Face ugly, Glenn broke her hold and fell to the ground. “Go Turn yourself, Tamwood,” he rasped, rubbing his neck. “I can take care of myself. This won’t be any worse than walking into a good-old-boy’s bar in deep Georgia.”

“Yeah?” she questioned, pale hand on her cocked hip. “Anyone there want to eat you?”

The Were pack flowed past us and inside. One jerked, doing a double take as he saw me, and I wondered if my stealing that fish was going to be a problem. Music and chatter drifted out, cutting off as the thick door shut. I sighed. It sounded busy. Now we’d probably have to wait for a table.

I offered Glenn a hand up as Ivy opened the door. Glenn refused my help, tucking his anti-itch spell back behind his shirt as he struggled to find his pride, squished under Ivy’s boots somewhere. Jenks flitted from me to his shoulder, and Glenn started. “Go sit somewhere else, pixy,” he said around a cough.

“Oh, no,” Jenks said merrily. “Don’t you know a vamp won’t touch you if there’s a pixy on your shoulder? It’s a well-known fact.”

Glenn hesitated, and my eyes rolled. What a crock.

We filed in behind Ivy as the Were pack was being led to their table. The place was crowded, not unusual for a workday. Piscary’s had the best pizza in Cincinnati, and they didn’t take reservations. The warmth and noise relaxed me, and I took off my coat. The rough-cut, thick support beams seemed to prop up the low ceiling, and a rhythmic stomping to the beat of Sting’s “Rehumanize Yourself” filtered down the wide stairs. Past them were wide windows looking out over the black river and the city beyond. A three-story, obscenely expensive motorboat was tied up, the docking lights shining on the name across the bow, SOLAR. Pretty college-age kids moved efficiently about in their skimpy uniforms, some more suggestive than others. Most were bound humans, since the vamp staff traditionally took the less supervised upstairs.

The host’s eyebrows rose as he took Glenn in. I could tell he was the host because his shirt was only half undone and his name tag said so. “Table for three? Lighted or non?”

“Lighted,” I interjected before Ivy could say different. I didn’t want to be upstairs. It sounded rowdy.

“It will be about fifteen minutes, then. You can wait at the bar if you like.”

I sighed. Fifteen minutes. It was always fifteen minutes. Fifteen little minutes that dragged to thirty, then forty, and then you were willing to wait ten more so you didn’t have to go to the next restaurant and start all over again.

Ivy smiled to show her teeth. Her canines were no bigger than mine were, but sharp like a cat’s. “We’ll wait here, thanks.”

Looking almost enraptured by her smile, the host nodded. His chest, showing beneath his open shirt, was scattered with pale scars. It wasn’t what the hosts were wearing at Denny’s, but who was I to complain? There was a soft look about him that I didn’t like in my men but some women did. “It won’t be long,” he said, his eyes fixing to mine as he noticed my attention on him. His lips parted suggestively. “Do you want to order now?”