Page 7 of Nikolay

She looked almost disappointed not to have found me fumbling. “And if we wanted blood pairings?”

Her companion, another witch with a mouth painted plum-dark, watched me with open interest.

I shifted the tray to my other hand. “For the O positive reduction on the lamb, dry red. For the sweeter blood flight, I’d lean bourbon neat instead. Cuts the richness better.”

The first woman sat back a little. Not softened exactly, but corrected. “Very well. The pinot.”

“Excellent choice.”

As I turned, the second witch lifted her glass toward me in a small toast. “You’re improving.”

I smiled without showing teeth. “That’s what they tell me.”

I had almost reached the service aisle when a hand touched my arm—light, quick, familiar enough now that I didn’t flinch. Amelia slipped in at my side with the kind of restless grace that made it seem like she’d been assembled from sharp elbows, intent, and caffeine.

“If table six asks for one more impossible substitution, I’m going to salt their threshold and leave them trapped in the bathroom,” she muttered.

I bit back a laugh. “What’d they do?”

“The demon wants the lights lower because he thinks he looks mysterious in shadow. The vampire he’s with wants them brighter because she says she can’t admire herself in his pupils if she can’t see them.” Amelia rolled her eyes so hard it was practically athletic. “I hate rich people.”

“You work in a nest of them.”

“I know. My punishment for past sins.”

Her fingers squeezed my forearm once before she dropped her hand. It was brief, but there was something easy in it that still surprised me sometimes. I hadn’t expected to find real friendship this quick in a place like this. Maybe because Obsidian looked like decadence from the outside, but behind the velvet and polished vice, staff watched out for each other with the efficiency of people who understood danger did not always announce itself first.

“You good?” she asked, green eyes flicking over my face. “You look flushed.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“It’s always hot in here.”

“That soothes me not at all.”

She grinned. “Bohdan’s about to start the demo, by the way. Good luck getting anybody’s attention for the next twenty minutes.”

Right on cue, the music lowered—not cut entirely, just softened until the room seemed to lean toward the center on instinct. Heads turned. Conversations thinned. Even before I looked, I felt the shift move through the floor the way weather ran over open country.

Bohdan stepped onto the low demonstration platform with the elegance of a man who knew every eye would follow and had long ago decided that was only proper. His suit tonight was black, so deep it drank the purple light; his expression composed, handsome, faintly amused in that way of his that made a person feel both welcomed and assessed.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and his voice carried clean as glass over the room without once becoming loud, “if I might have your attention.”

He waited while the final few murmurs faded. Nearby, one of my tables lifted a finger for a refill, then thought better of interrupting and lowered it again. Smart.

“As always,” Bohdan continued, “Obsidian reminds its patrons that pleasure without consent is merely violence dressed for evening. We do not permit confusion on that point.”

A murmur of agreement moved through the room, low and approving.

He gestured to the equipment arranged on the platform behind him. The St. Andrew’s cross rose from the floor in polished black iron, tall enough to hold a body open against it like an offering and elegant enough to make the danger look expensive. The restraint cuffs fixed at wrists and ankles were lined in dark velvet. On a tray set to one side lay an array of implements—floggers, paddles, a coiled length of rope, a crop with a lacquered handle that flashed under the light.

“Tonight’s demonstration is impact and restraint,” Bohdan said. “Everything you are about to see has been negotiated in advance. Boundaries have been established. Safe words are in place. Nonverbal signals are in place. Staff monitors are positioned and attentive. If at any time a boundary is crossed, the scene ends. Immediately.”

His amber eyes traveled the crowd, warm only in appearance. “We are not animals here. You will remember that.”

That got a few soft laughs, mostly from species who probably ought to have felt chastened by it.

“Enjoy the education,” he said, and stepped off the platform.