LITMIR.BIZ

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a terrible look. Customers will think you’re a drug addict.”

      She wanted to tell him she didn’t much care, as long as they tipped her, but flippancy didn’t go over well with Kristoff. “Sorry,” she said. “You really don’t want me working blind. I’d be walking into walls.”

      He shook his head. “We’re wasting time. Get to work.”

      She breathed deeply, trying to adjust to the noise, pace and stress of the restaurant, an atmosphere she ordinarily found bracing. Tonight, though, it felt like an assault. She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes until the second dinner seating, which preceded the midnight magic show. A half hour from now she would either be working at a fever pitch or falling hopelessly behind, and the latter could cost her her job. Kristoff wasn’t her biggest fan.

      There were no other Elven on staff, thank God. And if any came in as customers and Kristoff seated them at her station, she would just have to get Lauren to switch tables with her. Lauren was her friend, but a mortal, so Sailor would have to come up with some plausible excuse.

      But first she had to stay awake.

      She was taking the drink order at the deuce when she overheard a snippet of conversation behind her. “… only thirty-three. Her whole career ahead of her. I heard it was food poisoning,” a man said, to which his companion replied, “I heard it was a parasite picked up on location. Both of them were working overseas.”

      She knew they were talking about the dead actresses, but when she cast her eyes around the candlelit room, she couldn’t figure out which table she’d been listening to. The vampires at table six? Ivan Schwartz had been, among other things, a ventriloquist, so he’d played with acoustics when building the House of Illusion, with results that were sometimes magical and sometimes maddening.

      The dead Elven. Her heart hurt to think of them, had hurt all week, because she was tied to them in ways she didn’t even understand. But now her conscience hurt, too. She should have been more proactive. Even believing their deaths were from natural causes, as had been reported, she should have asked questions. Now that she knew they were dead precisely because they were Elven—Gina and Charlotte, and the other two, the acting student and the talent agent—she was appalled at her earlier inattention. How irresponsible could she be? For the first time she was glad that her dad was on the other side of the world, because she couldn’t bear to see his disappointment.

      “Hey, sister. Y’okay?” It was Julio, her favorite busboy, clearing plates from the table next to her.

      “I’ve been better.”

      “You look bad, baby.”

      “I feel worse.”

      “You need something?”

      “About fourteen hours of sleep.”

      “You change your mind, want something else, you let me know.”

      “I don’t do drugs, Julio.”

      He looked affronted. “Hey, I’m a full-service dealer. Herbs, homeopathic, healthy stuff. Legal, even. Chinese medicine. Not just party powders and pharmaceuticals.” He looked over her shoulder. “At the bar. El turista. I think he wants you.”

      Sailor turned. A customer, swiveling on his barstool, was snapping his fingers, signaling her. El turista was what Julio called any customer he considered too ignorant to be local and this one confirmed the designation by drawling, “Waitress, hand me one of the menus you got there.”

      “Customer,” she said, “I’d be happy to.” She strolled toward him, holding out a laminated menu. “But is that how you get your wife’s attention, by snapping your fingers? Because here in L.A. that’s how we summon our dogs. And I’m not your golden retriever.”

      Before she could reach the customer, Kristoff stepped in front of her, taking the menu. He handed it to el turista, then steered Sailor toward the kitchen. “I don’t know if you’re sick or hung over or what your problem is,” he hissed, “but talking to a customer like that? I’d fire you right now if we weren’t overbooked tonight, with two waiters calling in sick. You’re on very thin ice. Are we clear?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Good. You’d better give me a five-star performance the rest of your shift. I see three tables in your section needing attention. And I believe your appetizers are up.”

      He marched off, leaving her to retrieve two burning-hot plates laden with crab cakes. He was filling up her section all at once, and she wasn’t going to be able to handle it, not in her condition. But she couldn’t handle being fired either. Jobs were scarce, and it had taken footwork, luck and family connections to score this one. She wasn’t letting it go without a fight.

      “Julio,” she said, before heading back out onto the floor. “There’s this tea made of twigs and things, and—”

      “Chinese?”

      “No. It’s some Gaelic word, starts with an s. Tastes awful. I know it’s a long shot, but—”

       “Síúlacht.”

      Her eyes widened. “That’s it.”

      “Yeah, I have some. Not the tea. Capsules. My supplier, he gets them from some Druid lady in the Valley. Hang tight, mija, I’ll get them.”

      Other than being clearly exhausted, Sailor looked good, Declan thought, watching her from the far end of the bar. She looked better than good, in fact, communicating with Dennis in waitress/bartender shorthand, garnishing the drinks on her tray with speed and precision. She was dressed as someone’s idea of a French maid, a sleeveless dress in black velvet, with a ridiculously short skirt. Someone’s idea of sexy.

      Okay, she was his idea of sexy, too. Especially her long legs, in black stockings with a seam down the back, stockings that showed a bit of thigh at the top. Her wild hair was pinned up, with one errant lock in her eyes, but she didn’t have a free hand to deal with it, so she kept tossing her head, which didn’t solve the problem but gave her the look of a spirited filly. He wondered what she would do if he walked over and pinned it back for her. By his calculations she had to be close to the breaking point, and he searched for an opportunity to step in and … what? Stop her from keeling over, perhaps, when the síúlacht abruptly left her system. What he would like to do was pick her up and carry her into one of the back rooms and lay her down on a Queen Anne sofa.

      From there his thoughts turned to darker, more erotic images.

      Julio found Sailor while she stood at the bar, waiting for a drink order, eyes closed, asleep on her feet, like a horse.

      He slipped the síúlacht into her pocket.

      She opened her eyes with a start, pulled one of the pills from her pocket and sniffed it, then nodded. The pills were rough to the touch, and she imagined grass and twigs compressed hundreds of times, hardened into a caplet. “They smell just like the tea,” she said.

      He nodded. “The same, I promise. I gave you two. You take one now, you save one.”

      “I owe you.”

      Julio shrugged. “You take care of me, mija, so I take care of you.”

      She felt as if she was going to go into a coma waiting for Dennis to fill her drink order and knew she was fast reaching the point where she wouldn’t care about her job, her customers or the state of the world so long as she could close her eyes. She looked at the glass of ice water on her tray, took a quick glance around the bar and then, satisfied that no one was looking at her, popped a pill in her mouth and swallowed. She knocked back the water, placed the glass on the bus tray, then replaced it with a fresh one from the bar.

      Dennis came back with two white wines. “You okay, Sailor?”

      “Give me ten minutes. I’ll be fine.”

      It was síúlacht, all right. The

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