Read Online Firebug by Lish McBride - Free Book Online

shouldn’t be able to make that sound. She had to be an alien, or a genetic experiment that had gone horribly, terribly wrong.
    â€œDoes this look like a movie-theater outfit to you?” She opened her jacket to reveal a tiny skirt, heels, and what was either a sparkly handkerchief or a shirt. I honestly wasn’t sure which one it was.
    â€œYes?” I crossed my arms and sank into my seat. As far as I could tell, Brittany dressed like that all the time. What, exactly, made this outfit a non-movie-theater outfit? The hoop earrings? The body glitter? Did she wear less or more to the movies? Was this her version of understated? It wasn’t that warm yet. She was going to either get hypothermia or die of exposure. You kind of had to admire her commitment. I shrugged. “How should I know?”
    She made that weird noise again and looked away from me, like I was dismissed from her presence. “Silly of me to ask as if you would.”
    That seemed to be as close to an apology as Brittany ever got. I glared at Ryan’s profile. “Then where are we going?”
    â€œIt’s a surprise.”
    Have I mentioned how much I love surprises? As Ryan backed into a spot, I really took in my surroundings. I have to admit I’d been too distracted to pay attention until then. Imagine my dismay when I recognized the streets around the Inferno, Venus’s club I desperately hoped there were other restaurants in that section of town. Boston is a big city. He wouldn’t pick the one place in the great state of Massachusetts that I wanted to avoid, would he? I crossed my fingers and prayed that we were going anywhere else.
    My silent entreaties belly flopped as soon as we walked around a corner and saw the neon-red sign. I’d waltzed straight into Cade’s as-yet-unforeseen third misfortune. Neither of us had thought Ryan would actually take me directly into the lion’s den.
    As it was Friday night, the line twisted around the corner of the building. Not that there wasn’t a line every night. There were three levels in the Inferno. The top floor, or Heaven, was a dance club and bar. I was only seventeen, so no Heaven for me, which suited me just fine. At ground level, Purgatory, a maître d’ is there to take your name and seat you, whether you’re in a nice suit or ripped jeans. You could get surf ’n’ turf or a fancy burger in a nice candlelit atmosphere. Most places can’t pull it off, but the restaurant managed to be fairly high end without being snooty. If the place had belonged to anyone but Venus, I would have loved it.
    Below, as you might have guessed, was Hell, and while Purgatory was open to the general public, Heaven and Hell were VIP. It’s easiest to think of the Coterie as a mob family, except what mattered was that you weren’t human. Whether you had joined up through coercion (like Lock, Ezra, and me) or by choice, the one unifying factor of the Coterie was that back in your bloodline, something grew fangs, talked to trees, or had the ability to start fires, and those genes bred true. If you were in a Coterie establishment and you were human, odds were you were someone’s sack lunch. Or Venus’s juice box.
    Duncan had once told me that some cities have a Council, a ruling body that kept this kind of thing from happening. Boston had one a long time ago, but not anymore. Maybe Venus ate them. So, personal reasons aside, I didn’t exactly want to bring Venus three boxes of human takeout. Okay, fine, she could have Brittany and her paramour, but I wasn’t handing over Ryan.
    I couldn’t think of a way to derail this train, though. Fake vomit? They’d probably just go in without me. That was even worse. Ryan grabbed my hand and tugged me to his side. Since he was unsure as to whether the line was for the dance club or just to get in, Ryan led us to the front of the building.
    I had to try something. “You know, I