Page 49 of Roses and Murder
“Lance! Lucy! Shit, do you see it?” he slurred.
“See what?”
“There’s a tiny blue demon pissing in the corner of the Whispering Raven. Oh! He’s waving his cock at me and mocking me. Make him leave!”
Yeah, Darnell was pissed on spirits. He usually just embarrassed himself with the ladies and then started a fight. He could still do that. Beck swooped in to save us because sometimes, when we tossed Darnell out of the tavern, he wandered over to the brothel and caused a scene there. No one wanted that.
“Why don’t we get something greasy to eat while Lucy takes care of the demon?”
“Maybe Ollie should do it. His cock is giant and it shouldn’t be anywhere near girls.”
“Then, Ollie will handle it,” Beck said, steering Darnell out of the tavern.
“Okay, so if the new spirit has Darnell hallucinating demons with a third leg, then we have to call it something special,” Ronan said.
“Nothing about dicks,” Ollie said. “Call it Demon Rage.”
“That’s perfect,” I said. “I’m going to have to set a lot of it infusing. Between that and the Bloody Marys, we’re going tobe really busy when the rest of Nestran figures out they can’t recreate them.”
“Which is why we’re going to celebrate here and then we’re going to celebrate after at the barn,” Ollie said.
“You can wait,” Neco growled. “I haven’t even kissed her yet.”
“Uh, yeah, because you were a fucking moron,” Ollie said.
“What Ollie was trying to say is that it can be very sexy to watch, so we’d all be more than happy for you to go first.”
I broke out into goosebumps. What was Neco like in bed? Was it dangerous because he was a killer or was like how it was when we were alone and he just held me and I felt safe?
“Well, I’m planning on taking my time,” Neco grumped.
“Good. If you were bad at it, I’d get Keeva to teach me how to kill you,” Ollie said.
“I’m not bad at it!”
“We’ll be the judge of that.”
Neco pounced and put Ollie in a headlock.
“I missed you, you arsehole.”
We were all just so happy to have Neco back, not even Ollie pointed out we had been here this whole time waiting for him to come back.
But right now, we were celebrating. We took turns slinging drinks and running food from the kitchen and going out and seeing what people were getting up to on the street.
It was getting pretty rowdy. Sabine and the girls were playing some pretty raunchy songs. Most of them were written by men about women. It was pretty amazing hearing them sung by women, especially one as talented as these.
Guttertown didn’t have much of an occasion to party like this often. Things weren’t going to get better foreveryonebut they would get better for a lot of the Argent kids. If fewer Argent kids came to them for help when their moms were sick, maybe theBarons would stop swooping in here and forcing women to be their mistresses.
The Whispering Raven stayed open until we ran out of a lot of things. We couldn’t make Bloody Marys anymore and I didn’t know there was going to be a party when I set the infusions for the Demon Rage. We closed up before we were completely out so we’d have some to sell while I replenished our stores.
We enjoyed a little bit more of the music and then we headed off to the barn for our own private celebration.
Despite growing up above a tavern, I never got messy drunk, and neither did my friends. We did that when we were fifteen, spent a night in the cells, and then woke up with the worst hangover ever in the cell next to another group of drunk people who missed the chamber pot every time they puked, pissed, or shat. The smell was unholy.
We were stupid sometimes, but we learned our lesson the first time. We ended up in the cells the other times for reasons other than drunken shenanigans. So, we drank enough at the party to feel nice, but not enough that we couldn’t still run a business or end up in the cells again. The Guttertown constables would be looking the other way for a lot of shit tonight, but not everything.
The barn wasn’t as fancy as the first time I was here with these men. Ollie refused to let anyone proceed until he ran inside to get blankets and candles.
