He shot me a perplexed look. “You’re doing that thing you do again.”
“What thing?”
“Teasing.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“I…can’t really decide if I like it.”
“So growing up, you and your family didn’t tease one another.”
“My father doesn’t tease. He disciplines you for your own good.”
I snorted. “He sounds like your typical angel. I take it that speech about Siren’s Song was a quote from him.”
“Yes.”
I added another mark to the napkin under his name. “Well, I think I’ve proven that we can work on this important skill and have fun at the same time.”
I caught the arm of a passing vampire. She paused, her eyes taking on that distinctive hungry sheen as they slid down my hair, dipping to my neck. Her mouth curled back, exposing her fangs.
“My, my, what long teeth you have,” I said, taking hold of her mind.
The vampire kicked off the floor, sliding with silky grace over the bar.
“Hey, you can’t be back here,” Stash told her as she hopped down beside him.
The vampire batted her glittered eyelashes with false modesty. Then she grabbed Stash and kissed him hard on the lips. Her fingers, tipped with dark red polish, clawed through his hair, scraping down his stubbled jaw. Stash was kissing her back, and he wasn’t being gentle about it either. I guess he’d decided she could be back there after all.
“Are you done yet?” Jace asked me.
I chuckled. “They’re doing it on their own now.”
Surprise flashed in his eyes. He looked from the kissing couple to me.
“Pretty good, huh? The compulsion became ingrained, not just when I was actively controlling her.”
“It’s hardly surprising,” he said, recovering. “She is a vampire after all.”
I sighed. “What will it take to impress you?”
Jace glanced across the dance floor. “There,” he said, indicating the witch sitting on a sofa set atop a raised platform, looking down over everyone and everything like he was the king. “Enchant him. Convince him to sing ‘In the Moonlight’, and then I’ll be impressed.”
“That’s a shifter song,” I told him.
‘In the Moonlight’ was the shifters’ anthem, their theme song. It’s what they sang before getting furry and howling at the moon. Convincing a witch to sing it was about as easy as convincing a vampire to go on a no-blood diet. Nowadays, the shifters and witches of New York were getting along about as well as pickles and chocolate.
“Well, if you’re afraid of failing…” Jace allowed his voice to trail off.
“I’m afraid of nothing, least of all a witch wearing a purple wig and a gold suit.”
I poured myself another shot and drank it down. The witch king had bodyguards, two big witches who looked like they’d fallen off the pages of a bodybuilding magazine. I threw back another shot.
“If you’re not scared, then why do you need so many drinks?” Jace asked me.
“Just boosting up my magic.”
Which was kind of the truth. Witchy drinks had a hint of magic in them. Certainly nothing akin to Nectar, but you could only get Nectar drops in Legion bars. It was, after all, poison, so the fatality rate was pretty shocking. And killing your customers simply wasn’t good for business.
“He’s a leader,” I said, glancing at the witch king tucked safely behind his wall of bodyguards. “Leaders are harder to compel. The qualities that make others want to follow them also make them resistant to mental attacks.”
“That’s why it’s called a challenge,” replied Jace. “Don’t you want to push yourself?”
I did. Like everyone else, I had my reasons for joining the Legion. Some just wanted a place to fit in, others were hungry for power—or desperate for the magic that the gods’ gifts bestowed. That was me. Desperate. After my brother Zane went missing without a trace six months ago, I’d gone to the Legion with the intention of blasting through the ranks to gain the magic I needed to find him. The catch? The magic that would allow me to link to him, something called Psychic’s Spell, was a ninth level Legion ability. I had a long way to go, assuming I even survived. This training was what I needed. I had to push myself.
The Legion was doing a good job of pushing me too. Thanks to the First Angel, I was on the fast track, an accelerated path of intensely brutal training. And I wasn’t the only one.
“Ivy told me there are dozens of us across all Legion offices in this fast track program,” I said.
“How does she know that?”
I shrugged. “She talks to people. And you know Ivy. People tell her everything.”
“Maybe she could convince the witch king to sing ‘In the Moonlight’.”
“I’ll do it. Just give me a moment.” I traced my finger across the lip of my empty shot glass.
Jace’s brows lifted. “Need another?”
“I think I can manage without,” I said, tapping my fingertips atop the counter. “So many of us being pushed to grow our magic faster. The Legion must be preparing for something.”
“You ask too many questions. That’s what gets you into trouble.”
“Has your father told you anything?”
“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” he replied, frowning. “Trouble.”