Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The underground was surprisingly walkable.
It was also surprisingly busy, but then again, if you lived down here, I wasn’t sure day and night made much of a difference in your everyday life.
I saw people grocery shopping at small stores that offered a surprising selection of fruits and veggies, snacks, and street food.
There was even a pet shop that looked like it specialized in smaller animals, like fish and hamsters, bunnies and canaries.
I was holding Soyer’s hand. Probably a good thing.
There was too much to see here, and it was distracting me from really looking at where we were going or what turns we were taking.
People kept staring at Soyer as if he were some sort of scary gangster, but no one made any comment at all that I saw or heard.
After a few more turns down smaller side tunnels, we came to a staircase with an old-fashioned elevator set in the center of it—the kind that had one of those metal grates that always made me worry for people’s fingers. To the right of it, a staircase went down, spiraling around the elevator.
“Stairs or elevator?” Soyer asked me.
“Stairs. We can’t go that much deeper, right?”
“Can’t we? I might drag you to the underworld, to all the circles of hell where the best parties happen.”
“Oh, you’re not that bad. You know that.”
“My heart, what did I tell you about not saying such things where people might hear?”
He’d turned toward me and placed his palm against my cheek. It wouldn’t take much effort to kiss him, or for him to kiss me.
“Something about your reputation, maybe?”
“Hmm. Being feisty again, are you? Kiss me, and I’ll let it slide.”
The melody of his voice had gone down a few notes, and his dark eyes were my universe, the night sky I was trying to measure.
“What if I don’t?”
His jaw tightened. “Oh, Amory. My Amory. You’re temptation made flesh, aren’t you? Maybe I should have fired you so I could keep you all to myself.”
I kissed him then, just a quick kiss. It was more than I’d have been comfortable with half a year ago, but I’d changed. So much. And I liked the person I had become. I was excited to discover who I’d be in the future.
“Don’t joke about that. Besides, you’d need Dwayne’s okay to fire me.”
“Stop being reasonable and frustrating at the same time.” He sighed and turned toward the stairs. “Down we go.”
The stairs were metal, and our footfalls echoed, mine more than Soyer’s. The stairwell, even with the elevator in the center, was so narrow that I could see it making people feel claustrophobic, especially if it got busy. But we were the only people there.
“Where are we going?”
Soyer whistled. “Now you ask. You know, when someone leads you into the darkness, you’re supposed to ask where they’re taking you before you follow them. That’s reasonable behavior, but you just do what you’re told and head into the dark.”
“You’re not someone.”
“Hmm.”
“And I trust you.”
“Enough to let me fire you?”
“Nope, because that’s Dwayne’s decision, and he wouldn’t.”
“Hmm.”
We went around for several more turns, our footsteps echoing all around us, and if we’d been going just a little faster, the stairs might’ve given us vertigo. At the bottom, it got brighter, the light warm as dawn.
I took a few steps forward into that dawn-like light and gaped at the sight of the place Soyer had taken me to.
I didn’t know what to call it. It was a room, pretty big, with creamy stone all around.
The walls on three sides had been fitted with glass terrariums like you might see at a reptile house in a zoo, and inside them, odd greenery bloomed.
I looked closer to see what it was. Moss.
It had conquered branches and the little stone structures placed inside the terrariums to create strange landscapes behind the glass.
Placed around the room were more terrariums and bowls, some set up on spindly tables and small enough to fit in my hand, others octagonal and too big to lift. It was warm here too, warm and verdant, the orange light making me think of sunrise.
Soyer wasn’t stopping, but he slowed down to give me time to stare.
I’d never seen that much moss in my life, and I’d never known the many colors and shapes it came in.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement in one of the terrariums; a butterfly or a moth.
Its coloring made the creature vanish just as soon as I’d spotted it.
“Come on. We want to get there on the hour,” Soyer said, his thumb stroking the back of mine.
“Get where?”
I reluctantly looked away from the moss art and found his attention on me, his blackness such contrast to the softness behind glass, to the daybreak light.
“You wanted a drink. You’re getting a drink.”
“Right. This is just really pretty.”
“You can look later.”
He walked ahead of me to the far end of the room.
I realized there was a booth here, beyond the many terrariums, looking about as old-fashioned as the elevator.
Behind it sat a person with skin that looked more like leather and had a bluish black hue, and long black hair framing a thin face with high cheekbones.
They wore a dress—a robe of dark green, shimmering like silk.
As we came closer, I saw that their unusually long nails were painted in the same shade of emerald.
A brass sign fastened to the wall behind them read The Small Express.
“Welcome to the Small Express, Mr. Bennet. Will you and your companion be traveling with us tonight?”
Their voice, much like their features, was androgynous, and something about their eyes wasn’t quite right, either their size or placement. I made myself smile at them, pretending this was just a normal day for me. It was hard not being able to show my excitement.
“We will. Do we have a time limit?” Soyer asked.
The…concierge? Conductor? They made a clicky little sound.
“Not for you, Mr. Bennet. We’re excited to welcome you.
” They turned to an old typewriter, one of these big old things with the letter stamps hitting the paper as if it were a drum.
In short order, and despite their nails, they’d typed something on two rectangles of heavy paper with a slight metallic shimmer.
They handed both to Soyer. “There you go. Please enjoy yourselves tonight.”
“Thanks.”
Soyer walked through the open archway right behind their desk. I nodded at the concierge when our eyes briefly met, and if I was reading their face right, they were smiling at me.
The archway led us to a platform. It was clearly a subway stop, but not like any I’d ever waited at.
This one was a relic from a golden past, complete with shimmering light fixtures and shiny tiles in green and gold.
On one end of it, there was one of those photo points with a wooden display that had characters painted on it, their faces cut out so anyone could step into their role.
In this case, it was the uniformed body of a train conductor with a steam train in the background.
It said Small Express on the side of the train.
“What is this place?” I asked, cautiously stepping toward the photo spot even as I heard the rumble of an engine from the dark tunnel.
“A fucking tourist trap. Like the restaurant on top of the Eiffel Tower. Some people call it an exclusive dating spot, but they’re wrong.”
I snagged one of the tickets from Soyer. “The Small Express, Unlimited Ticket. Mr. Bennet plus one. Don’t tell me we’re going somewhere?”
“We’re going on an experience. That’s their marketing. It’s basically just a dining car that keeps going round and round.”
As he said it, the train came in. I’d expected something old, although maybe not a steam engine like in the photo wall drawing, given that we were in a system of underground tunnels with limited ventilation.
But the train that arrived at a leisurely speed was the lovechild of steampunk and futurism; sleek and shiny, yet painted in the golden and green tones that surrounded us and decorated with swirling metal fixtures that grew more pronounced when the carriages came into view.
Soyer walked with me to the front, where I spotted the actual conductor stepping off the train and onto the platform. She looked just like a regular human, and I was a little bit disappointed about that.
Soyer held out the ticket he’d held on to, and she produced one of those punch tool thingies to stamp it.
“Welcome to the Small Express, Mr. Bennet.” Soyer ignored her, and she turned her welcoming smile to me. “Welcome to the Small Express, Mr. Saintclair.”
When I just stood there with open-mouthed surprise at her knowing my name, Soyer gave her my ticket to punch, which she did.
“Thanks,” I managed.
Her smile brightened and she nodded, standing back while I followed Soyer onto the train.
I didn’t know much about the Orient Express, but this train reminded me of it right off the bat.
I’d only seen movies about the original—that eponymous murder mystery and others.
The interior of this train certainly captured my fiction-bred imagination and added flair to it.
It took the old and almost stuffy design from over a century ago and made it new and shiny.
I saw tables, alternatingly set to the left and right in a zigzag broken by dividers that curved from seat level almost to the ceiling, allowing privacy.
Another person in a uniform approached Soyer, and this one was strange.
She looked female in terms of body shape, but her eyes were shimmery and lacked pupils.
She didn’t have hair, exactly, more like a soft plumage.
The strangest thing was her wings though, moth wings, brown and black with blue and red markings.
She bowed to Soyer. “Welcome to the Small Express. May I show you to a table?”
“Something private,” Soyer said.
She bowed once more. “Of course. If you’ll follow me toward the end of the train, please?”
We did. Most tables were occupied, and people stopped their low conversations, looking up from fancy finger food as we passed. The food came with good liquor in the form of colorful cocktails with fruity decorations, though some people had gone with wine or neat drinks on ice instead.
The server-conductor led us through three sets of automatic doors. In this final car, the space between tables increased and the partitions were taller and looked sturdier.
“Please,” she said eventually, indicating for us to sit at what looked like the last table in this car.
Soyer turned to me. “Let me take your jacket. We’re good here,” he said to the server, who promptly made herself scarce.
“This place is something,” I said as I handed him my jacket.
He held out the chair with its back to the rest of the car for me. Once I was seated, he draped my jacket over his chair, then put his own half coat over it.
I frowned. “I could’ve kept mine over here, you know.”
He sat and folded his hands on the table. “Then how would you get comfortable, hmm?”
With the softest of jerks, the train started moving away from the station. I spotted a small group of people heading toward the exit, smiling and chatting with one another. They were a colorful group, some human-looking, some not. It made me smile.
“It’s just a jacket, Soyer. So, where are we going?”
“Just round and round. I told you.”
“And why is this place better than the Dazzle?”
“Because the Dazzle is crammed and crowded at this hour, and you get random people walking in off the street in there.”
I chuckled. “Right. We’re not random.”
He lifted his chin. “Obviously not.”
The server came back with water in an elegant glass pitcher, ice cubes floating on the surface. Along with two glasses, she put a little plate with lemon, lime, and cucumber slices on the table.
“Are you ready to order or would you like to see our menu?”
“Menu first,” Soyer said.
She nodded and was off again.
“This is fancy.” I eyed the sliced fruit and cucumber.
“Of course it’s fancy. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you, my heart. The Dazzle is just your average bar. This is much better. Much less chance of being disturbed or interrupted.”
The server, as if to undermine him, left two menus on the table right then, but she was subtle about it, doing her best to fade into the background before leaving again.
“You know, nothing can really distract me from you.”
Soyer raised an eyebrow. “Now that’s a lie. You were eyeing that moss display with more interest than you showed me, but it’s fine. I can deal with that if it’s only for a night. Look out the window.”
“But we’re just…”
I didn’t get to finish. Low music started to play from hidden speakers. I looked, and instead of the boring tunnels, the walls opened up. Much like the moss display, there was a spectacle to see here too.
Platforms to either side of us that had been converted into stages, where performers—artists—moved with slow grace in front of stylized backgrounds.
On our side of the train, an underwater world had been created.
I saw someone with tentacles dancing with someone winged like our server, who was wearing a ballet dress in ocean blue.
Around them, people in costumes or in their own skin danced, making the scene come to life.
On the opposite side, the performers were posing as all the characters in the Bacchus and Ariadne painting by Titian. Even the leopards looked pretty real.
And I was about ready to bet that they were. If there were werewolves like Ben, there had to be other types of shifters too, so why not leopards?
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Soyer lean on his elbows to watch me instead of the dazzling display. “See? You’re doing it again. Looking at everyone and everything, but not at me.”
My gaze landed on him even as the train slowed to barely walking speed. I was starting to feel giddiness rise inside of me.
“This is so cool.”
He tapped the menus the server had left with his index finger. “Hmm. Don’t forget to order a cocktail. That might make it even better.”
“No, this is really, really cool already. Thank you for bringing me.”
He picked up his own menu, one of those heavy things that looked more like an old library book than a menu. “You’re very welcome, Amory. But I’m getting a…not sure. They have themed cocktails, you know. Cocktails that go with the sights.”
And that got me. Without wasting too much time thinking about it—and trying to keep myself from turning the page of the menu so as not to spoil the next display—I went with something called Dionysos’ Delight.
They served it with dried ice smoke that smelled like grapes and freshly cut grass, and it was delicious.
This was the best date Soyer had taken me on ever.