“This what?” Cheyenne’s nails dug into her palms.
“This whole Goth thing, girl. I mean, sure, most of the world’s not even gonna look past the face paint and the piercings, so good job fooling everybody. But you can’t hide who you are. If I saw it freshman year, you can bet other magicals around Richmond with a lot more experience can pick you out of a crowd no matter what you’re wearing.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Me being Goth doesn’t mean I believe in magic or orcs or whatever other bull you’re trying to convince me of right now.”
“True. But you’re a bad actor and an even worse liar.” Ember smirked as she lifted her glass in a one-sided toast and took another long drink. “So, are you gonna help your only friend in the world or what?”
“I can’t give you what you want.” Cheyenne shifted in her seat, then realized she couldn’t keep still and snatched her beer bottle off the table. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Seriously, Cheyenne, I have no idea what’s stopping you or why you’re so set on playing this game. Until I met you, I thought halflings were just legends. But the drow’s already out of the bag, so to speak—”
“The what?”
“Oh, please.” Ember snorted. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that word either.”
The bottle in Cheyenne’s hand burst, sending shattered glass and foamy ale all over her hand and the table and the already-sticky, grungy floor. Cheyenne stared at her shaking, sopping hand, and felt the heat rush up her spine and curve across her shoulders.
Just this once. Please, just one time, don’t let it come out.
“Cheyenne.”
“What?” Why do I keep breaking things but never cut myself?
The amusement had drained from Ember’s face, replaced by a sympathetic frown as she pointed to the side of her own head. “Your, uh, your ears?”
The chair screeched behind Cheyenne as she jerked to her feet. Before the chair tumbled backward and clattered to the floor, she was already rubbing her black hair vigorously with both hands to cover the changes she knew most people wouldn’t believe—changes Ember had apparently picked up on four years ago.
One of the bartenders stopped beside their table with a rag in hand, ready to clean up the mess. “Everybody okay over here?”
Cheyenne’s hip bumped against the table corner as she stormed away from him toward the front door. Ember had almost caught her own drink before it also hit the floor, although hers wasn’t in shards.
She stayed in her seat and called after her friend. “Cheyenne. Hey, come on. You don’t have to leave. I’m not—”
The door burst open with a little jingle from that stupid bell some idiot thought would be fun to tie to the handle, then Cheyenne was in the fresh September air. The door bounced shut, and she stalked down the sidewalk in front of the bar, taking deep breaths.
How does she know?
“That’s a stupid question,” she hissed at herself, shaking her hands out as she stalked toward the alley on the other side of Gnarly’s. She slipped between the buildings, pressed against the alley’s brick wall, and closed her eyes. “She knows because you have serious anger issues. That’s how.”
The chains she wore every day, rain or shine, sleeves or not, clinked as Cheyenne lifted her hands toward her face and peered at them in the half-light of the alley’s shadows. The blotches of grayish-purple skin dotting her forearms were already fading, leaving nothing but her pale, vampirically white skin. “I have no problem with the vampire jokes. But she wasn’t joking, was she?”
She brought both hands up to her head and poked around in her mess of black hair, which now looked like she’d just rolled out of bed and rubbed a balloon all over it. Not that she spent a lot of time on her hair, anyway. But what Cheyenne was trying to gauge with her fingers had in fact been hidden by her mess of hair she’d been dying High Voltage Raven Black for the last six years. Her fingers ran up the sides of her ears, brushing over the industrial piercings and the half-dozen rings passing through each piece of cartilage until she reached the top.
Perfectly round human-shaped ears. No pointed tips. Hopefully, they weren’t slate-gray anymore. Even if they were, that would disappear soon enough. Cheyenne puffed a sigh and ruffled her thick hair until it covered her ears and all the silver rings again, then she rested her head against the brick wall and stared at the escape ladder and the catwalk on the other side of the alley.
“She could’ve just been messing with me.” The heat of her rage had toned down. “No, she brought up the ears. Out of all the other things, why does it always have to be the ears?”
A few yards down the alley, a dumpster lid clanged against the brick wall. A skinny man in a kitchen apron with a severe case of adult acne lugged a giant trash bag and then another onto the almost overflowing pile. “I can’t say anything about your ears, kid, but it sounds like you have some serious issues.”
Cheyenne peered at the cook who’d been firing up jalapeño burgers every Tuesday night since last year. She pointed her chin at him, smiling. “Bite me, trash boy.”
“Hey, that’s more like it.” Grinning, the cook—she thought his name was Sam—slammed a hand against the side of the dumpster and pointed at her. “Don’t lose that winning attitude, Wyoming.”
“Yeah, you think it’s cute. I was born here, by the way.” She stared at him until he slipped back inside Gnarly’s side door, stopping just long enough to shoot her a wink.
Alone in the alley
