Chapter 5

T rixie

"This is incredible!" I announced, a curling iron pressed to my head.

"I know!" Emmy pranced out of her room on Friday night, looking like she'd spent her whole life waiting for this moment.

She'd tamed her fun curls into a straighter wave for the event, and she wore a boisterous red dress that glittered like rubies.

"Wait a minute." Emmy frowned, looked at me. "What's incredible? You're not ready to go. You're still in jeans."

"Someone just requested a ride." I held up my phone and showed her the rideshare app that kept me mostly-legally employed. "And they're going in the same direction as us, just a block away. It'll be perfect. I can make an extra couple of bucks off this stupid event if I pick up a fare on the way. Maybe we'll even be able to pick someone up on the way back."

"We're not picking someone up on the way to an event with The Circle," Emmy drawled. "Are you kidding me?"

"I'm a paranormal uber-driver and you're a mostly-unemployed grad student. We don't have a choice."

"Good point. Get dressed," Emmy said briskly. Then she took another look at me. "Don't tell me you're wearing that. And please finish curling your hair."

I looked at my jeans and tank top. "Why not?"

"It says it's a black-tie event. "

"I don't own a black tie."

Emmy gave a huge sigh. "Get over here."

Twenty minutes later, Emmy had done what she could for me. I didn't have many dresses appropriate for a meeting with the most powerful magical folks in the city, so Emmy had let me borrow hers. A short black dress with high black heels finally passed her test. Ultimately, I'd given up on the curls and slicked my hair back into a low chignon because Emmy "didn't have time to deal with my rat's nest".

She did, however, have time to add red lipstick and a few extra swipes of mascara that I suspected made me look like a raccoon, while Emmy insisted it made me look alluring and mysterious. Not that I cared, seeing as I wasn't planning to stay all that long. Just long enough to hear the candidates announced and snag a few drinks from the open bar. Then we'd crash at the hotel in our complimentary room and head back in the morning.

"Let's go," I said. "I owe Chopstix money. I'm afraid he won't let me get my car out of the lot tonight if I don't give him something. I'm a few days late."

"Should I be scared of the fact that you owe a guy named Chopstix money?"

"He's really friendly, so long as he's paid."

That didn't seem to assuage Emmy's fears, but I was already halfway out the door. Emmy followed me. When we got to the sketchy restaurant on the human side of town, Chopstix was nowhere to be seen.

"Guess I'll get him the money later," I said. "We gotta go. "

Emmy looked around as if we might be attacked at any second. "You never cease to scare the pants off me."

"Good. Maybe you'll get lucky tonight." I winked at her. "You can go home with one of those sexy dwarves. Loosen you up a little bit. You spend too much time researching. Just enjoy the fancy champagne."

"You should talk. When's the last time you had a date?"

"You really can't comment seeing as the closest you've come to intimacy lately is with the pig whose nose hairs you plucked for your potion," I said, and that shut us both up.

We really had very sad love lives.

I stopped my vehicle in front of our apartment complex. Whoever we were picking up probably lived in the same building as us. They'd probably be in for a little surprise, finding two women dressed to the nines as their paranormal Uber drivers, but hey, maybe they'd leave a good tip.

I just about swallowed my tongue when I glanced up and saw the front door of our building open. Out walked the vampire from the other night. The man who'd haunted my dreams, my fantasies... my nightmares.

Then, like an icy bucket of cold water, I saw the woman trailing behind him. Tall, insanely gorgeous, her hair curled into an updo more intricately crafted than Milan's D'uomo. Her body was lithe, perfect, and that tight white gown showed off every beautiful curve. I immediately shut down any thoughts of the vampire then and there.

Of course Dominic Kent had a girlfriend. Of course she was perfect.

"They're not getting in here...?" Emmy gestured with her finger, because the idea of Dominic Kent and his supermodel girlfriend getting into a crappy old Honda was unfathomable.

Then a car pulled in just in front of us, a Lamborghini in a hue of red that matched the lipstick on the vampire's girlfriend.

"Oh." Emmy gave a hoarse laugh, connecting the dots between the car and the couple. "Yeah, that makes more sense."

"Don't upset my baby." I patted the Honda's dashboard. "She does good work, even if she looks a little shabby. Not everything is about looks."

"You talking about the car or have we moved on to self-reflection?"

I glanced over at Emmy who was super-pleased with herself for that joke. But my laugh died on my lips because at that moment, Dominic Kent glanced my way, and we locked eyes.

I could feel that he recognized me. I could feel it in my very bones.

At that very moment, a distractingly large fist pounded on the rear window of my car.

"I told you not to leave the parking lot without handing over my money, Trixie!"

"So that's..." Emmy winced as she glanced over at the huge man with a tattoo right on the front of his neck. She swallowed. "Chopstix?"

I was about to get out of the car and fork over Chopstix's money, with a couple of extra bucks for good measure, when I realized that he hadn't gotten a second fist pound on the window. I blinked, unable to believe my eyes.

Somehow, Dominic had yanked Chopstix—a nearly three-hundred-pound man with braids in his hair—over to the side of the building and was holding him above ground with one hand, making it look like Chopstix weighed nothing more than a cute little sachet of potpourri.

"Hey! Drop him," I said, scurrying out of my car and rounding on Dom. "That's my parking space landlord, you idiot."

Dominic looked very reluctant to drop the man. When he finally did, Chopstix inhaled, looking more than a little alarmed as color rushed back to his face. I doubted many people stood up to a man like Chopstix, and I'd bet there were even fewer who did it successfully.

"Here's your money," I said, handing over a sweaty, rumpled wad of cash. "I'll get you some more. I'm sorry, Chopstix. It's all I've got. I know it's late, but—"

"How much do you need?" Dominic asked gruffly.

"I've got it handled," I said.

"How much?"

Chopstix looked between us. "Hundred bucks, but she's always behind. Next month's payment is practically due."

Dominic pulled a wad of cash from his wallet, handed it over. "She's good for the year, yeah? And if I see you laying a hand on her, or her car, or anything related to this woman ever again..."

Chopstix just nodded. "Whatever. You keep me paid, she keeps her parking spot."

Dominic looked like he wanted to say something else, but by that time his partner had joined his side. The stunning woman rested a hand on Dom's wrist, and it seemed to have a calming, or at least a steadying effect on him.

"Cancel the car," Dom spat to his girlfriend. " She's our ride."

"She—" The woman in white glanced at me looking appalled. " She's our ride?"

"You heard me," Dominic said. "We're riding with them."

"Um, actually, that's not true," I said, glancing apologetically at Dom's girlfriend. "I actually have another fare that we were waiting for, so our car is full."

It looked like Dom's girlfriend could slice through my jugular with one errant touch of her designer nails. I wasn't sure whether she was a paranormal or not; she disguised herself well, so it was hard to say. I had to assume she was of some magical slant, but I couldn't tell what.

Maybe a vampire like Dom, but she was better at hiding the evidence than her boyfriend. Dominic Kent was the epitome of tall, dark, and brooding—with centuries of grumpiness stored in his cold, dark heart.

At that point, a young man in a hoodie shuffled toward the car. "Hey girl, are you Trixie—my ride?"

"Not anymore," Dominic snarled. The guy opened his mouth beneath his hoodie, looking like he was going to retort. Dominic spoke first. "Maybe this'll incentivize you to find yourself a new way to get where you're going."

The wiry guy took one look at the wad of cash proffered to him. He snatched it from Dominic's hand, shoved it in his pocket, and shuffled down the sidewalk without a look back .

"Hey!" I moved toward Dominic, shaking with anger. "I needed that fare. You can't just throw cash at every problem and expect it to disappear."

Dominic held up another stack of bills. I practically salivated when I saw the mix of fifties in there. But I had some dignity. Maybe not much, especially after shooting a cork at his eye involuntarily, but I was able to scrounge up a wisp of the stuff.

"I think you should allow him to throw cash at this problem," Emmy whispered to me. "It doesn't make you weak, it makes you intelligent."

"Listen to your friend," Dominic said, though Emmy had spoken so softly only I should've been able to hear her. Aside from, of course, his ridiculous sensory abilities. "Take the money and drive us to the damn event."

"No," I said. "I'll find another fare."

"Stop." Dominic reached out, rested a hand against my wrist. "Please, accept my apology. It's too late to fix it now, and we're all going to the same place."

"So take your Lambo."

Even as I spoke, the Lamborghini peeled away from the curb. Dominic gave a little wrinkle of his nose that somehow made the frightening vampire look borderline adorable. Almost like I wanted to play nice with him, if only for a minute.

"Just take the money," Emmy said anxiously. "We're going to be late to the summit, and if I miss The Fates announcing the names of the candidates, I'm going to hate hex you so hard you're going to wish your biggest problem was having dignity."

I looked at Dom's girlfriend. She shrugged, looking unhappy with the thought of climbing in the back of my car.

"Look, your fare had a load of illegal black fennel on him from behind The Veil. If you would've gotten pulled over for toting him around, you would've been thrown behind bars just for associating with him," Dominic said briskly, like he really didn't want to identify the fact that he'd been doing me a favor by stealing the ride. "Tell me I'm wrong, Vix."

Dom's girlfriend glanced at her stilettos, then to her nails, before turning her perfect pout in my direction. "Dom's not wrong. If someone had lit a cigarette in your car with that guy and his load of black magic ingredients, the whole lot of you would've been..." She flexed her fingers and made an exploding sound. "Better you don't give men like that a ride through town."

"Our car's gone," Dom said. "I'll pay you a fair rate to take us to the summit."

"For Pete's sake, you need the money." Emmy pulled me to the Honda, then nodded over her shoulder. "Get in the back, you two."

At Emmy's urging, I climbed into the driver's seat. My fingers clamped the steering wheel and locked there. Dominic climbed in one side and his girlfriend the other, and I couldn't help a peek in the rearview mirror. There was something unsettling about having two rich, attractive people in my backseat. They definitely looked like they didn't belong.

"Apologies to your girlfriend, Mr. Kent," I said dryly. "We're out of Perrier and mints in your chariot. "

"I'm not his girlfriend," Vix said at the same time Dominic looked out the other window and barked, "Not my girlfriend."

Emmy glanced over to me and mouthed, "Touchy subject?"

I shrugged and pulled out into traffic. This year the summit was being held at the finest hotel in The Hollow. It was a place so far out of my price range that I couldn't afford a bottle of water from the bar. But it was only the best for The Circle—our ruling governing body.

"Have you driven a vehicle before?" Dominic wondered, sounding cross. "The light was red."

"My wheels were in the intersection when it was yellow," I said. "I had to speed up."

Dom cursed as a big Ford truck narrowly missed clipping the back of the car. "Three hundred years of life, and I'm going to go out in a rusty Honda."

Vix gave a derisive snort. "I warned you. You didn't listen. By the way, how do you two know one another?"

"Who, Dominic and me?" I asked. "We don't. We had a run-in behind the building the other day. That's all."

"Pretty strong reaction to meeting your neighbor." Vix raised perfectly manicured eyebrows. "Seems like the two of you harbor a lot of hatred for each other after just one tiny interaction."

"It's pretty easy to dislike a person when they're the reason your whole life is falling apart," I muttered.

Vix looked to Dominic. "I know you can be a force, but even I'm impressed at the rate you've gotten her to dislike you. "

"How am I ruining your life?" Dominic asked me darkly. He did not seem amused by my accusation.

"You're kicking us all out of our homes," I blurted, the fear and panic of the situation really starting to settle into my shoulders. It seemed real now, the fact that the clock was ticking on the amount of time I had left to find a new place to live.

My neck was tense. My head was tense. My pinky toes were tense. Everything was tense. It was unsettling to be sitting this close to Dominic Kent.

The thing was, it wasn't easy for people like me to find a new place to live. People with somewhat lackluster savings accounts and somewhat sad paychecks. The only reason I'd been able to keep my mother's place was because of an old rule grandfathered into The Hollow about family members passing a place down from one generation to the next.

However, there were exceptions to that rule. Like if someone named Dominic Kent got approval from The Circle to sell the entire apartment building. Probably to develop the property into something bigger and flashier. In special cases like that, we indeed could be kicked out.

If Dominic Kent was allowed to sell his apartment building—the building I called home—it would leave me with no place to go. Rent had skyrocketed in The Hollow, and we were a lot of paranormals cramped into a not-all-that-large radius in the middle of New York City. Apartments didn't grow on trees, and I'd be looking at having to move out of The Hollow completely to find a place within my budget. I'd have to start looking into some really exotic places like the suburbs of New Jersey .

Dominic scowled, then looked out of the window again. "It's not personal."

"Not for you," I said. "Though it's pretty crappy for everyone else."

"Find a new place to live," he said. "It's just an apartment. There are plenty of them."

Obviously, this guy lived in a different universe than I did. One where he'd had centuries to build wealth. One in which he'd probably changed addresses so many times that he didn't know what it was like to have a place he cared about.

But it wasn't just the financial side that was a problem. It was more than that. Leaving this apartment meant leaving behind the last remnants of the life I'd shared with my mother behind—the only place that held the good memories captive for me.

My home was like a snow globe, a fragile ornament holding a glimpse of a magical former life that actually meant something. If I shook it, it was like I could watch the glittering memories sparkle for mere seconds before reality hit me again.

It sucked that Dominic Kent had probably been alive for so long that he'd already lost everyone he'd loved. He probably couldn't remember what it was like to care about another place, another person. It was sad for him, and it double-sucked that it was affecting me.

"You really don't have a heart," I said. "You don't care about anybody but yourself. Don't you have enough money without uprooting the whole lot of us for a stupid profit? "

Dominic eyed me curiously, as if he wanted to say something more, but I gave a pathetic shake of my head, knowing my words sounded pitiful. Unfortunately fanged words were all I had as a defense right now.

"We're here," I said shortly, turning into a parking lot so hard that Dominic's head cracked off the glass window as I pulled to an abrupt stop. The handle above the passenger seat fell right off with a clatter as Emmy gripped it like she was on her deathbed. "Call a different ride home, Mr. Kent."

I grabbed a shoulder bag that contained my pink pepper spray, a change of clothes, and toiletries for spending the night. Arguably, my pepper spray would be quite useless in a room full of the most powerful paranormal creatures in the universe, but it was a habit.

Most importantly, my bag contained a small flask of tequila that I'd packed in case my magic started to go on the fritz around all these paranormal types. I had a feeling I might need a few nips of alcohol to keep the tug of magic in my gut from exploding all over everyone around me, seeing as I'd be surrounded by an overwhelming display of magic for the next twenty-four hours.

"Tequila, really?" Dominic joined me as I strode angrily toward the front door. "I thought you were more of a cheap cabernet sort of girl."

I rolled my eyes at him.

"Ah, I see," Dominic said cheekily. "That bottle-to-missile cork was a special launch just for me. I'm flattered to have been your target. "

"Leave me alone," I said. "I have no desire to speak to you ever again. Won't see you ever again, anyway, since you're kicking me out of my home."

"I'm not..." Dom raised those muscled arms in exasperation. "It's a business decision. I'm not kicking you out of anything because I don't like you."

"At least we can agree you're a selfish jerk." I fished in my bag for the summit invitation as we reached the front door of the hotel building that'd been taken over for the weekend's event.

I handed it to the goblin security guard waiting at the door. The goblin sniffed at my bag, wrinkled his nose.

"The scent you're picking up is just tequila," Dom said with a knowing little smirk as he handed over his own embossed invitation. "Nothing magical about it, though I understand the disgust. It's quite vile."

The goblin sniffed again, nodded his head without speaking, though the distaste on his face was evident. Granted, it was pretty low rent booze, but I'd owed Chopstix a lot of money, and I hadn't had a lot extra for superfluous purchases like my purse stash of tequila.

Once we were inside, I pointedly took out my flask. I took my sweet time unscrewing the top as Dominic watched my every move, his eyes filled with an intensely calculating stare. I felt nervous, bare, like he could see right through my dress and beneath my skin.

I took a step closer so that our chests were almost touching. Dom breathed deeply, and I noted it was the first breath he'd taken since I'd met him. As if his breath literally hitched in his throat, and I was amazed at how human, how mortal the gesture made him seem.

Vampires didn't need to breathe all that often. They opted to do it on occasion, especially if they were trying to appear human, but it was more of an afterthought than a basic bodily need.

Dominic didn't move. He was a hard wall of muscle before me, his lips pinching together like it took every inch of restraint he had not to reach out and touch me. Or to knock the bottle of tequila out of my hand that was so offensive to him.

I lifted the bottle, took a deep drag. Then I smacked my lips with relish.

"Now that I smell awful like tequila, you can keep your distance." I took another sip, trying to keep my eyes from watering as the alcohol scorched a trail from my throat to my stomach. "It's really better for us both if you stay away."

Dominic looked like he wanted to say something, but I turned on a high heel, my dress swishing as I moved to find Emmy. I slid an arm through hers, steadying myself, more from the shock of having gotten into Dominic's face than from the alcohol I'd ingested.

"The two of you are burning up this place," Emmy whispered, glancing over her shoulder. "Are you sure you hate him? Because I don't think he hates you. I think he wants to eat you alive."

"He's a vampire," I retorted. "He wants to eat everyone alive."

Emmy laughed, but as she did, she slowed to a stop.

"Wow," she gasped. "This place is incredible. "

I agreed with her, but I supposed the summit wasn't quite as much of a novelty to me as it was to Emmy. As a new witch, she hadn't had much experience with professional paranormal events. She wasn't used to the excess, the glamor, the ritz and pizzazz. She craned her neck, looking around at the lobby.

The Circle had commandeered a five-star hotel, then used their combined magic to pump the venue up to twelve stars. The ceilings had been vaulted higher, the windows stretched larger, the sunlight glowed brighter. The chandeliers were bigger, the fairy lights daintier, the chocolate fountains sweeter. Everything was more. Shiny. Sleek. Perfect.

Events like this were made for people like Dominic Kent, not for people like Trixie Gardens.

Once Emmy got over the gawking stage, events like this would be made for her too. She ate this stuff up, loved it like it was in her DNA. She studied magic like it was her calling. She had the purest, most genuine love for magic out of anyone I'd ever met. She would truly appreciate and respect events like this as she grew in her paranormal status. She wouldn't be sipping gross tequila out of a flask and ignoring her summons letters.

A pinch of guilt sat in my stomach. I felt bad that I'd been invited but not Emmy. I should've been grateful to receive a summons in the first place. But it was hard to feel grateful when it didn't feel like I'd earned it after shucking my magic powers ever since that day.

"Let's go, Trix. They're calling everyone into the auditorium," Emmy announced. "We're running late, and I want to get good seats so we can see everything."

I gave a huge sigh, took one more fortifying swig of tequila, then felt myself being dragged by Emmy as she pulled me toward the place where the future of The Circle would be decided.