Read Online The Minority Council by Kate Griffin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kate Griffin
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still the light slithered, cold and silent through the city night, flickering around my neck and hair, running tendrils of brightness down my spine, wrapping like lovers round my calves, until the bubble of light in the palm of my hands was a football of illumination, growing brighter, and brighter, and brighter until…
We saw the face of the bouncer, eyes wide, skin lit up to a glow by the reflection from our bubble of light. His mouth was hanging open, his body locked rigid, unable to comprehend what he saw.
“This is the cool bit,” I explained, and closed my eyes, and slammed my fingers together.
The light didn’t exactly explode. Explosion implies sound, and there wasn’t any of that. There was just a silent whoosh-slam that went straight through the belly and sent ripples through the cushion of the brain. Behind my eyelids a flash sent yellow eddies round the surface of my eyes. I heard a wail from the bouncer and felt the light rush outwards, in a tide like lightning in the night.
I opened my eyes. The bouncer was bent double, hands pressed over his eyes; a grunting came from deep in his throat. I said, “It’ll pass, don’t worry.” At the sound of my voice he swung his fists wildly, eyes still scrunched up. As his punches went far wide, he shouted, “Police, police!” I sidled past, pushed at the closed silver door, and let myself in.
It was called Avalon.
It was a nightclub.
There are nightclubs, and then there are nightclubs, and then, finally at the furthest end of the spectrum, there are nightclubs. Some are about the music, some about the dance; some are about the sofas where the various genders huddle in darkness with bottles of fake champagne or jugs of lurid fluorescent cocktails, hoping other genders will notice them and their empty glasses; some are about specialists’ tastes—the music of only the 1980s, the lights of the disco period, men looking for men, women looking for women, men looking for women who are looking for women who are looking for men looking for men—and those who were looking for all of the above in various shades of ultraviolet paint. Some were tribal places, clubs for Goths dressed all in black, faces made up vampire-white and drinks with names like Virgin Blood or Fiery Nights all mixed on a theme of tomato juice, ethyl alcohol and not much else; or clubs for teenagers just discovering that there is a place known as
after
the pub, where the drinks come in goldfish bowls with five straws and a paper umbrella, and the music was acoustic guitar meets electric bass, and the waiters behind the bars juggled their bottles before going in for the serving kill.
In every club across the land, the atmosphere infects the magic, twisting the nature of the spells performed inside them. Here, it was like walking into a gunpowder factory flooded with paraffin and left under a hot sun and a giant lens. The taste of magic was palpable on the first step down from the silver door. As I ducked past the cloakroom before any questions were asked and through a second door into the pounding darkness of the interior, I smelt cantrips flaring and dying in the dark.
The music was, as music is in these circumstances, a pounding anonymity of bass beats and crunching guitar. The bar was lit up vivid blue inclining to purple; lights inside the glass counter revealed glasses of every shape and size, and bottles were hung upside down ready to be tapped for any combination of drink you could imagine. The waiters wore black, and bopped along to a beat that we could not detect in the cacophony of sound. There was a dance floor, distinguishable by the weight of bodies pressed together beneath a rack of speakers, and flashing strobes that gave the dancers a strange out-of-phase look. It was the dance of don’t-you-wish-it-was-sex, hands overhead so that maximum attention could be focused on the midriff. House style for women was tiny dresses that clung to every curve like tin to sardines; men were in
We saw the face of the bouncer, eyes wide, skin lit up to a glow by the reflection from our bubble of light. His mouth was hanging open, his body locked rigid, unable to comprehend what he saw.
“This is the cool bit,” I explained, and closed my eyes, and slammed my fingers together.
The light didn’t exactly explode. Explosion implies sound, and there wasn’t any of that. There was just a silent whoosh-slam that went straight through the belly and sent ripples through the cushion of the brain. Behind my eyelids a flash sent yellow eddies round the surface of my eyes. I heard a wail from the bouncer and felt the light rush outwards, in a tide like lightning in the night.
I opened my eyes. The bouncer was bent double, hands pressed over his eyes; a grunting came from deep in his throat. I said, “It’ll pass, don’t worry.” At the sound of my voice he swung his fists wildly, eyes still scrunched up. As his punches went far wide, he shouted, “Police, police!” I sidled past, pushed at the closed silver door, and let myself in.
It was called Avalon.
It was a nightclub.
There are nightclubs, and then there are nightclubs, and then, finally at the furthest end of the spectrum, there are nightclubs. Some are about the music, some about the dance; some are about the sofas where the various genders huddle in darkness with bottles of fake champagne or jugs of lurid fluorescent cocktails, hoping other genders will notice them and their empty glasses; some are about specialists’ tastes—the music of only the 1980s, the lights of the disco period, men looking for men, women looking for women, men looking for women who are looking for women who are looking for men looking for men—and those who were looking for all of the above in various shades of ultraviolet paint. Some were tribal places, clubs for Goths dressed all in black, faces made up vampire-white and drinks with names like Virgin Blood or Fiery Nights all mixed on a theme of tomato juice, ethyl alcohol and not much else; or clubs for teenagers just discovering that there is a place known as
after
the pub, where the drinks come in goldfish bowls with five straws and a paper umbrella, and the music was acoustic guitar meets electric bass, and the waiters behind the bars juggled their bottles before going in for the serving kill.
In every club across the land, the atmosphere infects the magic, twisting the nature of the spells performed inside them. Here, it was like walking into a gunpowder factory flooded with paraffin and left under a hot sun and a giant lens. The taste of magic was palpable on the first step down from the silver door. As I ducked past the cloakroom before any questions were asked and through a second door into the pounding darkness of the interior, I smelt cantrips flaring and dying in the dark.
The music was, as music is in these circumstances, a pounding anonymity of bass beats and crunching guitar. The bar was lit up vivid blue inclining to purple; lights inside the glass counter revealed glasses of every shape and size, and bottles were hung upside down ready to be tapped for any combination of drink you could imagine. The waiters wore black, and bopped along to a beat that we could not detect in the cacophony of sound. There was a dance floor, distinguishable by the weight of bodies pressed together beneath a rack of speakers, and flashing strobes that gave the dancers a strange out-of-phase look. It was the dance of don’t-you-wish-it-was-sex, hands overhead so that maximum attention could be focused on the midriff. House style for women was tiny dresses that clung to every curve like tin to sardines; men were in
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