by J. A. Pitts
I could see Paul and Carol watching, so I pulled the passes out. “Hold your hands out,” I said. Katie leaned forward, groping my breasts and giggling. Carol laughed, and I swatted Katie’s hands. “Be nice.”
“This is the best birthday ever,” she said.
I placed the two plastic cards into her hands, and she opened her eyes.
I never saw her move. One second her eyes got as big as headlights: the next she was in my lap, arms around my neck, kissing me like a porn star.
Paul wolf-whistled as I wrapped my arms around Katie and kissed her back. After a moment, she broke the kiss, nuzzled my ear, and whispered, “You are so getting laid later.”
Maybe this filking thing wasn’t so bad after all.
Three
The concert didn’t suck. That’s all I kept repeating to myself as Ari performed. The boy had a voice like an angel, even if he dressed like Jack Sparrow’s gay hairdresser. Despite the paisley trousers and the wide-cuffed pirate shirt that was opened to his navel, or maybe because of them, the crowd was in lust with this boy. He did nothing for me, but hell, he could belt out tunes and give Robert Plant a run for his money. He did some covers—sure, Zeppelin, Grand Funk, some old blues stuff—but his filk stuff, the fantasy lyrics with known tunes, or the original stuff really had the crowd wowed.
The last echoes of Ari’s voice were barely fading when the house lights came up and Katie went into overdrive.
“Can we go now?” Katie asked, bouncing in her seat. “Can we? Huh? Huh?”
I laughed, feeling a little twitchy. “You’d better remember who you came here with.” I didn’t mean to be jealous, but there was something inside me that began to wake up and take notice.
She leaned into me, planting a sloppy kiss on my lips, and grabbed my hand. “Come on,” she said, pulling me out of my chair. “Let’s go party.”
The house lights were a little too bright, and I was a little buzzed from the drinks, but it had been a couple of hours. Most of it had burned off.
Katie had drunk more than I had, but she was solid on her feet. Actually, once the crowd was pushing toward the exits and we’d managed to slip upstream toward the back of the club, she began to dance. I loved to watch her move. I stayed back a few paces, watching her spin once, her arms outflung. But when she stumbled, I was there in an instant. I caught her before she fell to the ground, swung her around, and pulled her to me.
She looked into my eyes, and I saw the mischievous look I’d learned to love and dread. “Nice catch,” she said, kissing me on the nose.
We walked the rest of the way down the service ramp toward the two large bouncers who didn’t look like they were having a good time. That and the forty or fifty young girls in corsets, spandex, or, in one case, surgical gauze caused me to slow down. “There has to be a different entrance.”
Katie looked around for a moment, and then straightened up. “No way. We’re running the gauntlet.”
“Could be a little crazy,” I said.
“But we have these,” she said, waving the passes in front of me. “None can stand before such might.”
I bowed to her, spreading my arms out with a flourish. “As you wish, milady.”
She giggled and grabbed me by the arm, nearly dragging me off my feet. “Besides, I can hide behind you.”
“That’s great.” I plucked the passes out of her hand and turned toward the crowd. Katie grabbed the waistband of my jeans and followed behind me real close as I began to work my way through to the bouncers. “Pardon me, coming through, excuse me, dreadfully sorry…”
One very large woman turned to block us, one hand on her hip and the other aimed at me with her working finger out. “Now see here, sistah,” she slurred. “We gotta right to be here.”
“Yes,” Katie said from behind me. “Ari told us to look for you. Said if we saw you to let him know.”
The woman was twice as wide as me, with her hair teased into some sort of eighties-psycho-cheerleader pomp with streaks of purple and gold.
“You know Ari?” she asked, her anger melting to awe. “Can you get me in? I’m supposed to marry him.”
I felt my face stretching as I craned around to look at Katie—seriously?
“Said he loved me at the show in Cleveland.”
“I’m sure,” I muttered.
“We’ll tell him you’re out here,” Katie said, pushing me from behind. “Once we get inside.”
The woman looked at us, debating, but the combination of desperation and alcohol won out. She swung around like a barn door, pushing several other girls out of the way. “Let ’em through,” she bellowed. “They’re gonna talk to Ari for me.”
I shuffle-stepped forward, aware of all the eyes on us, hungry eyes, full of need and … one of the young goth girls didn’t look quite right. There was something about the way her eyes were glinting, the tilt of her jaw, the way her hair covered her ears.
“I think she’s an elf,” Katie said, following my gaze. “But why would real elves be waiting in line?”
I handed the passes to the bouncers, who ushered us past the velvet ropes. Once we were on the other side, I looked back. “You sure?” I asked. “Real elves?”
Katie craned her neck to the side, trying to see through the milling crowd. “I’ve never met an elf. Maybe we should go talk to her.”
The bouncers gave us a look. Crossing back over to the milling crowd may be a bad idea. “You sure you want to be late for the party?”
I could tell she was torn. She glanced down the hall toward the party, then back at the crowd.
The girl was gone. I’d been watching her, watching us. Just glanced away a second and she’d vanished.
“She’s gone,” I said. “Maybe next time.”
Katie pouted a few seconds and threw her arms up. “What can you do? Let’s go party.” She sauntered off, turning the corner as the ramp continued downward while I got a pair of lanyards for the passes and slipped one over my neck. I hurried to catch up with Katie. Were there real elves? How the hell did I know? I needed a guidebook to my own damn world after I reforged Gram.
I staggered, a sharp pain in my left calf. Gram! I had been avoiding her, keeping my mind on other things, but she was out there, sleeping. Soon, she whispered in my dreams. Soon we hunt again.
I leaned against the wall for a minute, rubbing my leg and trying to breathe.
I pushed off the wall and turned the corner. Katie stood leaning against the silver push bar of a small door, impatiently waiting.
I walked up to her and placed the lanyard over her neck, and then I bent in and kissed her. “You ready?” I asked.
“You bet your ass,” she said, pushing her hip into the bar. A cacophony of party sounds blasted outward.
She slid her arm in mine as we waded into the debauchery.
There were people everywhere. Most were drinking tall glasses of some blue concoction and smoking. The room hung heavy with the mixed odors of sweat, cloves, pot, and alcohol.
Women lay around on beanbag chairs, couches, and long divans, while topless waiters and waitresses carried drinks around. No checking IDs here. I’d say half the patrons didn’t have the telltale wristbands that allowed them to drink during the show.
I grabbed a beer from one of the many coolers that lined one wall, and Katie snagged a glass of wine from one of the buxom lasses. We walked around, Katie sipping her wine and obviously searching for Ari, me drinking my longneck and watching.
The place felt like a trap. I was on edge and couldn’t pinpoint a threat. There was a lot of groping going on. No one paid any attention to the raunch going on around us, and I tried not to be judgmental. The room was a lot bigger than I thought it would be, because as we neared the end, we could see it turned to the left and continued back on itself, a larger room divided down the middle with huge rolling walls.
The party on the other side was a lot less Caligula. Ari held court on the far end, surrounded by girls ranging in age from high school
to college. The folks from The Harpers sat in two clumps along the left wall, and other small groups stood around talking. Katie, brazen as you please, cut through the crowded room like a shark. I could barely keep up with her as she made a beeline toward Ari.
He noticed her approach but feigned disinterest. It was obvious he was deliberately looking away. I caught his brief wide-eyed stare. Didn’t blame him, really. She was hella cute, but a little conservatively dressed compared to most of the women in the room.
“Ari Sveinsson,” she snapped in her best schoolteacher voice.
Ari’s head jerked around, his mouth agape.
“I see you haven’t learned anything in the last few years?”
I was puzzled; hell, everyone was puzzled. I sidled up to Katie and whispered, “Hey, babe. What are you doing exactly?”
Ari rose, shedding girls like Poseidon climbing out of the surf. “Well, well. If it isn’t the Sheriff of Not-Getting-Any.”
The crowd oohed and aahed as Ari stood in front of Katie with his hands on his hips.
“Droll,” Katie said. “Got a fine set of pipes on you, I’ll grant you that,” she said. She stepped forward and poked him in the chest. “But there’s a young woman out in the club who thinks you promised to marry her.”
Ari flushed, and the people in the inner circle there tittered behind their hands. “Oh, dear lord, not again.” He slapped his left palm against his forehead. “I’ve never spoken to her directly.”
“So you know her?”
One of the roadies in the back called out, “Not as well as she’d like him to.”
The crowd laughed again.
“I was singing at a club in Cleveland, and I talk to the audience about the songs. You saw it tonight.”
I stood back, not wanting to interrupt whatever this was turning into.
“I sang one of the ballads, and she thought I was singing to her.”
Katie walked around him, eyeing him up and down. “She seemed pretty insistent.”
“I swear. It’s like she was mesmerized, but I never touched her.”
Katie looked at me over his shoulder and winked. “Okay, I’ll let it go this time.” She walked around to the front of him, her arms crossed and her face set in a very stern expression. She leaned in and whispered something that no one but Ari heard.
“Right,” he said. “Can we get back to the party?”
Katie stepped forward and hugged him, to his obvious surprise. Several of the seated women rose up, their hackles raised. “Been too long, you snot,” she said, pushing him back to the crowd. “Try not to break too many hearts.”
What the hell?
“Who’s your hot friend there?” he asked, stepping back toward Katie and looking me up and down.
Katie watched me, a smirk on her face. “You don’t remember Sarah?”
Ari glanced at her, then back at me. “I think I’d remember a hottie like her. She’s stacked.”
Katie choked back a laugh and I felt my blood rising. “Last time I saw you,” I said, stepping forward into his personal space, “you were having trouble holding your pants up after Gwendolyn left you hanging in a horse trailer.”
He squinted, pushing his face forward and looking up toward my eyes for the first time. “Did my brother sleep with you?”
This sent Katie into full-blown laughter. I wanted to pound them both.
“Never mind,” I said, turning away. “You aren’t worth my time.”
He jumped a little skip into the air, waving his hands around. “Right,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re that dyke blacksmith.”
Katie stopped laughing.
A red haze fell across everything as I moved at him. I reached for Gram, ready to fight him, and then I realized I didn’t have the sword. Instead I grabbed him by the front of his silly-ass pirate shirt. I pulled him close, leaning in to whisper into his face.
“You need to learn some manners.”
Time shifted back to normal, and someone behind Ari shrieked.
Suddenly, two very large, hairy, tattooed men were scrambling toward me.
“Whoa there, boys,” a voice called from behind me. Everyone paused and looked over to Cassidy Stone, the lead singer of The Harpers. “Everybody needs to just calm down.”
The crowd mellowed at his words. I could feel the power of it washing over me. The wall of anger that had flashed into existence receded at his words. Freaky.
“Let him go,” the singer said, his voice mellow and sweet. “I’m sure he didn’t mean nothing by it.”
I glanced at Stone and gave a half shrug, pushing Ari away from me and into the arms of one of the bouncers.
“You okay there, son?” Cassidy asked, not looking too particularly concerned. His Scottish accent gave me a bit of a shiver. That’s when I realized Cassidy was on the far side of thirty.
“What the hell’s your malfunction?” Ari yelped, his dulcet tones lost in a moment of panic and fear. “You got no right…” The roadies took another step toward me, and I stepped back into a fighting stance.
“Oh, Ari,” Katie said, walking over to me and looping her arm into mine, wrecking my stance, but settling down the crowing voices in my head. “Didn’t you ever get the hint? I wouldn’t sleep with you at the faires, and neither would Sarah. It’s not just because we prefer girls.” She leaned in and kissed me full on the mouth. As her tongue danced across mine, the battle voices began to slip into nothingness.
The crowd buzzed for a moment—or maybe it was just the way she held the sides of my face as she kissed me—then she let me go and spun back to the crowd.
“But as cute as you are, you are still a clueless prick.”
No one moved for a moment; then someone began to laugh. Then one of the roadies joined in. Soon everyone else was laughing and coming to Ari’s aid, offering him beer, wine, clove cigarettes, and several kisses.
Thus distracted, he slunk back to his web of groupies, and I stepped back to face Cassidy Stone.
“Thank you,” I said. “Didn’t mean to pop off like that.”
Cassidy shrugged. “Boy needs to be taken down a peg or two if he wants to survive this game.”
I nodded once and stuck out my hand. “Sarah Beauhall.”
He wore a band of gold on his left bicep. Detailed work there, carved and shaped with precision. I’d like to talk to the goldsmith who made that one.
He gripped my hand. “Cassidy Aloysius Stone, at your service.” We shook. His grip was strong and his hands calloused from years of playing guitar, lute, and Autoharp.
“Oooh, nice name,” Katie said. “Means famous warrior.”
“Aye,” Cassidy said, taking her hand in his, kissing the back of it, and bowing. “A beauty who knows the origins of ancient names and can best young Ari there is a friend to be cherished.”
Katie seemed to melt. “He’s cute,” she said, hanging onto my arm. “For an oldster.”
Cassidy laughed, grabbed us each by one arm, and marched us over to his party. He introduced us to the rest of the band, and before you knew it, Katie had a bottle of mead and a twelve-string guitar. I sat behind her, one hand on the small of her back, while she launched into a round of drinking songs.
I hung with them for an hour, maybe two. Not really sure. The alcohol buzz and the general windowless, smoky haze sorta killed any real sense of time. When they showed no chance of slowing down, I excused myself to find a bathroom.
Katie stopped playing midchord, her hand over the strings and a worried look on her face. “Where are you going?”
“Bathroom,” I whispered to her, leaning against her shoulder. “You keep playing.”
A moment of panic flashed across her face. She glanced around, taking in the room, the people, the party. “Be careful,” she said.
I placed my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be okay,” I promised. “You keep playing. I’ll be back before you know it. Just need a spot of fresh air.”
She leaned her cheek against my hand. “Don
’t be gone long.”
I kissed her and squeezed the hand over the fret of the twelve-string. “Sing something raunchy,” I whispered. “I’ll be back in two shakes.”
She smiled at that and nodded.
I glanced over at Cassidy, who’d watched the scene carefully. “I’ll watch over her,” he said to me.
I nodded and took off. It was just the bathroom.
The room turned around one more corner, and I found a couple of roadies doing coke near an exit. One of them pointed out the washrooms, and I left them to their drugs. The room was fairly crowded, but I managed to do what I needed to do without resorting to the men’s lavatory.
I wandered the party after that, grabbing another beer and listening to snippets of conversation. Seems that since I’d killed Jean-Paul, Vancouver had undergone some sort of renaissance. Crime was flourishing—prostitution, drugs, gambling, all sorts of vice—but the city was friendlier, less seedy. The new guy in charge was apparently the self-proclaimed King of Vancouver. Unlike Jean-Paul, who got his demands met using charm, wit, and torture, this guy only demanded profits and loyalty. Pretty much he left his people alone to do their business.
I bet he had an easier time retaining employees than Jean-Paul. I’d seen how he treated his close and personals when he got angry. I couldn’t imagine what doing business with him had been like.
Just thinking of Duchamp made my right hand hurt. I clenched and unclenched my fist a few times, working out the kinks. You could barely see the scarring, and I had a good eighty percent usage of that hand again. The knitting was helping, much to my chagrin. The pain still haunted me though. Ghost pain, the doctor said, but I woke shaking some nights with visions of my wrist burned down to the bone by dragon fire.
There was this one moment, however, when I was sure the witch, Qindra, had visited me in the hospital. I distinctly recall her chanting, the smell of whiskey, and a blue fog that rolled from her mouth and doused the fire in my arm like calm, cool water.
