Circle of Arms (The Shades of Northwood 2)

by Wendy Maddocks

  “Self-preservation’s pretty high on my list.”

  “You really shouldn’t be there at all, you know.”

  “He thought I was working anyway. Then he just kind of assumed I needed the job. Which I do.” It hadn’t been quite that simple and she reckoned being found unconscious on his carpet might have encouraged the offer a little. “I’ll be fixing drinks and counting heads – nothing dangerous.”

  “Oh, I trust you. I’m sure you wouldn’t put yourself in harms’ way.”

  “Not when I have a choice,” Katie muttered. Lainy looked at her, puzzled. “I meant to go see Dina tonight but I don’t have time.”

  “I doubt she’ll mind.”

  “Still.” She had worked hard to get Dina back in her body. If no-one could know about that then she could at least go and see the girl and congratulate herself.

  “Things seem stable. There’s this dim awareness in her but activity hasn’t increased or anything. There are sometimes these, like, spikes of activity but nothing is happening. It’s like she’s in there but…”

  “Will she be brain damaged?”

  “We won’t know until she wakes up.”

  Katie liked the way her friend was saying ‘we’ instead of ‘they’.

  “The other day? When you went…”

  “Postal?” Lainy supplied helpfully.

  “It’s forgotten. You had a temper. It happens. Everyone does stupid stuff when they’re upset. So, I’m not going to keep on about it.” She could practically hear Lainy think PHEW! Wasn’t looking forward to explaining that one.

  You don’t need to explain. I understand.

  The two girls forced smiles at each other and then it just got too hard to meet the others gaze. Lainy wanted to tell Katie everything that was different about this town. Katie wanted to tell her she didn’t need to.

  There was a rule that children and teenagers under the age of 18 weren’t allowed to know that half the town was already dead, and most of the others were on some grand plan to die before they reached their potential. So they ended up here if God or some other higher power decided they were worth saving. Katie had found out that she was destined to die young too, but not how or when, and the Levenson Academy had recruited her because her sporting career was apparently too promising to let a little thing like death halt it.

  Shoving the last handful of Cheese Curls in her mouth, Katie gulped it down and dumped her plate in the sink. “You’re washing up later, right?”

  “I guess. I mean, I wouldn’t trust Leo with breakable plates. Would you?”

  “I wouldn’t trust him with paper plates.”

  “I’ll remember that one! Love it!”

  Katie stuffed her phone, keys and purse in her pockets and walked out into the night. It was starting to get cold and dark fast in the evenings now. Winter was definitely on its’ way. She let her feet wander to the student club – they knew the way better than her brain – and let her mind wander to… anywhere it felt like. And it felt like drifting into another world. A world where everything was simple and safe. Nobody died of anything but old age. Everyone was nice to one another. Her friends stood by her side. No trauma stained her outlook on life and the only things people had to worry about was where they could have the most fun. But what jolted Katie most was realising that the world she was fantasizing about was Northwood – not Worth where she had grown up. Northwood was home – stressful, maybe, but it was where she belonged. Worth had raised her. Worth had taught her well. It had killed the child in her.

  So soon was Katie gazing up at the smart SHIMMA sign in red and black that she almost jumped when the crowd of people appeared in front of her. The front doors were still closed to people. A sign on the door advertised some visiting DJ she had never heard of. MC Flex seemed popular judging by the amount of people outside. Katie quickly realised it was a former student who had invited all his friends to see his first set. She bypassed all the revellers – most of whom looked frozen half to death – and strode up to the guy on the door. It was the same guy as on Tuesday – skinhead, more muscles than teeth, beady eyes sunk into the folds of face. She dug her student ID out and moved to go past him when the bouncer put an arm out and blocked away.

  “There’s a line over there. It’s there for a reason.”

  “I need to get in though.”

  “Yeah. They all do. Join the queue.”

  “I’m working here.”

  “Right. Line.”

  “It’s my first day. Ask Shimma.”

  “Haven’t heard that before.” He jerked his head towards the sign. It was easy to figure out the name of the owner when you name your business after yourself. A heck of a lot of people must try that blag.

  “It really is. I don’t know any other way in. It’s supposed to be like an orientation thing tonight.”

  “Baptism of fire, more like.” Although the guy looked less than convinced, he obligingly got out his little radio, pressed a button and waited for the crackle to pass. “Got a girl out here, says she’s working tonight.” Another burst of static burst forth but it obviously meant something to Skinhead, because he frowned at Katie and looked her up and down. “Dunno. Maybe five seven. Brown hair, long. Don’t look like she’ll last two minutes.” Another burst of noise and Skinheads face softened. “Yeah, Shimma says you’re alright.”

  “Can I go in, then?”

  “Not yet. DJ’s got wires everywhere. Couple of minutes.”

  That was fine. She’d rather be chilly and not electrocuted than warm because she had just been fried to a crisp. “Is the line always this long?”

  Skinhead shrugged and leaned back against the door. A couple of chancers tried to rush past him but the bouncer was far too quick – he looked relaxed but it was obvious he was on high alert. “Uh uh uh. Don’t know where you thing you two’re going but it ain’t in there.”

  “How come she gets to jump the line? Teachers pet or something.”

  “That’s right. Good puppies get in but bad dogs get bounced.”

  Katie kept her gaze fixed on her feet. It wouldn’t do to get into a confrontation on her very first shift.

  “But-“

  “Move it.” He kept his voice low and steady but there was no mistaking the fact he meant business. Footsteps clomped down the street. “Freshers week. Think they’ll never party again.”

  “It’s… I didn’t even think there were this many people at the academy.”

  “Yeah, we won’t get everyone in tonight I don’t think.” A voice crackled through his walkie-talkie again and Skinhead opened a wooden door set in to the wall next to the man doors. It was dark enough to be almost invisible to the casual eye.

  It opened on a little hall with stairs leading up and down – up for staff areas and down to storage, Katie guessed – and a half open door to her right. Through the door she could see chaos. People flitting across her chink of light, a voice doing a soundcheck, an unholy crash of glass. It was that which made Katie open the door and step into hell. The speeding bodies were staff members and DJ lackeys running around with light and sound equipment. The crash of glass had been from one of the bartenders whose mind had been on the DJ and not on his job. It took a few minutes to realise that the guy who had just broken half of tonight’s wages was, in fact, Shimma himself.

  “Ready to make yourself useful?” he said when he saw her. “Got a long night ahead of us. This guy, this MC Flex, brought half of Northwood with him.”

  “I saw. The queue’s a mile long. Not literally but as good as.”

  “There’s a brush under the bar. Clean this glass up would you?”

  “Okey doke.”

  Katie had been working for two hours and hadn’t stopped taking orders, mixing drinks and robbing students of their loans.

  The DJ crew had set up really quickly and the main doors were letting in a flood of revellers within half an hour. Names were a luxury and Katie was identifying her friends in war by the people who didn’t look ready
to fight or fall over. MC Flex was not exactly brilliant but the young man was making a decent go of it and was playing a passable mix of dance and garage. There was a line of speakers hidden behind the bar which were starting to give her earache and the darting multi-coloured lights were burning into her retinas. If she hadn’t been here the past two nights and known it was normally less of a sensory assault, she might have quit there and then. In a rare lull in bar customers, Katie took a handful of coins out of the tip bowl, put it in the till, grabbed the coldest Red Bull in the chiller and propped herself against the bar with it. The adrenalin was pumping and sweat was coating her forehead. There were hundreds of people in, it seemed like, and they all wanted stuff – drinks, snacks.

  Shimma had decided he was needed on the club floor more than keeping the books in the back. It was probably more to do with keeping an eye on his new member of staff than making up the numbers. “Katie! Grab some paper towels from the back! Damn, dude, you throw up good.”

  The rest of the can slid down her throat in one gulp, and she instantly felt the rush of caffeine and carbonate wake up her flagging muscles – running five or ten miles in one stretch was one thing, but walking the same few feet and keeping ever increasing drinks orders straight in her head was something else entirely. Katie lifted the hatch of the bar and squeezed through the gap, being sure to lower it behind her. It seemed that clubbers sometimes thought they were being extremely helpful by helping themselves. She shouldered her way through the dancing bodies and passed under the doorway into the air-conditioned corridor with the green fire exit on one side of her and the corridor stretching off to her right. A bolt of déjà vu flowed over Katie and she might have allowed it to make her feel sick and tired if she had been on her own time. But she wasn’t. Instead, she opened the door a few metres down the hall, grabbed a roll of paper towelling and let the dark, pine-scented cupboard chase away the nausea. It seemed more than a few days since she had first been here – so much had happened – but there was a job she was here to do.

  Snap.

  Katie jumped back and slammed the door shut as though the action would shut the voice away too. She turned on her heel and half-jogged back to the main room.

  A space had cleared around the area Shimma needed to clean up. There was a crowd in front of Katie but people started clearing a path once they saw she meant to clean the floor. “Here.” She shoved through the rest of the people, already being fed up with the constant apologies and politeness, and handed the towels to Shimma, ripping a few lengths off and crouching to begin mopping vomit.

  “What you doing? You ain’t no cleaner tonight.”

  “Might as well get used to it.”

  “I’m perfectly able to clean vomit. Not scaring you off on your first night. Sides, my boys need you back on bar.”

  Puke was not her favourite bodily fluid – and how disturbing would it be if she actually had a favourite – so Katie wasn’t complaining. She left the towels on the floor and backed up a step.

  “Take a quick break. Don’t want you dropping on me, girl.”

  She smiled her thanks at the man whose hair shone almost silver under the swirling lights. The club called Shimma, owned by a man called Shimma, and he shimmers. It felt as if everything was falling into place – that things were starting to turn out how they were always meant to be. She backstepped a bit more and felt her spine smack into something slight but solid.

  Everything went to hell.

  “I told you I had a job to do.”

  Oh, bugger.

  If there was one voice she hadn’t wanted to hear tonight, it was this one. Far from sounding angry or ready to launch another attack, Jaye sounded cool and matter of fact. Not vindictive at all. It didn’t fool Katie for a second. She froze.

  “Oh, relax, babe. I’m not here to fight. Well, not at the moment anyway.”

  “What do you want then?”

  “A puppy, a Porsche, an Olympic gold in the butterfly, my parents’ unconditional love. The list is endless. Mostly, though, I want what should be mine.”

  Katie forced herself to turn, working on keeping her muscles loose. Attracting attention wouldn’t be a wise move. “Which is?” She took the smaller girl by the elbow and marched her through the club, trying to act like two friends on a night out.

  “So many things. You took a lot of things from me. It was quite unfair.”

  “You can’t show up here just because you want to… balance the books. Especially not looking like that. What if some-one recognises you?”

  “Let’s start with a dead girl.” They stepped into the harsh, fluorescent corridor. Katie found a darkened recess and threw Jaye against it with more strength than she knew than she had in her. She winced as the girl grunted with the impact. She had to stop thinking of her as Jaye – it was something evil wearing her face – but it was so hard. “Well, a should-be-dead girl. Goes by the name of Dina. Your boyfriend found her and then you took her.”

  “I said I would take whatever Shades with me that I could. Dina just happened to be one of them.”

  “She wanted to die. That was the plan. Who finished her off, how she got to the End Place, didn’t matter. Dina was meant to die and you brought her here. You messed with the order, Katie.”

  “So, you want her back?” Katie shrugged. “Sorry, she’s back in her body now. Take it up with her.”

  “Oh, I intend to.”

  The chill of those words had barely sunk in when Katie felt her mouth making shapes and heard sound coming out. Man, she hated it when her mouth didn’t warn her brain first. “Hold it. There are people here. You can take one of those, can’t you?”

  Jaye – She – tilted her head to one side as though considering the idea. Unfortunately, it gave Katie too much time to think over what she had just proposed and begin to hate herself for it. It was a cruel solution. But a necessary one. She bit her lip and did her best not to tangle herself up in complications, giving a heart-breaking back story to the hypothetical person she might have doomed.

  “I suppose it would make up the numbers. I could always hang on and wait for Dina to die. She’s still really close to the edge.” She watched Katie frown and giggled. “She’s still hanging on, I can feel her. But I’m holding her as deep down as I can.”

  Katie loosened her grip. Didn’t completely let go but she had relaxed enough for the other girl to slide free. “Why?”

  “It was meant to be her. And, one day, I will have what I want.” She blew Katie a kiss and skipped away.

  Once alone again, Katie tipped forward and rested her forehead on the cool painted breeze blocks. It had been a long night. Suggesting She took the spirit of one of the anonymous clubbers was the coldest thing she had ever said and letting her loose into the crowd to choose her victim was a mistake. It was done now. It didn’t shock her as much as she thought it should.

  “Oh my god.”

  It hit her like a brick. She was giving her exactly what the Other Place demanded – a living soul. Dina was too close to death still to be useful. So why was She so intent on having Dina? It couldn’t be as simple as the fact that it was just her name on some list. Could it?

  Katie took a step forward and pressed herself flat against the wall and let the deep chill sink into her body. It distracted her from the disorder that was her mind. She stayed like that for a couple of minutes. When her mind began to go into shutdown, Katie decided to get back to work. Knowing there was nothing to be done for tonight helped a lot but she had to ask how true that was. Surely there was something.

  Her first shift finished an hour later. It was a good job because Katie was fit to drop. She was tired, her feet hurt, and her hands reeked of dirty, sweaty coins. The night was still young. MC Flex was shouting at the crowd and they were all yelling back. The music was getting louder but Katie was glad she was getting out now, before her eardrums started to bleed. She hadn’t gotten the code yet for the staff room upstairs, so she head for Shimma’s office to get her jacket an
d wash her hands. Anti-bacterial hand gel was currently the best invention ever. There was a big bottle on the window sill and Katie pumped a big blob into her hands. The door opened behind her and creaked a little way shut but not fully closed. She was alert for those sounds, now – always listening to her escape routes being shut off.

  “Long night?”

  “And I’ve only done a few hours. I feel for you guys – here till closing.”

  Shimma padded across the room and stood at the side of the window where he could see her face. “You’ll get used to it.” It had taken him a while to handle a busy club for a whole non-stop night. That’s why he always started new people on half shifts and worked up.

  Katie finished rubbing her hands, sniffed them, grimaced, and offered them to him. The stink had faded a lot but it was a sweet, lingering metal smell that seemed to fill the room. “That’s not coming out, is it?”

  “Try lemon juice.”

  Of course the nearest source of lemon juice was wedges kept in ice behind the bar. And that would mean going back out into that migraine. “I’ll try it when I get home.”

  Shimma let out a laugh, seeing her eyes flutter to the door, the noise coming through the gap. “Don’t blame you, chick. Loud, right/”

  “Ear-splitting is closer to the mark. It’s not always this manic, right?”

  “No, sometimes it’s busy. Joke… joke. This is a busy one. Anything else you need?”

  “A caffeine shot straight into my veins.”

  “Probably kill you. Have a policy about it.”

  “Comforting. How about a Tazer?” she asked instead, aware only that she had talked about them the day before, but not why the thought had just popped into her head.

  “Same thing. 50000 volts is more likely to kill you than wake you up.”

  “Dammit.”

  He opened his top drawer a few inches, slid out a pen and a sheet of paper, not bothering to close it after. “Don’t forget to sign your timesheet before you go. I’ll set you up on payroll tomorrow.”