Chapter 6
Chapter Six
The train went in circles, passing each display several times. The artists and performers changed tiny details on each round, so it never even came close to being boring.
Not that Soyer’s company was ever boring. When we finally got off the train, I was slightly tipsy, and he was holding my hand and pretending he was sober.
“This was the best time,” I told him, leaning against his side as we headed toward the moss room.
“I agree. Watching you having fun generally is.”
I rubbed my cheek against his hair, tiredness catching up with me. “Careful. If people hear you, they might find out that you’re actually sweet.”
I’d whispered, but we were in the moss room now. Luckily, the ticket vendor simply nodded at us from behind their desk and made no other attempt at conversation. I hoped they hadn’t overheard me.
“My heart, I’m really not. But you need to be put to bed, don’t you?”
“I’m fine.”
Really though, I was getting tired, and curling up next to Soyer, hearing him breathe in the bedroom we now shared, sounded more than a little appealing.
At the same time, I didn’t want to spoil this surprise date; the way he’d turned going to the bodega into a good experience rather than the dark memory it had been.
On top of that, the moss displays were even more enchanting now, probably because I was slightly buzzed.
On the other hand, the slow train journey had felt magical, and I was ready to look for magic and wonder elsewhere, even within those little landscapes of greens and coppery browns and burnished reds.
“Liar. Come on, we’re taking the nearest exit up.”
“Don’t we have to get back to your car? Oh, wait. You drank. No driving for you.”
He chuckled—a low, warm sound. “Always such a law-abiding citizen, aren’t you? Makes you all the more tempting.”
While he’d been speaking, my mind had gone back to the Moonlight, and as we reached the elevator with the staircase snaking around it, I realized what it would mean to be open all night.
“Everyone we saw can come now, right? To the Moonlight, I mean. It won’t matter how many heads they have or… All the other stuff won’t matter.”
“That’s right.” He pulled the elevator open and gently pushed me inside before joining me and hitting the Up button. “Ugh. We’ll probably become a tourist spot just like the Small Express.”
My eyes went wide and I pressed my palm flat to his chest. “Wow, you said it.”
He looked confused, his smooth black eyeliner making the expression even more pronounced. “Huh? Said what? Small Express?”
My excitement made me sway, even as the elevator moved up, creating dozens upon dozens of dangerous opportunities for me to lose a finger between the grate and all the moving parts.
“You said ‘we’ when talking about the Moonlight.”
Soyer sighed. “You’re a funny drunk. Noted.”
I took his hands in mine, a smile tugging at my cheeks.
“No, I mean it. You always complain about bookkeeping and all that, but you like the Moonlight, right? Come on, you like it, and not just because of me. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have wanted to expand the opening hours.
In fact, that had to have been your idea.
Dwayne wouldn’t have known that was even an option. So it was you.”
“Amory, I believe you’re projecting.”
I rested my head on his shoulder, the smile almost making my cheeks ache. “You always get defensive when I’m right.”
He hugged me to him, scratching my neck as his warm chuckle filled the space between us. “Definitely projecting.”
The elevator stopped, and Soyer pulled it open in a way that made me worried he might get hurt, but of course he didn’t. Not my firebird. He took my hand and walked me along the strangely winding roads of the underground.
“People live here, right?” I asked as we went past buildings—tiny houses basically, and pretty much as cute.
“Of course people live here.”
“Did you ever live down here?”
“No. Although it’s convenient.”
“Hmm, yeah, I can’t imagine you in one of these little houses.”
He stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “No? Maybe we should rent a cabin in the mountains for a month or two so you can.”
“Maybe that would be nice.”
It was definitely the alcohol that made me say that. I’d never really done any hiking, let alone camping, and the very thought of sleeping out in the wilderness seemed foreign, dangerous even. But I could tell Soyer was all for it. I could tell he liked my half-drunk maybe.
“Perhaps I should have fired you.”
“Hey, that’s not nice!” I gently shoved him sideways, or I tried to, but Soyer being Soyer, he easily compensated and stayed the course. I didn’t buy that he was sober for a second, but he was definitely more sober than me.
Ahead of us, the tunnel split into two, and we went left.
The scenery didn’t change much. It was more houses, broken up by smaller stores.
Not all of those were open, but some were.
I saw food stalls mostly, some selling street food from no fewer than six countries by my count, some specializing in sweets or bread.
There were also grocery stores that had the air of a long-forgotten time, considering I saw old registers and mechanical scales, grains and flour in large glass containers to be weighed out as desired, and hand-painted signs in spotless windows.
It was nice. A little like the Moonlight.
Here, where people slept and the stores were mostly closed, the lights had been dimmed too, making it so that we were enjoying what felt like a nighttime walk along a network of cozy little streets, only underground.
I saw light peek out through curtains in some of the little houses, and I wondered what it would be like to live here.
“What’s that wistful look about, Amory? Daydreaming of that cabin?”
“Huh? No. Although, what would you do if there were bears or wolves? I was wondering what it’s like to be…well, like Kasey, I guess. When you have to be really careful about living somewhere or when you can’t even go somewhere, at least not where humans are. Unless you hide your snake hair.”
“I see. About the bears—you use bear spray and don’t leave food lying around.
Wolves know humans can kill them and will keep their distance.
And if your hair is snakes, you can move to a place like this, where there’s plenty of work to be had, where the infrastructure is more than decent, and where taxes aren’t too high. ”
“Taxes,” I huffed. “Was it always like this? Was there always another world where people hid from us because of what they looked like?”
Soyer wrapped his arm around my waist and sighed. “My heart, there are many such worlds, even now.”
“How do you mean?”
“Class, wealth, skin color, and other stupid things that don’t really mean shit have generally made great dividers.”
I rubbed my face, groaning. “Uh, fuck. Was I just being a white dude? I’m sorry. I swear I’m learning. I’m not calling anyone at the diner a waitress anymore.”
“Right.” He waved a hand at the ceiling. “It’s the religiously inspired patriarchal structures right now, I’m sure it’ll be some other shit in a few hundred years. There’s always something though. It’s like humanity as a whole is into sado-masochism.”
“You’ve seen a lot of that, huh?”
He must’ve. I should’ve thought about that sooner, but of course he would have done.
He was a person of color, and while I knew he wasn’t from here, he had to have crossed the Atlantic at some point, potentially when skin color made it so you couldn’t use the same bathroom as people who were just like you apart from their lack of melanin.
He glanced at me. “Worrier.”
“Well, yeah? Of course I worry about you.”
“You’re worried about something that’s in the past. That’s pointless. There’s nothing you can do about the past, and if it helps, for the most part, you’re pretty bearable, privilege and all.”
I didn’t know how that made me feel. I was pretty sure I couldn’t say anything that would be useful right then though, so I decided to shut up and put my arm around Soyer’s shoulders instead.
He was okay with that, and we walked the rest of the way in silence.
Eventually, the houses thinned out, and we arrived at a platform, or at least what had been a platform.
This one was lit up brightly, and similar to the murals I knew from the great arrival hall underneath the bodega, this one’s walls had been decorated with colorful patterns.
There was also a small shop that sold packed lunches, sandwiches, and coffee—stuff you might grab while commuting.
They still had food set out, and the familiar scent of coffee kept warm for hours wafted toward me. The person behind the counter was a woman with ocher-golden skin and horns. She eyed us with the same stiffness I’d seen in so many people the moment they recognized Soyer.
“Where are we now?” I asked as he walked me to the end of the platform.
“Not too far away from home. It’ll take us up to an office building. One of Valentin’s.”
There was just an elevator here. It opened right up when Soyer pushed the button. Inside, it was nothing like the classy retro of a good chunk of the underground. Instead it was sleek and modern, big enough to fit at least twenty people comfortably.
“Is no one worried about normal people coming down here by accident? Like in a fantasy movie when you find a hidden passageway and end up in another world.”
Soyer leaned against the very back of the elevator. “There’s security for that. If that fails, there are surveillance cameras, and then those people are going to be taken care of.”
My eyes widened. “Do you—”
Soyer smirked. “Woodchipper them?”
“Uh, well, I don’t know? Oh! I did that too, right? Well, I didn’t do anything, you just showed up and…you know. On the train. When they hurt you.”
Soyer sighed. “Come here. Didn’t I just tell you not to worry so much?” He hugged me close. “But yes, you were an accident.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
“Best thing that ever happened to me.”
I smiled. “Okay, slightly better.”
Soyer raised a brow. “Hottest accident ever? The accident I’m still falling for? Adorable accident?”
“Okay, definitely better.”
He raked his fingers over my scalp. “Demanding accident.”
I tried elbowing him again, and this time he actually let me. It was the sweetest thing; not something I’d have ever thought of as a romantic gesture, but it was, odd though that seemed.
“But…does that mean you go after people? Like you did me?”
He snorted. “Amory, I didn’t go after you. I asked to repay your kindness. I took you out for food, even if you wouldn’t believe that any place was open.”
The elevator arrived, forcing me out of Soyer’s hug.
We walked into…an absolutely boring, corporate-looking hallway.
It was pretty wide, and there were chairs backed against the cream walls across from the elevator and to the left.
I also spotted restroom signs there, but that was it.
No windows and no decorations apart from another poster that said nothing but Hawthorne, followed by the contact information.
“You did a lot more than that, and you know it. Does anyone work here?”
We turned right, and there was a sign on the wall ahead of us. According to the arrows, the exit was left, and the right was for staff.
“Security. And probably some of Valentin’s minions. He has a lot of those.”
“Hmm.”
The way to the exit was odd. The hallway made several turns, and with the cream walls and the monotony of it all, it felt labyrinthine.
It eventually spat us out in front of a short escalator that took us down to a spacious if nondescript foyer.
Our footfalls echoed on the polished floor there, mine more than Soyer’s.
“Is there no one here?” I whispered.
“Oh, they’re here. Security really isn’t too bad. You never know when someone as cute as yourself will walk into our world, after all. Of course, they need to be stopped immediately, lest they befriend vampires and take them on juice dates.”
I giggled. “I know I’m tipsy, but you’re the one sounding tipsy. You know that, right?”
Soyer stopped in the middle of the echoey foyer and reeled me into his embrace.
The lights here were dim, creating shadowy corners and hidden darkness.
I could see bare metal beams as part of the design, creating edges and angles to give the place character, and I was reminded of a wide cave entrance—the large opening that led to a hidden place.
Soyer wrapped his arms around me, holding me close. “I’m not drunk, Amory. I’m in love with you. What else did you expect, hmm?”
I blushed. “I love you too.”
“Yeah, that’s the best part of it.”
“Thanks for taking me on the train.”
He huffed. “Braved that fucking tourist trap because I love you.”
“Maybe we can go again some other time?”
“My heart, you’re going to be the death of me.”
“But you can’t die.”
He brushed my hair back and ran the tip of one finger over my forehead. “No, I can’t. You’re stuck with me.”
I felt my grin stretch. “You promise?”
He snorted. “Absolutely. Ready to go home?”
“Yeah. Soyer?”
“Yes, my heart?”
“I’m still a little mad about…you know. The four days a week.”
He cackled, then pulled me in for a kiss that made me all weak in the knees.
“Good,” he said when our lips parted. “That means I get to do anything and everything in a bid to get you to forgive me.”
“That wasn’t—”
He kissed me again. “Too late.”