Elias
I counted the bottles behind the bar for the third time in an hour, my fingers trailing along each label with military precision. Twelve premium whiskeys, eight gins, six vodkas. The same numbers as yesterday. The same as they'd been two weeks ago when everything went to hell.
The Purple Fang's main floor stretched out before me in perfect order. Every table wiped clean, every chair precisely aligned, every surface gleaming under the low lighting. My kingdom of symmetry. Of control.
I glanced toward the front door and the solid brick wall that hid what happened in the club from the humans who didn't pay to get in, listening to the growing crowd of people gathering on Bourbon Street. The cacophony of drunken laughter, off-key singing, and pounding footsteps grew louder as the night deepened. Their heartbeats created a symphony of temptation. Each one a different rhythm, a different flavor of life just beyond our threshold. Even through these walls, I could smell the distinct notes of alcohol-tinged blood, perfumes mingling with sweat, and that unmistakable scent of humanity that always carried just a hint of desperation as they tried to outrun death.
Out there, the world was full of noise and blood and unpredictable emotions. A swirling maelstrom of chaos that threatened to pull you under if you didn't keep your guard up. Too many variables. Too many ways for things to go wrong.
My attention shifted back to the bar, my fingers automatically realigning a bottle that had shifted a millimeter out of place. In here, I made the rules. Every glass had its place. Every patron had boundaries. Every movement behind my bar was calculated, precise, and under my complete control. Just the way I needed it to be.
And still, something was shifting inside me.
I'd already reorganized the inventory twice since sunset, alphabetized the receipt files, and scrubbed the already spotless bar until my reflection stared back at me from the polished surface. The familiar routine should have been soothing. Each precise movement a barrier against the unknown chaos threatening to breach my carefully constructed walls.
None of it helped quiet the turmoil clawing at the edges of my mind.
From the back office came the sound of Kenya's strained voice. She was mumbling numbers to herself as she worked through the books, and I could hear that her breathing was shallow, even for a vampire. She'd been skipping meals again. I could tell by the way her voice had that hollow quality it got when she was hungry.
Bagged blood wouldn't keep her alive forever, but it would extend her life and give us some time, which was the one thing we desperately needed right now. I knew she hated it, but she'd been pushing herself too hard since Marcus disappeared with her mate, throwing herself into the financial records of the club the way I threw myself into cleaning and organizing.
Though I'd never had to before, I'd been checking her work more often lately, not because Killian didn't trust her competence, but because I could read the signs.
Trauma had a way of making even the sharpest minds skip details, and Kenya was drowning in it.
I straightened a row of shot glasses that didn't need straightening, running my fingertips along the perfectly aligned rims, and fought the urge to check the inventory for the third time tonight. The numbers wouldn't change from when I'd counted them an hour ago, or the hour before that. And the methodical order I'd imposed on this small corner of the world wouldn't magically fix the djinn's chaos that had descended on New Orleans like a plague, infecting everything it touched with uncertainty and fear.
Just like counting wounded soldiers hadn't stopped the shells from falling. Just like following orders hadn't protected the men who'd trusted me to bring them home.
It's been two weeks since the cemetery battle that ended with Marcus disappearing into thin air, taking Alex with him. Two weeks since Kenya had collapsed when her mate vanished, the bond between them stretched across whatever void Marcus had dragged him into. Two weeks of waiting for some sign that Alex was alive, that Marcus hadn't killed him outright, that there was still hope of getting him back before one of our most precious members—
The front door's locks engaged with their familiar click, distracting me from that morbid thought. All seven of them, each one checked and double-checked before I'd allowed myself to believe we were secure for the rest of the night until the coming dawn sent us back to the historical house we called home .
Not that locks would stop a djinn if Marcus found a way back, but routine was all that stood between me and the kind of panic that had nearly destroyed me in the trenches of World War 1. Seven locks, checked in the same order every night. Predictable. Controllable. Unlike everything else in my world lately.
"Ye're going to wear a hole in that bar if ye keep polishing it."
I looked up to find Killian entering through the back door that led to the alley, his hair still mussed and his clothes wrinkled like he'd grabbed them off the floor. The shadows under his eyes told me he wasn't sleeping any better than the rest of us. I didn't envy him. I wouldn't want to be the master vampire of this coven right now.
"It wasn't clean," I said, which we both knew was a lie. The bar had been immaculate for hours. But what was time to vampires as old as we were?
Killian's gold eyes studied me with the kind of knowing look that made my jaw clench. He'd been watching me more carefully the last few days, but I'd been one of Killian's first turned vampires for a reason. When he'd found me on that battlefield, I was already drenched in death, my hands covered in the blood of men I couldn't save. But I hadn't panicked. I'd kept going. Kept trying.
Where Killian was Irish fire and fury, I was calm and calculation. Ice to his flame. Strategy to his instinct. It's why we worked. Why I survived.
Why I endured.
Everyone depended on me to hold things together. To be the steady hand that kept The Purple Fang running, kept the inventory organized, kept the human world from noticing that vampires ran the most popular strip club in the French Quarter.
Along with Dae, of course, who lived to mind-fuck the humans.
I couldn't afford to fall apart. Not now. Not when they all needed me.
"Any word from the witches?" I asked, needing to focus on something concrete, something I could potentially fix or organize or control.
"Alex checked in an hour ago. No sign of—" Killian stopped, his jaw tightening. "Shite. Sorry. Not Alex. Alice. Still getting used to..." He rubbed the back of his neck. Glancing toward the back office, he lowered his voice until it was barely audible, even for me. "Kenya's been trying to maintain some kind of connection through their bond. No luck so far, but she thinks he's still alive."
I nodded, my hands automatically reaching for a towel to wipe down surfaces that didn't need it. The motion was soothing, mindless, something to do with the energy that seemed to vibrate under my skin whenever I thought too hard about Marcus and his ability to control supernatural beings through fate manipulation.
"The others?"
"Brogan and Esme are patrolling the Quarter. Dae Jung is following up on reports of strange activity near the docks. Jamal and Angel are..." Killian's lips twitched with something between humor and disgust. "Indisposed."
A familiar tightness squeezed my chest, that old sensation of walls closing in, like my lungs couldn't get enough air. Consciously inhaling and exhaling, I focused on the immediate and tangible. The bar was clean. The doors were locked. The inflow of money was accounted for. These were facts I could trust, unlike the shifting uncertainty of supernatural politics and djinn magic.
"What do you need me to do?" Because that was my role. To be useful, to be dependable, to be the solution to whatever problem Killian faced.
He studied me for a long moment, weighing his words for several long seconds before he finally just came out with it. "There's a Threadwalker coming to see ye tomorrow night."
I froze, the towel crumpling in my grip as the memory hit me. Dark hair, stubborn chin, that infuriating way she'd blown me off when I'd found her wandering the Quarter alone two weeks ago.
"Talin Moss," I said, my voice holding very little emotion.
I'd noticed her before that night, of course. Anyone with functioning eyes would. That ebony hair, thick and slightly unruly, as if even it refused to obey. Those striking green eyes shadowed by dark brows, one pierced with a small silver ring that glinted when the light hit just right. And her mouth… Gods, that mouth. Full, expressive, too tempting for someone who spoke as little as she did. She hid her curves under boyish layers of clothing—button-down shirts, big T-shirts, vests, loose pants—but the effort only made her more noticeable.
Like water trying not to shimmer in the moonlight.
I wasn't the only one who saw how fucking pretty she was, either. I was just the only one who pretended not to.
The few times I'd seen her since that night, she never spoke about what we'd seen. Hardly even looked at me. And I'd never brought it up. I've noticed that something about her was all wrong now, though, like a wire strung too tight that was about to snap.
Killian's eyebrows shot up. "Figured ye'd remember her."
Of course, I did. I'd known all the Moss witches by sight for years. But Talin had always stayed on the periphery, quieter than her cousins, less involved in the formal meetings between our groups. Half-present, half-guarded, trying to disappear into the walls without vanishing completely. But watching everything.
Always watching.
"She was out alone the night Marcus took Alex," I told him, turning back to the bar and scrubbing at a spot that had been clean for hours. "Did I tell you that?"
His eyes narrowed on my face. "No, ye didn't."
"Well, I'm telling you now."
"And?"
"And she told me she knew where Alex was." The memory of her standing outside the warehouse, eyes bright with determination and fear, sent an unwelcome jolt through my chest. "Right before something blew up inside the building. Later on, when I asked her what she'd meant, she just shook her head and told me she didn't know."
Killian studied me with those knowing gold eyes. "She's been having visions about Alex and Marcus, but they're... fragmented. She needs someone steady to help her focus. She requested you."
Someone steady. That was me. Elias, the reliable one. Elias, who kept everything running smoothly. Elias, who never let emotions interfere with duty or discipline.
Still… "Why me?" The question slipped out before I could stop it. "Why don't one of the witches help her?"
Killian's golden eyes sharpened. "Because she said her visions showed her ye specifically. Something about yer threads being intertwined with whatever Marcus is planning."
The walls of the bar seemed to shimmer around me, and I gripped the edge of the polished surface to anchor myself. Fate threads. Destiny. The kind of mystical bullshit that took choices away from people and handed their lives over to forces beyond their control.
"I don't believe in fate," I told him.
"Neither did I, until I met my Lizzy." Killian's voice carried the weight of experience, of a man who'd had his entire worldview upended by forces he couldn't predict or manage. "But believing in it and being caught up in it are two different things entirely."
I turned away, ostensibly to check the ice levels in the cooler, but really to hide the tension I could feel creeping across my features. The ice was perfectly stocked, had been since I'd filled it three hours ago, but the repetitive motion of scooping and arranging helped steady my breathing.
A Threadwalker. I'd heard of this magic only once before. It was someone who could see the invisible connections between people, who could follow the mystical threads that supposedly bound everyone's fate together. The kind of person who dealt in uncertainty and unpredictability, who thrived on the very forces I'd spent decades learning to control.
She didn't belong here. Not in this bar. Not in my world of straight lines and quiet certainty. Because Talin was wild edges wrapped in sin. Secrets hiding behind sarcasm. A disruption.
A tremor in my perfectly balanced world.
Not loud. Not overt. But unmistakable, like a single dropped note in an otherwise flawless symphony. She didn't need to say a word. Her presence alone would be enough to skew the axis of the room, shift the air, and make the silence feel charged instead of calm.
"When?" I asked, because there was no point in arguing. If Killian said this witch was coming, she was coming. My job was to handle it, whatever 'it' turned out to be.
"Tomorrow after sunset. And if she's still here when the club opens, Kenya will handle the bar while you work with her."
"Kenya can't handle the bar by herself these days."
But he wasn't going to let me get out of this that easily. "She'll be fine for the short time you'll need her."
I nodded, sighed, and gave him a quick, resigned grin, already mentally reorganizing the next day's schedule to accommodate this disruption. I could prepare for it, plan for it, establish parameters and boundaries that would keep any upheavals from bleeding into the ordered structure of my life.
"Elias." Killian paused on his way out. "Don't overthink this. Sometimes the universe knows what it's doing."
I almost laughed at that. The universe that had sent me to die in muddy trenches, betrayed by the very system I'd sworn to serve? The universe that had turned me into a creature of the night, dependent on blood to survive, forever cut off from the human world I'd once tried to heal?
No. The universe was disorder incarnate, and the only defense against disorder was vigilance, preparation, and absolute control over every variable you could manage.
After Killian left, probably heading back to the house where the rest of our coven waited for news that never came, I returned to my inventory. Twelve whiskeys, eight gins, six vodkas. The numbers remained constant, reliable, immune to the forces that seemed determined to upend everything else.
Tomorrow, Talin Moss would walk back into my carefully ordered world with her unpredictable visions and mystical threads. I'd help her focus whatever fragmented images she'd seen about Alex and Marcus, extract the information we needed, and send her back to her coven where she belonged.
It would be professional. Controlled. Temporary.
The fact that I could still remember exactly how she'd looked that night—the way her eyebrow piercing had glinted in the streetlight. The stubborn set of her jaw when I'd called her reckless. The brief moment of vulnerability when she first saw me there. The way she fucking smelled—meant absolutely nothing.
Because the alternative was allowing some witch with erratic powers and a talent for finding trouble to disrupt the ordered structure I'd built. And that wasn't an option I could afford to consider.
I'd learned long ago that the only person you could truly depend on was yourself. The only stability that lasted was the kind you built with your own two hands, brick by brick, routine by routine, until you'd created something strong enough to withstand whatever turmoil the world decided to throw at you.
One encounter with a stubborn little witch didn't change that. No matter how those dark eyes had flashed with determination, or how that connection she'd been following had led her straight to...
Well…to me.
The bottles gleamed back at me in perfect rows, each one exactly where it belonged.
Yet the truth was, I could sense something changing. Had been feeling it for weeks now, like a frequency just outside my range of hearing. Something pulling at me, making me restless in ways that no amount of organizing could fix. And I knew Killian, as my maker, could sense it, too.
I suddenly stilled.
If he thought this witch was the answer to whatever was stirring in me, then I was probably fucked.
Because the last thing I needed was someone who could slip past my defenses. Someone who might make me want things I couldn't afford to want. Someone who could destroy the carefully controlled world I'd built to keep the chaos—and the pain—at bay.
I set down the cloth and reached for the inventory clipboard again, needing the familiar ritual of counting and categorizing to steady myself.
Tonight, I'd finish closing out the bar and go home and get some sleep.
Tomorrow night, I'd meet Talin Moss. I'd help her with whatever magical crisis had brought her to my door. And then I'd send her on her way before she could upset the balance I'd fought so hard to achieve.
Simple. Controlled. Safe.
So why did the thought of her leaving already feel like losing something I'd never even had?
