Page 17 of Fang Fiction

Per the terms of our previous motion, any human, witch, or magical creature will have permission to visit the Isle via Bar Between, assuming their own bodily risk. However, since the existence of the Isle is completely secret except to the witches on this distribution list, we don’t anticipate that will be an issue.

Thank you for all your efforts to make this project an unqualified triumph. As ever, should you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me via email or telepathy (preferred).

Sincerely,

Fern Castillo

Coven Secretary/Treasurer

REVIEW: Bar Between—Four Stars

posted by user JustJeanne114 on yelp.com

Okay, so I’ve heard about this place forever, my cousin Nichole swears it’s like the coolest place she’s ever been, but you can never find it online? She says the location is always moving, but she’s kind of a liar anyway, so I just chalked it up to an urban legend. But last week, I was with a couple of friends, and this cat came out of this bodega in Dumbo at 4am and started walking with all this purpose, and we were high as shit, so we were like let’s follow that cat! And I swear to fucking god, the cat took us to this vacant lot in Vinegar Hill, except there was this weird like, little stone hut in the back? None of us had ever seen it before, but it’s just some lot, so why would we have noticed? Anyway, the cat is all meowing and staring at us outside the door, so we go in, and I don’t know if we were hallucinating or what, but it was the craziest night of my life??? The walls, like, touch you back? And the people had really weird necks and shit? It was like being in a maze of your own dreams, I don’t even know how to describe it. We stayed a really long time, when we came out into the vacant lot, it was already the middle of the next day. We tried to come back the next night, but we couldn’t find the hut, no matter how many corners we tried. Only reason I’m not giving it five stars is because I’m still not totally sure it was real. But I really respect that cat for taking us there.

“Couldn’t you put me in the penthouse?” Octavia grumbled. “That rude witch checked out, didn’t she?”

“No, she stayed, despite you scaring the shit out of her.” Tess grinned. She’d checked Octavia in to the hotel’s rarely used cabana suite, which was set right next to the pool and had two glass walls allowing for fabulous views of Brooklyn to the east and the Manhattan skyline to the west, but which provided almost no privacy (unless you kept the blackout curtains shut all day, thus depriving yourself of the views you were paying for). Since Octavia couldn’t allow any sunlight into the room anyway, it was the perfect place to stash a vampire.

A vampire.

Tess glanced over at Octavia, who had changed into low-slung black trousers and a tight black crop top that showed off her sharp shoulders and unnaturally pale complexion. Even after watching her feed, Tess still kept expecting to wake up—at the hotel, in her bed, maybe in a hospital—to discover that all of this was nothing more than an exceptionally vivid dream. For the moment, Tess had told her assistant manager that she wasn’t feeling well and needed to leave her shift early. And now she and Octavia were walking toward Vinegar Hill, where Octavia knew of an entrance to Bar Between.

“Let’s run through the plan again,” Octavia commanded. Between her stern bearing and staggering beauty, Tess thought this woman wouldn’t even need to glamour someone to get them to do exactly what she wanted.

“I walk into Bar Between, I tell them I need to visit the Isle to deliver a message,” Tess started.

“No,” Octavia interrupted. “First you walk down the main hall, ignore all side rooms no matter how interesting they seem, and go directly to the bartender. Then say you need to go to the Isle to deliver a message. They’ll make you a doorway and send you straight there.”

“And after that…” Tess trailed off.

Octavia was wearing a few layered necklaces, and she tugged at one of the chains—it was delicate and silver and looked at least a century old. The chain was long, and dipped beneath the neckline of her crop top; when she extracted it, Tess saw that it held a tiny, intricately carved vial.

“Your scent vial?” Tess asked, and Octavia nodded. Tess loved when characters in old novels wore little vials of perfume, partly because it was romantic, and partly because it made her laugh to think of the lengths people went to to smell nice in the times before deodorant.

“Callum gave this to me when we were human, for our final birthday as mortals. I was wearing it the night we were reborn, and I haven’t taken it off since.” She lifted the necklace over her head and handed it to Tess, who stared with wonder. “When you get to the end of the crystal bridge, just open this, and he’ll smell me and come straight to you. Tell him everything I’ve told you—about how I got to New York, how I lost my powers, how he needs to find a way back to me. Except, maybe don’t mention the Blood Feud novels.”

“Why not?” Tess frowned.

“I mean, it’s kind of unbelievable.”

Tess choked back a laugh—it was a bit rich that a literal vampire was telling her the existence of some novels would be difficult to believe.

Tess pulled Octavia’s necklace over her head, and she felt the scent vial’s cool weight thump comfortingly against her breastbone with each step. They passed some drunks and other late-night sorts as they walked south through Williamsburg, but once they reached the misty cobblestone streets of Vinegar Hill, the city was silent except for the clack of Octavia’s heels. Tess loved this neighborhood; especially at night, walking through it felt like traveling back to the city’s earliest days.

“How do you know where the entrance to the bar is?” Tess asked Octavia.

“I came here once with Callum, decades ago.” Octavia waved her hand as if to dismiss the stretch of time between that moment and this one. “The key to finding the bar is that a silver birch tree with yellow leaves always grows in front—two trees with a connected trunk. Like this one.”

“Oh!” Tess looked up with surprise—there was a birch tree, just as Octavia had described. But there wasn’t a bar behind it, just an empty space between buildings, an overgrown vacant lot.

“Where is it?” Tess peered at the lot, and then at Octavia.

“It’s here,” Octavia replied, her voice steady. “Stand still. Don’t you feel it?”

Tess stood very still, wondering how one might “feel” an invisible bar. She tried to open her senses, but after a few seconds she had to admit she didn’t feel anything.

“Humans.” Octavia sighed and shook her head. “You have the scent vial, correct?”