Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
She would have asked if she could stay with her big sister, Samantha, for a while, but Sam was currently living out of her van so she could travel to various haunted locations for her ghost hunting show. Also, she’d just gotten into what seemed like a pretty serious relationship with a Wulven Kindred Warrior who had been assigned to be her Protector. So now they were traveling together and Hanna couldn’t stand being a third wheel.
She could always go up to the Mother Ship and stay with her Aunt Luna and the Kindred Warrior she was married to, of course. But whenever she saw the two of them together, they seemed so totally in love that Hanna was sure she would just be in the way. Her new uncle was a Beast Kindred named Bruin and he seemed completely devoted to her aunt in every way.
Hanna wished she could find a Kindred Warrior who would fall in love with her. The big aliens who had come from beyond the stars to protect Earth years ago were 95% male due to a genetic anomaly. As a result, they valued females highly and treated them like queens.
But she was sure that any Kindred she met would just think she was crazy—like all the human guys she’d tried to date before she’d given up dating for good. And like Mr. Harvey, her manager—now her ex-manager, she supposed—and like the male customer she’d accidentally poured coffee on.
She hadn’t meant to do it—honestly, she hadn’t—even though he had been provoking her. Previous to the coffee incident, she’d just finished with a horrible customer—a woman who had eaten all but two bites of her Denver omelet meal with a side of hash browns, bacon, and blueberry pancakes with extra whipped cream—and then declared that it was all “disgusting” and she wasn’t going to pay for any of it.
Hanna had been forced to get Mr. Harvey involved in the matter—which he absolutely hated, since he preferred to sit in the back room and look at porn on his phone all night. He had ended up comping the woman’s meal and while she left with a triumphant smile on her face—and a Liar Imp clinging to her shoulder like a pet bat—he’d turned to Hanna and growled,
“You’d better not fucking bother me for the rest of the night! And the price of that woman’s order is coming out of your tips!”
“But…but how is that fair?” Hanna had protested. “It’s not my fault she didn’t want to pay!”
“You should have given her better service,” Mr. Harvey snapped. “Then maybe she wouldn’t have complained!”
Then he had stormed away, presumably going to resume his porn scrolling in the back room.
At that point, Hanna had been wishing she could just go home. She felt like crying—almost all the money she’d made so far that night was going to go to pay for the nasty customer’s meal! What was even the point of her being there?
She felt tears stinging her eyelids and she didn’t want to break down in the middle of the dining area. Turning quickly, she went to the bathroom to blow her nose and put some cold water on her face.
Her hand hovered over the knob of the employee’s only restroom…and then she passed it by and went to the ladies room for customers instead. She’d learned the hard way her first day on the job not to go into the employee bathroom. It looked like an empty room with just a sink, toilet, and hand dryer to anyone else. Only Hanna could see the dead man sitting on its single toilet, staring vacantly at the wall.
She thought he might have been one of the short order cooks at one time and he’d died of a heart attack in there, but she didn’t know for sure because he never talked. He just sat there, gray and silent, with his pants around his ankles as he stared at nothing.
Hanna was used to dealing with dead people—she’d been seeing them all her life—but some were definitely creepier than others. So she went to the ladies room where no one had died.
After splashing water on her face and blotting her eyes, she walked out again to find that the hostess had seated two older men at one of her booths. Putting on her best professional smile, she brought them some menus and said,
“Hi, I’m Hanna and I’ll be taking care of you tonight. What can I get for you?”
“Well, you can start by bringing that fine ass over here, honey,” one of the men—a biker-looking guy in a black leather jacket said, eyeing her.
Hanna felt her smile freeze on her face as she saw a Lust Imp poke its pointed snout out of the collar of the man’s jacket and give her a lascivious grin.