Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) eden Hudson (best book club books txt) 📖

right really pumped me up, so I kicked my distortion pedal until the amps were buzzing like metal bees, screaming,

Now you can all talk about

How close you were to taking me out.

Just wanted to let you know

Cyanide never tasted so sweet,

Suicide never tasted so sweet,

As it does with your name in my mouth.

I think maybe “talk” was really supposed to be “bitch,” but Mom always edited out the cuss words when she sang to us.

All around the stage, people were going crazy, dancing like they did on the videos of Mom’s concerts, jumping and waving their arms and yelling. I used to dream about people doing that for me, but now that it was happening, fuck ‘em. I couldn’t see past Colt, anyway. I don’t know what I was looking for—some kind of sign, maybe. Something that said Colt was still the OCD hard-ass who would make you run a drill until you got every step better than right, perfect. The guy who barely cracked a smile when he made a joke and who used to spend eighteen hours a day training, running the arsenal, and designing attack plans so twisted they’d make you dizzy.

But that thing in the suit with its hand on Mikal’s back didn’t give me any kind of sign.

The last words to “Out of Spite” are “so sweet, so sweet, so sweet…” When I played that last little riff, Mikal yelled and clapped louder than anyone else in the bar. She even stuck her fingers between her lips and whistled.

“Okay,” Dodge said, his hand over his mic. “You think you can be serious now?”

I nodded, kicked the distortion back down, and started playing “Tulsa Time”—because while I was at it, fuck Jason and Mitzi, too. Dodge shook his head, but he sang it.

People started honkytonk dancing again. Behind the bar, Rowdy nodded at me like he was excusing the slip into hardcore. Kathan, Tempie, Mikal, and Colt sat down at a table like it wasn’t any big deal for them to be at the human bar, not Seventh Circle, at the other edge of town.

Jax was on the floor, pushing through the crowd trying to catch up with Harper, who was crying and headed for the bathrooms.

Every now and then it would hit me why the teenage me should be glad I didn’t end up with Harper. She was hot and she had the attitude, but if someone hurt her—really took her out—she wouldn’t know how to get back up and keep going.

Desty was sitting at their table by herself, looking at me like I’d just killed a dragon or something. Desty got it, even if no one else did. Fuck anybody who thought they could make you sorry.

Desty

 

When the band took their second break of the night, Tough brought a couple of beers back to the table.

“That song you played—” I wanted to tell him how incredible it was. I’d heard Jason Gudehaus’s songs on the radio while I was hitchhiking, but after listening to Tough’s recordings, I could tell Jason was playing an instrument he didn’t know how to use. Tough knew how to make people feel anything he wanted them to feel. That song he’d played when Mikal taunted him had given me this rush of everyone’s-going-to-get-what-they-deserve.

I wanted to put all that into words, but before I could make any sense, Tempie pushed between us.

“Tough, right?” she said. She nodded toward a red Emergency Exit sign. “Mikal said she wants to talk to you outside.”

Tough looked over his shoulder at the empty table where Tempie and the fallen angels had been sitting, then tugged on the bill of his John Deere hat as if he was straightening it. He looked from me to Tempie and back.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

“I’m her sister,” Tempie said. “She’s safer with me than she is with some redneck loser. And, by the way, Kathan told me what you used to do—or, who you used to do. Gives new meaning to the phrase ‘Screwing the boss’s wife,’ huh?”

Tough was blushing, the top part of his cheeks turning that too-red color. I tried to say something—anything to get Tempie to shut up—but it’s hard to stop her when she’s on a roll.

“Desty’s too pretty to pay for sex,” she said. “And even if she was an ugly skank, I wouldn’t let my sister bang someone who’d give her post-mortem syphilis.”

Tough sucked his teeth, then put his hands up in front of his chest and nodded at the way Tempie’s dress was pushing her boobs up.

Nice rack, he mouthed.

Tempie flipped him off, but he was already headed for the exit.

“You’re such a jerk, Tempie,” I said.

“I’m just looking out for you.” She sat in the chair beside me and pulled down on the sides of her dress so it would cover her butt.

“Tough’s not Dad,” I said.

She took a drink of my beer. “And I’m not a psychology book.”

“Touché.” I watched the door close behind Tough. My foot started jiggling under the table. “So…”

“Don’t be weird, nerd.” But it was like Tempie didn’t know what to say, either. She started picking at the corner of my beer’s label with her fingernail. “Did you read up on the joint-familiar thing?”

I shook my head. “My friend Jax is giving me all the info the Witches’ Council has, but that’s not much.”

“Why don’t you just ask Kathan your questions?” she asked.

“I need to know more before I even know the right questions to ask,” I said.

Tempie’s always been really good at that cruel laugh that makes people feel stupid.

“You’re cool jumping into bed with that durr-Chevy-kid necrophiliac, but you won’t even consider something I already know everything about?”

“I didn’t jump into bed with Tough,” I said.

She pointed at my