by Beth Dranoff
Although it might have been useful to find out about his other lovers, hmm?
Even in my head, my tone was sarcastic.
* * *
Gwen, the sexy not-quite-night nurse, was back. This time she was in a white PVC getup with matching platform loafer-type shoes.
Relief.
At least until I saw the foot-long hypodermic needle she was carrying.
Shit!
I struggled to move away from the syringe, but it was pointless—I couldn’t do a damned thing. I was growling my helplessness as the opaque serum was shot into my primed and waiting vein.
Finally, she began to set me free.
Gwen explained, while bending over to unbuckle my various restraints, that I’d been under observation for the last forty-eight hours. She also confirmed what Anshell Williams had told me—based on the severity of my convulsions, if I hadn’t been restrained, I would have caused damage to both myself and to those trying to help me.
I rubbed my wrists and used the arms of the bed to propel myself upright. “What did you shoot me with?”
She just watched as I folded backwards onto the pillows and the world went dark again.
Chapter Three
I woke up in my own bed.
Layers of patchouli, mandarin, lavender and “fresh rain”—scented laundry soap rolled over me. The feel—my top pillow indented just so; the position—on my stomach, one arm tucked between the pillows under my head. Comfortable.
No restraints.
My cat, asleep on my head, purring.
Home.
Home?
Since when did I get a cat?
I was afraid to open my eyes. Experiments with bondage, time in a hospital, blacking out in pain—no way was that real. I couldn’t allow it to be.
Please let me have dreamed it.
I forced my eyes open and looked up. No cat. Another trippy mind blip apparently.
Idly, I flexed my back and extended my arms and legs as far as they could go. I rolled onto my back and got into Little Boat pose, legs curled to my chest with arms clasped around bent legs, rocking from side to side. Losing my mind? Maybe. But impending befuddlement was no excuse to slack off on my yoga training.
Holding my calves, I actively chose to focus on my breathing instead of my brain. Inhale, hold, count to five, exhale. Repeat. Roll over onto my front again and into Child’s Pose, legs bent beneath me with palms and arms outstretched past my head on the bed. I felt as though I’d grown about five extra vertebrae, and my lower back had lost its customary stiffness. Odd.
Cat pose next. My back definitely felt like there was more of an arch happening. No tail yet though. I was poking at my sanity with a sharp stick. Moving into Dog pose. This one, strangely, felt harder than usual—my legs didn’t want to flex as dramatically as they had yesterday. Was it only yesterday? Thinking anything else would be...crazy. Which I’m not. Yet.
Time to start my Sun Salutations.
I ran through the various poses in sequence. Easier to focus on my body and the flow of muscle and bone than on the thoughts running through my mind.
Breathing. Stretching.
Still too much energy.
I shook out my hands, wrists, legs; drew circles with my ankles and shoulders to loosen them up even more. Standing in one place, my feet shoulder-width apart, practicing my punches in front of a mirror. Then my kicks. Up and down the length of the room, focusing on keeping power behind the ball of my foot as it made contact with an invisible foe over and over and over again. Front kick. Side kick. Spinning roundhouse kick.
I did sit-ups. Then push-ups. Then knuckle push-ups. Debated going for a jog but opted for skipping rope instead. Anything to work off that frenetic need to move, the antithetic effects of immobility pouring out of me as I sweated out my demons.
I’d feel it tomorrow. Or in a couple of hours.
Either way I knew had to stop eventually and relax.
Relaxation meant sinking into the old-style, claw-legged bathtub with sides so high I didn’t have to expose any of my naked bits to potential air-chilled breezes. A range of soap selections completed the experience, either herbal or fruity undertones tinged with drops of purified essential oils.
Normally, breathing deeply while surrounded by water would have eased both my mind and my body. Today was a bad day. My hands shook as I poured frothy gel under the running water, and the scents jabbed at my temples with a throbbing staccato of pain. I rushed through what would normally be my favorite part of the day.
Weird.
I couldn’t get out of that bathroom fast enough. I left colorful towels behind in a pile on the floor as I put distance between myself and the smells and thoughts that wrapped their vise-like tendrils around my brain.
I retreated to my bedroom on a hunt for clean underwear and something to wear to work. Butt floss or cotton comfort? Red, floral, white or black? Too many choices. I opted for cotton comfort, black. Keeping my options open.
Eh, what the hell. I reached for a matching black cotton/lycra blend stretch sports halter bra. Shrugged into a black T-shirt. Completed the I-can’t-be-bothered-trying-to-match-all-my-clothes-today outfit with black jeans. Black socks. Black combat boots with purple laces. Yeah. That worked.
Wait, how did I know I had to work today?
The phone beside my bed was flickering red; someone had tried to reach me. Three people actually—the ones who would notice if I went missing. The first message was from my best friend Lynna, confirming lunch for Thursday. The next: my mother wanting to know about brunch over the weekend. And finally my boss, Sandor, hoping my great aunt—great aunt?—had recovered from her operation enough that I’d be able to make it into work today for my 4:00 p.m. shift. Today being Wednesday.
Wednesday? What happened to Sunday, Monday and Tuesday?
I started to feel anxious again.
Focus.
Normality. Being with the here and now. I could do normal. Or at least normal for me.
The clock beside the phone read 3:30 p.m.
Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go?
Apparently so.
Chapter Four
Work was a three-story warehouse that functioned as a bar/meeting place/conference facility where mortal and otherness met. It’s called the Swan Song. Don’t ask me why.
It’s located in a weird part of town. The old warehouse, complete with rippled aluminum and snot-green siding, is down close by Lake Ontario in an area called the East Bayfront. Known for derelict factories and squatters, most of the area is actually quite pretty in the spring and summer. City planners had scattered wildflower seeds over the garbage, turning a former landfill site into an overgrown nature trail. There’s even a community garden. It’s the perfect hiking spot for city people who want to pretend their hometown isn’t as stinky and contaminated as it really is.
By day, families on bicycles and hand-holding couples stroll through. But when night bleeds the light, things change. Even the darkness teems with life—and not just horny couples making out on the beach.
I’m the bartender at the Swan Song. What other job lets you dress in combat boots without also making you wear military fatigues and sign away the next three years of your life?
Okay, so sure, I’d spent my last three years here. I’d meant to move on. Never quite got around to it. Hadn’t figured out a better application of my extensive education yet. So here I am, and there you go.
Next?
The Song was pretty empty and I was getting bored. Until I noticed this Goth guy, very dressed-in-black in a 1980s retro-Bauhaus kind of way. Not unlike myself, actually. And not so hard on the eyes either. Hmm.
Worth a closer look. With practiced casualness, wiping down the counter with a grimy rag, I snuck
peeks in his direction through hair that just happened to fall forward over my face as I rubbed invisible moisture rings from the scarred surface.
The guy did not look happy. He was nursing a Bloody Bloody Mary and staring at a pack of Du Maurier Lights that an earlier patron had left behind. I watched him pick up the box, turn it over in his hand and run his fingers along the sides. Then he did the same with a matchbook that blared the Swan Song’s logo—red lettering on a black background with something white and winged that seemed to flutter the longer you stared at it.
Was he a former smoker? Manic depressive? Clairvoyant trying to pick up vibes?
One of my favorite parts of this job is making up pieces of other people’s lives. Doesn’t matter if it’s true—it’s almost more fun when it isn’t.
The cover band playing this early dark hour blared angsty musical stylings remade into pastel blandness. An artistically revisionist blast from a 1980s past—four guys and a dark-eyed, waif-like androgynous lead singer, all dressed in various shades of dark. Young. They reeked of innocence.
I take your hand / You let mine go / Oh baby baby / I love you so / Come back to me / And be my girl / I’ll love you forever / You are my pearl / Don’t get scared / The pain won’t last / Throughout eternity / We’ll have a blast...
I rolled my eyes and noticed a woman farther along the bar do the same. We shared a laugh.
She flicked a glance at Mr. Morose and snaked the tip of her tongue along the edge of her teeth. I nodded and gave her a lopsided grin. Yup, he’s hot. But what’s his trauma?
One of the waitresses, Janey, was trying to get my attention at the other end of the bar so I turned and headed down to get her order. Two lager drafts, a Screwdriver, a Gimlet and Giblet double double on the rocks (gin and innards, shaken not stirred, on ice), a Massive Attack (ground glass, O positive blood, a shot of grenadine, served chilled with a slice of lime), and a shot of Cusanjo Rojo mescal with extra worms.
Mmm, yummy.
You have to develop a strong stomach working here. I mean, those giblets are slimy buggers and you can’t think about where they came from or you might lose what little food you ate before your shift.
The blood came from a cow who was meeting a timely death anyway, and this way, all parts of the animal were being used. Or maybe a goat, same proviso. You don’t allow yourself to think anything else. You throw the glass chunks along with the contents of the blood bank bag into the blender, add the grenadine and crushed ice, replace the lid and blend on “high” for about a minute until everything froths together. Pour into a glass. Repeat as needed.
The term “finger food” takes on a whole new meaning at the Swan Song. Sure, we’ve got the usual deep-fried mozzarella sticks, zucchini strips, French fries and onion rings. But you’ll also find things like baby bottom flapjacks, frog tongues in a cornflake batter, goreal demon eggs scrambled with grasshoppers topped with a delicate blood and blue-butter sauce, whale blubber on toast, and more—a gourmet cornucopia of oddities and tastes from across the dimensions.
Not that I necessarily believed in other dimensions. But I’ve seen some weird shit here over the last few years, stuff I couldn’t explain, so I’m going to have to declare myself “undecided” on the whole are-we-alone-in-the-universe question, with an option to believe or disbelieve as the evidence presents itself.
In the meantime, my spidey sense was tingling, hairs tickling the back of my neck sending shivers along my spine and up around the edges of my shoulder blades. My co-conspirator was watching me now. Up and down. A little too long on the down for my taste.
I believe in that old cliché, to each his (or her) own. But your own doesn’t necessarily mean it’s my own. And—truly unfortunately sometimes—I just wasn’t attracted to women that way. Tried it. Might even try it again sometime. But not tonight, and not with her. Something was off. Question was what.
I tried to get a better look using my peripheral vision. Instead I started sweating, tiny beads of liquid endorphin formed on my upper lip, and an answering heat somewhere lower. Unexpected. I tried to remember to breathe. Her body curved and straightened with a selective fullness. Her cherry-red gloss-covered lips glinted off her glass, and I wanted to know whether the shiny balm was strawberry or bubblegum flavor. Instead, I bit into the coppery salt of my own bottom lip. I’d almost missed the tips of what was barely hidden in the wild curls of her blue-black hair.
Horns.
Demon alert.
Being able to name the source helped me regain control over my cravings. Was I losing my touch? Usually I can spot—and avoid—a trawling demon.
Refills anyone?
But Broody Boy was looking past me towards the arched entranceway to the club. His eyes narrowed as his nostrils flared, anger replacing melancholy. He sat a little straighter and his gaze hardened as a solid-looking man walked in.
Broody seemed to grow—somehow bigger, stronger, more alpha.
Weird.
I followed his gaze and stepped back so fast the corner of the counter behind me slammed into my hip.
Anshell.
Fuck.
The room started spinning and I felt like I was about to faint. I’ve never actually fainted before, but I figured if I was going to, this is how it would feel. Demon woman was behind the bar now at my elbow, catching me in her arms before I could hit the floor. On the other side of me was some guy I’d never seen before. A flash of shoulder-length hair, not mine, brushed a bare spot on my shoulder as he cushioned one-half of my fall. They eased me onto a nearby stool.
When, exactly, is a dream not a dream?
Cute-but-broody wasn’t paying any attention to me at this point. But my boss Sandor was. Moments later he was beside me, edging the patrons away and thanking them for their help.
You don’t say no to Sandor, especially if he’s being polite. At six foot five inches tall, Sandor towered over most of his clientele. Nothing pretty by human standards, he had three eyes stacked over two rows in a drunken pyramid, pylon-orange tusks curving up and around from just under his cheekbones, warted tree frog—green skin and a tail lined with slabs the size of my palms trailing out behind him. I’d seen him use a combination rear sweep and smack maneuver more than once to clear out a crew of rowdy drunks.
I liked Sandor. He was a good guy for a demon; understanding as a boss, invaluable as a friend. One thing you could always say about him—he stood by his people. He kept the place fairly violence-free, and didn’t allow the patrons to hassle us no matter who we were or where we’d come from.
Sure, I’m used to having my own back. Being ex-Agency with a dead father who was a scientist with that same Agency will do that. But I’m also a norm working an intersectional, inter-species bar in a city that only sees what it wants to see, serving patrons who’ve either taken a beat-down from one of my former associates or know someone who has. So I don’t share. Safer that way.
Sandor was the reason I’d stayed at the Swan as long as I had. He would also be the first to encourage me to move on when I felt I was ready.
Right now, Sandor was watching me watch Anshell. He lifted his snout and sniffed, then looked at me, hard.
“Dana, is there something I should know about?”
I shook my head, then nodded, then shrugged.
“He seems to recognize you,” Sandor commented. “Don’t look up if you don’t want to engage.”
“Shit,” I muttered.
“He’s heading this way,” continued my boss. “Want me to get rid of him?”
But no immediate need. Mr. Melancholy stepped into the mix, unwittingly blocking Anshell’s path to me.
“I told you to stay away from me,” Mr. Getting-Less-Melancholy-All-The-Time hissed.
“I’m not here for you,” said Anshell.
“But you’re here now, and so am I. Get g
one.”
Anshell stared the other man down. “Get yourself gone,” he said. Anshell’s voice was quiet, a polite incline to his head, but there was force behind those words.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Goth Guy spit out through gritted teeth. “Not anymore. I’m not yours.”
Anshell smiled thinly.
“If we have no connection, then why are you wasting your time talking to me?” Anshell kept his voice level, pitched low, but for some reason I could hear him as well as the other guy could and they were standing maybe two feet apart—and at least twenty feet from me. “If I were you,” he continued, “I would finish my drink and leave now. My business here is not with you.”
Anshell’s head swiveled so that his eyes met mine.
Damn.
Broody Guy glared at me, then at Anshell. He balled his hands into fists and shoved them into his pockets.
“Fuck this shit,” I muttered. “I don’t need this.”
I pushed myself back to my feet and forced the sludge from my brain. There. Standing. Right, that’s it. I could stand on my own. No problem.
“I’m going to take my break now, ‘kay, Sand?”
Sandor nodded.
I headed straight for the women’s bathroom. Pushed open the knife-scored, black-painted worn wood to one of the stalls, lowered the lid and sat. Tried to remember how to breathe. The room was tilting.
I leaned forward and put my head between my knees. Then pulled it out again. No idea why people tell you to do that—it always makes things worse in my experience. Instead I found a pockmark in the door and fixated on that. Focus. Focus on breathing. The earth beneath the floor beneath my feet. Blood pumping through my veins. The air surrounding me, pressing in on me, me pressing out on it. Inhale, exhale. My hands were shaking again. I closed them into fists, flexing my fingers and palms outward. Forcing them steady, pushing all other thoughts out of my head. Fist and flex. Fist and flex.
Trick of the light, or were my nails longer, more pointed?
Fist and flex again.