Sixpence & Whiskey Read Online Free PDF Page A

paper bag the stink eye. “You keep bringing the competition in here and I’m gonna get fired.”
    “Nah. Beaner’s and Amazing Grace aren’t in competition, Sy. Beaner’s has the best coffee, but Amazing’s got the best muffins, so sometimes I gotta hit that. Simple facts.”  I give her a salute with my cup before taking a sip. “Mm-mmm. Their coffee ain’t half bad, either.”
    Syana Norgaard and me have been friends since our freshman year of high school. She’s the nicest person I know—except when it comes to me. She lives to give me shit and I like it. Letting loose her inner bitch on me seems to give Sy the ability to rain sunshine on everyone else.
    Like I’m her metaphorical whipping girl or something.
    She flicks a towel at me over the counter, knocking my beanie lopsided and making me yelp. Okay, maybe not so metaphorical. I rub at my smarting ear and stick my tongue out at her. It’s weird relationship, I grant you. But it works for us. I eye her as I sip my coffee. Sy and Seph. The dynamic duo. We couldn’t look more different if we tried. I’m low to the ground, with a backside that begs to be slapped with a wide-load sticker. A blond, four-eyed sexpot librarian-type. Sy is slim, tall and graceful. Brunette with a chin-length cut that highlights her perfect jawline, elegant neck and delicate little ears. There’s something earnest about her beauty. Earnest and otherworldly. She looks like an elf by way of the Peace Corps. She’s full-on human, though.  There’s no such thing as elves. At least I’m pretty sure.
    “Jack’s back.”
    She’s buffing the counter with the rag she hit me with, doing a little shimmy to the music on the radio. “Isn’t that a horror flick? Nineties? Fairly awful. James Spader. Who was pretty yum back in the day, but—” Then her face pales. “Oh, you mean, that Jack. Your Jack.” In an instant, she’s around the counter, but she doesn’t reach for me, and she doesn’t ask if I’m ok.
    Because, duh, not okay, and we’re not exactly an over-emoting pair.
    Sy just gives me a look—one look—but it settles the swirling Jell-O of fear and worry inside of me enough that I take my first deep breath since Jack showed up.
    “He’s not my Jack.” But of course, I think of him that way, too. Just shows we’re both mental.
    “Holy Hannah. It’s been ages, Seph—”
    Almost four years since his last appearance, in fact. Sy doesn’t know that—no one does. She thinks it’s been at least eight since I saw him last.
    “—what does he want?”
    “How the hell should I know?” I take off my beanie and run a hand through my hair, which clings to my fingers like corn silk, full of static.
    “Is he still, you know, hot as fuck all?”
    “He’s a freaking FTC, Sy. Of course he’s still hot. He looks exactly the same.” Jack is perpetually stuck in his prime, the son of a bitch.
    I scowl, which Sy returns with interest, snapping me again with her towel. This time on the ass. Of course, she knows exactly what I’m thinking.
    “Quit pouting. You’re hot as fuck all, too. Maybe you’re not seventeen anymore, but you got it going on. Enough to make that SOB suffer every time he looks at you.” Her fierceness for me turns my frown upside down, even if she’s dead wrong about Jack doing any kind of suffering over me. “And once your b-day gets here, you’ll be officially FTC, too.”
    Twenty-seven is the magic number in the magical world. Even for elementals, that’s the age when they stop growing older. And for witches, natural werewolves and others that are born mortal, that’s the birthday when near-immortality kicks in. I say near, because there’s always a way to die—just degrees of how easily you do it. And FTCs are a violent, creative lot. Population control is never gonna be an issue, believe me.
    “Not ’til May. A lot can happen in that amount of time, Sy. Especially with Jack back in town.”
    Her eyes widen.
    “C’mon, he