CHAPTER ONE: Welcome back to Zeus’ Watering Hole

CHAPTER ONE: Welcome back to Zeus’ Watering Hole

Nika dropped four chowder bowls with a spectacular crash. Pieces of seafood and ceramic flew in all directions. One giant shard flew across the wooden floor and embedded itself in the leg of a chair and – thankfully – not in the occupier of said chair. Another piece bounced and jumped across the other side of the floor of the bar area and landed in a sleeping dog’s fur. The dog’s owner, whose feet the dog was lying over, looked perturbed, to say the least, but his scowl quickly faded and was replaced with a look of fear when he saw that it was an Arae who had dropped the dishes.

The definition of perfection of her species, that was what Nika’s mother had called her when she was born. Tall and lithe, with pearl white hair, eyes and skin, she had been born to chase and curse the Souls who came to the Underworld after they had made statements under oath and broken them, deliberately deceiving others.

A pity then that she hadn’t wanted to do that job. Instead, she’d found a love for putting all that chasing energy into something she found productive – serving the finest food in all of Asphodel Meadows as the lead maître d’. That was, when she wasn’t dropping said food.

“Gods dammit!”

“Are you okay?” Tomas, a lanky dryad Nika had been training as a waiter for the past three months, asked as he appeared in front of her.

“Do I look okay?” Nika muttered. She began to carry the remaining plates towards the back. As soon as she turned the corner that separated the staff from the diners, Garth rounded on her.

“I’m trying to run a dinner service, and here you are throwing my food all over the floor,” he drawled.

“Yes, well, perhaps if you’d put enough staff on tonight, I wouldn’t have to run myself ragged and make such clumsy mistakes,” Nika spat back, letting the ruined plates clatter into the bin.

“I know you’re stressed but I’d watch your tone, Nika. I’m still your boss.”

“You watch it,” she hissed back. “We’ve had a hundred and fifty covers tonight, Garth, and you’ve only given me three waiters! Three!” Nika’s voice went up an octave until it was an uncomfortable screech to anyone who was eavesdropping, which happened to be the entire kitchen team. “You ask too much of us, Garth!”

“We all knew forgoing the libations agreement was going to be a bit tight on the way we run things around here, that we were all going to have to make sacrifices. This is that sacrifice.”

Nika rolled her eyes. She wasn’t going to get into this argument with Garth again, not here. Not now.

In the aftermath of the cook-off food festival last year, when Garth had sacrificed the prize tokens for his new hire Rae, he’d somehow got it in his proud head that he no longer needed the libation deal with Zeus. The libation deal, where for fifty percent of their profits, Zeus made sure that half of the drinks and food offered in the earthly realm were to Garth. As a result, mortals often sought out Garth’s pub first when they travelled to the Underworld, thinking they’d find favour with him after half a lifetimes worth of offerings.

It had made the pub quite popular.

It was a costly brand deal, essentially. One set up by Garth’s great-great granddaddy. But after centuries of winning Hades cook-off, Garth assumed his work and reputation stood well enough on their own merit, and ended the agreement to claw back some more of the profits.

He hadn’t foreseen that Zeus would take the split so badly.

Perhaps, Nika thought for the millionth time, he shouldn’t have told the petulant God of Gods to also settle up his tab. As a result, Olympus was going out of its way to make Zeus’ Watering Hole the place for the obsolete. No libations meant fewer new Souls knew of them. The ones that did know of Garth’s place liked to go to the places Olympians were seen dining in, and the other members of the Olympic Twelve had been making their way down to the Underworld to – very deliberately – visit other eateries in the area.

The dead liked to gossip, and the gossip was that this place was losing its touch, fast.

For now, the team were just managing to hang on to the post cook-off momentum, but Garth had already started cutting corners – like the number of staff on shift.

“This isn’t sacrifice, this is slave labour,” Nika said.

Garth stepped forward until they were standing toe to toe. “I’d be very careful about the next words that come out of your mouth.”

Nika opened her mouth when a low voice cut in.

“That’s enough, both of you. The guests can hear you.” Rae’s quiet voice was all the more powerful for it, as her head nodded towards the part of the restaurant they could all see.

“Fine,” Nika said, blowing out a breath, causing her pale blonde hair to flutter in the air before settling around her harsh cheekbones.

“Fine,” Garth agreed, running one of his scaled hands through his slick black hair, a curl of it falling over his forehead as he did so. “You’re off for the rest of the night, Nika. You clearly need the rest.”

“You can’t—”

“I just did.”

Nika crossed her arms over a flat chest. “We’re already short-staffed and struggling, and you want to take me off the shift? You’re out of your mind!”

At that moment, tall and gangly Tomas stepped into the archway of the small area between the guests tables and the kitchen, a dustpan and brush enchantingly sweeping up alongside him. Inside the dustpan; the rest of Nika’s broken bowls.

“Tomas can take on your tables. There’s only an hour left, it’s only a few extra tables and dessert orders. You can handle that, can’t you Tomas? Nika’s definitely trained you  well enough for that?”

“Yes, sir. Not a problem.”

Garth smiled wide and slyly at Nika.

“That’s settled then.”

She wanted to slap the smile off his smug face. She debated doing it, too, until she felt a little touch on her elbow.

At first she thought it was Rae. Rae who had been the catalyst for all this change in the first place. Garth’s soft spot for the other Arae had led to him jeopardising the one place and the only job Nika had ever loved. On top of that, Rae had the nerve to have a perfectly-imperfect demeanour, where nothing was ever too much trouble for her to take on. It grated against Nika, who had always been taught that perfection was the standard to attain.

Luckily, it wasn’t her who touched Nika, but Lexie – the grill chef – instead.

“Want to take a fire stick break with me?”

Nika released a breath, rolling her shoulders and cracking her neck. “Sure.”

Before she turned to leave, she pointed a long, pale finger at Tomas. “You better not screw it up.”

Tomas gulped and nodded.

“The boy will be fine, Nika,” Garth drawled.

She sent him a glower and made her way back through the kitchen to the service entrance outside, where Lexie was waiting for her, fire stick in hand. The voluptuous vampiric demon, taller still than Nika, looked down at her with an expression that suggested Nika had been out of line back inside. Nika scowled back at her, feeling like a chastised child.

“What?” she said, as she snatched the fire stick Lexie offered her, lit it, and took a long drag.

Lexie shrugged. “Seems like you’re going out of your way to make sure you aren’t Garth’s favourite anymore.”

“Oh please, I haven’t been Garth’s favourite ever since his little right-hand Rae in there showed up.”

“She’s been good for business. You, on the other hand, I hear almost just decapitated a dog with a plate shard.”

“Hardly on purpose.”

“That’s not the point, is it? You’re making mistakes, noticeable ones.”

“Isn’t everyone allowed to make mistakes?” Nika snapped.

Lexie snorted out a laugh, smoke billowing out her nostrils. “For anyone else, yes. But I’ve known you since we were five, running around in Tartarus. You don’t make mistakes. You make, what is it you call them? That’s right – calculated moves.”

“So?”

“So? What’s the gameplan here, Nika?”

Nika was about to open her mouth and tell her long-time friend exactly what she planned to do about Garth’s newfound independence, when Yani poked his head out of the service entrance, a loose curl of his wet hair bouncing around his forehead from under his chef’s cap.

“Lexie, someone’s just put through an order for oxen steaks – and I know you’ll kill me if I grill them like a fish.”

“Damn straight I’ll kill you. Those cost a fortune to trade for, and that’s once you find them,” Lexie muttered. “I’ll be right there.”

Then she turned back to Nika. “Are you going to be okay?”

Nika waved her off. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you.”

Enjoying the fresh night air on her skin, Nika spent the next five minutes listening to the clattering sounds of the kitchen behind her. The sounds felt just far enough removed to not feel like her problem, especially when she was looking out at a quiet cobbled street. Firebugs danced in the air above her, the trees rustled and swayed as the wind nymphs danced through them. Occasionally the odd deity, daemon, or Soul would wander past.

Nika didn’t feel like going home. She felt like a drink.

***

“Another one, bar keep.”

Savvas refilled her glass with golden wine for the fourth time, that delightful glugging noise that came out of the bottle making Nika sigh.

“Thank you.”

“You’re going to regret this in the morning, you know.”

“I have no regrets, Savvas,” Nika said, swirling the liquid while looking him square in the eye. “I only have calculated moves and consequences. And my calculated move right now is to continue to drink this delicious nectar you brewed.”

“Suit yourself. A warning though, boss man is heading over this way.” Savvas nodded behind him as he went back to drying glasses.

The bar was almost empty now, there was only one straggler at the other end of the bar. Garth had sent the chefs home, the only one still in the kitchen was Melamene. Being the pastry chef really did suck when it came to being the last one to get to clock off. All the wait staff had clocked off too, all that was apart from Tomas, who was cleaning the coffee machine and waiting for the final table to pay their tab.

Nika watched as Ross – their water nymph in charge of the dishwasher – delivered a caddy full of clean crockery to place on the coffee shelves above Tomas’ head; a collection of terracotta kylikes with different designs on them that made the shelves as decorative as they were storage.

“What are you still doing here, Nika? I told you to go home,” Garth said behind her.

“This is my home.”

“Don’t be glib.”

“I’m not.” Nika hiccuped.

“How much have you had to drink?”

“I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Reeeeeally.”

“I’m about to walk Rae home. You want me to walk you, too? Or are you going to let Savvas here take you home once he’s closed up tonight?”

“I don’t need walking home like your precious Rae. Where is she, anyway?”

“Doing your job of making sure all the tables are set up for tomorrow.”

“Well,” – another hiccup – “if you’d have let me stay on, that wouldn’t be a problem now, would it?”

Garth let out a sigh and took the bar stool next to her. “Look, Nika, I know you’re not happy about my decision to step away from the libation agreement. But it’s not like it was going to last forever anyway. You and I both know more and more mortals choose to believe in different gods these days. Hell, some of them choose to do away with all of us altogether. I know now is the time for us to strike out on our own. You have to trust me on that, because I can’t have you going around causing fissures in the team with your insubordination.”

“Insubordination? When have I ever been … subordinate?”

The only indication that she’d managed to get under Garth’s skin was a brief clench of his fist that was resting on the bar.

“You know what I mean. You know the sway you have on the team. I’m just asking you to trust me, to back me.”

“Trust is a tricky commodity. Slippery as one of those eels in the Cocytus river.”

Garth rose from his chair, and tapped with his fist briefly on the bar when he saw Rae coming round the corner, coat in hand. “Yeah, well Nika, have I ever let you down before?”

Nika threw her head back and tipped the rest of the golden liquid down her elongated throat. When she looked forward again, Garth and Rae were gone.

“No,” Nika said, staring at her now-empty glass. “But that’s not to say you won’t.”