I hadn’t been in here since.

It hadn’t changed all that much. It was still a rough place where rough-looking guys in leather vests or jackets with Outcast motorcycle club colors gathered to shoot pool and drink beer, many of them with eyes that glittered a little too brightly in the dim light, watched by tired-looking mortal women who had histories of violence and hardship etched on their faces. But it was different. It felt different. Still dangerous, but somehow not quite as seedy, not quite as dissolute.

Huh.

“Hey, darlin’.” The blond kid from last night peeled himself off the wall he’d been leaning against. He checked me out with an impudent look. If I hadn’t known he was more than two hundred years old and had been hanged to death, it might have tickled me. “Here to see the big man himself, are you?”

“If he’s free.” I put out my hand. “Cooper, right?”

“Best you don’t.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He wore a chambray shirt with the sleeves cut off and his bare arms were thin and wiry. “Miss Daisy, right?”

“Right.” I was having a hard time reconciling his age with his appearance. “So no leathers for you, huh?”

“Haven’t passed the initiation yet.” He looked me up and down again, pupils flaring briefly in his angelic blue eyes. “No disrespect, m’lady, but you’re a wee mite to be carrying such a big dagger.”

“Yeah, well.” I laid my hand on dauda-dagr’s hilt. “You know what it can do, right?”

“Oh, I do!” Cooper flashed a grin that was at once charming and unnervingly fearless. “You’re the angel of death in a feckin’ ponytail. C’mon, I’ll take you to see him.”

I followed him to Stefan’s office in the rear of the bar. Patrons moved out of the way with alacrity. Cooper may not have been initiated into the motorcycle club yet, but he’d obviously gained their respect. No one here showed any inclination to challenge Stefan’s choice of lieutenant.

“Daisy.” Stefan rose to greet me. He sounded surprised. “Is everything well? I thought the situation resolved.”

“It is.” The room seemed to get smaller as Cooper exited and closed the door behind him. Conscious of Stefan’s gaze on me, I had a vivid and not entirely unwelcome memory of the hunger in it last night. Taking a deep breath, I suppressed it. “As Hel’s liaison, I came to offer my official thanks for your assistance.”

Stefan smiled.

It was a genuine smile, one that brought out the dimples he had no earthly right to possess. One that gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach and made me wonder if that really was why I’d come here in the first place, and . . . oh, gah! What the hell was wrong with me, anyway?