He bent over and inserted the picks into the lock. Ten seconds later, the tumblers click-click-clicked into place, and the door snicked open. Finn tossed the Ice picks onto the asphalt to melt away.
He grinned. “Child’s play.”
I shook my head and followed him inside.
The interior of Northern Aggression was dim, with only a few low lights on here and there, and the VIP section off to one side was completely dark. Finn strolled forward, walking out onto the springy bamboo dance floor in the center of the club, but I took a more circumspect route, hugging the thick, red velvet curtains that covered the walls and scanning the shadows, looking for any hint of danger. I also palmed a silverstone knife, one of five that I always carried on me—one up either sleeve, one against the small of my back, and one tucked into the side of either boot.
Just because I didn’t think that Madeline would strike out at me somewhere like Northern Aggression made it all the more likely that she would. That was just the way my perpetual bad luck went. I was fully expecting some sort of sneak attack from her, a proverbial knife erupting from out of nowhere and stabbing into my back again and again until I was down for the count and bleeding out. That she’d been in town for more than a month and hadn’t made an obvious move yet only set me that much more on edge.
Oh, yeah, waiting for the black widow to strike was definitely the worst sort of torture.
“What do you mean there’s a problem?” a loud, angry voice sounded.
Finn and I both stopped as a door set into the back wall burst open, causing the curtains to swirl in surprise, and Roslyn Phillips came striding through, holding a cell phone up to her right ear. She was wearing a fitted, pale green pantsuit that brought out the rich, toffee color of her eyes and skin, as well as highlighting her gorgeous, curvy figure. A thin headband dotted with clear, square crystals held her black hair back from her face, although the displeased pucker of her glossy pink lips distracted from the symmetrical beauty of her flawless features.
Roslyn spotted Finn and pointed her finger at the elemental Ice bar that lined one wall, telling him to make himself comfortable. Finn headed in that direction, but I took one more look around before sliding my knife back up my sleeve, going over, and settling myself on the stool next to his. Still holding her phone, Roslyn marched around the Ice bar and started stalking back and forth behind it, making the bamboo floor creak with her hurried steps.
“Understand you? Of course I understand you. More important, I understand this—we have a contract,” Roslyn snapped to her caller. “And if you don’t honor it, then I will sue you for every drop of liquor and cash that I can squeeze out of you. Understand that.”
She slammed her phone down onto the bar, causing a few chips of elemental Ice to fly up from the frosty surface. Roslyn glared at the device before pinching the bridge of her nose. She grimaced, revealing the small fangs in her mouth, before letting out a long, tired sigh and dropping her hand from her face.
“Sorry, guys,” she said. “As you can tell, I’m having a bit of a problem. I heard the buzzer and was coming to get you, although I see that Finn went ahead and let you in anyway.”
He winked at her. “I never let a little thing like a locked door stand between me and a free drink.”
Roslyn laughed, but a cold finger of unease crawled up my spine.
“What sort of problem?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Despite the fact that we have an iron-clad contract and have been working together for years, my liquor distributor has suddenly decided to triple his prices. He’s threatening to stop delivering to the club altogether unless I give in to his demands. Greedy bastard.”
Roslyn reached under the bar and pulled out a pen and notepad. She flipped over to a new sheet on the pad, then turned around and started counting the bottles of colorful liquor sitting on the mirrored-glass shelves behind her.
“Why do you think he did that?” I asked. “Why now?”
She shrugged and kept on counting. “He probably realizes how much money I make just on liquor sales alone, and he wants a bigger piece of the pie.”
“You don’t think that it’s something else?” I persisted. “That someone put him up to it?”
Beside me, Finn snorted, slid off his stool, and went around behind the bar.
Roslyn stopped taking inventory and looked over her shoulder at me, her eyebrows knitting together into a puzzled expression. “Who would put him up to something like that?”
Finn grabbed an expensive bottle of gin off one of the shelves and gave it an admiring glance. “Oh, no doubt Gin thinks that it’s some sort of elaborate plot on the part of one Madeline Magda Monroe.”
“Madeline Monroe?” Roslyn said. “Why would she care about my liquor distributor?”
I sighed. “Because you’re my friend. Because she hates me. Because she’s evil that way. Because she delights in being petty and cruel and watching others suffer, no matter how small and trivial the problems are that she creates.”
Roslyn gave Finn a look that clearly said she thought I was off my paranoid rocker, although she was too polite to come right out and say so to my face.
Finn shrugged back, silently agreeing with her, then set about fixing a gin and tonic with a fat wedge of lime, which he slid across the Ice bar to me. “Here. Drink this. It’s a double. Maybe it will drown out some of your delusions.”
I glared at him, but he merely wagged his eyebrows in response, before making another gin and tonic for Roslyn and then a final one for himself.
The vampire waved her hand. “Finn’s right. These things happen from time to time. My supplier’s been making noises for a while now about trying to renegotiate our contract. It’s nothing. Just the cost of doing business, especially in Ashland.”
“Don’t I know it,” Finn agreed. “I’ll drink to that.”
The two of them clinked glasses, then started chatting about all of the crooked businesspeople they both knew and all the fast ones that those folks had tried to pull on them over the years. But I just sat there, letting their cheery conversation wash over me, my elbows propped up on the cold surface of the bar while I cradled my glass in my hands and brooded into my gin. Normally, I would have enjoyed shooting the breeze with Finn and Roslyn, but right now, I couldn’t even muster up enough enthusiasm to down my drink.
Maybe Roslyn’s problems with her distributor were a coincidence. Maybe it was a complete fluke that the guy had decided to raise his prices today. Maybe it was just the cost of doing business in our corrupt Southern city, like my friends had said.