Take a Shot

She-Devil

The music was so loud I could barely hear myself think, but even that was preferable to the unfortunate situation to my left. I looked over to my right, trying to sneak a peek at Tekh's cards as he, also, was distracted by what was about to become an "unsolvable homicide" next to us. Unfortunately, Tekh noticed me as well, putting a big hand over my eyes and chuckling to himself.

"So, Emerald, it's a bit rare to see you at a function like this," Tekh said, his loud-as-fuck deep voice breaking through the thumping bass line and strange, high pitches of the music currently playing. "Especially without Matt."

"Yes, I know," the assassin said solemnly. I tried not to roll my eyes. Only she could make a bumpin' party like this feel so overdone. There were drugs, and the beer was cheap, and the women were hot...though, in fairness, I was pretty sure she wasn't into that.

Tekh removed his hand from my face, and I looked towards Emerald. Her face was normally pretty hard to read, but even she had trouble hiding this particular feeling: boredom.

"Where is Matt at tonight?" Thane asked, taking a sip from their beer. Emerald shrugged. I looked around the table. Whose turn were we on? Was it my turn? Were they waiting on me? I thought I had already gone. Maybe it was Tekh's turn?

I sent a quick glare at the newest addition to our little friend group: a new grunt named Klein. He was the reason this game was going so slow. He was a pretty cool guy normally, but right now, he was about three sentences away from me kicking him the balls. He was distracting the rest of us from our game of Old Maid in the most efficient way possible: cozying up to Emerald.

It was a pretty common occurrence. Almost every time we folded someone new into our friend group, they decided Emerald was worth it to hit on: in fairness, she was pretty hot, and it's not like our specific group was overflowing with women. We had Gordie, a major hoe, Juanna, a 10 but married, and Stella, one of Matt's exes who turned out to be a lesbian and kept hanging out with us because we were all cool. So really, at first glance, if you didn't make the assumption that Emerald was dating Stella or Matt, it wasn't hard to see why she might look like the most eligible option. It was hard to really blame anyone who tried their hand with her. Still, it was annoying to watch. Even more annoying was how pouty Matt got when he saw it happening, even though Emerald was never murky about how much she disliked being hit on. It was part of why she never came out to parties like this with us.

Also, being a huge buzzkill didn't help. For such a freaky woman, she was a real stick in the mud. How she and party-animal-extrovert Matt ended up friends was still sort of beyond me. I'd heard the story, of course, since Matt told it to everyone who would listen, but still...ugh.

"Whose turn is it?" I asked. Tekh nodded to his left, towards Frej, who was staring intently at his cards. I sighed. Frej was pretty new to Harmony, and he'd fortunately not hit on Emerald or Juanna, so he'd been quickly welcomed into our friend group, perhaps especially by Por, who was off getting more drinks. He was a nice kid, if a little bit shy. We all liked him.

What Por had neglected to think about before going off, though, was that his new brown-haired boyfriend spoke Kyese, not Dalan. He spoke common as well, but haltingly, and so we weren't exactly sure if he fully understood what Old Maid was. So now he was holding up the game.

Emerald, one empty seat to Frej's left, leaned over and waved to get Frej's attention. He looked up, brown eyes going wide. Emerald said something that I couldn't hear over the music, tapping the top of one of Frej's cards. As Frej nodded, though, it appeared she might be re-explaining the game to him in his home language. I looked at Tekh, who shrugged.

"She is a woman of many mysteries," he said, leaning in closer to me. I snorted. Understatement of the year. It wasn't really a surprise that she knew Kyese. She was an assassin, after all. Rumor around the castle was she was also pretty smart, which, having seen her fight in a few informal matches, did unfortunately appear to be true. Yet another thing that made it hard to believe a killing machine like her and a softie like Matt were best friends. I guess opposites really did attract.