Valkyrie

Chapter 4

By the time the cab picked me up from the hospital and took me back to the diner to get my bike, the sun was up and blaring brightly right in my tired eyes. I stopped at the grocery store and picked up a few things, including some of those tasty pudding cups in chocolate and butterscotch, before going home. I inhaled enough food for two grown men, emptied a gallon of water down my gullet, took a short, hot, cramped shower in the trailer, and then collapsed into bed where I slept for about fourteen hours. It was just what I needed. When I finally came back to the land of the living, I had to piss like a racehorse and felt better than I had felt in weeks. I was fed and rested. I was even adequately hydrated for once. It was glorious and put me in a rare good mood. I even responded to the text from Trey making sure I'd made it home safely.

Staring at my reflection in the mirror while I got ready to go out didn't make me wince for once. I looked like my better rested, more put together twin. The dark circles were gone from under my pale amber eyes so I threw on a little mascara and eyeliner, drawing attention to the soft, mellow color of the irises. I didn't spend too much time on my hair since any effort I put into it was going to get ruined by my helmet so I did what I always did and pulled the thick, golden locks back into a French braid and tied it off with one of the twelve million hair ties that littered every horizontal surface in the trailer. A pair of black, skin tight jeans tucked into the tops of my beloved boots and a dark maroon top with a daringly low-cut front and I was out the door on my bike, cruising off into the night.

The bar I worked at was busy. The bar proper and the game room were both packed with milling, laughing people. My boss was tending bar and he looked a little pressed to keep up. He was never very good at bartending when things got busy. He's great at telling everyone what to do, though. That's why he's the boss. There were empty glasses and empty bottles being waved at him from both ends of the crowded bar. There was supposed to be some new girl training with him tonight but it looked like she hadn't shown up. I sighed. I was supposed to be off but I couldn't leave him hanging. He was family after all and serving drinks is embedded in my DNA. It's literally one of the things I was made for.

"Where'd all these people come from?" I asked as I pushed through the swinging door behind the bar. I had dumped my stuff in his office, startling the two sleeping ravens perched on the shelves along the back wall. They grumbled at me and snapped their beaks at me when I flipped them off before they settled down and went back to sleep. I resigned myself to the fact that my night off was not going to be a night off. "And where's the new girl?"

"Thank fuck," he said with a relieved sigh when he looked over his shoulder and saw me. His eyepatch was a little askew, the white mass of scar tissue where his right eye used to be visible under the bottom edge. There was a toothpick with a pearl onion on it and a cherry stem stuck in one of the braids in his long, gray beard. What the hell had he been doing with the onions? He reached up and pulled the patch back down, settling it back in place. "Some kind of concert or convention or some shit. I forgot all about it or I wouldn't have given you the night off. And I have no fucking idea. No call. Nothing. She hasn't even started and she's already godsdamned fired," he growled, voice gruff and gravely. Trish was standing at the server's station, trying and failing to get the old man's attention by waving her order pad around. She gave me a relieved smile when I started to move toward her. I stopped in front of Odin and pulled the cherry stem and impaled onion from his beard, tossing them in the trash before I put my hands on his shoulders, looking him in the eye since we were the same height.

"Good thing I came in, then." He threw me a grateful smile. "I expect overtime for working on my night off, Uncle." His smile slipped away as he moved down to the other end of the bar, grumbling about ungrateful women and impertinent employees as I went to help the waitress, a small smile lifting the corners of my lips.