The Kit Kat (Yekaterina Ostrovsky)

[Solene]

“Busy for a Monday, eh Sweetheart?”

The blonde stood behind the bar, polishing a wine glass to within an inch of its life, annoyed within seconds by this patron’s presence. She flashed him the fakest smile she could muster and hung the glass in its designated rack.
“What can I get you?” Pouring a whiskey sour for a quiet and mostly pleasant customer, she watched as the new and unfamiliar face took some sort of pose on his stool, placed his dirty *** bowler cap on her bar, and gave her what was surely meant to be a disarming smile.
“Nothin’ for me doll, just here for the show”
The patrons on either side of him moved their stools.

“You have to order to sit at the bar.” This was true, for everyone but Alexei and Katya.
He frowned at her and loosened his tie, “A water then.”
The whiskey sour moved to a table.
“Only water we have here is vodka.” She lied.
“Look, sweets, I’m sure you have a quota or some ****,” He snapped at her, leering as he weighed up the cost of being a ‘big man,’ “but I’ll tell ya what, I don’t see a sign that says I have to drink to watch the girls dance.” He leaned closer as he spoke to her, spittle flying out of his mouth. Without taking her gaze from the man, she slid everything he’d drooled on over to the barback to be washed. She couldn’t kill him at the bar- it was against the rules and made a mess, but Katya never directly told her to be nice either.
“You can either order something, or you can ******* leave.” She said it without a smile- it wasn’t often that Solene smiled as it was, but the crowd at The Kit Kat couldn’t be trusted with a happy bartender.
“Oh! You’re gonna cuss at me, huh? Get your manager, missy. The customer’s always right!” His back straightened as he fixed his tie, presumably quite satisfied with himself.

Now THAT’S an idea. With a wicked glint in her eye, Solene reached across the bar, gripped the man’s hair, and slammed his head into the wood surface, planting the small blade she usually used for zombie killing through the cloth of his now very tight tie.
She re-cleaned an already spotless glass, waiting until he began to turn purple in the face before making Katya’s preferred drink and send the barback to get her.
The man looked at her pleadingly with bloodshot eyes, idiotically straining to get out of the makeshift bar prison. Solene simply carried on mixing drinks.

[Yekaterina Ostrovsky]

The blonde Killer had made an early round to her businesses that night, stopping in, as always, at the Kit Kat last. Lex had texted her earlier that he had taken care of the prior night’s books already, so honestly it was simply a matter of indulging her usual habit. The staff was made aware of her presence as she entered the mainstay establishment, as ever, with a curt hello and instruction to only bother her if there was an issue. And, as the hours ticked by and she went over everything for the current night, she closed the laptop and kicked back at her desk, hands folded against her chest, as she contemplated all that had taken place in the prior months.

A great deal of travel had been accomplished; until, that was, the humans went ape-**** over the presence, seemingly growing and thriving, of immortals and mythical creatures of all sorts. She had enough cops, agents, and politicians on the payroll leftover from her gangster days to avoid being hassled anywhere she or those close to her went, but with everything so up in the air, heading back to the City was the smarter move regardless. She’d come back in between various trips, but it was time to be where she’d made her home and actually work her businesses again. So far, things had been swimming along and there had been no complaints from anyone, really.

Even with this blasted plague, by some stroke of luck (or the extra few grand slipped into the right pockets, who could really say?), her businesses had been labeled “essential,” as long as some rules were followed to keep everything on the up and up. The girls couldn’t perform lap dances and there was absolutely no contact in the private room. No more slipping cash into g-strings, or anywhere else for that matter, unless it headed straight for the ornate tip boxes now installed around the stage. Access to the club had been cut down to a third along with hours, with plenty of distance between seats and no more than 4 to a table. They’d had to get creative, but so far everyone had been making bank and if anything, the caliber of her performers was what drew in regulars and newbies alike. They would more than survive; they were thriving and Katya was pleased. That would mean a round of hefty bonuses, but she was happy to pay for the consistency they delivered.

She’d idly been texting on her phone, catching up here and there with a few select people, when one of the newer barbacks came knocking on her ajar door. She refrained from rolling her eyes as she nodded to his hesitant look around the door frame, and beckoned him in. “Yes?”

“Um, Miss Katya… Solene asked for you… there’s that nasty guy back from the other night and she’s… well.” He cleared his throat with a grimace, clearly not certain how to approach whatever was going on out there. “Um, well, the guy is turning purple.”

Now the Killer did roll her eyes; she’d hired Solene because she had been fairly certain she could handle herself while looking hot behind the bar to boot – such a combination was not easy to come by in a bartender – so whatever was going on had to at least be entertaining. She stood with a sigh, the very picture of languid calm. “Thank you, Pete. You can go. I’ll be out in a moment.” He gave a nod and took back off down the hall and toward the club, likely to get a better look at what was happening. It took quite a lot to get Solene’s back up, so whatever it was had to be good.

The blonde straightened her cocktail dress and took her time making sure not a hair was out of place before she sauntered on out, a confident though elegant swagger to her walk as she made her way over to the bar, nodding and smiling to patrons as she went. Finally arriving, she slid onto the barstool beside the man in question, just enough so that he could barely make her out from his perspective.

She lifted the opaque rocks glass and sipped at the tepid blood inside with a half-smirk, side-eying the greasy piece of **** as she did. “You cannot be serious. What did I tell you if you returned here, Sid? Hmm? Hassling my ladies, not dropping any cash, and now harassing my bartender? I’d hoped at the very least you’d learned a lesson and were trying to behave this time.” Her lip curled as she set her glass down, revealing sharp fangs as she grabbed him by the collar, the small knife ripping from the wood even as he gasped for that first breath of air and she brought him level with her face. Aqua eyes went icy as she sized the sniveling, slimy thing up and lifted him a bit harder, and higher, with disturbing ease. “So disappointing,” she hissed, snapping the fingers of her free hand, almost imperceptibly, for one of her bouncers to materialize. When he did, she passed him off, though not without a warning:

“Try it again and next time I’ll let her cut something precious off of you. To start.”

With an exasperated sigh, Katya sat back in her seat, grateful that the little show had gone mostly unnoticed. She lifted her glass again, taking a sip to keep up appearances, as she gave the slightest of winks to Solene. “Excellent work,” she said with a small smile – from Katya, it was high praise indeed. “Though next time, do try and draw a little blood. It goes some way toward scaring them.”

[Solene]

The barback looked giddy when he returned, and as he had a tendency to get overly excited when the unexpected happened, she didn’t see him lasting very long. That kind of electric energy caused brawls, and brawls caused broken bottles and unpaid tabs. So as he stood there, bouncing on his toes, she moved in close enough to hear his blood rush, tipped his head back with the crook of her finger, and spoke quietly to him.
“Do you know what I’m going to say?” The fear in his eyes was confirmation enough, but this was a process and without it, he’d be off like a butterfly wreaking havoc.
“I need to calm down…”
She nodded as he whimpered, “Or…?” His eyes shut tight then, and as Solene could hear Katya’s heels approaching, she gave him a firm pat on the cheek and sent him to get more supplies from the store room. The threat to skin him alive was there every time they worked together… and they both had more than enough to do to waste any more time.

She washed his sweat and grease off of her hands as Katya took her seat to admonish this repeat offender. Once he’d been schlepped off, Solene removed her blade from the bartop and started cleaning the space. She expected Katya might have something to say to her, but what was said had not been on the list of possibilities. Solene had received very few correctional comments in her time there, so she assumed that a lack of commentary had been the proverbial ‘well done’ in the world of Ostrovsky. This hadn’t been ‘well done’ though. She’d said, “Excellent work,” and followed it up with permission to make him or anyone like him bleed. Internally, she could feel a knot of confusion tying itself in her stomach- on the outside, however, she remained cool as a cucumber and nodded her thanks, the corner of her lips turning up just enough to suggest a grin.
“Will do… though I don’t know how he keeps getting past the bouncers.”

Just then, the barback returned with full cases of liquor instead of the bottles he’d been asked to fetch. Solene slipped her blade back out of its hiding place and, getting the hint, the young man turned back with the stock.

She grabbed the next ticket and quickly whipped up an Old Fashioned, a Negroni, and a vodka Gimlet for a table of semi-regulars that had just been seated. Typically, they didn’t show their faces until around Thursday when the work week started wearing on their control, but the pandemic had filled the bar nightly and everyone was ordering from the top-shelf. The promise of illness and death really did send humans into a destructive spiral.

Once called, she started on the next and dared to start a conversation with her boss. A pleasant one, no less.
“It’s nice to have you back. Will you be staying?”

The barback returned once again, but with too few bottles. He wasn’t at carrying capacity… he was just inept. She knew better than to discuss employees at the bar, so she bit her tongue and shook the mixer with a little more vigour.