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They never begrudged their sister for her casual hookups, and Fey certainly never judged her for it. In fact, Fey envied her. Lilith always returned from these nameless boys with a smile on her face and a look of deep satisfaction.
Whereas Fey… well… Fey never felt anything after a one-night stand but a deep desire to take a hot shower.
Lilith lived and breathed sex, and it invoked something in her Fey never understood. In Fey’s experience, men knew so little about the female body it was a shock they managed to put their dick in the right hole. She’d had her fill of fumbling, slobbery encounters in the last few years—Lilith was welcome to all of them, as far as she was concerned.
Fey took a sip of her drink while Joy and Willow shimmied into the booth, pausing at the taste. She held the seltzer in her mouth, registering Joy’s eyes on her as she swallowed. Fey’s smile never slipped as she set the glass down, grinning at Willow like nothing was out of the ordinary.
“Hello, my loves,” Lilith purred, strutting up to the table. Whoever the Shifter was, he must have done a damn good job based on the wobble in her step and the satisfied glaze in her eyes. Lilith grabbed the unclaimed glass from the table and downed her vodka in a single gulp.
“Dance with me, little sister,” she cooed at Willow. Willow grinned and hopped out of the booth, not needing to be told twice. Before they turned to the dance floor Lilith cocked an eyebrow at Joy and Fey, an invitation to join them.
“I want to finish my drink first!” Joy said, beaming, and Fey just shook her head with a smile. Lilith nodded, and Fey watched the crowd split around her and Willow as they joined the dance floor.
“So,” Fey said casually, toying with the tiny plastic straw in her drink. “Do you want to tell me why you and I are drinking seltzer tonight?”
Joy’s smile faded for a moment as she chewed her lip. Fey should have noticed right away, should have smelled the difference in the drinks when Joy had set them down—two vodka sodas, two seltzers, looking almost identical.
“This is where she came,” Joy said, finally. “This is where Alice was the night she died.”
The words were such a shock Fey nearly choked on her drink. Her hand shook as she set her glass back down on the table. “How do you know?” she asked.
“Security cameras,” Joy answered, voice barely above a whisper. Her smile was back like they were just two friends chatting it up, but it was a mask. Joy was rattled, and it had been a long time since Fey had seen her rattled. “I spent hours combing through footage from all around the city. Alice was here the night she died, and then she left and didn’t go anywhere else but to the safe house.”
Fey schooled her face to match Joy’s, smiling at men as they walked by their booth. It wasn’t hard. She’d perfected this exact smile over the years—just enough to look seductive, but not enough to look welcoming, not enough to convince any of them to approach. It was a smile that said you can look, but you can’t touch.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Fey asked. She tried to keep the anger from coloring her voice. Tried, and failed.
Joy’s smile didn’t waiver for so much as a second when she answered. “I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”
Fey let the information sink in. This was good, she decided, even as her heart broke all over again. This was a lead; this was one step closer to finding her killer, to finding out what had happened.
Fey never drank during an assignation. Trust Joy to think of that. Joy was a tactile genius, after all, always thinking at least two steps ahead of everyone else. Fey needed every brain cell at full capacity, and something about alcohol messed with her connection with Water—not a lot, but just enough that it could be a problem.
And a risk, even a small one like that, could be the difference between living and dying in their line of work.
Joy wanted her alert, wanted Fey at her best. And she was trusting her with this tonight.
“Alright,” Fey sighed. “We’re here. You have my support. What do we do now?”
Water, Water, gives us life.
Heals our ills, and calms our strife.
Fire, Fire, born to fight.
Brings us pain, and rage and light
Earth, Earth, sure and calm.
Stubborn often, but rarely wrong.
Air, Air, fast and quick.
Smart and clever, full of wit.
The chorus from a children’s nursery rhyme bounced through Fey’s head as Joy outlined her plan. Joy was, without a doubt, the smartest Witch she’d ever met.
“This place has cameras everywhere,” Joy explained. Her eyes darted quickly to a few stationed around the nightclub, a subtle look that Fey followed. She was right—Fey could see at least a few of them. They weren’t even hidden. “The owner must have a voyeurism kink, I think—there isn’t a single corner in this place that’s not being watched. But I can’t access it since it’s all on a closed system.”
