not much fun sitting in here with you two, is it?” I shot back. The djinn are all the same: pale androgynous creatures with elongated features that look alien and a bit unsettling. They’re not much for conversation either.
The djinn and his twin fell into step behind me as I glided across the room under the pretense of making myself a drink, shooing away one of the otherworldly servants I employ as bartender and listening to the conversations of those around me. So far, no one knew that I was intimately connected with the EHJ, and I intended to keep it that way. No one would spill their guts to someone who could potentially tattle on them to the authorities.
Two men magic-users, who I had heard vague rumblings about starting a magic-user biker gang, were having a few beers and discussing me.
“What’s she doing out here?”
“Dunno. She never comes out.”
“Still smoking hot.”
“Acts like she’s so much better than everyone else, though.”
“Maybe she is.”
I smiled and took a sip of my drink. I was queen of this world. But lately that gig was starting to stale.
Forcing the predatory smile to remain on my face, I glided around the tables saying hello to the patrons who were worth knowing. I draped my arms around the neck of a man with curly light brown hair and an air of danger—just the way I like my men. It had been a glimmer of similarity that had attracted me to his brother that catastrophic other night. He was playing and/or cheating at cards with a few other faces I recognized. Glancing at his hand, I smiled and lowered my red lips to the Brother of Power’s ear, at the same time giving the rest of the table an eyeful of décolletage. “Playing to win, I see, Joseph.”
“Always, darlin’,” he replied with an affected Irish brogue that was every bit as fake as his brother’s British one, and with a playful smile. That grin had charmed its way into many a girl’s bed. Joseph was a flirt, just like me, but he would also sleep with anything he could get his hands on. We would flirt, and I also sometimes got information out of him, but I wasn’t stupid enough to go any further than that. And right now I was more interested in finding out if there were any jobs on the horizon. I couldn’t take this monotony.
Recognition suddenly tore through me. Donald. Donald was the name of the man I’d ended up sleeping with on my birthday.
“Crawled out of your cave, I see, Fantazia.” A woman with bobbed dark hair shot me a glare over her cards. She was wearing Gothic clothes from Victorian England.
“Just to show you up, London,” I said.
An old man who looked like he should be ordering the blue plate special at some early bird diner shook his head at me. “Trying to use your goodies as a distraction? Some things never change, Fantazia.”
“Oh, come now, Howard,” I cooed. “I used to do it for you all the time.” Howard was an old friend, now literally old. He’d been very handsome when he was younger, and the sweetest guy you could ever meet for someone who didn’t consistently play on the right side of the law. I’d once considered getting involved with him, but he would have wanted something permanent, which never works out with me. He went on to meet and marry another magic-user and had a passel of children and grandchildren. I definitely couldn’t have given him the domestic life.
He smiled. “That seems like centuries ago.”
“Only decades.”
The youngest man at the table shivered. He had the look of a high schooler trying too hard to seem a tough guy, baggy clothes practically falling off his emaciated frame. “Shut up and play. I don’t want to think about you doing the nasty with anyone, Howard.”
“Let’s not offend Dylan’s delicate sensibilities,” I agreed. “He’s still practically a baby.”
His eyes glimmered with a predatory light. “Give me a chance and I’ll show you I’m a man, Fantazia.”
London rolled her eyes. “Gross.”
All four of them were probably on the EHJ’s most-wanted list. They had each done magic a bit outside of the law at one time or another, things that had made headlines and caused ordinary humans to quake with fear. They also probably each had a few of those ridiculous aliases that both heroes and villains go by, but I couldn’t be bothered to remember them, or their last names. They