Page 629 of Flirting with Darkness

DEVIL’S DEBT

KT STRANGE

1

KATYDID

“Katydid, stop playing with that. Do you want the chain to break again? God, you’re careless.”

My guilty fingers stop twisting the chain, abandon it to let it lay against my chest, and I huff under my breath. I swear Emily has eyes in the back of her head, if she could see me playing with it while she’s turned away, counting cash from the lunch rush at the pub. It’s nearly 3PM, and most people have staggered away to get on with their day, pick up their kids from school, or start their shift at any of the big factories that ring around the center of the downtown core.

Drip. Drip.

The wet rag in my hand, which I’d been using to wipe the counters down, spatters drops over my shoes. Emily’s back straightens, and my older sister turns to me with a scowl on her face.

“You made me lose count,” she said, her fist full of twenties. She brushes the hair back behind her ears, the blond strands limp after sweating it out behind the bar while I ran from table to table. I don’t know why she bothers to do her hair. I can’t be assed to fuss with mine, although maybe if mine was princess-blonde like hers I’d bother.

Her locks, her looks, and the way she pulls her shirt neckline down right at 11AM every day — it all adds up to her ending the day with more tips than me.

I’m okay with it. Attracting male attention has never really worked out for me. I’d rather slip in her shadow, our patrons’ eyes glossing and gliding right over me to focus on her instead. I’m sure Emi’s half the reason we have people,men, coming in here at all during the day. It’s certainly not the beer selection. I eye the wholetwobrew choices on tap with a wrinkle of my nose.

Nor was it the decor. This place was an auto mechanics’ garage at one point, until the old man who ran it died and my dad bought it for nothing and turned it into this...locale. It’s still got a grease stain on the other side of the bar that I can’t get out no matter how much I scrub at it, or what I scrub at it with. There’s another stain in the men’s room I really don’t wanna know anymore details about than I already…

Emily scoffs under her breath, and I snap my head up.

“Dreaming, again… idiot,” she mutters, whipping back to the cash register and starting her count over again. She’s six years my senior and has always made it clear to me that her life was completely perfect with Mom and Dad before I went came along and ruined it all. After me, well, yeah. Mom’s not around anymore, Dad’s always drunk on his own supply, and I have an older sister who thinks she really could have Been Something if she hadn’t been stuck taking care of her awkward little sister as soon as she turned eighteen.

My necklace charm sticks to my skin, the weight of it — old worn gold that’s tarnished to hell and back — reminding me of the woman who had originally owned it. I think of her every time I touch it, and every time I look in the mirror and see her plain brown eyes staring back at me. Her presence is even with me as I’m cleaning up around the bar, the shape of her nails and fingers mirrored in mine as I mop and scour and scrub.

“Dad’ll be back before dinner right?” I ask, re-wetting my rag to give the countertop another going over. Nothing’ll get years’ worth of water rings out of the mottled wood at this point, but I like to lie to myself. Pretend I can breathe life back into this place. Somehow.

“Mmmph,” Emi replies, ignoring me as her fingers flick through the bills. She can count all she likes; they’re not going to double themselves in her hands. Which isn’t great news. It goes without saying that a place in as bad shape as this, with no windows to let in the light and attract hipsters and tourists and people with any actual money to spend, is never going to be a great place to earn a living or provide for one’s own.

But it’s all we’ve got.

And at least if I’m stuck here, I’m stuck here with family, even if I don’t think they like me all that much. I scrub the rag over a particularly stubborn tabasco stain.

“Ugh. You’re doing itwrong.”

Emi is scowling down at me, her footsteps covered by the low beat from the jukebox nestled between two booths across from us, not fifteen paces from the bar. “You need to get that up with a butter knife first or it’ll never come off.”

She picks up the dull blade, and then glances at me. Her green eyes narrow, and her lips pull together into a pursed cat’s ass. For a moment I wonder if she’s tempted to stab me with it, as revenge for daring to come along and upend her life and ruin our mother’s and inebriate our father’s. The moment shivers, and I wonder how long it’ll be before Dad comes back from his meeting and finds me bleeding out on the rubber mats behind the bar, the red liquid congealing in my hair and the holes in the grout between the tiles.

“If it weren’t for you, I’d have a good job, uptown, and Father wouldn’t need to go off and beg for more money from the bank or whatever,” she says, curling her upper lip. She starts scraping at the tabasco and I back off, deciding that retreat is the wiser course considering how she’s on the edge of cursing when her nail catches on the wood.

“Oh for FUCK’S sake,” she spits, then turns to me. “I swear to God, he’d better get back soon, because if I am stuck here one more effing minute breathing the same goddamn air as YOU—“

Her finger is shaking in my face one second, and then the next the darkness swells around us, and she disappears.

The bar disappears. The thrum of the jukebox goes silent. I swallow hard, and feel like my feet have pitched sideways. I reach out and grab blindly, my hand hitting the countertop and wrapping around the rim of it tightly.

Emily gives out a frustrated cry and I hear the sound of metal hitting the cement floor. She’s thrown the butter knife — thankfully not at me.

“Did he not pay the damn power bill?! Ugh, fuck!” Her feet shuffle away from me, and I hear her knocking things over. “Where’s the stupid flashlight…?”

I sigh and lean against the bar, dropping my rag on top of it, and settle in to wait. There’s not much to do now except—

Light pierces across my vision and I squint as the front door swings open, and the outline of someone tall, a man, silhouettes itself heavily there. Holy shit, he’s… tall, very tall. And strong. I swallow.

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