Bad Girls Drink Blood Read online

  BAD GIRLS DRINK BLOOD

  S.L. CHOI

  BAD GIRLS DRINK BLOOD

  By

  S.L. Choi

  Copyright © 2022 S.L. Choi

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  Edited by Heather McCorkle.

  Cover Design by MiblArt.

  All stock photos licensed appropriately.

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  Published in the United States by City Owl Press.

  www.cityowlpress.com

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  For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.

  PRAISE FOR S.L. CHOI

  “With tantalizing hints of a wolfy blood tryst, a heavy dose of sisterly love, and plot twists to make the ride a surprise, S.L. Choi’s, Bad Girls Drink Blood is too much fun. This brand-new world and mythos are a pleasure to explore. Solid world building, easy to grasp politics, hints of future romance and plenty of snark are the perfect scaffold to a story about finding that your scars are only the signposts of your hidden abilities, and that the part of you that brings you the most pain, can also be the wellspring of your deepest satisfaction. If you like the Hollows, you will love this.” — Kim Harrison, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Hollows series

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  “Welcome to a sexy, new spin on the fae. Deliciously gritty and full of snark, you’ll find your new hero in Lane Callaghan.” – International and award-winning author of the Weird Girls UF romance series, Cecy Robson

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  “Bad Girls Drink Blood is an action-packed good time that delivers wit, grit, and an unforgettable heroine.” – Kat Turner, author the Coven Daughters series

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  “Bad Girls Drink Blood has everything I love: a heroine that can put bad guys in the dirt, side-splitting humor, and characters you’re invested in from page one. In a debut that is both heart-wrenching and wildly hilarious from start to finish, Choi carves out her place in a crowded genre with what I hope to be a long series.” — Gabrielle Ash, author of The Family Cross and For the Murder

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  “Magic, modernity, and multiple dimensions collide in the richly imagined world of S.L. Choi’s page-turning debut Bad Girls Drink Blood, where a snarky, badass heroine with a monster complex and a sexy spark of friends-to-lovers romance will delight fans of urban fantasy and fae intrigue.” – Erin Fulmer, author of Cambion’s Law

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  “This urban fantasy debut will have readers on the edge of their seats as they follow Lane's action-packed adventure! Choi's voice and style pulled me in right away and I instantly loved Lane, who is a total badass. I also adored her sisters and Teddy and loved the found family theme--it's one of my favorites! I hated to put this book down and I found myself wondering what would happen next for Lane and company. I am thrilled to read the next installment in this series and can't wait for more adventures with one of my favorite characters to date. Fans of urban fantasy will want to sink their teeth into this brilliant debut!” – Ashley R. King, author of Forever After, Painting Lines, The Wilde Card

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  “Want a fast-paced urban fantasy with a badass fae heroine, a hunky love interest, and a snarky cast of mythical beings? How about found family, sisterly love, and multi-layered world building? Then sink your teeth into Bad Girls Drink Blood. Craving satisfied.” – Sarina Dahlan, author of Reset

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  “I was thrilled for the chance to read an advanced copy of Bad Girls Drink Blood by S.L. Choi and let me tell you, it did not disappoint. This story hits the ground running and sprints full-tilt to the end until I was turning pages faster than my kindle could keep up! The writing is crisp, the characters delightful, and the worldbuilding is absolutely phenomenal. Faes, shifters, druids, and a hot bartender who’s not what he seems. Yes please! I loved Lane and her sisters so much, and I can’t wait for more stories about them and their detective agency. Bad Girls Drink Blood is a sparkling urban fantasy gem with a gooey romance center. Highly recommend.” – Jess K Hardy, author of Love in the Time of Wormholes and I, Bionic

  CONTENTS

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Find Your Next Read

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Sneak Peek of Wicked Misery

  Find Your Next Read

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Additional Titles

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  Don’t miss the next Blood Fae Druid book coming soon, and find more from S.L. Choi at www.slchoi.com

  * * *

  Until then, discover WICKED MISERY, by City Owl Author, Tracey Martin!

  Jessica Moore only has five days to catch a killer.

  Thanks to a goblin’s curse, Jessica gets a magical high from humanity’s suffering. While the guilt of thriving on misery could bury a girl, she atones by using her power to hunt the bad guys—until one of them frames her for his crimes.

  In desperation, Jessica seeks refuge with the one person she trusts—a satyr named Lucen. Like every member of his paranormal race, Lucen uses his lusty magic to control Boston’s human population, and Jessica isn’t immune to his power.

  But the murder victims belong to a rival race, and when they discover Lucen is harboring Jessica, dodging the cops becomes the least of her problems.

  With time running out, Jessica faces a danger every bit as serious as the brewing magical war—succumbing to Lucen’s seductive power. Will their tenuous relationship survive, or will more misery prevail?

  GET IT NOW!

  To my cat, Cronos, whose insi
stence on laps kept my butt in the seat writing.

  1

  I’M A BAD GIRL

  I’d been nursing my drink for the past hour, along with my pride. I didn’t want to face my sisters. I didn’t want to tell them I’d screwed up.

  The morning sun broke through stained-glass windows high on the far wall of the shotgun-style front room. It illuminated the rich mahogany bar top and the pale red layer of melted ice atop the disgusting virgin Bloody Mary I’d made the mistake of ordering.

  “I don’t smell nos blood.” A hand large enough to crack a watermelon like an egg slid in front of me and tapped a chipped fingernail on my glass.

  “Too early for that stuff.” He didn’t need to know I was allergic. That type of info would ruin my rep. “Tomato juice and plenty of vodka.”

  “Yous should go straight vodka. Don’t mess with that vegetable stuff.”

  “Fruit.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” I swung around on the well-worn saddle of my stool and faced the ogre. Rip, a regular fixture at the bar, had a remarkably expressive face for something that resembled an unfinished block of gray sculpting clay. Broad as a refrigerator and somewhere close to seven feet tall, he dwarfed my already short stature. Both of his ever-roaming—and more than a little creepy—chameleon-like eyes landed on me.

  “Lane Callaghan.” He pinched the lapels of my jacket to straighten it. The shifting sides revealed a shoulder sheath holding a push dagger under each arm, and he tweaked one with a thick finger. “What’s a bad girl like yous doing in a nice bar like this?”

  Despite playing into the corny cliché, I snatched his finger and bent it back, stopping before it reached the point of pain. “Never touch a girl’s hardware unless you’re prepared to lose a finger.” I tempered the action with a wink. Though, I meant it. Don’t touch my blades.

  “No touch. Gots it.” He threw his hands in the air. Such a drama queen.

  From the front of the bar voices rose, furniture clattered on the hardwood floors, and a bottle shattered. The only one to react was Teddy, the bartender, bar owner, and resident eye candy, who appeared from behind the bar and easily vaulted over the counter before the fighters could cause any damage to his establishment.

  A nice bar, indeed. Nice was relative in Interlands, but the ogre did run a bookie business from the booth he rented here, so he was biased. To be fair, Teddy kept the place in surprisingly good shape, considering the locals and some of their shady side businesses. Myself included.

  Cleanliness was not a typical werewolf trait, not that I’d ever seen Teddy go furry. Not in the seven years I’d known him, but it was obvious in the way he moved, the way he easily cowed other wolves—and just about anyone else, really.

  I hitched my elbows on the bar behind me and leaned against it. “What’s up, Rip?”

  He rolled his thick shoulders and did a quick side-to-side look, as if there might actually be someone in here who didn’t know why he’d approached me.

  “Yous lookin’ for work?”

  My nostrils flared with a slow, deep breath. The crisp grapefruit scent of whatever cleaner Teddy used to keep a bar full of humans, fae, and other degenerates suspiciously clean invaded my senses. If I said yes, my sisters would be pissed. I was already on a job, but I’d screwed it up, and we were less than a month away from having our electricity cut off, so why not?

  “You know, being propositioned for work in a bar would offend most women.” I tugged my ponytail forward and began twisting the deep auburn strands into a fat braid. A red so deep it was nearly black, but not the black-on-black of a true blood fae.

  The ogre’s full belly laugh sounded like stones rattling inside a bass drum. His gut was about the size of one, too. “Most don’t get paid to beats up folks and take their money.”

  “True.” My business card might say private investigator, but as my failed attempt to tail someone solo proved this morning, I should stick with being the muscle of my sibling trio, even if my sisters insisted otherwise. “All right. Who is it, and what’s the timetable?”

  “Lotta whos. Grounders. A pack of them.”

  I barked a laugh. “You want me to shake down a bunch of overgrown hamsters?”

  The trenches carved into the big guy’s forehead deepened. “Yous don’t know much about them, do you?”

  “Enough. Doesn’t matter. I’ll swipe the Easter Bunny’s carrots, so long as you’re paying. Here.” I pulled the palm-sized pad emblazoned with the business name, YML Investigations, from my jacket pocket and handed it to Rip. “Details. Names, descriptions, their usual haunts. You know the drill.”

  The pad disappeared into Rip’s massive mitt. He paused. His thick lips pressed into a tight line. “Yous don’t underestimate these guys. Theys not so easy.”

  “Hey, I’m the big bad blood fae, remember?” Blood fae enough. “That’s why you hire me. Let me worry about me.”

  Rip reached across the counter, grabbed a pen, and began scribbling the info. “Yous still on that other job?”

  My turn to frown. Although, I shouldn’t be surprised. Information kept him in the bookie game. “How’d you know about that?”

  “Word gets ’round. I gots money on you bringing her in by end of tomorrow.” He paused his scribbling to look me in the eye, which took getting used to. His protruding, conical-shaped eye sockets swiveled in all directions. “Yous gonna deliver?”

  “Geez. Is there anything you don’t run bets on?”

  “Nope.” His broad grin revealed two cracked teeth and a whole lot of pride. “Yous company is popular. YML makes me good money. Stupid tourists bet against yous. House wins.”

  “Why didn’t I know about this? As the L in YML, I should have. I could’ve been double dipping, doing the jobs and betting all along.” And paying bills on time.

  Rip returned my pad. “Didn’t seem ethical.”

  “Riiight. Because you’re all about ethics. Put me down for a grand. I’ll have your money by three.”

  One conical eye remained on me while the other rotated to the clock above the bar. His hairless brow shot skyward. “Almost noon. Yous telling me yous wrap this up in three hours?”

  “Yup. I got this. Odds?”

  His puffy lips pulled wide in a slow grin. “No bet. Yous bring my money in three hours or less, yous keep half.”

  “Let me guess, if I’m late I don’t get paid?”

  Rip tapped his bulbous nose, smiled, and pushed his way through the crowd toward his booth in the far corner. A brass plaque embossed with his name hung on the wall above the back bench.

  Hot damn, half of what the grounders owed. They better owe a lot. It’d been a slow year for YML Investigations. Good for me and the more physical jobs—money collection, intimidation, even a little bit of protection. Those jobs were fun, for me, but didn’t pay nearly enough to cover our bills. Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to drum up investigative business in a town of degenerates and criminals that didn’t want to be investigated. The job I’d bombed this morning was meant to be our big payday.

  I returned the pad to my pocket, but it caught on a bar napkin I’d shoved in there. Not from this bar, but to the bar in the fae-friendly casino I’d trailed my mark to this morning. Notes were never good. The one scrawled on the napkin was no exception. I tugged it free and fit the pad into place. Instead of replacing the napkin, I smoothed it on the bar top and stared down at the spindly black script.

  Better luck next time, hybrid.

  Fury roared through me. My ears burned and scalp tingled.

  “What the hell is that?”

  I spun with a snarl. My fangs elongated instantly, painfully.

  Teddy’s tall, lean frame bent over my shoulder as he read the napkin. My body thrummed with the surge of unspent adrenaline and possibly the intimate proximity. I flexed my fingers, curled them, flexed again.

  “It’s nothing.” I snatched the napkin and jammed it into my jacket pocket. I’d deal with how exactly that woman
knew I was a hybrid later. That was a secret for me and my sisters, and I aimed to keep it that way.

  There was only one hybrid, and I was the unlucky genetic winner. It wasn’t for lack of fae mixing, that was something they did often and copiously, but offspring were always of one race. It kept their magic powerful, and if fae worshiped anything, it was power. My existence wasn’t an exalted position.

  “But—”

  “It’s nothing,” I stressed, my gaze steady on his. I meant business.

  “Okay, okay.” He tipped his forehead toward my face. “You should holster those things before you hurt someone besides yourself.”

  Crap, not again. All at once my lip became a persistent throb, reminding me of the pain from my fangs punching out. I dragged a finger along the edge of my mouth. It came away sticky, warm, and wet. When startled, I had zero control of the things. It was embarrassing.