Yeah, naïve.
On this day the sun was blazing hot, though it was long before noon, and there I was with my brother in what we from the Mundane world would call a dive bar, complete with battered chairs and a sticky floor. All that was needed to complete the trashy ensemble were a jukebox and a mechanical bull. Oh, and some off-key karaoke wouldn’t hurt.
As I pried my shoe off the floor, I was hit with a pang of homesickness for The Room, the dive where I used to hang out with my coworkers at Real Estate Evaluation Services, though they weren’t actually my coworkers. It was a sham job, set up by Peacekeepers to spy on my family. You would think that the government would find other ways to spend our tax dollars.
Anyway, The Room’s floor had never been washed, at least not in the year and a half I’d frequented it, and for a long time before that. But, the beer had been cheap and cold, the pretzels salty and crisp, and the music wasn’t completely horrible, so I kept going back. I wondered if this place, aptly named The Dell’s Alehouse, had any good beers on tap.
Oddly, at least to me, a stream ran through the center of the common room. Was this their version of running water? No, I’d seen a well outside the building, so this was…decorative? For fishing? I sighed and took a seat at the bar next to Max; for all I knew, the stream kept evil from crossing sides.
Hey, that just might be it.
“You come here a lot?” I asked. Max signaled the bartender, and two brightly colored concoctions that reminded me of unset gelatin were delivered a moment later. So much for beer.
“I’ve been a time or two.” He drank from his glass, the contents leaving a ring of orange slime around his mouth. Nice.
“Too bad we didn’t invite Sadie,” I murmured, now tilting my glass from side to side. It seemed that, the more the liquid moved, the more it solidified.
Weird.
“Like she would have come,” Max said, annoyed, and I could hardly blame him. Sadie hadn’t left the manor since the Iron Queen’s death; in fact, she hardly even left the main house to walk the grounds, lovely as they were. I get antsy if I’m holed up at the manor for a day or so, even with my morning walks around the orchards, but Sadie seemed content to haunt the silver halls until the end of time.
“What’s she hiding from?” I wondered, not expecting an answer. Max, true to form, did the unexpected.
“This,” he replied, gesturing to encompass the bar. “All of this.” I squinted into the dark corners and saw a few orcs embroiled in a drinking game, some horse-faced beings arguing over their bill, and a pixie, roughly half the size of a human, slowly gyrating for a table full of human men. It was an odd sort of chaos, kept to a dull roar by the constant threat of the bartender, who was the largest, ugliest man I’d ever seen. And, since his head was covered in bulging eyes, he saw everything all the time.
Which came in pretty handy when Max signaled for a refill. “She’s terrified,” I murmured. Max nodded as he sipped his second drink, intent on watching the pixie. “She’s got to realize that it’s not all bad here.”
“How are we gonna make her realize that when we can’t even get her out the door?” Max asked. The pixie had slipped her gown off her shoulder, leaving the men at the table, and my brother, fully enthralled. By all that is holy, please don’t let Max start drooling.
“There’s something else we need to talk about,” Max murmured. “Mike Armstrong. He’s making a bid for the Presidency.”
“Mike Armstrong?” The name was familiar, but I couldn’t recall a politician named Armstrong. The only person I had ever known with the surname Armstrong was…
Oh, crap. Juliana.
I had met Juliana in middle school, a few years after Max had been arrested by the Peacekeepers. She and I had become fast friends; for much of my life, she had been the only friend I had. School and the teen years are tough enough, but having an M.I.A. father and brother and a surname synonymous with Elemental power, not to mention living in a mansion when most others resided in government shacks, doesn’t exactly ingratiate oneself to one’s peers. Without Juliana, I don’t know what would have become of me.
Fast forward a few years: I’m an adult, living in my own government-issued apartment, and working with Juliana at Real Estate Evaluation Services. I meet Micah and learn that I’m a Dreamwalker and that my father and brother are (probably) still alive. Despite being a supposedly responsible adult and somewhat intelligent, I decide to dreamwalk to Max. Alone. Without even Micah’s help.
Yeah. I know.
Anyway, I’d found Max, trussed up like a science experiment gone wrong, in the Institute for Elemental Research. In the control room, with all the other lab coats, was Juliana.