Dane walks up to the man sitting in one of those chairs. The man seemingly doesn’t notice him, his eyes closed as he nods along to the music like a conductor. I take this second to memorize his face for the police; skin lightly tanned and very smooth, the sort of smoothness only people without my anxiety issues and constant acne have. His hair is a dark brown and slicked back neatly, and he wears a pure white suit with a little green pocket kerchief over his breast. He’s handsome, definitely, in a graceful-older-man way, but he’s got none of Dane’s wild feral edge or his height. The only jewelry he has on him are his gold cufflinks, but his air of refinement is pretty much palpable. He’s older than Dane for sure, but younger than my Dad by what looks like a few years.
We stand there in awkward silence as the death metal plays and the man lilts his head to it, savoring it like a fine symphony. I put my hand to the metal choker around my neck, trying to loosen it, but it won’t budge. It’s like it’s super glued on or something. The man’s eyes fly open suddenly - a mild brown color - a smile blooming on his face like he’s genuinely happy to see us. He snaps his fingers, and the music stops abruptly.
“Dane! I didn’t expect you back so soon,” The man’s voice is even and calm, like flowing water over smooth rock. “And is this the lovely lady?”
Dane doesn’t say anything, his broad lips pulled in a straight, indecipherable line. I’m waist-deep in shit, aren’t I. Worst case scenario? This guy had Dane bring me here to kill me. Best case scenario? This guy had Dane bring me here to give me a million dollars. I could still run - I didn’t see any guards walking around, no electric fences or guns. But my hands are shaking so hard - I don’t think I’d get very far with how tired and scared I am.
Yeah, I said it. Scared. I always thought I’d be calm and cool in these types of scenarios - like if someone mugged me, I always imagined I’d be able to talk my way out of it with some clever quips or fast thinking or appealing to their humanity. But now I’m just quivering facing down this super rich guy who has unknown plans for me.
The man must have stellar empathy or perfect mind-reading abilities or maybe I’m just obvious, because he smiles warmly and says;
“Please, Miss James. There’s no need to be frightened - I merely brought you here to discuss a business proposition with you. One I think you’ll find very agreeable given your circumstances.”
‘Circumstances’. He says it like I’m unfortunate, trapped, and that condescending bullshit breaks me out of my scared funk.
“You don’t know anything about my circumstances,” I blurt. Dane’s gemstone eyes shift to me sharply. The man looks surprised, but almost immediately starts to laugh.
“I think I know quite a bit more about you than the average person - ”
“Stranger,” I correct. He nods patiently.
“Of course - I’m a stranger. Where are my manners? I’m Vilmor Van Grier, but you can call me Vil. And you are undoubtedly May James, are you not?”
I square my chin. “Yeah. Not to be rude or anything, but I need some answers. And pretty quick.”
I see Dane’s fist tighten at his side. Vil just chuckles.
“Don’t we all?” He spreads his hands to a chair next to him. “Please, sit. Dane, you may leave us. Be sure to call in Quinn on your way out.”
I sit on the plush chair and Dane starts to leave, his leather jacket whirling behind him and every cell in my body wants to scream for him to stay. He might’ve choked me once but he’s the only familiar thing in this place. Vil stops him with a call;
“Where is your bow, Dane? I thought we discussed improving your manners at great length before you left.”
Dane freezes nearly to the door, his back to us. He starts to walk out again when Vil repeats himself, his voice suddenly a sword, sharp and serious, none of the detached politeness from just seconds ago;
“I asked you; where is your bow?”
Like he’s a rusted puppet on old strings, Dane turns one-eighty degrees. He walks back over to Vil, standing in front of his chair, but his steps are jerky and unnatural and totally void of his predator-like gracefulness he had before and his face - I suck in a sharp breath to keep myself from screaming. There, in his left eye socket just below his harsh dark blonde eyebrow, blooms a pure white rose.
“What in the flying blue fuck -“ I exhale. Am I still on those mushrooms? It hits me like a monster truck doing one hundred on the highway; I saw this before when I was losing consciousness - Dane’s white rose in his eye, and the other guys’ black rose. Was I drugged back then too? No! There’s no way I’ve been drugged twice without knowing it - I can’t keep the dynasties of Ancient China straight for shit, but I’m smart enough to keep my drinks safe at the very least!
“Bow,” Vil says that one word and it sounds like a rumble of thunder, like a huge bell being struck in total silence. As if on cue, Dane bows, bending in half slowly and haltingly. But his head stays up, his gemstone eye burning out at Vil with a hatred so strong I can practically taste the acid venom in the air. The temperature in the room feels like it drops to ten below in a split-second, and I shiver and rub my arms. Is the A/C broken? Vil just looks at him imperiously, down through his nose, as if Dane is nothing but a footstool, a piece of furniture, and the only movement for a tense second is their steaming clouds of white breath in the cold room.
The moment passes when Vil smiles, and Dane straightens instantly, all of the rustiness in his movements gone as he whirls and storms out of the room. I catch one last glimpse of his face in the frosted mirror as he passes - his white rose eye is gone. Slowly, so slowly, the room warms up again.
“I’m sorry about him,” Vil turns his smile to me, none of the imperiousness in it anymore. “He can be troublesome, sometimes, and he’s certainly the most willful of the bunch.”
“The bunch,” I repeat.
“Shall I explain it to you?” He offers.
“No - ah, that’s fine. I just wanna go home, if that’s okay with you.”
“And you most certainly can,” Vil agrees. “As soon as you’ve heard me out regarding my business proposition for you.”
Just then someone comes in through the door Dane left through. He’s tall and lean with broad shoulders and younger than Dane, so maybe my age? But the most stunning feature is his shockingly bright and lustrous sky blue hair that hangs around his cheeks in soft curls. His face is much easier to look at than Dane’s, no harsh brows or glass-cut cheekbones, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less handsome - he’s just got a long, gentle face, like an elf’s, with sleepy eyes and an elegant, perfect bell-shaped nose. If Dane is like a beautiful honed sword, then this guy is like a beautiful polished shield.
Vil spreads his hands. “There you are, Quinn. Would you like anything to drink, Miss James? Quinn is exceptional at mixing drinks. He’s the bartender at my club.”
“Club?” I absently say, mesmerized at Quinn’s lithe movements as he wheels a silver cart to our side. He’s dressed in a butler’s uniform from a movie or something - all brass buttons and long coattails.
“Surely you’ve heard of it,” Vil presses. “Seventh Circle, down on Second Avenue and Smith? It’s the talk of the town.”
Quinn pulls out a delicate little glass with two long fingers, and in a graceful whirl he drops two sugar cubes in, pouring steaming coffee and rich brandy into it. A flick of his wrist, and he stirs it once with a cocktail stick, handing it to Vil.
“Sorry, I don’t party much,” I swallow, looking at Quinn’s hands ready to make another drink. Dane warned me not to drink anything. “And I don’t drink much, either.”
“You sound like a very serious woman,” Vil sips his brandy-coffee. “I admire that.”
“I’m nothing special. Just, uh, poor.” I admit. Vil laughs.
“And that brings me to a perfect segue-way for my business proposal. How would you like to work for me?”
Let’s see - work with a guy who owns a huge mansion,
a huge garden, who dresses like Satan at Fashion Week and apparently has some sort of weird ability to order prideful-scary-freaky Dane around? No thank you.
“Your salary will be twenty thousand dollars a month,” Vil adds. My entire world collapses like a stone thrown at one of the glass rose houses outside. Twenty. Thousand. Fucking. Dollars?!
“W-What?” I make like a fish and gape my mouth a few times but keep it together somehow. “Doing what?”
Vil looks up at Quinn. “Let the thing in, will you?”
Quinn bows without a word, eyes flickering to me for a second. He’s got the gemstone eyes, too, like Dane and black-haired guy, except his are a blue so pure it’s hard to look at, pale and smooth like glacier ice. They practically glow. Quinn leaves, and I sit in awkward silence with Vil until the sound of claws scraping the floor get closer. And closer. And heavier. The sound of whining, too.
“That’s -“ I start nervously. “That’s a big dog you got.”
“Oh,” Vil smiles. “He’s not mine.”
The door bursts open, and I get one second of a wet nose and hot breath on my shoulder before something slams into my chair from behind, hard, and sends me flying. I brace myself for impact, but when nothing happens I squeeze my eyes open.
I look up to see Quinn’s chin, his pale blue eyes looking not at me, but at the thing in front of us. He’s holding me in his arms - what is it with these gem-eyed guys and bridal-styling every girl they meet?
“I caught you,” Quinn says softly. Unlike Dane, whose voice is always brimming with either sass or horniness or both, Quinn’s voice is near-emotionless. “You would have hit your head.”
I look over his shoulder to the wide expanse of hard, fancy wall just inches from us.
“T-Thank you?” I try. I catch sight of my chair that’s clattered to the floor, and the giant green dog eating it -
I shove my hands into my eyes and rub. Hard.
“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”
“No, you aren’t.” Quinn offers helpfully. I let out a strangled groan just as Vil starts to chuckle.
“He’s your creation, Miss James. Look on him and despair.”
A low dog’s growl, and the gunshot sound of cracking wood. I jump in Quinn’s arms, and ease one eye open just a smidge - there, tearing apart the chair I was sitting in apart with its huge jaws, is a giant green dog. Wolf is probably more accurate a term. It’s twice the size of the white grand piano in the corner, from tail to tip. The huge paws it uses for leverage to rip another piece of wood off the chair are as big as tires, the claws there black and just one is as long as my entire hand. Its gargantuan green tail thumps on the wood floor, and its fur -
“Are those…thorns?” I hiss.
“Yes. Cactus thorns.” Quinn agrees. Irritated and definitely dreaming, I wiggle out of Quinn’s arms only to immediately jump back in them when the wolf perks its huge head up and leaps over to me.
“Whoaaaaa fuck no!” I shield myself with my arms as a soft, disgustingly slimy pink tongue lashes over my face. “No way! He’s got…is this real spit?”
Even through my muffled words, Quinn answers. “Yes.”
The dog keeps licking me, goosebumps pimpling my skin and his breath smelling like genuine dog ass. I catch glimpses of the dog’s teeth through my arms and almost piss myself - they’re the size of a great white shark’s teeth!
“How - How the fuck did you guys make this?” I shout to Vil. All of a sudden I hear the dog whine, and the licking stops. When I ease my arms down enough to see again, the wolf-dog-thing is sitting politely on its haunches in the middle of the room.
“As I said,” Vil clears his throat. “You made him, Miss James. Not me.”
“I did?” I squint. Quinn puts me down, and when I look between him and the dog he shakes his blue-haired head.
“Mr. Van Grier has him subdued. Don’t be afraid.”
“Don’t be afraid,” I pettily mock-grumble as Quinn passes me. He pats the green dog’s head as he works his way back to his place at the silver drink cart. I edge slowly over to Vil through the slobbery wooden remnants of my chair, the dog whining as I get close but never moving a muscle, only following me with his huge, sad brown puppy eyes. “Listen Vil, the only things I make are bad decisions. So. I’m not capable of making that…thing.”
My eyes roam over the dog’s fur now that I’m closer - it’s fluffy and dense and not too green, more like a sage color than neon. But the top coat of fur is silvery, with fine, pointed strands that are definitely, definitely thorns, except lying flat. I frown. Those silvery thorns - they look so familiar. The dog’s got a metal choker around his neck like I do and I feel a flash of indignation. Why the fuck am I collared like this dog?
“You are too modest, Miss James,” Vil chuckles, and empties his drink. “You show great promise.”
“What.”
“You buried a cactus in a plot of dirt,” Vil says cuttingly. “He had a name, didn’t he?” I swallow my nerves. How did Vil know that? “What was his name, Miss James?”
“Sir…Sir Charles.”
The dog instantly lets out a happy bark. I turn my head over my shoulder in increments, like a broken puppet. The wolf-dog wags its tail the second my eyes set on its face.
“Sir Charles?” I whisper. Another huge, happy bark. Every system in my body shuts down and I scramble backwards, clutching at the mantlepiece of a nearby fireplace. My eyes dart to Vil, then to the dog, then to Quinn. “I’m dreaming.”
“Saying it twice doesn’t make it true,” Vil says calmly. “You are not.”
“I’m definitelyyy asleep right nowwww,” I sing-song, nervousness pitching the ends of it up and bringing it crashing down. “Holy shitttt I’m sleepinnggg and dreaminggg of some crazy stuffffff!”
Quinn won’t take his eyes off me, and for a second I swear I see a pale blue rose blooming out of his left eye socket. It starts to fall into place, like a puzzle shaken loose and into the right formation by an earthquake. The eight roses in the eight glass houses; white, blue, black - Dane, Quinn, that dark-haired guy. Sir Charles as a cactus, Sir Charles as a huge dog with spines.
“W-What,” I breathe, my lungs trembling as I force out the words at Quinn. “What are you?”
Quinn turns his curly blue-haired head slowly to Vil, who nods. Only then does he look back at me, and for the first time I see his slender bow-like lips pull into a ghost of a smile.
“You’ve called us many things throughout history - demons, nature spirits, vampires. But the one I like the most is the word ‘fae’.”
-4-
I black out. Or I black in. I can’t tell, but when I wake up, I’m in my own bed.
I’ve never been happier to see my shitty, falling-apart futon bed in my life.
“Oh thank you God,” I snuggle as deep as I can into the lumpy bedding. “Thank you so much. It was a dream.” I breathe in and out, slowly, repeating it to myself. “It was a dream. It was definitely a dream.”
I put my fingers to my throat, but there’s no silver choker there at all. Just faintly-bruised, almost-healed skin. So Dane choking me was real, but everything with the field of tall grass, the garden, the roses, that mansion and the cactus dog - those weren’t real.
“I’ve had some weird exam dreams,” I exhale. “But that one takes the cake. And the pie. And the whole damn bakery, while we’re at it.”
I check my phone - ten fifteen on a Saturday morning. I’m still in my work uniform, as greasy as it is, which means…what? Did Dane really come to my work? I think he did, and then I tried to run off across the parking lot and tripped -
I beat my palm with my fist in brilliance. That must be it! I must’ve tripped and hit my head. Maybe Marie helped me home? I text her frantically, and stare at the phone waiting. And waiting. Screw waiting - I get in the shower and wash every speck of that dream off me. My stomach growls as I’m toweling off my hair, so I pop in a piece of toast and check my p
hone while I wait. Lo and behold - a text from Marie.
No, she says. Last I saw u u were leavin with that hunky blonde cousin of yours yesterday. He said ur mom wanted u.
After that? I text back. Did I trip or something?
Girl, I aint u. I dunno what happened! All Im saying is the last I saw u was when u left work with ur cousin. I covered for u too lol
Thanks, I text. I’ll see you tomorrow.