Hard Bitten - Chloe Neill [65]
I chuckled, then looked over at the bar. “Since her work is under way, let’s get moving on ours.”
“Humans—check,” Lindsey agreed, moving her finger in the shape of a check mark. “Now, shall we hit up the bartender?”
I winked at her and moved toward the bar. “Just try and keep up, okay?”
Lindsey snorted. “Honey, you may have the steak, but I got the sizzle.”
Only Colin, who was a little older and taller than Sean, was working the bar tonight.
“If he’s solo, it might not be a good time to tear him away,” Lindsey said as she followed me over.
I took her point, but countered with my own. “We’re nocturnal, and he probably works the bar until sunup. I’m not sure there would be a good time to tear him away, and we need to find out what’s going on.”
We bypassed the two-deep crowd of humans and vamps in front of the bar and went directly to the end of it. I waited until Colin moved toward us, wiping his hands on a towel stuck into his belt, before I popped the question.
“Can we talk in private for a few minutes?”
With a dubious expression, Colin turned to grab two beers out of a small refrigerator, then put them on the bar and grabbed the cash a vamp had dropped there. “Busy tonight. Can it wait?”
“Um, hello?” Lindsey asked, moving beside me and propping an elbow on the bar. “I’m here. I can watch the bar.”
Colin frowned at her. “Are you up for it?”
“Honey, I spent a decade of my rather glorious life pouring shots in the East Village. These people will be both drunk and entertained by the time you get back, or I’m not one of the top ten hotties of Cadogan House. Seriously,” she added with a glance at me. “There’s a list, and we’re both on it.”
“Nice,” I said. Not bad for a former library-bound grad student.
From hottie to barmaid, Lindsey didn’t waste any time sidling behind the bar and slapping a white towel over her shoulder.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, “who needs a drink?”
When the crowd let out an appreciative hoot, Colin put his hand at my back and steered me toward the other end of the bar. “Let’s go to the office. It’s a little quieter back there.”
I followed as he made a loop through the bar. He worked the room like a seasoned politician: checking on drinks, kissing pretty girls on the cheek, recommending pizza toppings at the joint next door, and inquiring after the parents of apparently human friends. I didn’t know Colin much at all, but he was clearly well liked, as much a fixture of the bar as the Cubs gear and vampires.
When we made it across the room, we stopped in the photograph-covered back hallway—and past a picture of Ethan and Lacey Sheridan, his former flame—and into a small room at the end.
Colin pulled a key ring from his pocket and unlocked the door. The office was small—barely large enough to hold a metal desk and beat-up file cabinet. Every free surface was covered in papers—magazines, notes, checks, tax returns, pages from yellow legal pads, folded newspapers, sports programs, invoices, take-out menus.
The walls were also covered, although the content was much less kid-friendly. Posters and calendars featuring pinups from the last seventy years were plastered like wallpaper across the room, busty blondes and brunettes in tiny shorts and three-inch heels smiling down at us coquettishly. It looked like the office you might find in a service station or quick-lube shop. Not exactly the kind of place that made it comfortable to be a woman, but then again, I wasn’t the target audience.
“Nice digs,” I politely said.
“We like it,” he said. “Get the door, would you?”
I closed it, which lowered the volume just enough to allow us to talk instead of screaming.
Colin slid around the desk and pulled open the top drawer of the file cabinet. He slipped a small metal flask out of the drawer, unscrewed the cap, and took a sip.
“Booze?” I wondered aloud.
“Type O. My own special concoction.” He offered it to me, but I shook him off. I needed a clear head, and I wasn’t confident Colin’s “special concoction” was going to keep me in a business-minded place.
“No, thank you.”
The flask still