Page 374 of Hell Hath No Fury
Unconventional, but beautiful.
“Gotta look out for each other,” she continued with a saucy wink. “Us redheads are a rare breed.”
I raised a brow. “Especially the neon ones.”
She laughed. “Alright, I was born a brunette, but I have the soul of a redhead.”
“Oh, yeah? What kinda soul is that?”
A boy with crimson hair growing up wasn’t easy. Kids were inventive with their name calling: fire-crotch, ginger girl, redheaded step-child, Strawberry Shortcake, carrot top. To make matters worse, I was pale as milk and dusted in cinnamon freckles from head to toe. My bones were too long and pointy, jutting through my skin in a way that made me seem like a living skeleton. I was gawky, gangly and uncomfortable in my skin nearly my entire life.
People said that self-conscious, body dysmorphia shit was only for girls.
They were fuckingwrong.
It was only when Mum passed that I got some bloody perspective.
I was a tall, rangy redhead with skin pale enough to trace the veins beneath it, but that was just how my code presented itself. Behind the scenes, I was a series of numbers that totalled so much more than that.
The bartender cocked her head as she studied me. “Misunderstood,” she surmised finally.
“You don’t even know my name,” I countered.
She clucked her tongue. “I’m a bartender, I can read people like a book.”
“Cocky.”
“True,” she countered, leaning her forearms against the sticky black countertop. The neon lights played over her hair and skin like punk Northern Lights. “You’ve been here an hour and only spent twenty minutes on the dance floor. You’ve had exactly two drinks and you’re too alert to be looking for a random piece of ass. You’re here for something else.”
A chill skittered down my spine as I stared into the shadowed pits of her eyes and tried to shake the feeling that this woman could see beneath my skin.
I shrugged a shoulder. “It’d be three drinks by now if you were any good at your job.”
“Sometimes it’s dangerous to be too good at your job,” she retorted smoothly, angling her head slightly to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear.
My gaze traced her movement so I saw the way the light caught on a tattoo beneath her left ear.
It was a black pixelized swan tattoo.
The very same one that had flashed across my screen days earlier before my computer crashed. The very same one placed on top of my greasy burger yesterday at McDonalds.
Hope and fear tangled in my gut and grew roots.
I lunged across the bar top and grabbed her wrist a little too hard.
“What do you know about Obsidian Swan?” I demanded in a rough growl that was swallowed by the electronic music pulsing through the club.
Still, she heard me.
Calmly, she placed her other hand on top of my mine and peeled off my fingers. Her grasp was gentle as she folded our hands together as if in a hand shake. Between our pressed skin, I could feel the papery texture of a note passed secretly into my possession.
“It’s Christmas Eve, have you told Santa what you want for Christmas yet?” she asked opaquely before stepping away and slipping down the bar toward waiting patrons.
I blinked into the mirrored backsplash across from me at my own stupefied reaction.
I was at Club7 to find the hacker who’d been stalking my presence across the web for the last year. The same one who’d finally confronted me yesterday.
But faced with the knowledge they might beherein the same room as me, watching me, ready to meet me and change the course of my life forever?
