Catfights in Faeland **Teaser**

'Don't eat the finger fries. You're safer getting the rat burger.'

Catriona O'Shea walked swiftly past the Delicious Eats Delicatessen, if you could call it that. A high dollar name, for a hole-in-the-wall shop that sold the fanciest rodent burgers this side of the human defense wall. But god in heaven, don't order the fries. They cost an arm and a leg... and they're french-fried fingers. Actual fingers. They do give you a delightful honey mustard siracha dipping sauce though.

Still, it is the best eating in the Underbelly, she defended the restaurant as she sidestepped to avoid a cart vendor selling 'fairy' dust. She'd bet her eye teeth it was the fake shit they peddled in back alleys, not the real stuff. No way a Duster would catch a pure-breed fae and bleed 'em just to sell it for a dollar or two on Main Street. It was a tedious process—refining the blood before spraying it onto the tiny bits of edible glitter. The glitter was just for curb appeal, people seemed to like it.

Course, all that glittered wasn't gold.

It didn't matter if the stuff was a crock of crap though, because most folks didn't know a pixie from a fairy from their own damn faces in the mirror.

Hell, maybe it wasn't 'exactly' the fake stuff. Maybe it was pixie dust. They looked nearly identical once packaged, and it was easy as pie to catch a few dozen pixies and shake 'em for their shiny dandruff.

Pixie dust made you break out in hives. The small flying creatures needed a defense, being so far down the food chain.

Fae blood? The so called 'fairy' dust? That was an aphrodisiac. Made you feel confident and sexy. More than one victim had jumped off a building thinking they could fly after snorting too much. Hell, the police chief's a fucking troglodyte and it gave him the balls to approach one of Shade Kincaid's women... and not to arrest her. No, the ball chin douche bag wanted to take her out to dinner, maybe a motel. Get a little dirty under the sheets.

He'd been fired the next day. Not just fired, hell, replaced and kicked out of the Underbelly.

So Cat steered clear of the stuff. And at a few bucks a bottle from a shady vendor? You were either getting plain old glitter, maybe scented with a little nimbus root, or a body of itchy hives. No in between, and she didn't know which was worse. Cleaning up human glitter was its own kind of torture.

"Get the hell outta my way," a grunt sounded before Cat was pushed forcibly off the street.

"Gnome fucker," she muttered, regaining her balance and continuing towards Havershim Road. She was already late opening shop up on the surface and she still needed to stop by the salvage yard for the refurbished fuel tank Dynamite had promised her.

Sooner or later, she had to move topside. Get a human apartment, extract herself from this damned city of supernatural riffraff, but that would mean leaving her brother to his own devices. And if she did, she had to be emotionally prepared to let him make his mistakes without her there to clean them up.

Mac needed her. She was all he had left, now that their father was dead. But the boy didn't make it easy. Half her earnings typically went to pay off his gambling debts or yank him out of jail.

Shaking her head, her whole body tired of the life she was living, Cat turned left and blinked up at the green neon sign.

'The Den of Sin'. Strippers. Never-ending poker games. And 'fairy' dust. The real stuff.

"Mac, I can't do this for much longer." She sighed and pushed through the chipped maroon door. 

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**Cat lands on her feet- June 4th, 2020. You'll love this spin-off to the Victoria Cage Necromancer series!**