Page 1 of Taking Orders in the Underworld

CHAPTER ONE: Welcome back to Zeus’ Watering Hole

Nika dropped four chowder bowls with a spectacular crash. Pieces of seafood and ceramic flew in all directions. One giant shard flew across the wooden floor and embedded itself in the leg of a chair and – thankfully – not in the occupier of said chair. Another piece bounced and jumped across the other side of the floor of the bar area and landed in a sleeping dog’s fur. The dog’s owner, whose feet the dog was lying over, looked perturbed, to say the least, but his scowl quickly faded and was replaced with a look of fear when he saw that it was an Arae who had dropped the dishes.

The definition of perfection of her species, that was what Nika’s mother had called her when she was born. Tall and lithe, with pearl white hair, eyes and skin, she had been born to chase and curse the Souls who came to the Underworld after they had made statements under oath and broken them, deliberately deceiving others.

A pity then that she hadn’t wanted to do that job. Instead, she’d found a love for putting all that chasing energy into something she found productive – serving the finest food in all of Asphodel Meadows as the lead maître d'. That was, when she wasn’t dropping said food.

“Gods dammit!”

“Are you okay?” Tomas, a lanky dryad Nika had been training as a waiter for the past three months, asked as he appeared in front of her.

“Do I look okay?” Nika muttered. She began to carry the remaining plates towards the back. As soon as she turned the corner that separated the staff from the diners, Garth rounded on her.

“I’m trying to run a dinner service, and here you are throwing my food all over the floor,” he drawled.

“Yes, well, perhaps if you’d put enough staff on tonight, I wouldn’t have to run myself ragged and make such clumsy mistakes,” Nika spat back, letting the ruined plates clatter into the bin.

“I know you’re stressed but I’d watch your tone, Nika. I’m still your boss.”

“Youwatch it,”she hissed back. “We’ve had a hundred and fifty covers tonight, Garth, and you’ve only given me three waiters! Three!” Nika’s voice went up an octave until it was an uncomfortable screech to anyone who was eavesdropping, which happened to be the entire kitchen team. “You ask too much of us, Garth!”

“We all knew forgoing the libations agreement was going to be a bit tight on the way we run things around here, that we were all going to have to make sacrifices. This is that sacrifice.”

Nika rolled her eyes. She wasn’t going to get into this argument with Garth again, not here. Not now.

In the aftermath of the cook-off food festival last year, when Garth had sacrificed the prize tokens for his new hire Rae, he’d somehow got it in his proud head that he no longer needed the libation deal with Zeus. The libation deal, where for fifty percent of their profits, Zeus made sure that half of the drinks and food offered in the earthly realm were to Garth. As a result, mortals often sought out Garth’s pub first when they travelled to the Underworld, thinking they’d find favour with him after half a lifetimes worth of offerings.

It had made the pub quite popular.

It was a costly brand deal, essentially. One set up by Garth’s great-great granddaddy. But after centuries of winning Hades cook-off, Garth assumed his work and reputation stood well enough on their own merit, and ended the agreement to claw back some more of the profits.

He hadn’t foreseen that Zeus would take the split so badly.

Perhaps, Nika thought for the millionth time, he shouldn’t have told the petulant God of Gods to also settle up his tab. As a result, Olympus was going out of its way to make Zeus’ Watering Hole the place for the obsolete. No libations meant fewer new Souls knew of them. The ones that did know of Garth’s place liked to go to the places Olympians were seen dining in, and the other members of the Olympic Twelve had been making their way down to the Underworld to – very deliberately – visit other eateries in the area.

The dead liked to gossip, and the gossip was that this place was losing its touch,fast.

For now, the team were just managing to hang on to the post cook-off momentum, but Garth had already started cutting corners – like the number of staff on shift.

“This isn’t sacrifice, this is slave labour,” Nika said.

Garth stepped forward until they were standing toe to toe. “I’d be very careful about the next words that come out of your mouth.”

Nika opened her mouth when a low voice cut in.

“That’s enough, both of you. The guests can hear you.” Rae’s quiet voice was all the more powerful for it, as her head nodded towards the part of the restaurant they could all see.

“Fine,” Nika said, blowing out a breath, causing her pale blonde hair to flutter in the air before settling around her harsh cheekbones.

“Fine,” Garth agreed, running one of his scaled hands through his slick black hair, a curl of it falling over his forehead as he did so. “You’re off for the rest of the night, Nika. You clearly need the rest.”

“You can’t—”

“I just did.”

Nika crossed her arms over a flat chest. “We’re already short-staffed and struggling, and you want to take me off the shift? You’re out of your mind!”

At that moment, tall and gangly Tomas stepped into the archway of the small area between the guests tables and the kitchen, a dustpan and brush enchantingly sweeping up alongside him. Inside the dustpan; the rest of Nika’s broken bowls.

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