’d take that. He frowned, but started to follow after me through the alley to the back of the shop and then up the wooden stairs to the second floor of my building.

      After Asylum took off, I managed to buy the entire building from the owner instead of renting. I had lived in the second-floor apartment for a while, but had moved out a few years ago so I could get a little space in my life from work. The apartment above the parlor was kept empty for times like these, when it was better to deal with matters here rather than drag anyone into my home.

      “This your place?” Robert asked as he shut the door behind him.

      I shook my head. “Just somewhere I crash on occasion.” Setting the bottle on the scarred coffee table, I walked into the tiny kitchen and grabbed a couple plastic cups that I kept there. I paused, staring at the disposable plastic cups. It had been a while since I had gotten plowed in this apartment with a friend or two. Was I mellowing out too much? Getting old? I rolled my eyes and wandered back into the living room with its cracked beige walls and stained carpet to find Robert sitting on one of the sunken cushions of the couch.

      Sitting on the other end of the couch, I poured us each a healthy shot of whiskey and sat back. “All right, talk.”

      Robert took a big swallow and winced as it went down. Definitely not as smooth as Mordred, but it would get the job done. “I don’t have to tell you shit.”

      “You’re going to СКАЧАТЬ