change your mind, want something else, you let me know.”
“I don’t do drugs, Julio.”
He looked affronted. “Hey, I’m a full-service dealer. Herbs, homeopathic, healthy stuff. Legal, even. Chinese medicine. Not just party powders and pharmaceuticals.” He looked over her shoulder. “At the bar. El turista. I think he wants you.”
Sailor turned. A customer, swiveling on his barstool, was snapping his fingers, signaling her. El turista was what Julio called any customer he considered too ignorant to be local and this one confirmed the designation by drawling, “Waitress, hand me one of the menus you got there.”
“Customer,” she said, “I’d be happy to.” She strolled toward him, holding out a laminated menu. “But is that how you get your wife’s attention, by snapping your fingers? Because here in L.A. that’s how we summon our dogs. And I’m not your golden retriever.”
Before she could reach the customer, Kristoff stepped in front of her, taking the menu. He handed it to el turista, then steered Sailor toward the kitchen. “I don’t know if you’re sick or hung over or what your problem is,” he hissed, “but talking to a customer like that? I’d fire you right now if we weren’t overbooked tonight, with two waiters calling in sick. You’re on very thin ice. Are we clear?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. You’d better give me a five-star performance the rest of your shift. I see three tables in your section needing attention. And I believe your appetizers are up.”
He marched off, leaving her to retrieve two burning-hot plates laden with crab cakes. He was filling up her section all at once, and she wasn’t going to be able to handle it, not in her condition. But she couldn’t handle being fired either. Jobs were scarce, and it had taken footwork, luck and family connections to score this one. She wasn’t letting it go without a fight.
“Julio,” she said, before heading back out onto the floor. “There’s this tea made of twigs and things, and—”
“Chinese?”
“No. It’s some Gaelic word, starts with an s. Tastes awful. I know it’s a long shot, but—”
“Síúlacht.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s it.”
“Yeah, I have some. Not the tea. Capsules. My supplier, he gets them from some Druid lady in the Valley. Hang tight, mija, I’ll get them.”
* * *
Other than being clearly exhausted, Sailor looked good, Declan thought, watching her from the far end of the bar. She looked better than good, in fact, communicating with Dennis in waitress/bartender shorthand, garnishing the drinks on her tray with speed and precision. She was dressed as someone’s idea of a French maid, a sleeveless dress in black velvet, with a ridiculously short skirt. Someone’s idea of sexy.
Okay, she was his idea of sexy, too. Especially her long legs, in black stockings with a seam down the back, stockings that showed a bit of thigh at the top. Her wild hair was pinned up, with one errant lock in her eyes, but she didn’t have a free hand to deal with it, so she kept tossing her head, which didn’t solve the problem but gave her the look of a spirited filly. He wondered what she would do if he walked over and pinned it back for her. By his calculations she had to be close to the breaking point, and he searched for an opportunity to step in and...what? Stop her from keeling over, perhaps, when the síúlacht abruptly left her system. What he would like to do was pick her up and carry her into one of the back rooms and lay her down on a Queen Anne sofa.
From there his thoughts turned to darker, more erotic images.
* * *
Julio found Sailor while she stood at the bar, waiting for a drink order, eyes closed, asleep on her feet, like a horse.
He slipped the síúlacht into her pocket.
She opened her eyes with a start, pulled one of the pills from her pocket and sniffed it, then nodded. The pills were rough to the touch, and she imagined grass and twigs compressed hundreds of times, hardened into a caplet. “They smell just like the tea,” she said.
He nodded. “The same, I promise. I gave you two. You take one now, you save one.”
“I owe you.”
Julio shrugged. “You take care of me, mija, so I take care of you.”
She felt as if she was going to go into a coma waiting for Dennis to fill her drink order and knew she was fast reaching the point where she wouldn’t care about her job, her customers or the state