“Wolfboy, I’d like you to meet Caramel.”
She offered her hand as if I’d bite it off but that’d be all right if it made her part of B-town. I clasped the hand and smiled.
“Pleased to meet you,” she whispered, then looked at Orient. “Guess I should go...”
He nodded. “You don’t want to miss the first song.”
As Caramel edged into the Danceland crowd, Orient said, “Lord, lord. Perfectly nice Friday night, and I have to get pinned down in the street by some poor little thing with the dust of the World still behind her ears.”
I laughed and patted his head.
“Oh, go chase cats. I even gave her a name, for crying out loud.”
I gave him the You-know-you-want-me-to-ask look.
“Well, what was I supposed to do? Camilla,” he muttered. I thought it was pretty, but Orient added, “Lordy,” and he was probably right. Your name’s part of the first impression you make. Some names can destroy your life if you’re not strong enough, and Camilla sounded like one of those. Whatever his motive, Orient had given Caramel a much easier identity to form in town.
Which made me remember running off to B-town. I’d wanted to call myself Starbuck, like a sci-fi hero with a blaster on his hip. Mickey had warned me in time. It was amusing to wonder if Ron Starbuck would have ended up as Wolfboy.
Orient tapped out a second cig. I shrugged and took it. If I got hooked, I could always have the fun of quitting. Orient lit it without saying anything; the Wolf’s hands are stronger than those of the kid who wanted to be Ron Starbuck, but they aren’t as nimble.
“You been out of town?”
I grinned, drew a bulky leather wallet from my back pocket, and flipped it open: twenty-two perfectly preserved four-leaf clovers. See ‘em and weep.
“Oh, my stars and garters.” He sighed. “Well, if I need to borrow money I’ll sure ‘nuff come to you. You gonna sell ‘em inside?” He pointed to Danceland.
I flipped the wallet shut and nodded as I stuffed it into my back pocket.
“Offer one to Goldy. He’s going to need it.”
I gave him the high eyebrows.
He explained, “I just sent that runaway to him.”
I laughed and shook my head. A couple of Packers glanced my way; I suspect there’ll always be people wondering when I’ll turn rabid.
“I don’t suppose you’d trade one of those little green beauties for the latest copy of Stick Wizard, would you?”
I grinned: Dream on.
He pulled an issue of the mag out of the sidecar’s map pocket. On the cover, stick figures flickered in faerie-dust ink: the Wizard was flying off a beat-up cycle that’d hit a wire held by Tater and Bert, the cigar-smoking elf delinquents. Tater and Bert are great. Villains are always more interesting than heroes.
I forced myself to shake my head. With luck, someone would give me a copy. Orient smiled and put it away. He has a sadistic streak.
“Here’s a fine convocation of riffraff,” Tick-Tick announced behind us.
My Tick-Tick crush clicked in when I heard her voice. Her short hair was dyed dandelion yellow, with a lock in front that hung to her eyebrows. The evening’s gear consisted of a long gray leather coat, matching tight pants, low red boots, a charcoal gray suit coat, a white shirt, a red tie, and three garnet earrings in one ear. Poor Caramel—this was the woman she wanted to be.
“Boil me in lead,” Orient said blandly. “She’s back before morning!”
“Oh, shut up. Hi, Lobo.”
I grinned. See the importance of names? Lobo. It’s got dignity.
Tick-Tick loaded a paper-covered bundle into her bike’s top cargo box. “Goodies?” Orient asked.
“Well, not that you’d think so. A little replacement stock, wire connectors, and that sort of thing. And a toy or two.”
“Or eight or ten.”
She shrugged. “So, anyone here want to rock the moon down?”
“Me! Me!” Orient leaped from the sidecar, and I gave my best party howl. As Orient checked his hair in the bike’s rearview mirror, Tick-Tick said, “Yes, yes, you’re just breathtaking. Come along.”
•
The crowd inside was even thicker than the crowd outside. Maybe that was possible because the laws of physics aren’t consistent in B-town. The stage lights were off, but the band’s equipment was up and waiting, and the spellboxes powering the amps gave a steady red glow. Tick-Tick headed for the pool tables, and Orient and I squeezed up to the bar.
Valda was setting bottles of beer on the counter three at a time to meet the demand. Orient yelled over the din of conversation and recorded music, “Val, precious Val, did the coffee come in yet?”
She looked at him and started to shake her head, but as his face fell, she smiled and said, “You’re a lucky boy.” He blew her a kiss, and she headed to the end of the bar to pour a cup.
She set it in front of Orient, and a bottle of beer in front of me. Orient pried a silver stud out of his wristband and said, “That’s for both.”
I glared at him; I had trading stock, which wasn’t always the case.
He nodded toward my wallet of clovers. “So pay me back when you’ve made your killing in good luck.”
Orient’s got a major coffee jones. He held the cup under his nose and savored the fumes. Since this was one of the times when coffee was rare in town, I forgave him.
A dark hand tapped his shoulder, interrupting his bliss. A familiar voice said, “Watch that stuff, young man.”
Goldy was in uniform, the standard green long-sleeved Danceland T-shirt, which he wore that night with silver-green trousers and gleaming gray pointed-toe shoes. The shirt doesn’t scream Bouncer, since you can buy them at the bar, but when he’s wearing one and makes a request of a customer, it gives him an extra degree of authority.
“Goldy. What it is. Watch what stuff?”
He narrowed his eyes at the coffee cup. “That’s a dangerous intoxicant, Orient, my friend. I fear you may get high as the Tooth and tear the place up before the night is out.”
“Call me Mr. Coffee Nerves.”
“Or perhaps I might toss you out now and save myself a bit of trouble. It’d be no more than you deserve.”
“Me? Oh, you got my present, then.”
“If you mean your runaway, yes, you snot-nosed little mutant, I did. What am I supposed to do with her?”
“Talk her out of doing all the stupid things we did at her age.”
“Except for continuing my acquaintance with you, I’ve never done anything stupid. I assume you Found her?” Something in Goldy’s voice, a pause, a bit of stress, let us know that “found” had a capital F.
“Course not. Though I suppose you could say I found her nickname.” Goldy frowned, so Orient added, “Well, she was complaining about her real one. I guess it worked as well as a direct request.”
The ceiling lights fired up in bursts of light, electrical and magical, forming alien symbols that clearly meant, You’re born to have fun; start now. “Back to the fray,” Goldy said, then signed to me, Enjoy, and moved into the crowd.
The stage lights came up. Dancer walked to the center microphone, and Orient nodded at me. (When Dancer introduces the band, it’s something special. And when she saunters slow and pleased, making us wait, you know it’s something extra-special.) I gave Orient the thumbs-up, and we charged up front toward the stage.
Along with half of B-town. Orient and I made it to the middle of the dance floor before the press of bodies became an impenetrable wall.
Dancer waited for silence, then brought her lean hands up, paused, threw back her head and laughed, shaking her curly ponytail of black hair, and finally said, “I give up. Ladies and gentlemen, Wild Hunt!”
What more did she need to say? All of Soho had been hearing their recordings for months. At long last, we were going to get the real thing, to finally see the people who made the music we loved.
An elf in white leather leggings and a white sleeveles
s tunic ran onstage. She was paler than Strider or Tick-Tick or any elf I’d seen. Her eyes were coins of polished silver. Her hair, the color of milk lit by moonlight, had been cut close on the left side and lengthened as it circled her head. Her left eye was daubed in blue paint that ran from her nose into her short white hair.
Add another to my list of crushes.
While the rest of the band, all elves and halfies, took their places, the elf in white slung a Fender Witchfire bass over her shoulder. Faerie dust in the paint job made star formations that went supernova within seconds. Light flared from silver rings on her fingers as she slammed down on the bass strings.
Everyone recognized “Shake the Wall Down.” Everyone screamed. Everyone danced.
For you music mavens, some tech specs: The keyboard player had a Fairlight Sorcerer. The lead guitarist played an eight-stringed custom ax with ease, at least partly because he had six fingers on each hand. The drummer bopped around like a madman, but his beat stayed steady and complex. As for the halfie on elfpipes, well, I wished there were some elves fresh out of the Elflands to hear it, ‘cause they would’ve thought it sacrilege. I thought it genius.
My hand was grabbed by an elf with green hair, a sweet grin, and a red jewel on one cheek. You got to live. I picked her up by her waist, whirled her once, and we dove into the crowd to see if we could dance on the ceiling.
Sometime during a wild, mad version of “Heart’s Desire,” I spotted Orient dancing with Sai. She was in a Danceland shirt, too, which meant she must have been on break. Strider stood near the bar, but I don’t think he saw me. His eyes kept panning from the crowd to the band to Sai.
Someone waved—okay, lots of people waved, but I spotted a hand and saw it was attached to King O’Beer, who was dancing with Jeff. They drove their fists into the air in time to the tune, and so did I. I signed, Flying! and the King signed, Yes!
Wild Hunt moved into “Running on the Border” without a pause. The crowd quieted, but no one left the dance floor. Everyone was swaying in place and singing along. The halfie on elfpipes stopped playing to lead the crowd in double handclaps like on the tape.
Then the crowd rippled because of a sudden intrusion: Across the dance floor strode an Elflands elf in an odd seventeenth-century brocade coat that kept changing color and pattern. His pale hair was pulled back in a braid that hung to his waist.
I moved toward Orient and Sai in time to hear Sai say, “My, my. Weeds of Elfland he doth wear.”
Orient kept a grip on her arm. “Calm down, he hasn’t done anything yet.”
“Couldn’t I just warn him a little?”
“No.”
I suppose she sounds like a madwoman when I record her words without her tone of voice, but Sai’s hatred of elves was mostly a joke that we all shared with her. We watched the elf in brocade stalk to the edge of the stage, but we didn’t know there’d be trouble until he shouted something Elvish, maybe a name.
Wild Hunt kept playing, but you could tell they weren’t happy. When the Elflander screamed and pounded his fist on the stage, the singer hit a jarring chord on her bass, then stopped playing. The rest of the band let the song flop about for a couple of seconds and die. Sai began forcing herself into the crowd.
The singer clicked off her mike. In the silence, probably half the club could still hear her. “Leave me alone,” she said in a fainter version of the other’s Elfland accent.
The elf in brocade balled his fists and said something else, even more angrily.
The singer answered, “No! I told you no. I am not—I will not go.”
The Elflander said something more, including the elvish words for clan and Border. From what I could tell, he wanted her to come back with him, he wanted her to come back now, it was important, and her life in Bordertown wasn’t. Which must’ve really endeared him to her.
She turned away, as if to leave, then turned back. “Are you, now?” Whatever he thought of himself, she thought very little of him. “Well, not me. Maybe all those pretty sheep—” She pointed north, toward the Border. “—but not me.” She stalked away.
The elf grabbed the edge of the stage to jump up and follow her. Then Strider arrived as if from nowhere—he’d avoided the crowd by crossing under the stage—and grabbed the Elflander’s shoulders, spun him about, and shook him by the lapels. Strider wasn’t happy. I don’t suppose any of us were.
Suddenly he released the Elflander and stepped back, as if he’d been hurt. They each moved sideways, measuring the space between them. Strider spoke an Elvish word, very tentatively.
The Elflander lifted his chin even higher. “You are not permitted to be free with my name.”
“You’re over the Border now. That name doesn’t mean piss-all here.” When Strider was working, he was always polite. Something was very wrong.
The Elflander sneered at Strider’s shirt, which looked as if someone had driven over it several times (which, in fact, Strider had), and his raggedy blue jeans. “Little more than a savage. You embarrass all in whom the True Blood flows.”
“Yeah, well, you set a fine example for the race, rich boy. Go make trouble in somebody else’s place.” Strider reached for the Elflander’s arm.
The stranger pulled something from his coat that looked like a metal antenna, a weapon you’d expect to see in the hands of Wharf Rats and the worst of the Packers. The Elflander casually snapped it open to maybe a meter in length, and as everyone watched, he slashed Strider’s face.
Sai screamed something. I couldn’t see Goldy, who was undoubtedly caught in the crowd like the rest of us. People backed desperately away from the Elflander, but they ran into people who were trying to get closer to see what was happening and whether they could help.
Strider fell back against the stage with blood smearing his face. The Elflander kept after him—a lunge took Strider in the arm, a swipe sliced through his T-shirt’s Danceland logo.
I was part of the crowd trying to get forward, fighting the crowd trying to get away. We were like waves rolling back from the beach only to crash into new ones coming ashore, and Strider was somewhere out in the calm ocean, dying beyond our reach.
He fell to his knees, holding his bleeding chest and still raising a fist. Sai burst through the crowd then, almost within reach of the Elflander’s Faerie blade. Strider gasped, “No.”
Sai stopped still, to everyone’s surprise, and waited for Strider’s explanation. The Elflander backed away, lowering the tip of his blade a little. Behind him, Goldy stepped from the crowd with a baseball bat dangling from his hand.
Strider shook hair out of his face. “This is an honor fight. Nobody gets this son of a bitch but me.” Sai stiffened, but Strider ignored her. “And I will.”
The Elflander turned his back on Strider, which seemed brave, and on Sai, which seemed foolhardy. He saw Goldy and drew back, but Goldy smiled and bowed, indicating the door. The crowd made a wide path for the Elflander.
At the door, he turned. His cutter was back in his gaudy jacket. He called, “We shall continue this matter sometime soon.”
“Damn straight,” Strider agreed.
The Elflander smiled. “Yes. Soon.” He bowed with a flourish and left.
Sai and Orient helped Strider to his feet. I opened the door to the back hall for them, and we went to Dancer’s office. They set Strider on the couch, but he refused to lie down.
Strider grunted as he peeled off his shirt. Orient, wincing, filled a bowl with water at the office sink and brought it with some towels to Sai, who dabbed at Strider’s face. The only sounds were our breathing and Strider’s occasional burst of swearing.
Goldy leaned into the office. “Is it as bad as it looks?”
Sai frowned, but Strider shook his head. “I’ll live. Mostly slashes, and none of them deep. Bastard knew what he was doing.” He grinned suddenly. “When he drew on me, he’d lost it for a second. But when he started cutting...”
“What was that objectionable little tool of his? Any idea?”<
br />
“It’s a goddam dueling toy in the Elflands,” Strider replied.
Sai streaked Gold-N-Rod Creme across Strider’s cuts. He swore some more, and if he hadn’t been in such pain, I would’ve admired his inventiveness. When Sai did his face, she had to hold him by the hair to keep his head still.
The cream drew the edges of his skin together as we watched. Oil of goldenrod works best on elves and halfies. In Faerie, it probably works instantly and prevents scars from forming; that’d explain the Elflander’s flawless features, given his habits. But maybe he was just very good with his fencing toy.
We weren’t in Faerie: Strider was going to remember the Elflander’s attack for the rest of his life. Every time he looked in the mirror, he’d see a white seam across his nose and cheek.
Goldy said, “Strider, my lad, are you quite sure you don’t want me to find him, cut off his pretty braid, and see that he eats it?”
Sai said, “The hell you will! If he doesn’t want to do it himself, I’m gonna—you hear me? Oh, shit.” She looked away and hit her thigh with her fist.
Strider squeezed her shoulder. “Hey, all of you, why don’t you take a walk? I don’t feel like talking right now. Okay?”
Sai looked up at him.
“Yeah,” he said kindly, “you, too.”
She nodded and stood. Orient and I were already leaving. Sai followed, closing the door, and we all stood in the hall feeling useless. I thought, Okay, everyone’s talking crazy to blow steam. It’ll be all right now.
As if to prove me right, Goldy said, “Ah, well. Friday night, a band that’ll draw half of Bordertown when the word gets out, and only two of us on the floor. Nothing we can’t manage, yes?”
Sai pursed her lips, then lifted one finger.
“Oh, dear,” said Goldy.
“Please, Goldy? I gotta get out of here. I’d just take this out on some poor jerk out front.”
He sighed. “Very well. Don’t do anything foolish, will you?”
She grinned wearily and headed for the back door.
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