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Ren’s irritated eye roll made it clear that she didn’t have any desire to serve him, but, our personal feelings aside, family was family. Even if that family did try to make a spectacle of our sire’s funeral.

“All the live ones gone?” he asked, sucking his teeth.

“Pretty sure,” Ren said distastefully. She didn’t share the cynical fondness for Garrett that I did. I couldn’t blame her, he’d never given her any reason to think he was more than a thrill seeking shitbag. “Pouch okay?”

He wrinkled his nose. “Barely, but fine. I’ll slum it.”

Ren turned to get his drink sorted, muttering under her breath about freeloading. Garrett never had much money, despite a fairly high-profile job at the gallery. Hard to, with his raging gambling addiction and unmedicated mania.

It wasn’t that I didn’t feel for the guy; I did. But you could only go through trying to get someone on medication and into a ten-step program so many times if they didn’t want to follow through.

“Hard to be a freeloader in my own bar, isn’t it?” he asked smugly, taking the offered drink from my covenmate and swirling the deep red liquid in the domed glass. Satisfaction dripped from his frame like he’d just revealed some great secret, his ego almost a physical thing as his head swivelled on his thick neck to look at me.

Fucking great. Another night of dealing with his delusions, that’s just what I needed.

“This isn’tyourbar, Garrett,” I said flatly, trying and failing to keep annoyance out of my tone.

I really didn’t have time for this. Not with inventory overdue and needing to escape up to my office to get started on Vi’s contract. Briefly, I wondered if I could shove him off on Ren.

It would mean owing her one, but maybe it’d be worth it if I didn’t have to sleep in the bar again.

“Well… That isn’t entirely true now, is it sugar?” he gibed, that fucking smarmy smile of his taking on a new, entirely more irritating quality. “Never did find Cherie’s will, did ya?”

I scoffed. “You and I both know that she’d never give this place toyou. I helped her build it.”

“Funny thing that.” He downed the glass with a smack of his lips. Once upon a time, maybe about eight months ago, Garrett would’ve been considered handsome. It was amazing what the better part of a yearlong unchecked breakdown could do to a man. “The courts don’t really care about what she would’ve wanted. Just that I am the sole survivor of her family line.”

Vampire wills and estates were… messy. Not even a marriage certificate was enough to guarantee without an ironclad will that your coven would become the beneficiary of your estate. They always looked for next of kin—that was to say, the closest related vampire—unless there was a document that stated otherwise.

Talk about bullshit.

Bullshit that up until this moment, I hadn’t thought I needed to worry about.

Garrett wouldn’t be cruel enough to try and take Cherie’s club, my coven’s home, out from under us?

Right?

“You son of a bi—” Ren started, only for Garrett to speak over her.

“But you know, Dana, I'm not a monster. I’m not going to kick you out. I just need you to pay me twenty-five percent off the top each month, and I’ll leave you be, nice n’ easy.”

“We’re a fucking bar, Garrett. We don’t have those kinds of margins.”

“I don’t see how that’s my problem, sugar,” he replied, pushing his empty glass toward Ren as he stood. “I’ll be back to collect my first payment at the beginning of the month.”

“And if I refuse?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest furiously.

Which, realistically, I’d have no choice but to do. There was no way we could afford to?—

“I’ll sell the club,” he said with a shrug, offering a nasty little wave over his shoulder as he headed upstairs. “Always hated this fucking place. Your choice, sis.”

vi

. . .

My ringer cutthrough the music in my headphones, and I sighed, forcing my hand beyond the worn folds of my leather bag to hunt for my phone in a sea of old receipts, granola bar wrappers, and at least three too many lipsticks.

It’s gotta be the fucking bank calling again.