Grady, the newest member of the band was slamming beer and trying to pretend that he cared what the guy next to him was talking about. M.A.D.’s lead guitarist, Meridian was telling an animated story at a higher volume than was necessary, gesturing wildly, the wine in his glass slopping over the edge to drip down over his hand.
I was transfixed, staring at the dark red droplet as it hung on his pale skin. The woman tugged on my hand and I turned away the trance broken as she pulled me towards the corner of the room where Eli stood with a tall, slender man in an immaculate suit. He had gold rings in his ears, and his hair was elegantly coiffed. A manager or maybe the club owner.
“You have to watch your step, Maddern. You’re taking liberties here…” the man in the suit was angry, and I felt awkward as though we were stepping into a meeting we hadn’t been invited to.
Eli looked unfazed. Bored. He leaned against the wall and took a long drink of the dark liquid in his glass.
“You’re just being paranoid, Bishop…” he sighed, his tone as ambivalent as his expression.
Bishop, whoever he was, bristled and lifted a finger to stab it into Eli’s chest, “Look here you punk—“
“Hey, Bishop, hate to interrupt,” the woman beside me said, laying a soothing hand on the manager’s arm and separating the two men. “I have a fan here; she wants to meet the band. You’ll sign her poster won’t you, Eli?”
Bishop made a disgusted noise and turned away, whatever that was, it definitely wasn’t over, but I didn’t give a shit, Eli Maddern was looking at me, and smiling at me, and Shade was coming over, pulling Grady with him. Oh my god.
The woman with red hair smiled and poked me in the ribs.
“Right. Shit. Sorry.” My hands were shaking as I unrolled the poster.
“What’s your name, kitten,” drawled Shade as he placed his fingers under my chin to look at me closely. His eyes glittered in the light, dark grey with a silvered shine— wait, what the fuck was that?
I pulled away, goosebumps running up my spine. “Maia. It’s Maia, m-a-i-a.” He nodded, smiling quickly as he scrawled his signature over the poster. Grady drew an atom bomb and a beer can before adding his initials. Shade was pulling Meridian away from his conversation. He lurched over, his eyes dark and shadowy. The light glinted off his teeth. Sharp teeth like the bouncer.
What the fuck was going on?
I felt light-headed, suffocated. The room swam in front of my eyes, and I stumbled just a little. The woman with red hair caught me as I lurched against her, and I was suddenly grateful that she was there. The room seemed too hot, and everything was too close. Pale faces loomed around me, conversation swirled deafeningly, and the smell of incense was heavy in my nostrils. The pillar candles that burned in the faux fireplace flared suddenly and I gasped.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” the woman whispered in my ear. “The groupies are getting antsy…”
I nodded, feeling sick. She led back through the backstage room; eyes followed me, silver-shined eyes. At least, I thought that was what I saw, but I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that I had to get out of there. We pushed through the room, groupies stepped in our way, and we bumped against creaking leather jackets and metal studs. Were they trying to slow us down?
Finally, the woman pulled me back into the club, the air was cooler and the crowds had thinned out, the girl behind the bar pushed her purple hair behind her ear and stared at us through her pink glasses. The woman next to me waved, “I’ll see you later, Lacey.”
“Whatever,” the girl muttered, turning back to her cleanup.
All I wanted was to get outside and into the cool night air. I needed to breathe. I could still smell incense, and my mind was racing. The woman handed me the poster and I thanked her dumbly before rolling it up again.
The stairs leading up to street level were bathed in red light and I grabbed the handrail to steady myself. Take it slow. As soon as you get upstairs, you can run.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked, “it’s really hard to get backstage, and the guys aren’t used to unfamiliar faces.”
I didn’t reply, I was afraid that if I opened my mouth I’d either puke or laugh like a crazy person.
By the time we’d reached the top of the stairs, I was almost shaking. It was all too much. The bouncer waited for us, his hand on the rope. Church. What a stupid name.
He glowered down at us, and I tried not to stare at him.
“Thank you, Churchill, I’ll be seeing you soon!” the woman at my side said brightly. I looked at her in surprise, catching her broad smile.
The bouncer grimaced and I drew in a sharp breath as I saw his teeth flash in the red neon light. There was no mistaking it this time.
The woman grabbed my arm and pulled me away. We ran down the rain-slick sidewalk together, and I finally let out the crazy laughter that had been sitting tightly in my chest. The subway station was just ahead, and I turned to take the platform that would take me back to 9th Street, and away from all of this madness. I needed to think, and write about everything I’d seen in my notebook. I needed to call Becca.
“Maia! Come visit me tomorrow. I work at Haven near Prospect Park. It’s easy to find,” the woman shouted after me.
I didn’t wait, didn’t reply... I just kept running. Part of me wanted to stay, wanted to talk to her, to ask her what the fuck had been going on in that club. But how would I say it? What was I asking? What the fuck had I even seen? What if it was all the lighting and I was seeing things... that’s all I needed.
The platform was bathed in a sickly yellow green light... institutional, Becca would have called it. Eerie as fuck, sez I.
The woman with red hair stood on the platform across from me, she pulled her leather jacket tightly around her torso and stared at me. The train rumbled as it approached and I stared back defiantly, my priceless poster clutched in my fist.
The woman shifted slightly, stepping back just a bit, and I saw an aura of pale purple smoke twist around her hands... or maybe I imagined it.
“Ow!” My arm burned, just above my inner elbow, the sensation was surprising more than it was painful, but then it started to itch, and then the itch was the stabbing pain of a tattoo needle. Burning and scratching across my skin. “Fuck!” I shouted, grabbing for my arm. My eyes watered with the sudden intensity of the pain. I looked over at the woman on the other platform in surprise; her face was a mask of shock.
“Meet me tomorrow! I’ll explain everything,” she shouted. The train rushed into the station and I lost sight of her. The doors opened and I ran into the train car, crowded even at this late hour... or was it early. The train lurched and sped away and the pain in my arm faded, I rubbed at it through my jacket and then wiped a tear from my cheek.
Explain everything? What the fuck was that supposed to mean.
9th Street was only a few stops away, but I was so on edge that I almost missed it. The doors were about to close when I finally realized where I was and had to wedge my knee into the door to make my exit. Classy is my middle name, folks.
The concert poster was still clutched tightly in my fist and I opened my hand carefully to examine the damage.
“I can iron it...” I murmured, trying to pull the creases out with my fingernails. With a grunt of frustration I re-rolled the poster and jogged up the stairs to the exit. It was a relief to be on the street again. I’d lived my entire life in Washington State, but there was something about New York that was comforting. Like a home I’d never known, but had always been searching for. Funny that I’d find it here. Especially after the night I’d had.
I shook my head, trying to get the thought flashes of sharp teeth and silver-shined eyes out of my mind. Nonsense. It had been the lighting, the energy of the night, the joint I’d smoked... but I hadn’t smoked anything. And I hadn’t drunk anything but the bottle of soda that woman had bought me.
I thought hard as I walked, trying to remember each thing as it had happened. The girl with the purp
le hair, who couldn’t have been any older than me, had set down the bottle, popped the cap in front of me... she wouldn’t have had time to drug it, and if she had, she’d been using crap drugs, because I’d felt fine all night. It was just when I got backstage. Everything had just suddenly become too much.
“Ridiculous,” I muttered aloud, fumbling in my jacket pocket for the hotel key card. I couldn’t help checking over my shoulder to make sure that the woman with red hair hadn’t followed me. I mean, I knew she hadn’t... at least, I was mostly sure.
She’d asked me to meet her. She would explain everything. But what was everything, and did I really need things to be explained? Maybe I did.
When I got up to my room I unrolled the slightly crunched poster and tried to flatten it out as best I could, brushing my fingers over the signatures briefly before weighting it down with the amenities binder. I’d iron it out in the morning. Or something.
I threw my jacket on the floor and fell face first onto the bed. For the first time in a long time I didn’t care about setting an alarm, brushing my teeth or washing my face. All I wanted to do was sleep.
* * *
I woke with a start. Sunlight streamed through the high windows of my hotel room and I groaned, smashing my face down into the pristine white duvet again. I knew that my makeup would be smeared across the snowy expanse of the coverlet, and I didn’t fucking care. I’d just flip it over before I left. No big deal.
I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. The fan turned lazily, and I wondered when I’d turned it on.
“Come and see me...”
The woman with red hair, hair like mine, standing on the platform with purple smoke swirling around her legs and blowing through her hair... she’d been in my dreams. Not saying anything. Just watching. Making that same spot on my arm burn.
I lurched to the bathroom and turned on the shower. Maybe that would help me feel more human.
I might be underage, but I’ve had my fair share of hangovers and hours spent begging whatever God was listening to make the room stop spinning. But this wasn’t a hangover. I didn’t know what I was feeling. Or how to make it stop.
Everything I touched seemed to have a static charge to it, and even my hair looked a little fried, which was saying something.
I stared into the mirror and stuck out my tongue, “Glaaaahhhhhhfuckkkk.” I definitely needed coffee, and not that shitty pre-packaged single-serving fauxspresso that came standard in every hotel room. I was a Seattleite... I needed a proper hit of java.
Haven.
That was the name of the café she’d shouted at me.
Maybe I’d go there... maybe... I stared into the mirror, trying to see what was wrong with me before I shook my head wildly, threw off my clothes and jumped into the shower.
Fuck you, Thursday.
Chapter 7 ~ Ophelia
I opened the door to my apartment quietly, not that it mattered. I knew that Suki would be awake. She blinked sleepily at me from her spot in the center of my pillow and yawned. My arrival never surprised her, and after all these years, no matter how late I came home, she was always waiting for me.
“Hey fluffbutt,” I said quietly, crawling onto the bed and pulling her into my arms. “You won’t believe it, Suki; I think I found another Daughter. But I might have scared her off.”
Maybe? Probably definitely.
Suki purred and rubbed her head against my jaw. Relax, her purring told me.
“Easy for you to say, you spend all day lounging around looking cute. Must be nice,” I muttered. I shifted my familiar over my shoulder and went to the kitchen. Now that it was spring, my counters were covered with new seedlings that were ready to plant. I’d be getting to that as soon as the full moon rolled around. It wasn’t especially necessary, but I always found that planting under the full moon gave the plants a bit of an extra boost. I’m sure it had everything to do with the magic I injected into the soil and very little to do with the time of night, but when anyone asked what my fire escape gardening secrets were, that was the easiest way to lie. Half-truths never hurt anyone. Especially not me.
I set Suki down on the counter and she sniffed at the seedlings that had sprouted, rubbing her whiskers against the tallest ones.
“No munching,” I scolded her gently, rubbing her ears before opening the fridge to check on the dandelion heads I had sitting in a large Tupperware. Lacey and I had picked them one night when she wasn’t working. It must have been a strange sight, two women laughing like idiots while picking weeds in the dark. I shook my head and smiled. I never expected that Lacey could have been someone that I looked forward to spending time with… a lot of time in this case.
The flowers were starting to look a little wilted… I had to make a note to sit down and pluck them before it was too late. I had a closet full of bottles waiting for the next batch of wine to be laid down; I just had to do it.
My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket. Speak of the undead.
Something’s going down with Eli and Bishop, I’m getting the fuck out of here.
Great. I had a feeling Eli would be catching shit for those lyrics. Or maybe it was something more. If M.A.D.’s history was anything to go by, the release of a new album meant a renewal of contracts… permanent contracts. Grady was due. He’d been with the band for almost a year, almost exactly a year come to think of it. He was a good guy, maybe a little uncomplicated. Drummers were all alike, weren’t they? If he hadn’t started asking questions already, he might never ask.
Eli had been absent in more ways than one since they’d started recording the album, and I knew that the pressure of the release plus the added tension of Grady’s contract were looming over him. I just hoped that he wasn’t doing anything stupid. That was the last thing I needed.
Up until a few months ago, my life was going great. I was perfectly happy living a totally unremarkable life, working a totally unremarkable job and waiting out my lives with little or no responsibility except to myself, and my fluffy minion.
Suki meowed at me from the counter and I scooped her up in my arms again.
“We were just fine when it was just the two of us, weren’t we?” Suki meowed in response and jumped to the floor. “Well, agree to disagree then, fussbutt.”
If Lacey was on her way home, that meant I only had a short amount of time to get my shit together for tomorrow. I had another opening shift, which was fine with me, but the late nights had started to take their toll, and I knew I was looking a little worse for wear. David wanted to meet with me tomorrow morning, which could only mean one of two things. He was going to offer me that ugly manager’s nametag again, or he was going to ask questions I didn’t want to answer. Both options were unappealing and not something I wanted to deal with after floating through the door after only a few hours sleep.
By the time Lacey came home, I was tucked into bed with my spell book in my lap. Since October, I’d had a surge of memories and had been writing like a maniac. Things I hadn’t been able to remember clearly, or spells I had only watched my mother or aunt performing in our kitchen had come flooding back to me, and I was seeing them more and more often in my dreams.
Speaking of dreams, those had changed too. Since banishing the goddess who had hunted us, I no longer dreamed of fire or the day I watched my family die. My dreams were calmer, and I wanted to stay asleep longer to spend more time with the ghostly images in my mind. Sitting at the kitchen table with my mother as she prepared meals, or brewed a special tea for a pregnant woman suffering from the cramps of a false labor. My aunt and I on the stairs that led to our garden, braiding endless ropes of lavender to drape around the house to dry… comforting memories, elongated and enhanced by my magic and my dreaming. Sometimes I wished that I could just sleep forever.
Suki meowed and jumped down from the bed when the apartment door opened. “My spoopy muffin!” Lacey cried, bending down to pick up my cat. She nuzzled Suki’s face and kissed her loudly on the head. “Did you have a
good day, Suki? You can tell me all about it when Ophelia goes to sleep, you can tell me all your secrets.”
I chuckled and closed my book, “I’m not sure if you want to hear her secrets, Lacey… I’m sure most of them involve the best places to sit and clean her butt…” Suki looked mildly offended and began to purr loudly in Lacey’s arms.
“Ohhh, I’m sure she’s got plenty to say,” cooed Lacey as she shed her boots and bag awkwardly to avoid putting Suki down.
I sat up and little straighter and pulled up the blankets, “I can’t stay up forever, I have to be at Haven by five… but what’s up with you? What happened at the club?” I was tired, but I was also really curious. Eli hadn’t texted me all night, and hadn’t responded to my congratulatory message from earlier either. The show had been legitimately great, but I knew that he would be feeling conflicted.
Lacey sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and fell backwards with a groan. Suki bounced off her chest and curled up in her usual spot on my pillow.
“I didn’t see much, but I heard Bishop and Eli arguing. Grady was drunk and wanted to go home, but they weren’t letting him leave… and Eli was really upset about it. When I left, they were still shouting.” Lacey closed her eyes and rubbed at her face with her sleeve.
“Was Grady still there when you left?”
“No, he left right before I did… Church took him home. He was talking about his contract and being paid for the night, but he was really drunk, Fee… I don’t think he knew what was going on.”
You dodged a bullet tonight, Grady. An immortal one.
“Is Eli going to get fired from the band?” Lacey asked in a small voice. She turned over onto her stomach to look at me and I shook my head.
“Nah. Eli and Bishop butt heads every decade or so… they’ll get over it.” I mean, they probably would. “And there’s no way Eli would be fired. It’s in his contract. No Eli, no M.A.D… it’s just the way it works.”
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