I had to pass the sub-club where the dreamy-eyed guy tended bar to get to the stairs. “Directly,” construed as a geographical command, didn’t preclude stopping along the way and, since I was parched and had a few questions about a tarot card, I rapped my knuckles on the counter for a shot.
I could barely remember what it felt like to mix drinks and party with my friends, jam-packed with ignorance and shiny dreams.
Five stools down, a top hat gauzed with cobwebs was a dark, unused chimney badly in need of sweeping. Strawlike hair swept shoulders that were as bony as broomsticks in a pin-striped suit. The fear dorcha was hanging with the dreamy-eyed guy again. Creepy.
Nobody was sitting next to it. The top hat rotated my way as I took a seat, four empty stools away. A deck of tarot cards was artfully arranged in its suit pocket, a natty handkerchief, cards fanned. Knobbed ankles crossed, displaying patent-leather shoes with shiny, pointy toes.
“Weight of the world on your shoulders?” it called like a carny selling chances at a booth.
I stared into the swirling dark tornado beneath the brim of the top hat. Fragments of a face—half a green eye and brow, part of a nose—appeared and vanished like scraps of pictures torn from a magazine, momentarily slapped up against a window, then torn off by the next storm gust. I suddenly knew the debonair and eerie prop was as ancient as the Fae themselves. Did the fear dorcha make the hat, or did the hat make the fear dorcha?
Because my parents raised me to be polite and old habits die hard, it was difficult to hold my tongue. But the mistake of speaking to it was not one I’d make twice.
“Relationships got you down?” it cried, with the inflated exuberance of an OxiClean commercial. I half-expected helpful visual aids to manifest in midair as he hawked his wares—whatever they were.
I rolled my eyes. One could certainly say that.
“Might be just what you need is a night on the town!” it enthused in a too-bright voice.
I snorted.
It unfolded itself from the stool, proffering long bony arms and skeletal hands. “Give us a dance, luv. I’m told I’m quite the Fred Astaire.” It tapped out a quick step and bent low at the waist, thin arms flamboyantly wide.
A shot of whiskey slid down the counter. I tossed it back swiftly.
“See you learned your lesson, beautiful girl.”
“Been learning a lot lately.”
“All ears.”
“Tarot deck was my life. How’s that?”
“Told you. Prophecies. All shapes.”
“Why’d you give me THE WORLD?”
“Didn’t. Would you like me to?”
“You flirting with me?”
“If I was?”
“Might run screaming.”
“Smart girl.”
We laughed.
“Seen Christian lately?”
“Yes.”
His hands stilled on the bottles and he waited.
“Think he’s turning into something.”
“All things change.”
“Think he’s becoming Unseelie.”
“Fae. Like starfish, beautiful girl.”
“How’s that?”
“Grow back missing parts.”
“What are you saying?”
“Balance. World lists toward it.”
“Thought it was entropy.”
“Implies innate idiocy. People are. Universes aren’t.”
“So if an Unseelie Prince dies, someone will eventually replace it? If not a Fae, a human?”
“Hear princesses are dead, too.”
I gagged. Would human women be changed by eating Unseelie and end up becoming them in time? What else would the Fae steal from my world? Well, er, actually, what would I and my—I changed the subject swiftly. “Who gave me the card?”
He jerked a thumb at the fear dorcha.
I didn’t believe that for a minute. “What am I supposed to get from it?”
“Ask him.”
“You told me not to.”
“That’s a problem.”
“Solution?”
“Maybe it’s not about the world.”
“What else could it be about?”
“Got eyes, BG, use them.”
“Got a mouth, DEG, use it.”
He moved away, tossing bottles like a professional juggler. I watched his hands fly, trying to figure out how to get him to talk.
He knew things. I could smell it. He knew a lot of things.
Five shot glasses settled on the counter. He splashed them full and slid them five ways with enviable precision.
I glanced up into the mirror behind the bar that angled down and reflected the sleek black bar top. I saw myself. I saw the fear dorcha. I saw dozens of other patrons gathered at the counter. It wasn’t a busy bar. This was one of the smaller, less popular sub-clubs. There was no sex or violence to be found here, only cobwebs and tarot cards.
The dreamy-eyed guy was absent in the reflection. I saw glasses and bottles sparkling as they flipped in the air but no one tossing them.
I glanced down at him, pouring high and flashy.
Back up. There was no reflection.
I tapped my empty shot glass on the counter. Another one clinked into it. I sipped this one, watching him, waiting for him to return.
He took his time.
“Look conflicted, beautiful girl.”
“I don’t see you in the mirror.”
“Maybe I don’t see you, either.”
I froze. Was that possible? Was I missing in the mirror?
He laughed. “Just kidding. You’re there.”
“Not funny.”