Chapter 1

Jane

I kept my service dog, JB, close to my side; without him it felt like the world might swallow me whole. He was always close to me on bad days – which seemed all too frequent lately. I walked down the aisle of blue carpet. Renfear’s bar is always packed, but it’s where we all went to after work. With tables at either side of me, there were happy family’s enjoying dinner; men of business cutting into unquestionably rare steak, college kids seeing who could drink the most, and at my table, a collective of hard working girls ready to relax.

My best friend Bethany, whose long hair was so black you’d think she dipped it in a pool of ink, turned her head with an excited smile. “Jane!” She practically chirped. “You made it.”

I preened back a strand of my platinum blond hair behind my ear. “I didn’t want to seem like a flake,” I admitted, “besides my stomach has hated me all day.” Just after the words left my lips, a pang of hunger formed in my belly, and a faint rumble could be heard.

The other three girls, Mary, Sayla, and Francine, were smiling at me. It was hard for me now, to process how they could be so effortlessly happy. They collectively said my name and gave their greetings.

Before I knew it, drinks had been imbibed and the cheesiest, most greasy bar food imaginable had been consumed. And of course, delicious doggie treats were bestowed on my most faithful companion hiding beneath the table. During the course of my celebration, I made mention of the many tickets I’d racked up over the last couple of months speeding on my motorcycle for cheap highs. It caused a dull sadness to bloom in the back of my skull when I thought about it. How riding like the devil was the only way I felt like I had to deal with the incredible pain. The crushing, ever-looming agony of that night.

Each thought of it, each stab of memory, it only sent me spiraling down further and further into darkness.

“Jane?” Bethany said in her mousy voice.

“Huh? Yeah?” I replied, blinking and coming out of my daze.

“You know, if you need to earn some scratch chickadee, there’s this gig going around at The Blackstar.”

That wasn’t a place I was intimately familiar with, but I did know that it was a bar managed by none other than the notorious criminal Leonardo Ligotti. “I don’t know if I have any gigging days left in me after that weekend in Nebraska.”

Bethany laughed, no doubt remembering our run-in with the twins who had us try and recover their grandfather’s time capsule; we had to use those shovels from the ass crack of dawn up until the stroke of midnight, with nothing but our sweat and sarcasm to keep us sane. That was our ninth circle of hell. “It’s actually pretty sweet,” she admitted. “You get two grand just for passing the initial test.” She blushed then, strangely. “I’m sure you’ll pass far easier than I did,” the words left her in a sad, envious tone.

“Sounds like a scam.”

“It’s definitely not a scam,” Bethany chuckled, the other girls expressing utter delight when the waiter came back around.

“Heyyy cutie come over here,” Sayla was much deeper into her drinking than the rest of us. She had the constitution of an Irish bull of a man trapped in a woman’s stunning body. She whistled for the waiter, as if she couldn’t catch his attention before.

The waiter, dressed in black pants and a classy white shirt, turned his attention towards our table. He moved over to us with notepad and pen in hand, his brown eyes flicking to the overly excited Sayla. “Hi ladies,” he greeted, “needing something?”

Sayla grinned, put her elbow on the table and twirled at her curly black hair. “I think I’d get you in trouble if I were honest,” she simpered, playfully winking at the man.

The Waiter moved in closer to the table, and an internal need to distance myself from the man bloomed through me. The air in my lungs felt heavier, the very act of breathing became a task that I had to remind myself on how to perform. “Well,” the Waiter said with an equally playful tone, “what can I get for you, sweetheart.” His eyes raked over to me, and that heaviness only became worse. My whole body became still. Frozen with fear. It wasn’t always this way, but some encounters were just worse than others – with no rhyme nor reason.

The only comfort provided to me was that JB was beneath me. I wanted to pet his head, but I couldn’t find the nerve, and I think between my nervous fidgeting I might have shuddered – with the way the Waiter looked at me, I was certain.

Sayla leaned in further against the table as the other girls nursed their various liquors. “Can you fetch me a strawberry daiquiri?" She asked.

“That’s not the only thing I could fetch for you.”

Sayla’s blue eyes danced with amusement. “Tell you what. You go and get me my daiquiri, and I’ll pick out a good leash and collar for you on the way home.”

The waiter grinned, but even with his distance he still felt so close to me – it made me feel uncomfortable. Made me think back on that horrible day. I tried to push the thoughts from my mind, to focus on the image of my loyal companion.

After a moment, the Waiter departed, and the pressure in my chest faded away.

I swallowed away my nerves and looked over to Bethany, "Sorry," I said absently, "so it's definitely not a scam?" I asked.

"Most definitely not," Bethany replied.

"How can you prove that?"

"Well I could flash you my fat stack of Benjamin’s, but I already tucked it away back home. Always keep something in the stash for a rainy day."

"You just don't want the government getting a sweet cut."

Bethany gave me a sly smile, "Yeah, that too."