17. A Fish Out of Isolated Waters, Watching Hot Chicks on a Bar
A Fish Out of Isolated Waters, Watching Hot Chicks on a Bar
ONE
My skin crawls as the hulking bouncer studies my fake ID.
I normally would never be caught in a place like this. I absolutely should not be here, and yet...
It's been too long. Too many nights that stretched into boredom without a single Snow sighting, so here I am, tracking her down.
Because we hurt her. And her hurt is now our hurt, and it's unbearable.
The bouncer's dark, flat eyes look right through me, making me feel like he knows all our secrets.
But that's just my paranoia.
It's not out of the question, Six points out. This place is a hotbed for magical beings. Maybe he can read our secrets.
Great, Two says sarcastically. That makes us feel better.
Finally, I'm handed back my ID and waved inside into what feels like a totally different realm.
The place is bigger than I expected.
A real live tree grows out of the floor, fairy lights threaded through the branches, amber light falling over everything below. Heavy perfumes, warm wood, and spilled spirits overpower my senses, but I'm not sure I dislike it.
Bottles are stacked several stories high behind the bar like backlit gold. People crowd every available inch, talking, laughing, drinking, pressed together at the tables, the bar, and the dance floor in a writhing swarm that matches the beat.
I don't go to bars. I don't go anywhere with more than three people in it if I can help it, and even then, I'm mapping the fastest way out of the room.
The noise alone is torturous—the way it stacks, conversation on top of music on top of laughter on top of glass on glass until I can't pull one clean sound from any of it.
I've already got six other voices in my head, and the added noise violently overwhelms me, causing me to start backing up toward the door.
Why are we here again? Six asks.
Because we miss her, Five answers. We need to apologize. We really hurt her.
Everything is so boring without her, Two adds, and I can feel Four's hearty agreement. Even Three is quietly pushing me forward.
I try to keep my opinion to myself, but I can't say I disagree.
The midnight hour slows to a crawl. Even though we told her to get lost, almost every minute is strung with the hope that I'll catch sight of her gorgeous white hair coming from around a corner, or from a rooftop while she plays sneaky black cat.
My chest wrenches with a painful feeling. A longing.
Mother wouldn't like this, Seven adds, the only one truly reluctant to be here.
Mother isn't here, is she? Two counters. Besides, Snow is human. She'd approve of that.
I try to ignore the commentary and force myself forward. Four surges toward the forefront again, as if attracted to the heat of the room like a moth to a flame.
His fascination winds around my trepidation, making it slightly easier to move forward, pushing my way through the crowd so I can rubberneck in an attempt to find Snow. So far, no sighting.
Didn't she say she was the bartender? Three asks.
I look in that direction, but no one is behind the bar.
Before I can get closer to see if the bartenders are all hiding underneath the counter, the lights go out, plunging the bar into darkness.
Panic grips me, tightening around me. I zip through the crowd, bumping into people who let out indignant cries of protest, but I don't stop until my back is to the wall.
A crack of blue powder explodes from the stage by the tree.
The crowd erupts.
I flinch hard enough that the back of my skull connects with the wall behind me.
Get out. We need to get out of here, Seven demands with such authority I'm tempted to do what he says.
No, wait, Four says. No one else is panicking.
It could be a trap, Six points out.
A single spotlight cuts through the dark and finds a man in a powder blue top hat, coattails, and a bare chest, standing on a platform near the base of the tree.
"Good evening, my wicked little deviants." He purrs. "Tonight, I am your host and emcee, Geanie. Welcome to the only bar in Boston where the drinks are potent, the women are deadly, and your inhibitions aren't welcome."
The crowd loses their minds. The man grins, slow and wide. He reminds me of a peacock showing off his feathers. I'd once encountered them at the zoo and found them unnecessarily aggressive.
I like him, Four says.
Of course you do, Two replies.
"We all know why you're here." Geanie's voice drops. "To drink. To forget. To sin." Another surge of cheering. "And no one serves up sin better than our Lost Girls."
The bass drops.
A turquoise spotlight hits the far end of the bar, and the crowd parts enough that I can see her.
Copper hair, a sleek black and chrome wheelchair, tattoos winding up one pale arm, piercings catching the light at her ears and nose.
Her aquamarine eyes cut through the crowd, and a dozen people stand up straighter.
"Our girl Ariel came to Boston, a fish out of water," Geanie announces. He is somehow now draped sideways across a tree branch above the crowd, one finger trailing the bark. "But oh, how fast our girl learned to swim."
Two cords drop into her hands from somewhere above her. Weighted ends glow an electric blue-white as she begins to spin them.
The spotlight winks out.
In the dark, the cords trace light. Figure eights, halos, full orbits that expand and contract with her wrists.
The crowd goes silent in a way it hasn't since I walked in.
Just the bass and the cold glow of the patterns she pulls out of nothing, looping over her head, crossing at her chest, spiraling out wide on either side until the whole dark corner of the bar is mapped in moving light.
Then the spotlight floods back.
Ariel drops the cords, rolls off the platform and straight into the crowd, and they catch her. Hands go up without hesitation, the chair lifted and passed overhead in a rolling surf across the room, her copper hair streaming behind her, face tipped up to the ceiling.
The turquoise light follows her out and cuts away.
Another spotlight, this one gold, hits the other end of the bar, and a woman in pink steps into it.
Blonde, full-figured, with a wide sunny smile.
"Goldie," Geanie announces from the branch.
He fans himself. "Our goddess of the golden pour.
A level five siren in pink leather, and trust me, darlings, you will not even see it coming.
Don't let the sweet exterior fool you. Her mixes are as bold as she is, and she has never in her life met a stranger. "
Level five, Seven says from somewhere very quiet and very still.
I feel it move through all of us at once. The count. How many magic users are in this building right now? How many in this room? How many between us and the door? It presses against the back of my skull like a thumb finding a bruise.
Goldie pulls two bottles simultaneously, one in each hand, and begins to move. She crosses them, tosses the right one behind her back, catches it without looking, and sends it straight up into a full arc while the left one spins between her fingers. The crowd tracks the bottles with their heads.
She tips them both into a crossing pour, two streams hitting the same glass from opposite angles.
Then she turns to the crowd and walks the length of the bar with both bottles extended. Every upturned open mouth she passes gets a pour. People shove toward the bar. Someone in the front row grabs their friend by the arm.
She winks at someone near the back, and the cheering doubles.
The spotlight swings to the middle stretch of the bar.
An East Asian goth woman steps into it. Dark eyes, still while everyone else is moving, platform boots spiked with metal.
"And a special treat tonight." Geanie's voice shifts into something careful.
"Those of you who know your Lost Girls history know that our girl Cinder doesn't pour anymore as Queen of Midnight.
She is in town for a little while, and as a special treat she has very graciously agreed to remind Boston what a level five blood mage, vampire hybrid looks like behind a bar. "
Another one, Seven counts.
His attention makes my skin itch. This isn't why we came here. We came for Snow.
Cinder pulls a bottle, uncaps it, and tips a thin stream of liquor along the full length of the bar top in one slow, continuous pour. Then she produces a lighter, flicks it, and touches the flame to the near end.
The fire runs the length of the bar in a blue-white line, chasing the liquor trail, and the crowd stumbles back a full step before surging forward again with a roar.
Cinder watches it burn without moving.
The hair along my arms lifts. Even diluted through three hundred bodies, the weight of her magic reaches me at the wall. I have felt magic that dense only once before. I push the thought down before any of the others can catch it.
Cinder raises one hand and closes it into a fist. The fire goes out. The crowd goes nuts.
The spotlight swings from Cinder to the raised platform at the far end of the bar, turning cobalt blue.
There she is.
I'm not sure if I said it, or if all of us did. But we are instantly locked on Snow.
She's in a cerulean corset and a leather skirt with fishnet underneath, white hair loose under the light, dark skin catching the blue. The white tattoos on her arms look like frost. Her electric blue eyes drag across the crowd slowly, that saucy smile playing at her lips.
It's the same smile she gave me right before she jumped in the damn ocean. Which makes me very, very nervous right now.
"Snow." Geanie's voice drops to something almost reverent. "Our petite powerhouse. A gaze like a blade. A feral spirit. She might resemble a winter fairy, but her concoctions will warm you to your core."
A pause.
"And beware, my friends. She can set fire in the most unexpected of places."
He doesn't know how true that is, Four says.
From some place inside me, I'm tempted to grab her, throw her over my shoulder and leave.
Everyone is watching her, Seven says in an uncharacteristic observation. As if he doesn't like it.
Snow rolls her neck, loosening it, then plants her hands and goes into a cartwheel, transitions straight into a roundoff, and comes out of it into a back walkover that takes her the full length of the platform.
At the bottom of the walkover, upside down, both hands on the bar, she closes her mouth around the rim of a waiting shot glass. She comes back up to standing in one fluid motion, tips her head back, and swallows.
The crowd loses their minds entirely.
She sets the empty glass on the bar and flashes a triumphant smile.
She may be human, but everything about her is magic. I don't care if she doesn't have super speed, the ability to phase through walls, or can start a fire from nothing. There is something so undeniable about the attraction I have to her that the only explanation is it must be supernatural.
Geanie drops from the branch and spreads his arms wide.
"Drink up, darlings. Because what happens at Poison Apple," he grins, "stays with us."
The lights flood back. The music hits different as the bar swings back into motion, and the Lost Girls move in a blur of bottles and laughter.
I’m still against the wall, but my gaze cuts through the crowd to find her again immediately.
Snow is laughing at something Ariel said, head thrown back, white hair falling behind her shoulders.
She doesn't know I'm here.
Are you going to keep standing against the wall, Two asks pleasantly, or are you going to go apologize?