Still, there was one theme the whole place shared: Chester’s had been decorated for Valentine’s Day.
“This is just wrong,” I muttered.
Thousands of pink and red balloons dangling silken cords drifted through the club, emblazoned with messages that ranged from sweet to cheeky to horrifying.
At the entrance to every mini-club was a huge golden statue of Cupid holding a bow that sported dozens of long golden arrows.
The human contingent of Chester’s clientele was chasing the balloons from one level to the next, climbing stairs, perching on stools, yanking them lower, and popping them with their arrows, which I didn’t get at all until I watched a folded bit of paper explode from one, and then a dozen women piled up in a heap of fighting, clawing wildcats, determined to get whatever the prize was.
When one woman finally broke free from the mess, clutching her treasure, three others ganged up on her, stabbed her with their arrows, and took it away. Then they turned on one another with shocking brutality. A man rushed in, snatched the wad of paper, and ran.
I looked around for Barrons, but we’d gotten separated in the crowd. I shoved dangling silk cords from my face.
“Don’t you want one?” a redhead chirped, as she snatched the cord of one I’d just pushed away.
“What’s in them?” I said warily.
“Invitations, silly! If you’re lucky! But there aren’t many! If you get one, they’ll let you in to the private rooms to dine upon the sanctified flesh of the immortal Fae for the whole night!” she twittered rapturously. “Others have gifts!”
“Like what?”
She stabbed at the balloon with a delicate golden arrow, and the balloon popped, raining green goo mixed with tiny bits of writhing flesh.
“Jackpot!” people screamed.
I scrambled out of the way just in time to avoid being trampled.
The redhead shrieked, “See you in Faery!” Then she was on her hands and knees, licking the floor and fighting for pieces of Unseelie.
I looked around for Barrons again. At least I didn’t smell like fear. I was too disgusted and angry. I pushed through the press of sweaty, jostling bodies. This was my world? This was what we’d come to? What if we never got the walls back up? Was this what I was going to have to live with?
I began to shove people out of the way.
“Watch where you’re going!” a woman snapped.
“Chill, bitch!” some guy snarled.
“Are you asking for an ass-kicking?” a man threatened.
“Hey, beautiful girl.”
My head whipped around. It was the dreamy-eyed guy that had worked with Christian at the Ancient Languages Department at Trinity College, then had taken a bartending job at Chester’s when the walls fell.
The last time I’d seen him, I had a creepy experience, looking at his reflection in a mirror. But here he stood, behind a black-and-white bar walled with mirrors, tossing glasses and pouring shots with smooth, showy flair, and both he and his reflection looked every inch the perfectly normal young, gorgeous guy with dreamy eyes that melted me.
Though I was eager to see my parents, this guy kept showing up and I no longer believed in coincidences. My parents were going to have to wait.
I pulled up a stool next to a tall, gaunt man in a pin-striped suit and top hat, who was shuffling a deck of cards with skeletal hands. When he turned to look at me, I jerked and looked away. I did not look back again. Beneath the brim of his hat, there was no face. Shadows swirled like a dark tornado.
“Divine your future?” it said.
I shook my head, wondering how it spoke without a mouth.
“Ignore him, beautiful girl.”
“Show you who you are?”
I shook my head again, silently willing it to go away.
“Dream me a song.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Sing me a line.”
I angled my body away from it.
“You show me your face, I’ll show you mine.” Cards snapped together as it shuffled.
“Look, buddy, I have no desire to see—”
I broke off, physically unable to say another word. I opened my mouth and closed it, like a fish gasping for water, but I was gasping for words. It was as if all the sentences that I had been born with, enough to last a lifetime, had been sucked from me, leaving me utterly blank, silenced. The shape of my thoughts, the way I would phrase them, had been taken. Everything I’d ever said, everything I ever would say, it held now. I felt a terrible pressure inside my head, as if my brain was being vacuumed clean of who I was. I had the crazy thought that, in moments, I would be as blank behind my face as it was beneath its hat, leaving only a dark tornado, ceaselessly whirling, inside my skull. And maybe, just maybe, once it had everything it wanted from me, a fragment of a face would appear beneath its brim.
Terror gripped me.
I shot a frantic look at the dreamy-eyed guy. He turned away and poured a shot. I mouthed a silent plea at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
“I keep telling you not to talk to things,” the reflection of the dreamy-eyed guy said.
He poured and served, moving from one customer to the next, while my identity was erased.
Help me, my eyes screamed in the mirror.
The dreamy-eyed guy finally turned back to me. “She is not yours,” he told the tall, gaunt man.
“She spoke to me.”
“Look deeper.”
After a moment, “My mistake,” the card-shuffling thing said.
“Don’t repeat it.”
As abruptly as they’d vanished, I had words again. My brain was full of thoughts and sentences. I was a person, complete with ideas and dreams. The vacuum was gone.
I fell off my stool and stumbled away from the faceless man. On shaky legs, I tottered three stools down, hoisted myself back up, and clutched the counter.
“He will not bother you again,” the dreamy-eyed guy said.
“Whiskey,” I croaked.
He slid a shot of top-shelf whiskey down the counter. I slammed it back and demanded another. I gasped as fire exploded inside me. Though I wanted nothing more than to put a mile between myself and the card-shuffling monster, I had questions. I wanted to know how the dreamy-eyed guy could command something like that. For that matter, what was the faceless thing?
“The fear dorcha, beautiful girl.”
“Reading my mind?”
“Don’t have to. Question’s all over your face.”