Chapter 2 Two

The streets were rain-washed, and the air was heavy with the smell of wet tarmac.The darkness was cut with the bright artificial lights from neon signs, car headlights, streetlights, and shop windows.

Music pounded from the nightclubs, the late-night shops luring in shoppers, and the wound down windows of cars doing rings of the city streets so that the occupants, mostly male, could call out to the women on the street.

Girls dressed for dancing shook in the chill of the night, their breath hanging like smoke clouds in the air as they huddled together for warmth, their voices bright and excited, and their high heels clip-clopping through the puddles.The queues into the nightclubs were long and trickled off the red carpets.

The hobgoblin looked like a drunk or homeless person to a human huddled in his cloak and muttering spells to himself as he wound his way closer to the unwary girls at the tail of one of the queues that had curled around into the alleyway between buildings.One was speaking on her phone, and was further behind the others, distracted by her conversation.

The hobgoblin stretched out his gnarled hands.

"Hands off," Lia snapped, startling the girls.

The hobgoblin met her eyes, startled at being seen, his eyes flashing white with the magic of his Other as he recoiled.He babbled as he scurried down the alleyway, disappearing behind an overflowing and stinking dumpster.

"Flasher," Lia explained to the girls.

"Oh," they said, in a rising chorus."Thanks, eh?"

"No problem."

"I did not see that," Paris said in admiration."You have sharp eyes, Lia."

"I guess," Lia shrugged.Paris had no idea how sharp.Being a witch, Lia could see through the glamour that the magical Others wore to disguise their true natures from the humans they lived amongst."Are we far? I am freezing." She huddled her jacket closer to her, but it did little against the cold.

"Not far."

After the car accident had killed her parents, Lia had been raised by her grandmother in the increasingly dilapidated house that had been in the family for generations, passed down from mother to daughter, along with its secret tower room and the magic book contained within.

Lia's memories of the car accident were vague, something that she was thankful for, but she remembered the golden-haired man who had pulled her from the car, and the kind eyed boy who had made her feel safe.

Her grandmother had tried to teach Lia the magic that was their birthright as witches, but Lia had always been more interested in becoming a ballet dancer than a witch.Her grandmother had gradually given up on teaching Lia more than the most basic warding spells which she insisted her granddaughter perform before leaving the house every morning and cautioning her about the Other world of werewolves, vampires, and magical beings that lived amongst the humans disguised by glamour.

Their line was hunted, her grandmother told her, by the Wingless, and mixing with the Other world would only bring her to their attention.

Her grandmother had passed unexpectedly in her sleep the year before, leaving nineteen-year-old Lia with a house that was slowly decaying at the edges, and a small inheritance that, combined with her parents' life insurance, had paid for her schooling, but the fees of her dance academy were starting to chip away at its capital, and the monthly interest payments did not provide enough to maintain let alone renovate the house.

Paris had moved into the house soon after Lia's grandmother had passed, Lia finding it too frightening to live alone, and her rent helped cover utilities and rates, but Lia was a long way from being comfortable.She needed a part time job with a regular paycheque, and she needed to let out the third bedroom, although the house was not large, and the idea of a stranger living with her and Paris was not a comfortable one.

Paris had begun working as a waitress Friday and Saturday nights three weeks before and had talked Lia into joining her saying the pay was good, and being regular weekend work, it wouldn't interfere with their dancing.

"Are you sure it is not a strip club?" Lia was dubious.Sometimes Paris' ideas were reckless and ill-thought-out.It would not be the dodgy job that she had talked Lia into going to, and the last time the audition for "entertainment dancing" had turned out to be for jobs as mobile strippers for private events, so her suspicion was well founded.

"No, it is an exclusive men's club.It is like the male version of a cocktail bar.It is smaller than a normal pub and posher.Leather couches and chandeliers sort of deal.They only open Fridays and Saturdays, and they have stage shows on both nights."

"So, this new guy, Brook."

"Brock," Paris swooned against Lia, almost unbalancing her."Oh my god, Lia.He is such a man.Like, a proper grown up.When he kisses me, I can't get my underwear off fast enough."

"Paris!"

"It is so true, though."

"Right.Where did you meet him?"

"The club of course," she fluttered her eyelashes."I am telling you, Cecilia, it is more than a job, it is a future husband shopping mall.Exclusive men's club means men with money," she made the money symbol with her fingers and thumbs."What every wannabe dancer needs is a man with the moolah.Stick with me kid," she bumped her hip against Cecelia's."And you will be on your way to easy street."

Lia's attention was diverted by a woman, her hair hidden beneath a knitted hat and her face all but lost in her scarf, who was trying to get passers-by to accept a flyer from the stack she clutched to her chest like a last hope.

"Please," she appealed to the girls as they passed her."My daughter is missing."

Lia paused to take one, looking at the black and white photo of a laughing young woman around her own age.

"Have you seen her?" The woman asked hopefully.

"No, I am sorry," Lia folded it and put it into her pocket."But I will keep it with me, and ring if I do see her."

"Thank you," the woman was pathetically grateful for so little."Bless you and stay safe."

"You did not have to do that," Paris murmured as they walked away.She linked her arm through Lia's."You are too kind, Lia."

Paris turned them down a side alley and they dodged the filth and puddles on the ground, sending stray cats and rats scattering into the shelter of the shadows as they made their way to a solid door, its chipped surface showing the layers of paint beneath it in a rainbow of hues.She entered a code into the pad and pushed the door open.

The hallway beyond was dark and narrow, and they felt their way along the walls with the music from the club pulsing around them like a heartbeat.Paris pushed open a door into artificial light and perfume.

This room was lit by a ring of lights around a long rectangular make up mirror fixed to the far wall.Freestanding racks queued to the right, holding a variety of costumes.A door to the left opened into a small bathroom, with a shower and toilet, the tiles old and dingy looking, although Lia could smell disinfectant.

"Give me your coat," Paris reached out her hand for Lia's coat.

Lia shivered as she stripped it off.The change room was warmer than outside, but only just, and her skin crawled with goosebumps."Don't they have heaters here?" She asked.

"It is warmer in the club," Paris hung the coats onto a rack and flicked through the costumes until she found what she sought.

She handed Lia a French maid's dress."Here you go."

"You are kidding," Lia pulled a face.It was one step above a cheap Halloween costume in quality, the material holding an acrylic sheen and the tulle netting coarse, the petticoat meant to protect its wearer from its edges too short to serve its purpose.

"It is what it is," Paris pulled on an identical dress, tugging it down, and reaching inside it's neckline to lift her breasts and the lace of her bra.She used safety pins on the waistband to hold the dress to the garter belt, before tying the white apron around her waist."If you pin it to the garter, it will stop it riding up so much," she advised."Don't look at me like that, Lia.Waitresses wear this.If we do our dues as waitresses, Elior will let us audition as acts.So, put on the stupid dress and come and haul some trays around with me."

Lia sighed heavily and pulled on the dress, following Paris' directions to pin the waist to her garter belt, and arranging the bodice so that her breasts and the top edge of her bra were on display."I hope these are laundered in between," she complained.

"When you take them off, you give them a steam.Write your name on the tag, and it is yours.If Elior likes you, that is.And he had better like you, Lia, because it is the only way that we are getting onto that stage."

The dress barely covered her arse as the skirt was fluffed out by tulle despite the safety pins, and the bodice was scooped indecently low, but it was hardly worse than any other costume she wore as a dancer.Except that normally the costume was like that for dancing, not so that she could be leered at by men.

She opened her purse and touched up her lipstick, smoothing the flyaways that had escaped the bun she had put her dark hair up into.Paris' had insisted that she apply a full face of dance-style makeup, along with her good black underwear, stockings and the garter belt, which now made sense.

Paris posed next to her."We look cute," she said with a giggle and pulled out her phone.They posed for a selfie pouting.

"I guess it is not the worst costume that I have worn," Lia decided trying to see an upside.

"Yeah, I remember when we were both trees.Ugh now that was a hideous costume and routine.Alright," Paris pouted at the mirror."Let's go.Remember, tables are numbered left to right, starting in the back booths, and they have the numbers on the tabletops, so you can't go too far wrong, really.Just grab a tray, check the number on the docket, and put the drinks onto the table.We don't take orders, just deliver.They have an app for ordering."

Paris led the way back into the dark hallway and they felt their way to where a doorway was outlined in light through the doorjamb and the music pounded out louder.She pushed open the door and they stepped out into a large room filled with tables and chesterfield couches arranged around a central stage, currently occupied by a burlesque act.The walls were all wood panelled and painted in a grey so dark that it was almost black, the effect both opulent and masculine.

The men around the tables fell into two categories, Lia noted, those still in business suits who had come straight from work, their ties and attitudes loosened, and those whose business did not require suits or who had changed before coming, in their jeans and steel toed boots, leather jackets and tattoos.

The bar was to the left of the doorway and the barman was just sliding a tray onto the glossy surface."You are late," he yelled over the music to Paris."Who is the fresh meat?"

"Lia," Paris yelled back checking the docket and handing the tray to Lia."Table four." She took a tray that was already waiting.

Lia counted the tables as Paris had told her and moved with confidence towards a group of men in jeans and t-shirts, their arms over the back of the armchairs they sat on, and their long legs sprawled out in the type of confident, relaxed abandonment men achieved when their day was done, and they were amongst themselves and surrounded by alcohol.

Werewolves, she realized with a fission of surprise as she drew close enough that the Other in their eyes reflected back golden in the darkness.She checked the table number before leaning between two of them to slide the tray onto the table.

She began to offload the drinks.

"I haven't seen you here before," the man to her right did not have to raise his voice above the music in order to be heard.