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“I’m going to Night Owl. It’s a shifter bar on the edge of the city. You should join me. It will be fun, and it will do you some good to get out of the house.”
I thought about it. I didn’t feel like going to a bar. I wanted to wrap myself in a blanket and watch an old movie on my plush couch like I’d done the past few days.
I still had to get out and about, though.
“Bishop usually hangs out at the bar,” Elaine added.
Right. I definitely had to go, then.
“Let me grab a coat,” I said.
Elaine’s face lit up, and she smiled at me.
“It’s going to be fun.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I had to start somewhere. I’d already been here a while, and other than finding out where to buy groceries and clothes and where to get gas, I hadn’t really gotten to know my area or the people here very well. The hours at the clinic and not knowing anyone or anything were exhausting.
I ran back inside and grabbed a coat. I checked myself in the mirror. My long light brown hair was up in its usual ponytail, and I wore jeans and a long-sleeved shirt against the chilly weather. I shrugged into a coat that matched and put on shoes, and we headed out.
Elaine drove.
“I don’t drink,” she said, “so you might as well have some fun and not worry about getting a taxi or a DUI.”
I laughed. “Thanks. Why don’t you drink?”
“I don’t like losing control. My bear and alcohol… they don’t go together very well, so we have a deal. I don’t drink, and she behaves.”
It sounded fair to me. I never had issues with losing control, but I knew of some shifters who did. The more powerful shifters had full control of their animal, having the magic and the know-how to keep the animal in check, but not everyone had figured that out yet. Sharing a body with a creature that had a mind of its own wasn’t easy.
We drove through town, heading toward the outskirts. The houses changed, going from upscale and grand to smaller and non-descript to dilapidated and forgotten.
We drove into an industrial area, and then Elaine pulled into the parking lot of a bar that was out of place.
“It’s surrounded by factories,” I said.
“Which means the humans who work in the area during the day are long cleared out, and the shifters can let loose without worrying about hurting someone by accident.”
Ah. There was a method to the madness. We tried to keep our enchanted world away from humans. A few knew about us. Most of them weren’t aware that they were surrounded by shifters, fae, vampires… sometimes even demons, and a long time ago, angels, too. It was better that way—the humans tended to get up in arms over anything that wasn’t normal in their world, and we didn’t need them to lose their minds over our existence. We were more than happy being something of speculation, the stuff of fairy tales. It kept the humans, who had no extra power to speak of, safe, too. They had no way of defending themselves against magic, but there was also the brave—or the stupid—who would try.
We climbed out of the car and walked to the entrance of the bar. It was an old warehouse, transformed. A long bar stretched along the back wall, with stools that faced the bartender. A podium from artists dominated the center of the room with a dance floor in front of it—both empty now—and tall tables and booths around the edges of the room took up the rest of the space.
The warehouse roof was high, with thick metal beams and dusty windows. Stairs led up against one wall to separate rooms or offices, and the doors were all closed, but light fell through the windows that looked down on the bar area.
The strangeness of a bar in a warehouse wasn’t what got me, though.
It was the fact that here, there wasn’t a single human in sight, and shifters and other magical beings claimed every spot unapologetically.
We didn’t usually mix—shifters kept to themselves and lived on Earth the way they’d been made to do when angels had created them.
Vampires and their creators, the demons, could move between Earth and the Underworld using their dark magic, but the demons kept away, and the vampires, seen as a pest more than anything in our circles, typically stayed away from the rest of us. Angels had gone into hiding, since their blood was coveted, especially by vampires, and the Archangels in the Overworld never came to Earth, so they were a non-entity in my opinion.
Between the Earth, the Overworld, and the Underworld, a whole variety of species existed, but we tried not to get mixed up in each other’s business if we could help it.
Despite the smoking laws, a bunch of shifters smoked cigarettes or cigars indoors, and the smoke swirled together with magic in the air.
“Come on, we’ll get a booth,” Elaine said, walking to an open booth not too far away. I followed her, aware of eyes on me. They were watching me.
“You’re new. They’re curious,” Elaine said when I sat down, and she noticed me glancing around. “They’ll get used to you in a second. We don’t often get new blood in here.”
