Nine Lives was a strip club on the edge of 107th and hell, and that was me being generous about the location. It was also the place I'd been calling my second home for the past three years."This bitch must think I'm all kinds of stupid!"Bianca Quinn—self-proclaimed queen of Nine Lives—tossed her faux diamond earrings onto her vanity with a toss of her manicured hand, the lights flickering in the wake of her anger. Sirens had a hard time keeping their electromagnetic fields in check during times of high stress, and Bianca wasn't an exception just because she was half. She flipped her head back, locks shifting from blood-red ringlets to her more natural blue-black straightness.The other girls scattered to the wings of the Ready Room, trying to avoid her bad mood. They knew what would happen if Bianca locked electric blue eyes on them. Instead, the other strippers preoccupied themselves with either swapping outfits or counting money to give to Mrs. Banks, the personal assistan

He'd flipped our positions somehow, and I bounced on the thousand-dollar springs of the bed. He'd folded me neatly in half, knees touching either side of my head, pussy exposed to his gaze with only a lace strip of red and hose preventing me from being fully naked. Jévon put his whole weight on my legs, looming over me enough that I lost details of his face in the shadow of him.All except those odd bright aqua eyes."Hold them," he growled, and it didn't take a genius to understand what Jévon was implying, "Or, I'll solve that for you."Jévon had never frightened me, and he didn't scare me now even with myself completely at his mercy.But, Jévon did sound…dangerous…and in a way, I'd only heard once before.It was a tone that meant he was serious and I wasn't to argue. Commanding.My pussy clenched around nothing as I thought of how that might translate to taking me. He'd be rough when I expected him to be tender, and the thought of his mild-mannered nature givi

"Did you hear about the Midnight Cowboy!?""I heard that he—""—my cousin Delores said—""—he's SO dreamy, like—""—I heard he kills people—""—pero, better than—" "Veronica…Veronica…? HEY Ronnie!""I'm awake!"My eyes are blurry, tracking the streaming neon lights of Nines.I must have fallen asleep after my shift at Open Palms Retirement Home.Half of the reason why Nana Bet could stay was based on my continuing employment there, it helped to clear away a good portion of her housing cost. However, good was still "too much" with my student loans, my apartment, and any debt my parents still had. Which was…a lot.I wasn't treading water so much, as I was trying to fight the currents so I wouldn't drown. I yawned, stretching to crack my back, dressed in my own pair of scrubs shaded a nice berry magenta, my favorite color. Shit, I was never going to make it through my sets for tonight if I kept nodding off."Sorry," I covered my mouth in fear

"And!?""And what?"Noelle and I were taking our break outside Open Palms, near the decrepit picnic table hidden behind a blown generator sanitation refused to get. Noelle pressed her Black Magic Woman clove cigarettes to pine green lips, blowing to the side so the smoke would remain downwind of me."Come on, Ronnie. Don't play me like that. You met Cibola royalty last night! Like an actual goddamn vigilante as cryptid as cryptids get! And you're not going to tell me what the favor was? I thought we were friends!""We are!" I said putting down my chicken salad sandwich, "remember Angela Ravencroft?""Why one of the coolest names to ever be created had to land on such a dick, I will never know. This is why I don't believe in gods…And she was a descendant from the Salem coven! Salem!""But she wasn't nearly half the spellsmith you are!" I bumped my shoulder into Noelle's hip making her grin. "Remember when she turned her tits blue?""She was trying to m

Tomorrow was actually not better; it was infinitely worse.For starters, Erika was not having an allergic reaction to a customer's cologne like I was led to believe, which meant stealing this life-saving and expensive Epinephrine was not only pointless but was another mark to get me fired if Noelle didn't turn the cameras off in the drug room. Which, she might not have, because she was magical and technology never worked like how it was supposed to for her unless she magically hexed it herself.It's one of the many reasons why she'd hidden being magically inclined from her mother for the rest of their relationship and just labeled herself "technologically impaired"No, Erika was not in trouble, and normally that would be something to rejoice about because I derived zero pleasure from people getting hurt unless they were a nemesis, i.e. like Bianca. I wasn't a saint; I could admit that.But, I mentioned how today was not so great, right?That's because if I had