Whoa. The answer I couldn’t give was here all along. Though I feel like I’ve heard the line before.
If David were here, the news would crush him. But Josh is a statue. Unmoved. “It doesn’t matter.” He resumes walking, the first to break our stagnant state. “I’m the only one of us still linked to her. Whether I gave her the mark is irrelevant. But the Kiss of Infinity I bestowed on her birthday? That’s what will lead us to her.” He speaks of their kiss as if it’s a weapon. One he’d like to use to take me down a few pegs.
Try again, Josh.
“Bound souls always find one another.” I don’t elaborate. Don’t say he’s full of hot air, that she and I are more deeply linked than he can imagine, and it’s my soul that will find her, not his. We’ve had enough banter. We know where we stand. Maybe it’ll never be together, but we can at least try to work together until we reach our goal.
“Now we’ve had our Ever lesson for the day. I say we get ourselves a guide.” Dahlia laughs. “Whaddya say? Y’all up for a drink?”
Preacher rises and follows her. “You know I am, Reg.”
“Good. My knowledge of the Sixth is vast and all, but if we really want someone who knows the ins and outs, our best bet is one of my oldest and dearest friends. She knows this place and all the gossip that comes with it.” A slap to her knee and then Preacher’s back puts a little more spring in his step. “If anyone’s heard of Eliyana comin’ here, it’d be her. Good thing for us I know just where ta find her.” She taps her temple.
“And where would that be?” Song voices the question we’re all thinking.
“The Lazy Lime.” The Ever woman gives another wink, twists, and sashays down the road, humming a little tune.
Anyone else would annoy me with their redundant patronization and constant cheery disposition. But Dahlia is one of a kind, and I can’t help but love her like a relative with each bat of her eyes.
“The Lazy Lime, eh?” I call after her. “Sounds like some sort of pub.”
“That’s because it is,” she says. “The finest pub in Emerald City.”
Pubs always smell like one thing and one thing alone to me—Tiernan. The man couldn’t stop drinking to save his life. It started when Khloe was born, his final attempt to sire a son of his own. That’s when he started beating my mother, which means he started beating me. The more I disappointed him, the more he drank to console himself. If, on a rare occasion, I pleased him, he’d celebrate with a bottle in his hand and a lazy smile plastered across his lips. But no matter the reason, slap happy or depressed, Tiernan always ended his binges with a round of beat on Kyaphus, the little twerp who would never be good enough because I didn’t share his blood.
Classic.
“Stop, Tier!” my mother would cry. “Please.”
He never listened, never cared for anyone but himself. Now that I know Em, I can’t be anything but grateful it was me and not her he unleashed his pain upon. Perhaps, in a way, I’ve been protecting her all along without even knowing it.
Dahlia saunters up to the bar of the Lazy Lime, hefts herself up onto one of the stools. The four of us join her on either side, Song and Josh remaining a pair, Preacher and me taking stools to the Ever woman’s left.
The bartender, a lanky man with beady eyes and a nose too big for his thin face, braces himself against the bar. He fires each of us the stink eye until his gaze lands on Dahlia. Then he grins, a golden tooth shining like buried treasure.
“Ma’am.” Spittle drips from one corner of his mouth. He swipes it with the back of his arm. “What can I do you for? You’re lookin’ like you need a strong drink to knock out that cold you’re fighting.”
I shudder to think what bodily fluids end up in the drinks he serves.
Dahlia’s mouth turns down. “I ain’t sick, just tired. I’m looking for the bartender, Wart Langley.”
He shakes his head. “Only barkeep here is me. Has been for at least a decade now.”
If Dahlia is shaken by his answer, she doesn’t let it show. “All right then, well, how about a Munchkin woman goes by Odessa? You happen to have seen her?” Her talk is smooth, as if this is a normal visit and we aren’t foreigners in a new Reflection. “Last I saw her was right here on this very stool. ’Course, Wart was the barkeep then.”
He begins cleaning glasses with a towel. “I told you. Only one here is me and has been since the place opened.”
Shock covers Dahlia’s face. “Since it opened? Void, man, this place is older than dirt. Everyone knows that.”
Setting the glass down and flipping the towel over one shoulder, the bartender who is not Wart stares her down. “I’ll say it one more time, lady, so listen close. There is no Wart Langley. This establishment has been here for coming up on ten years. I am the owner and anything else you fancy. Now, I suggest you and your friends leave before I have you tossed out for causing trouble.”
Eyes narrowed, Dahlia rises. The suspicion and confusion in her expression are impossible to miss. “Very well. Let’s go.” She hops down from the stool and navigates back toward the door, knocking over a chair as she walks by. The man at the bar watches us go. No one breathes until we’re through the croaking door and standing beneath the sign we missed before.
I bring it to Dahlia’s attention.
She stares up at it, her normally wide eyes now two slits. “Something ain’t right, y’all.”
Yeah, no kidding. It started with the absence of someone Dahlia seemed to be sure would be here, and now this?
“What an absurd name for a pub. Green Glasses? It’s not even original.” She huffs. “Well, I’m afraid I’m at a loss for what to do next. Without Odessa—”
“Did you say Odessa?”
At once we all turn to the man half my size who’s leaning against the wall on the other side of the door. A newsboy cap sits low over his eyes. His pants go to just below his knees where his socks meet the hems. He’s wearing a diamond-patterned vest and a cigar hangs from his mouth.
So we have traveled back in time then. Fine. But we still don’t know if it’s the right time or place.
“What’s it to you?” Dahlia asks the man.
“Not much. I just like to be a helpful citizen. Doing my duty to the community and all.”
“Sure.” Typical Wren can’t keep her mouth shut.
“I’ll handle this.” Dahlia scoots past her and stands before the man, looking down at him with both hands resting on the shelf of her hips. “What do you want?”
“I want in.” He looks up. His face is like the human version of a bulldog. He drops his cigar and puts it out with the toe of his shoe. “I tell you where the Matron of Munchkins is and you smuggle me in with you. She owes me a sizable sum, and I’ll be green if she doesn’t pay me every last penny. Hard to get to her on my own, but with you lot I might just stand a chance.”
“You got a deal.” And just like that, Dahlia shakes his hand.
No interrogation, no making sure we can give weight to anything he says. Being around as long as she has, Dahlia can probably tell a lot about someone sooner than most. I trust her. Let’s hope she’s not wrong.
The small man, who I can only assume is also a Munchkin, pushes off from the wall. “We have to make a stop first. Otherwise we’ll never get in.”
“Get in where?” Wren again. Always talking and never listening.