13 Deadly Deals

Departure 1: Familiar

Two Yokai walk into a bar...

He knew it was the butt of an overripe joke. And yet, the line hit the paper before he could damn it to hell alongside the other hooks before it. Maybe he was losing his touch. It had been ages since he'd written anything with heart in it. Or maybe it was all influenced by the actual bar he was sitting in. As actual as a brothel with a bar could be, anyway—but maybe he was just splitting hairs at that point...

Mafuyu dipped his glass pen into a quarter-pint bottle of ink, immediately hatched through his literary sins, and started the chapter anew while he waited.

To be fair, a rendezvous at a bar put his standards near barrel-scraping levels of shame. But given the events that led him up to that point, the smoky atmosphere reminded him that beggars couldn't be choosers. At least the place was a little classy, he supposed, with its beautifully vaulted ceilings and black light turning his snowy fur radioactive colors. Black mahogany held everything up in a soundproof bubble of clinking mugs and warbling jazz music that sounded like the musicians were already a few drinks in themselves—

But again, beggars couldn't be choosers. They didn't choose to be suffocated from all sides by Yokai that could barely hold their drink. They didn't choose to choke in a miasma of booze, and sex, and whatever the drug du jour was. And they sure as hell didn't choose to flash the silvery engagement ring around their neck to ward off anyone willing to make a boa out of their bushy fox tail.

No, they just sat there looking conspicuous as all hell while they waited for their contact to show.

"Here,"

The bartender slammed the drink too harshly on the black soapstone countertop. The pit bull was a burly Yokai for sure, with chiseled muscles under swaths of gray fur and a tail that melted into flames. Not to mention a permanent 'piss off' frown that meant he doubled as the bodyguard in his off time.

"The boss says it's on the house. Beats the fuck out of me why, though." The inugami bartender rumbled.

"The same reason anyone would get anyone drunk in a brothel, I assume." Mafuyu's quip came punctuated with a grin. It was the kind only a kitsune could give, an uncanny hybrid of smug craftiness and playful glee that made his crimson eyes glimmer.

"Look, I'm gonna be straight. I don't like you." The inugami said pointedly, "I can't put my paw on it, but something about you feels...very off."

"I tend to get that a lot." Or at least, he had started getting that a lot in the past fifty years. But the bartender didn't need to know that as Mafuyu inched the glass away. Partially because he held his liquor about as well as a wet paper bag did. But also due to the condensation wetting his notebook triggering some latent OCD best left in his thoughts.

"Our elderflower beer is our most popular—and expensive—draft. At least give it a try first, hun."

Mafuyu's ink-dipped ears perked at the lady's soft, sultry voice. They were both plugged with dark gauges smack in the middle, her words whistling through them and the smokey air like a knife. His contact had finally arrived.

The winter fox had met the sultry brothel owner in a quieter, less boozed-up location before. And so, the imposing air of authority and sex-appeal was less effective this go around as the capybara Yokai approached him. Dark chocolate fur accented the big-and-tall bell-shape of her body like a punch to the senses. Her crimson butterfly-print kimono swayed like elegant wings in her metronomic sashay, and it was a wonder how she was even able to see behind the curtain of dark headfur that covered her eyes. The manager was flanked by two badger Yokai, dressed and styled identically to their employer.