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pixies. I barely tolerated them sober.
    While dragons were frequent fliers at my job, and dealing with them was a good way to end up with third-degree burns, there was no worse job to take than one involving a pixie. They loved stealing things, especially naughty things. An enchanted object that could take out a city block, open a portal that led off a cliff, or made the victim only able to speak in pig Latin? All fun and games to a pixie. They hid their treasures in magical pocket universes that only they could access. It was always a complete pain in the ass to get them back. The sugar drunk pixies continued to buzz around my head and I reached for my absent swords. I let out a growl that scared a couple away, but the other ten remained, now making lewd gestures. "Fine, you asked for it."
    I opened the vault of my own fears and pulled out the memory of watching the Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds when I was a child. Seeing all of those birds swarm had terrified me. Being frightened by a flock of birds was amusing to me now, but I could still recall the stark terror it inspired whenever one of my banshee sisters put it on. I channeled that fear and pushed it out in an ever-widening circle. The effect on the pixies was immediate. Many of them reversed course and crashed into the others. A faint tinkle of mist hit my shoulder, smelling sickly sweet, then the swarm finally gathered their wits enough to properly flee.
    I pulled a tissue out of my bag and groaned as I wiped my shoulder clean of pixie piss. My fear aura wasn't a power I used often for precisely that reason. I could make people afraid, but I couldn't control their reactions. If I had judged them wrong, the bastard that had pissed on me could have just as easily attempted to kill me. Pixies weren't known for being particularly blood-thirsty, so I'd risked it. Also, I was annoyed. That was going to get me killed someday .
    After another block I came upon a line of people leaning against a wall. I started to walk past them, but the harpy at the end raised her voice. "You going to Smoke and Mirrors?"
    "Yeah, why?"
    "Line starts here," she said, shaking her head.
    "But the club is still two blocks away." This wasn't helping my mood any. Ava hadn't said anything about waiting in line all night.
    "Hatchling ," she said with an annoyed grunt.
    "Oh, hell no. You did not just call me a hatchling." It may have been true I was new to the scene and didn't have any idea what I was doing, but I wasn't about to take what was an obvious insult.
    Pissed off, and a little trigger happy after it had just worked so well with the pixies, my fear aura surrounded me. This time, I didn't draw on the memory of The Birds . I'd always been tense in cramped spaces, but since Leandra's attack, I'd developed a case of claustrophobia. The horror tightened my insides, and in a rush of panic, I forced it away from me, magical terror oozing from every pore and filling the surrounding air. Shrieks followed. The rude harpy at the end of the line cowered against the building, her hand stuffed in her mouth to quash her maddened screams. Tears streamed from eyes so wide with terror it looked like they might fall out. I felt a little bad for her. I hadn't meant to dump quite so much fear in the air.
    The rest of the people in the next fifty feet had fled, many of them leaving purses and other personal effects behind. As much as it would suit my mood, I couldn't put that much fear into a crowd. Sooner or later I'd run into someone who came down hard on the fight side of fight-or-flight. If I was giving off that much terror and they still felt the need to fight, they would be a force to be reckoned with. It would end in a bloodbath. I pulled back on my magic, but didn't extinguish it entirely. I still didn't have time to deal with the line.
    I ambled toward the club entrance, watching the queue gradually dissolve before me. A couple of shoving matches broke out, but nothing serious. I stepped around them