Angels and Amulets: A Steampunk Christmas Adventure (A Holly Drake Christmas Heist Book 1) by Nicole Grotepas

Author:Nicole Grotepas [Grotepas, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

4

“I’m not sure this is the best way to use our time,” Odeon said as they pushed through the doors leading into the strip club. Sveldt Encounters was the front for Beatrice Le Tissier’s real business—selling black market goods for surveillance, espionage, and other sundry tools that could assist a person in skirting the authorities.

Holly’s history as the daughter of a police officer and the sister of Meg Wolfe, who also worked in law enforcement, often caused her to feel intrinsically at odds flying under the radar like she was.

But then, nothing had ever convinced her that following the rules paid off. When she’d followed those rules, she’d landed square in the midst of an abusive relationship that pushed her to the edges of her tolerance until she snapped.

These thoughts were as far away from her conscience mind as they could be as Holly and Odeon waltzed past the front desk, nodded at the attractive human male working there, and overall kept to the fringe of the club floor to get to the doors that led to the secret underground tunnels.

“My, my,” Odeon said softly, noticing the female dancers on stage. In addition to the female human dancers, there were Yasoan females on the multiple elevated dais stages today, something Holly never thought she’d see—Yasoans. Dancing . . . like that.

“Le Tissier seems to be branching out,” Holly noted. As Odeon’s reaction to the strippers registered, she almost stopped and looked back at him. Instead she glanced over her shoulder, but kept walking, careful to note that their pathway was clear of bystanders. “I thought you preferred males.”

“Holly Drake, I’m fluid. Sexuality is a spectrum,” he said. “And these females look very, very nice.”

Holly resisted the urge to smirk. Of course it was a damn spectrum. But, hearing that from Odeon stirred up a jumble of confused emotions. But this was no time to address them or dwell on them, so she shoved them aside and focused. Sex. Love. They were as boundless as spirit. She had no arguments for that. The love that someone nurtured was the love they reaped.

She shrugged as though using her body to tell her mind to move on and drop it. There were bigger fish to fry at the moment. Working out her emotions could come later, during downtime.

They descended a stairway concealed behind a tapestry. Both of them were quiet as they followed a familiar path toward the shop they’d patronized many times. Narrow corridors were lit with sconce-lamps that punched shadows off their bodies into black misshapen oblongs dancing up the scuffed and pockmarked walls and across the floors. Their footfalls clattered off stone floors. Humid, musty odors hung in eddies of air that dispersed when they passed through them and swirled into the far corners of the long hallway and the various rooms that branched off it.

“I prefer her wares to those of some of the others,” Holly said. The silence had finally gotten to her, and the hollow sounds of their feet.

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