Chapter 7

Chapter 7

T he Last Drop was not where Fey had envisioned spending the rest of her evening.

And as far as night clubs went, it didn't have a lot going for it. Sure, the music was great, the atmosphere dark and dripping with sex…

But why in all hell had Joy picked a Fallen nightclub?

Fey sighed, drumming her fingertips on the table, watching a bull-horned Demon chatting up a wide-eyed Doe Shifter two tables over. She should have put up more of a fight when Joy had insisted that the three of them go out to celebrate with Willow. But Willow had been so thrilled with the idea of going out in the Eternal City, of spending time with them all, and getting to know her new sisters. And Joy? Well… how can you say no to those big puppy dog eyes of hers when she had her mind set on something?

You couldn't. The world would stop spinning the day she said no to Joy when she got that look in her eyes.

But now with the excitement of Willow's trials and progress behind them, and her muscles starting to grow heavy from a full day of training, Fey couldn't help but feel like she'd rather be back in their rooms luxuriating in a hot bath. Hell, she thought, she'd take a lukewarm shower over this place. Usually, Fey was all for the nightlife of the city, happy to dance and drink the night away with her sisters at her side, stumbling back to their rooms at dawn exhausted and still a little drunk. With their sigils hidden and their masks, their gear, back at home, it was one of the few times they were all allowed out to be themselves. But today she just couldn't get into the spirit of it.

It didn't help that this wasn't one of their usual clubs. Fey had never even heard of this club before tonight. It was in the Fallen section of the city, on the outskirts of the Shifter district, and the clientele reflected that. Looking around at all the Shifters, Demons, and even a few Vampires filling up the dance floor, Fey would have bet a full gold mark that they were the only Witches there tonight.

The heavy bass of the club's music beat in time with the growing pulse of her headache as Fey watched Joy and Willow sashay their way through the crowd to their booth, both Witches looking perfectly in their element here. Joy's golden blonde hair spilled over her bare tan shoulders as she moved seductively across the dance floor. Her turquoise dress clung to her like a second skin, and more than a few men turned to watch her as the crowd parted to make room for her.

Next to her, Willow looked almost modest in comparison. She wore her hair down, the highlights in her natural curls catching the flashing lights of the dance floor. She'd picked a corset top and tight black jeans to wear tonight—by far the most clothing out of all of them.

Compared to what Lilith was wearing tonight, Willow looked positively pious.

Fey had raided Joy's closet, and though she was just a tad curvier than Joy, her clothes usually fit just fine. Tonight, she wore the twin to Joy's turquoise dress, in ivory white, though Fey's curves pulled the hem a little higher on her thighs and showed a bit more cleavage. The color made her red hair pop, and from the way men in the club were looking at her, she knew she could have her pick from the crowd tonight.

Joy deposited their drinks on the table and pushed one in front of Fey. "Where's Lilith?" she asked, yelling to be heard over the music.

Fey smiled and motioned across the neon lighting of the dance floor and toward the bathrooms, where she'd seen Lilith disappear a few minutes previously. It had taken Lilith less than a minute to find and capture the hottest male in the club—a Lion Shifter by the look of him. By the time they'd headed off together, her hands were already fumbling with his fly and his had been making their way down the front of her dress.

"Oh!" Joy's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. Willow giggled, and Fey grinned and winked at her.

They never begrudged their sister for her casual hookups, and Fey certainly never judged her for it. In fact, Fey envied her. Lilith always returned from these nameless boys with a smile on her face and a look of deep satisfaction.

Whereas Fey… well… Fey never felt anything after a one-night stand but a deep desire to take a hot shower.

Lilith lived and breathed sex, and it invoked something in her Fey never understood. In Fey's experience, men knew so little about the female body it was a shock they managed to put their dick in the right hole. She'd had her fill of fumbling, slobbery encounters in the last few years—Lilith was welcome to all of them, as far as she was concerned.

Fey took a sip of her drink while Joy and Willow shimmied into the booth, pausing at the taste. She held the seltzer in her mouth, registering Joy's eyes on her as she swallowed. Fey's smile never slipped as she set the glass down, grinning at Willow like nothing was out of the ordinary.

"Hello, my loves," Lilith purred, strutting up to the table. Whoever the Shifter was, he must have done a damn good job based on the wobble in her step and the satisfied glaze in her eyes. Lilith grabbed the unclaimed glass from the table and downed her vodka in a single gulp.

"Dance with me, little sister," she cooed at Willow. Willow grinned and hopped out of the booth, not needing to be told twice. Before they turned to the dance floor Lilith cocked an eyebrow at Joy and Fey, an invitation to join them.

"I want to finish my drink first!" Joy said, beaming, and Fey just shook her head with a smile. Lilith nodded, and Fey watched the crowd split around her and Willow as they joined the dance floor.

"So," Fey said casually, toying with the tiny plastic straw in her drink. "Do you want to tell me why you and I are drinking seltzer tonight?"

Joy's smile faded for a moment as she chewed her lip. Fey should have noticed right away, should have smelled the difference in the drinks when Joy had set them down—two vodka sodas, two seltzers, looking almost identical.

"This is where she came," Joy said, finally. "This is where Alice was the night she died."

The words were such a shock Fey nearly choked on her drink. Her hand shook as she set her glass back down on the table. "How do you know?" she asked.

"Security cameras," Joy answered, voice barely above a whisper. Her smile was back like they were just two friends chatting it up, but it was a mask. Joy was rattled, and it had been a long time since Fey had seen her rattled. "I spent hours combing through footage from all around the city. Alice was here the night she died, and then she left and didn't go anywhere else but to the safe house."

Fey schooled her face to match Joy's, smiling at men as they walked by their booth. It wasn't hard. She'd perfected this exact smile over the years—just enough to look seductive, but not enough to look welcoming, not enough to convince any of them to approach. It was a smile that said you can look, but you can't touch.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Fey asked. She tried to keep the anger from coloring her voice. Tried, and failed.

Joy's smile didn't waiver for so much as a second when she answered. "I'm telling you now, aren't I?"

Fey let the information sink in. This was good, she decided, even as her heart broke all over again. This was a lead; this was one step closer to finding her killer, to finding out what had happened.

Fey never drank during an assignation. Trust Joy to think of that. Joy was a tactile genius, after all, always thinking at least two steps ahead of everyone else. Fey needed every brain cell at full capacity, and something about alcohol messed with her connection with Water—not a lot, but just enough that it could be a problem.

And a risk, even a small one like that, could be the difference between living and dying in their line of work.

Joy wanted her alert, wanted Fey at her best. And she was trusting her with this tonight.

"Alright," Fey sighed. "We're here. You have my support. What do we do now?"

Water, Water, gives us life.

Heals our ills, and calms our strife.

Fire, Fire, born to fight.

Brings us pain, and rage and light

Earth, Earth, sure and calm.

Stubborn often, but rarely wrong.

Air, Air, fast and quick.

Smart and clever, full of wit.

The chorus from a children's nursery rhyme bounced through Fey's head as Joy outlined her plan. Joy was, without a doubt, the smartest Witch she'd ever met.

"This place has cameras everywhere," Joy explained. Her eyes darted quickly to a few stationed around the nightclub, a subtle look that Fey followed. She was right—Fey could see at least a few of them. They weren't even hidden. "The owner must have a voyeurism kink, I think—there isn't a single corner in this place that's not being watched. But I can't access it since it's all on a closed system."

"‘Closed system' meaning?"

"Meaning the cameras are recording but not connected to the internet or any outside source. Everything must be saved and managed here, locally. Which is good news and bad news. The bad news is I can't get the footage using my usual ways. No hacking, no breaking in remotely and getting the files we need that way."

"And the good news?"

Joy had beamed at her. "The good news is you're going to steal it for us."

And that's how they ended up here, standing in a dark corner past the bathrooms on the second floor of the nightclub. The VIP area was a few feet away, guarded by a massive Shifter who was built like a brick wall of muscle and body odor .

They were far enough from the action on the dance floor that the music was dulled to a tolerable level. The smell of desperation and cheap liquor that permeated the lower floor was barely perceptible up here. It was a relief, honestly, and Fey found herself thinking she could learn to like this place if she could manage to get a table behind the VIP rope.

"I was here a few nights ago staking out the place, and the owner's office is down the hallway on the left," Joy said, pressing an object into Fey's hand. "Get in, find a computer, and slip this into the USB port. I programmed this one myself. It should download everything I need in a matter of minutes."

Air, air, Fast and quick. Smart and clever, full of wit. Fey laughed softly, to herself. "Joy, you never cease to amaze me."

Joy smiled brightly back at her, blue eyes sparkling. "I know."

The mountain of a security guard beside the VIP rope hadn't seen them yet. Joy eyed him, chewing her lip in concentration.

"Ready?" Joy asked. Fey nodded next to her, and Joy took a deep breath.

The calm, confident assassin Fey knew disappeared in an instant and appeared nothing at all like the hysterical Witch who stumbled forward toward the bouncer.

"Oh, thank the Goddess," Joy gasped, her voice strangled with fear and panic. Fey pushed herself against the wall, further into the shadows, struggling to remain unnoticed.

"You have to help, they're fighting!" Tears pooled in Joy's eyes as she closed the distance between them and reached for the Shifter, all but collapsing against his arm.

"What do you mean? Who's fighting?" he asked in a gruff voice, but she was already pulling him away from the rope, already leading him further into the club. And, like men always do, he followed her, letting her pull him along by his sleeve.

"There's no time, they're going to kill each other!" she sobbed. " Please! You have to stop them!"

Fey had to hand it to her, watching Joy lead the confused Shifter away, Joy could have been an actress.

She probably wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much, though.

The moment they were out of sight Fey ducked under the velvet rope separating the VIP from the ordinary patrons below. She rolled her eyes as she slipped past, heading for the hallway Joy had indicated.

Velvet rope , she thought to herself. What a fucking pretentious cliché.

In the hallway, the music from below was almost imperceptible. It was still dark back here, and Fey used it to her advantage, keeping to the shadows stretching down the hallway to stay hidden until she reached the owner's office.

She tried the door.

Locked. Of course. Not a surprise, but also not a problem, especially for her. Fey had mastered unlocking sigils when she was fourteen.

Fey placed her finger on the wood of the door and drew the complex symbol against the grain. She was rewarded by the audible click of the deadbolt retreating as the door unlocked. Sparing one more glance down the hallway to make sure she hadn't been seen, Fey opened the door just a crack and slipped inside, shutting the door behind her.

The office inside was unoccupied, just as Joy promised, but for a brief moment, Fey assumed she must have had the wrong room. She sure as hell hadn't expected the manager to have an office like this.

It was… cozy.

The entire room was furnished in solid wood, from the heavy desk that dominated the middle of the space, to the bookcases lining the walls. Full bookcases, Fey noticed with appreciation. What she wouldn't give to spend a few hours here, picking out a nice book, lounging in the huge oak and velvet armchair near the desk, sipping something hot and sweet…

But Fey didn't have a few hours, so she pushed the fantasy out of her head. Joy couldn't guarantee how long the office would be empty, and she needed to get to work.

There was a laptop open on the desk and no other computer in sight, so Fey figured it was their best shot. She moved around the desk, making sure to keep the door in her line of sight, and fumbled with Joy's thumb drive before connecting it to the laptop. It emitted a pleasant electronic hum as it went to work.

The giant oak desk was covered in sheets of paper, some haphazardly separated into stacks, and Fey flipped through a few curiously, looking for… something. If Alice had been here in this club, if her investigation le d her to this place, there had to be something here explaining why, some piece of evidence to help them figure out what had happened to her.

A cursory glance through the pages scattered on the desk didn't reveal anything interesting, and the thumb drive continued to hum, so she tried opening one of the desk drawers instead.

Jackpot .

The top drawer opened without so much as an unlocking sigil, and Fey found herself looking down at a row of carefully organized manila folders. She picked through them at random, pulling out a few to read what lay inside. It was mostly invoices and receipts, exactly the sort of boring documentation you'd expect from managing a club.

Fey sighed, frustrated.

She didn't know what she had expected. A folder marked "Here's what happened to Alice Kelly"? Still, the disappointment left a sour taste in her mouth.

Joy's drive gave one final hum and went silent. Perfect, Fey thought. She returned the file she was flipping through—some sort of expense report for liquor—to the drawer and was just about to reach for Joy's thumb drive when a voice growled from behind her.

"Just what the fuck do you think you're doing in my office?"

Fey squealed and twisted around to find herself trapped between the desk and a Vampire.

And just her luck—he looked angry enough to rip her limb from limb.