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I poked Leodos, who was sitting at the bar of my tavern waxing poetic to Trevils and Aimes about how the sun shone out our future queen’s arse. Yeah, he might not be saying it to her, but Leodos was madly in love with Princess Esylle.

“Listen, now that you know I’m a girl, can I give you some advice?”

“Sure, kid.”

“You’re insanely tall, not ugly, and her dad likes you. Just tell the woman you’re in love with her.”

“Are you kidding?” Ollie asked. “Leodos is kind of hot for an older man. I wouldn’t kick him out of our bed if one of you wanted to invite him.”

Leodos started choking.

“With that, I’m going to buy something greasy from a stall outside. And whatever you’re calling this new infusion, I want regular bottles.”

Yeah, I hadn’t even named it yet, but people loved it. I was going to have to step up my infusions, especially if Leodos was buying. I was going to let Ollie and Ronan loose when it came to naming it because my creativity lay in recipes.

Just then, Darnell, who managed to live in Guttertown and not be able to handle his spirits, crashed into me and held onto me for dear life.

“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 to be 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 for everyone but 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 the Barons 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.