WINDOWS: A BROKEN FAIRY TALE (15 page)

“This needs to be
delivered to Valentria.”
 
Sarah told
him.
 
The young man produced a form from
beneath the counter and she bent forward to fill out the necessary lines.
 
She’d grown accustomed to being the one in
charge of all paper work for the shop.

“When can we
expect this?”
 
She asked as she handed
the completed delivery request back to the clerk.

“Within a week,
ma’am.”
 
The girls nodded and strolled
around the store, Sarah asking questions about nearly everything they saw and
Raven explaining the uses of each.

Night had fallen
by the time they left the store.
 
Large
lamp post were spaced at even intervals along the streets, each circle of light
merging with its neighboring ring so it was easy to see where you were going.
 
The businesses that hadn’t closed for the day
wore glowing signs declaring them open and ready to receive customers.
 
There were sections of Vestavia like this,
but Sarah grew up poor with few opportunities to visit them.

“You hungry,
Lil’bit?”
 

A rumbling in her
stomach reminded Sarah that she hadn’t eaten since lunch so they stopped at a
corner restaurant Raven swore had the best burgers in the world.
 
After finishing their delicious, if greasy,
supper the girls headed to the outskirts of town to find the club.

The music was
heard before the lights could be seen.
 
Heavy drum beats thudded in the cool night air and a screaming guitar indicated
they were getting closer.
 
Finally they
turned a corner and saw it.
 
The club was
huge, about two of their shops combined Sarah guessed.
 
A blinking sign in yellow and blue on the
roof read,
The Equinox
.
 
A line of people stretched about 50
yards.
 
Sarah didn’t know how they’d get
in but Raven marched right by the queue.

When they reached
the door, the bouncer, a large burley man wearing a black shirt at least two
sizes too small for his muscular frame, held up a massive hand.
 
“The line starts at the back you two.” he
growled, without looking up from his clipboard.
  

Raven thumped the
man’s ear.
 
“Lady Branwyen Chandlish,
plus one.”
 

The guy looked up
and smiled in recognition before letting them pass through the doors.
 
Sarah heard the bouncer telling the unhappy
people that Raven was aristocracy just before the door closed.
 
The two left their jackets and Raven’s sword
at a coat room in the vestibule and headed inside.
 
Not for the first time Sarah wondered how
great it would be to be born nobility; able to open any door you wanted with
just your name.
 

That train of
thought derailed as a cacophony of sights and sounds assaulted her senses.
 
The air was thick and pungent, a mixture of
tobacco smoke and alcoholic drinks with an underlying reek of sweat.
 
Strobe lights suspended from the ceiling
lanced a dizzying array of colors, punctuating the dimness of the interior
rather than relieving it.
 
A dance floor,
which took up a large portion of the center of the building, was teeming with
an undulating mass of shadows that rose and fell with the music.
  
Against the back wall a stage jutted from
the floor and a band was playing a rock song, heavy with power chords and a
panicky bass line that Sarah could feel in her chest.
 
All in all, she thought, this place seemed like
fun.
 
Someone yelled in her ear.

“What?”
 
She shouted back at Raven, having to raise
her voice to be heard above the din.

Raven leaned
closer, “I said, ‘Do you want to grab a beer?’”
 

Sarah nodded and
they snaked their way through a throng of people congregating around a wide
bar.
 
The bar top was lit from within and
rows of bottles stood like soldiers behind the bartender.
 
A large mirror showed the crowd behind
them.
  

“Two of your
coldest and run a tab with this.”
 
Raven
ordered as she handed him two hundred gullions.
 
The man nodded and filled two mugs with an amber liquid.

“Planning to get
snockered, are we?”
 
Sarah grinned as
they found an empty table to set their beers on.

Raven laughed,
“Nah, not tonight, but it’s always a good idea to tip heavy the first time you
go to a club.”
 
She took a swig, “That
way they’ll always remember you.”

They watched the
dancers writhe and swell on the floor as they sipped their drinks.
 
Now that her eyes were accustomed to the lack
of light, more details about the club were reveling themselves.
 
At the other end of the dance floor, another
bar, identical to the one they were at, seemed to be just as packed.
 
She could barely make out a door with a sign
that read VIP above it, just to the left of the other bar.
 
Sarah turned to ask Raven if they could get
in there but the redhead had gone to grab another round.
 
They finished that one and then another.

After the third
mug of beer Sarah was feeling very relaxed and cheerful.
 
A few guys had even asked them to dance but
neither girl really wanted to.
 
That is,
until Raven grabbed her by the hand.
 
Being drug towards the dance floor, Sarah protested that she didn’t know
how.
 
Raven just laughed and said neither
did she.

The mixture of
alcohol and pulse pounding music was having the expected affect on Sarah.
 
She felt her inhibitions falling off like she
was discarding a heavy cloak.
 
Watching
as Raven started grinding her hips in time with the music, she followed
suit.
 
The two danced with reckless
abandon through one song and then the next, which was even faster than the
first.
 
Sarah was drenched with sweat and
could see beads starting to run down Raven’s pale face when the lead singer
informed the crowd that they were going to slow it down and for all the couples
to come out and dance.

Sarah felt herself
get spun around as she tried to walk of the dance floor.
 
Raven’s mischievous grin loomed in the
semi-darkness.
 
“I ain’t finished dancing
yet.”

She clasped her
hands behind Raven’s neck.
 
“I thought
this dance was for couples only.”

Raven’s slender
arms encircled her waist. “You’re my date tonight since I got you in, plus
one.”

As they slowly
turned in the crowd of people, Sarah studied the face in front of her.
 
She had never done so upclose, but decided it
was very pretty.
 
Raven never wore
makeup, she knew, except for a rust colored lipstick that really accentuated
her full lips.
 
Alabaster skin that
seemed to almost glow in the dimness of the dance floor and a few freckles
smattered across the bridge of a pert nose.
 
Sarah could just make out tiny flecks of amber in the green of Raven’s
eyes when she looked hard enough.
 
There
was something else in there, behind the emerald and gold, something she
couldn’t quite place.
 

Then those eyes
were coming closer and Sarah’s lips opened.
 
Her eyes shut as the world seemed to fall away; the music became muffled
and the other dancers melted into obscurity.
 
All that existed were the arms holding her tight and a yearning.
 
The second stretched into eternity and Sarah
felt Raven’s grip on her tighten.

“You don’t mind if
we cut in?’
 
A slurred voice brought
Sarah crashing back into reality.
 
She
opened her eyes and a man who obviously had way too much to drink was pulling
her away from Raven.
 
Someone-- she
guessed a friend of the drunk’s-- had moved in front of Raven and tried to grab
her as well but the redhead deftly avoided his grasp, took Sarah’s hand and
tried to leave the dance floor.
 
The two
men were having none of it and tried to block them.

“Guys, you really
don’t want to do this.” Raven warned.
 
Her voice carried in the crowded bar now that everybody, including the
band, stopped to watch.

The two drunks
sneered and then one, a large man with black hair, lunged at Raven.
 
Sarah saw that much at least.
 
Why the man was suddenly holding a bloody
nose and stumbling backwards into the ring of people was a matter of some
debate.
 
She didn’t have time to ponder
what happened as the burly bouncer stepped onto the dance floor, grabbed both
jerks and escorted them away.
 
The band
started playing again and the two girls wandered back to the bar.

When they got
their drinks, Sarah asked if Raven had broken the guy’s nose.

“Yeah.”
 
Raven responded slowly.

Sarah heard
something in her friend’s voice and turned to look at her.
 
There was a shadow in Raven’s eyes that made
her uneasy.

“You know he
deserved it, right?”
 
She tried to sound
comforting, mistaking the look on Raven’s face as concern for the guy.
 
“He was trying to grab you and you stopped
him.”

Raven took a long
drag on her beer.
 
“I’m not worried about
that.”

 
“Then what is it?”
 
Sarah reached out and touched her friend’s
pale arm comfortingly but Raven jerked back as if she had been shocked.
 
Sarah reached another wrong conclusion and
asked if it had anything to do with what happened on the floor between
them.
 

Raven shook her
head then drained the last of her beer and laughed; the chipper façade
returning.
 
“No, nothing to do with
that.
 
Sarah, do you mind if we leave
soon?”

They sat in
silence for a few moments as the bar life danced and swirled around them until
Sarah finished her beer.

After retrieving
their belongings from the coat room, they walked into another bit of drama,
this one between the bouncer that had broken up Raven’s fight and what seemed
to be the owner of the bar.

“Those were
Protectorate guards you threw out, you idiot!”
 
The manager was poking the bouncer in the chest.
 
Sarah thought that was a very stupid thing to
do since the owner was shorter than she was and the guy whose chest he was
jabbing with a finger was basically huge.

The big guy tried
to explain that he had no clue that they were, he was just doing his job by
removing patrons who were causing a disturbance.
 
His calm manner did nothing to quell the
smaller man’s anger; in fact, it seemed to intensify.

“Well you can kiss
your job good-bye, Jimmy.
 
You’re
fired!”
 
The man started to say something
else but Raven interrupted.

“Excuse me, but
your employee protected us from two drunks who were being overly grabby.
 
You should be thanking him.”

The owner had
found a new target for his anger and turned on Raven with a vicious snarl.
 
“You’re the bitch who broke John’s nose
aren’t you?
 
What’s your name?”

 
Raven arched an eyebrow and glared at the
small, blustery man.
 
Sarah knew that
look well and part of her brain wondered if Elspeth intentionally taught it to
all four of her daughters.
 
“My name is
Lady Branwyen Chandlish and if you call me a bitch again, it will be the last
word that passes those slug like lips.
 
Are we clear?”
   

The pudgy owner
laughed shrilly, intoxicated by the knowledge that in his bar, he made all the
rules.
 
“Listen here, Lady Branwyen.
 
You assaulted one of my customers, a member
of the Protectorate no less, and then you have the nerve to threaten me?
 
You are banned from The Equinox from this day
forward.”
 
For all his bluster he didn’t
call Raven a bitch again.

While the small
man was venting, Sarah had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from
laughing.
 
She could hear snickers from
the people in line but doubted many knew what exactly was happening.
 
Raven twirled her finger while watching the
angry dwarf with a bemused expression.
 
The man’s toupee floated about a foot over his head.

Finally realizing
people were laughing at him the guy jerked his hands up and felt his bald
dome.
 
Laughing into the face of his former
boss, Jimmy grabbed the hair piece and handed it to Raven.

Stuffing the rug
into her front pocket, Raven hollered, “If it’s my last visit, I want something
to remember you by”, as the man disappeared into the club.

Sarah chuckled and
saw Raven walking away with Jimmy the bouncer at her side.

“Why were you
working there, Jimmy?”
 
Raven’s arms were
crossed when Sarah caught up with them.