Chapter 3

"I can't performwith him there." Zee thrust both hands out, gesturing across the room to where Reynard was frowning over the half-constructed cabinet.

Zee had been absent from the hotel since heading to Razorsedge with Ramone the previous evening, and I'd been preoccupied with a minor emergency in the kitchen that saw the wrong kind of mushrooms almost end up on the menu. The potentially fatal error was only caught because one of Chef étrange's assistants found a stoned gremlin trying to climb into a pie.

I'd only now found time to check the bar, where I'd found Zee, wrapped in a black and purple, silk and leather outfit, tail lashing, arms crossed, glaring at Reynard. There were others in the bar too, enjoying their drinks and socializing.

Reynard had his back to us, and was focused on the cabinet. He probably didn't even know we were here. "He's not even watching."

"But I fucking know he's there." Zee thrust his hands out again, as though the more he gestured, the more I'd get the point.

What was happening here? If he wanted to dance, he could. Reynard was too busy with the cabinet to notice or care.

Tom Collins placed a multicolored cocktail in front of Zee, distracting him, then caught my eye, trying to convey something. Tom was attuned to reading his customers, including dramatic demons. I glanced between him and Zee—who was now guzzling the cocktail like it was water—and then over at Reynard. Nope, I still didn't get it.

"It's not like you to get stage fright?"

"It's not... that's not..." Zee huffed, slumped on a stool, and groaned. "It's fucking worse than that."

Wait... I was lost. Worse than stage fright... and it had something to do with Reynard? Tom Collins caught my eye, and motioned cutting a line across his throat—i.e., stop talking, Adam. What could be worse than Zee being afraid to go up on stage? Was he afraid of Reynard? No, that didn't make any sense. He'd never been afraid of him. So why couldn't Zee dance?

Tom whipped Zee's empty cocktail glass away and replaced it with a fresh one. "Thanks," Zee mumbled, then caught me loitering. "I want him to watch," he whispered, then chased the confession with a gulp of cocktail.

Wait. "What?" Zee was all huffy because Reynard wasn't paying him any attention? Oh. Oooohhh. "Oh."

"Fuck off. I am not into him. Like that. At all. I don't do suckers. Especially humorless, heartless, sticks of ice like Fuck-Hard."

He was definitely into him. "I didn't say anything."

"You said oh." He waved at my face. "Like you do."

I snorted, parked myself on the stool beside Zee, and motioned for Tom to serve my usual whiskey. "Why don't you just ask him if he wants to watch you dance?"

Zee recoiled so hard he almost fell off his stool. "Wait, let me think? Fuck. No."

Tom Collins rolled his eyes. "Man baby."

"The fuck you just call me?" Zee snapped. His wings flared, then gave a little warning shimmer. "Do I look like human spawn to you? Is this exquisite package of demon prowess a pink potato? I think fucking not. Take that back."

"Easy." Tom Collins raised his hands. "What do I know? I'm just an AI, with no emotional depth or ability to experience feelings." He picked up a random glass and wiped it down. "See? Sticking to my script, and doing my fucking job."

Zee glared. His tail whipped back and forth. His wings sizzled.

"Zee?"

"Yes, Adam." He snapped his teeth together.

"Are you okay? You seem a little... tense."

His top lip rippled. "I am not tense. I am abso-fucking-lutely fine. I may have read some Reyzee fanfic and learned a few fucking things about myself, such as, I'm not not into him. And totally unrelated to Fuck-Hard, is that I want to dance. But he's right fucking there." He was gesturing again. "I can't chill, knowing he's there and I maybe want him to watch—that fanfic was fucking hot—and it's the fucking internet's fault." A low growl rumbled out of him. "It should be fucking hashtag Zeenard."

"Okay." Zee was clearly having a fanfic crisis. "Can I help in any way?"

"No. Maybe. Alright. Distract me." He propped his elbows on the bartop, buried his face in his hands, and groaned. "If he takes any longer making that cabinet we'll all be dead of old fucking age," he mumbled, then breathed in and looked up at me. His eyes sparkled, a little more softly than before. The little smile was real too. "He used a ruler, Kitten. A fuckin' ruler, to check the corners were perfect. Who the fuck uses a ruler to make furniture?"

"A set square," Reynard interrupted, appearing behind him.

Zee jolted. His wings popped out, to balance himself, and would have knocked Reynard over if he hadn't neatly sidestepped them. "Sweet baby Gareth. Vampire, you were this close to getting my knuckles through your fangs. A square what now?"

"Gareth?" I asked.

"Baby Gareth?" Zee explained. "Son of human God?"

I glanced at Reynard, who arched an eyebrow. "I think it's maybe, baby Jesus?" I offered.

"Gareth? Jesus?" Zee shrugged. "What does it matter? Reynard almost got my fist in his face."

Reynard added, "It likely matters to several billion humans."

Zee flung a hand at me. "Adam is human, and he doesn't know Gareth's name. Maybe these humans should get their names straight?"

"I am definitely human," I agreed.

A moment of tense silence fell over the three of us, until Reynard cleared his throat. "It's called a set square." He raised the little triangular measuring tool Zee had seen him use in making the cabinet. "For measuring exact angles."

Zee squinted. "That's clearly a fucking triangle."

"You are correct. It's triangular in shape. But it's called a set square." Reynard placed it into his shirt pocket. Did he just happen to have a set square hanging around, or did he carry one with him at all times for angular emergencies? "Regardless, Adam, I'll continue the cabinet's construction tomorrow. I'm needed elsewhere this evening. I will return."

"Okay, sure?—"

"Or, you know? Here's a thought. Don't come back at all?" Zee suggested. "Just an option. It's good to have options. Think about it."

Reynard ignored Zee's advice, and bowed his head. "Good evening, Adam... Zodiac."

We watched Reynard scoop up his jacket, hook it over his shoulder, and leave the bar. "He's trying," I told Zee.

"Yeah, he fucking is."

I picked up my whiskey, Zee picked up his replenished fancy cocktail, and we sat a while in silence, sipping our drinks. I needed to approach the idea of seeing his contract, but now was definitely not the time to bring up Sebastien or Razorsedge.

Zee sighed. "Ever since we found him in Vampire Mansion, all fucked-up, I've been... feeling things." A shudder ran from his horns to his toes, then back up his wings.

He'd seen Reynard vulnerable, and he'd stood up for him. He'd cared. I understood. Because I cared too. "It's not wrong to care about someone."

He sat upright. "For you, maybe..." His eyes widened. "Wait ... It's your fault! Your need to fuck him has rubbed off on me."

I spluttered my whiskey. "That's not—it's not like that. I don't, I mean, it's just?—"

"That's it! You're gagging for his cock, and since I'm tuned into you, so am I. It's not me at all. Fuck, that was close." A strained, slightly panicked laugh fell out of him. "Imagine wanting to fuck a vampire. Ugh, yuck." He grimaced.

Uh. I did sort of want to do that.

"No offense." His smile flopped and faded from his face as a new thought ruined his mood again.

Maybe he was right. I definitely had a thing for Victor Reynard, but most of that was mixed up in the fangs-in-neck scenario. Was Zee angry about his secondhand lust for Reynard? We hadn't really talked about feelings or relationships, mostly because he'd made it clear that whatever relationship we had wasn't supposed to be more than business with benefits.

"I just wanted to come back here after going to Razorsedge," he said, sulking again. "But he's here. And I was going to fucking dance, but then I got to thinking about what would happen if he watched and liked it, and it messed with my head, and then you arrived, and here we are. Fuck. I'm not usually this messed up. It's Daddy Fuck-Hard's fault."

He had feelings for a vampire, which I suspected was a demon no-no. He'd also had to go back to Sebastien to find a friend who had gone missing. Then there was the opening of the hotel, and the shadowbeast who had tried to kill him—it was a lot to handle. And because Zee was so... Zee... I sometimes forgot, not everything rolled off him like water off a demon's wings. "How can I help?"

"You're sweet, Kitten. I'm okay." He breathed in through his nose, nostrils flaring. "But back at the club, I—" He swallowed his words, and tried again. "You ever cut yourself off from a part of you, and hidden it so deep that you don't recognize it anymore? I mean, if you try to be that person, you can't?"

More than he could ever know. "A little," I admitted.

Zee winced, and sighed hard. "Forget it. I'm just hungry. I haven't eaten in like, forever. Wanna get wasted and fuck?"

"An admirable solution to almost all problems, I find," Tom Collins piped up before I could attempt an answer. "Besides the fucking part. Unfortunately, your cheap asses made it so I am not equipped with that bonus package."

Zee's eyes lit up. "There's an upgrade for that?"

Oh dear. "Tom, can we maybe get some space here?"

"I'm a few lines of code away from a sexbot," Tom unhelpfully explained, with a little gleam in his brown eyes.

No, this wasn't happening. I did not need an incubus demon and a sexbot in the hotel bar.

"You don't say." Zee sat straighter, his interest piqued. "How does that work, then?" He circled his hand, gesturing below the bar. "You got much going on down there?"

"Buy the upgrade, then fuck around and find out." Tom grinned. "Refill your cock-tail, sir?"

"Fuck." Zee chuckled, holding out his glass for a top up. "We should definitely get that upgrade," he said, watching Tom Collins saunter off to serve another customer.

"We aren't getting that upgrade, and you can't have sex with the AI bartender. It would be inappropriate. Like having sex with the jukebox." I gestured at the neon jukebox sitting in the corner, playing a jazzy record.

Zee glanced over, then back. "You say that like I haven't."

"What?"

"What?"

I narrowed my eyes. He hadn't. Had he? How was that even possible? Did it... have holes?

Zee's eyebrows jumped.

He was joking. Wasn't he? I laughed. "No sexbot."

He pulled a sad face and made his wings droop. "Buzzkill."

"Even if I wanted to upgrade Tom, which I don't, we don't have the money for upgrades."

"Ugh, everything is so much easier when the answer is always to fuck it." Zee slumped hard against the bar. "Tell me something good. Anything. Good news only. Lay it on me."

"Uh... nobody died in the hotel today?" Did that count?

He rolled his head to face me and arched an eyebrow. "Was someone going to?"

"There was an incident with a gremlin, some mushrooms, and a pie."

He blinked, but his smile grew. "I fucking love this place. It must stay shitty and broken forever."

We chinked our glasses and toasted to the hotel, our fabulous sanctuary for the fiendish. "We could maybe fix the elevator though?"

"Yeah, for sure," he agreed. "It's a fucking death trap."

"One of the back windows fell out yesterday."

He snorted a laugh.

It felt good, the two of us. Felt like it had while we'd fixed up the hotel, just him and me, working toward something new and good. And now that Zee's tension had fizzled away, it might be a good time to mention his contract with Sebastien.

"So—"

"I have to go back again," he said, not needing to explain where. Razorsedge.

"When?"

"Tonight."

An acidic burn tainted my tongue. The toxic taste of Sebastien. "You don't have to go anywhere though, you know. He can't force you."

He raised his eyes, and there was that defeat. The same defeat I'd seen when Sebastien barked orders at him. He didn't even want to fight. "If only that were true."

"Maybe if I could take a look at your contract, I might be able to?—"

He laughed. "No fucking way."

"If you could leave Sebastien tomorrow, would you?"

Zee smiled, but the rest of him remained very still as he held himself in check. Only his tail twitched. "You gotta ask?"

"Show me the contract, Zee, and I'll find a way. I promise."

He shook his head, ruffling his hair. "There's no fucking point. It's unbreakable. You think I'm the first one who's tried to get out of it? It doesn't happen. And I don't want you anywhere near him or any of that shit."

It was a bit late for that. "But I can help."

"No, Adam," he said sternly. "Give me your word. Don't go near Sebastien. Stay out of it."

I couldn't promise that when I was already in the middle of it. I frowned into my whiskey glass, feeling guilty, and kinda defeated too. I wanted to help. I could help. Why wouldn't he let me?

"Adam?" he growled. "Promise me."

"I can't do that."

"Look at me."

I turned my head and faced him. His serious expression left no room for smirks and glittering eyes. He braced an arm on the bar, and leaned in so close I had to look up to meet his gaze. Close enough to kiss. Close enough, it was just him and me in the whole world. I could taste my heart and feel how, whenever we came together, it felt as though continents shifted and the stars aligned.

"If you get hurt because of me, I'll lose my fucking mind," Zee whispered. His hands—always fluttering and gesturing—settled on my face. His tail looped around my ankle, holding tight. "Razorsedge and Sebastien are my shit, Kitten. They can't touch you. You're too... you. You're this place. You're the good I come back to, the good shit I need to always be here. Can you just be that?"

I kept my lips pinned shut, but nodded. I'd always be here for him. I wasn't going to promise him I'd back off when I knew I could pry him out from under Sebastien's heel. But if he wasn't going to show me his contract, then I'd have to get it another way. Sebastien had already killed to prove a point. He might kill Zee, just because he could. And he'd made it clear Zee was just meat to him. But Zee was so much more. It hurt, looking at him looking at me, thinking he had to protect me, when I should be the one protecting him.

It hurt, that he didn't think he was worth fighting for.

"Zee, I..." I placed my hand over his on the bar—always so warm—and I tucked my fingers around his. "Don't let him tell you you're worthless."

He huffed, shrugged, and backed off, taking his hand from mine. "Babycakes, I'm fucking priceless, and I know it."

Did he, though?

He wasn't going to listen to me, but there was another way to make him understand. Plus, he was hungry, so it would kill two birds with one stone. I slid off the stool, and leaned into his shoulder. "Your room or mine?"

His eyes widened, then narrowed. "Are you offering a pity fuck?"

I smiled, and batted my lashes. "I'm offering whatever you want."