Tara Kingsley was insane. Not in a scary, stabby way, but in a ‘holy smokes she will
not turn down a dare no matter how crazy it is’ way. Sometimes Gianna wished she was more like Tara, then she’d fit in with her siblings better. They were all
cool and
brave and
daring, while she was still the baby who hid under the covers when the (unwashed) kettle in the sink got knocked over by
gravity. Blech.
If she couldn’t actually be Tara then knowing her was the next best thing, because she was the only girl Gianna knew who had access to a place like Grimli. Or maybe Nessa did, but she’d never in a million years ask her sister. All her siblings were too over-protective for their own good, and she’d rather not go through having Ness interrogate her about how exactly she got to know Grimli, thank you very much. The answer was simple and laughingly obvious. How else had she known where mummy hid her ‘happy juice’ when their dad got a bit hard to deal with? And how would she have known where to punch Jimmy where it hurt when they were just five years old? In a word: Torr.
He didn’t have to
tell her these things. No, nothing so elementary, she thought, not without a hint of pride as she wrestled herself into a
dark outfit underneath a simple black robe. Being Torr and Ness’ sister meant that she just sort of learned how to pick these things up as she grew older, whether they knew it or not. And Torr definitely didn’t need to know that his “baby sister” would be showing up at Grimli tonight.
She was curious, alright?! She had been ever since she woke up in her brother’s apartment (in shame) after sleeping off the after effects of Bliss, and saw that crumpled bit of paper in a forgotten corner with ‘Grimli’ and a date and time scribbled on it. Gia knew she wasn’t supposed to snoop around her brother’s place while he was sleeping, but asking her not to snoop was like asking her not to
breathe. Besides, she wasn’t stupid; despite Tara keeping her lips tightly shut about it (damn her) and Torr’s general elusiveness, she just had this hunch that the supposed bookstore had something… darker going on behind the scenes.
With a ‘crack’, Gia apparated, catching her balance and she slowly spun into control on the grubby cobblestone streets of Knockturn Alley. She shivered and pulled the hood of her robe closer around her face. No matter how many times she came here she’d never be able to shake the feeling of how creepy everything seemed after dark. “Keep your tentacles to yourself little man, I’m not interested.” The slightly toad-like figure who was about to approach her adopted a vague look in his muddy, opaque eyes, as if surprised that Gianna wasn’t as scared and lost as she ought to be. The twenty-two-year-old rolled her eyes and brushed past him quickly, focused on getting into Grimli before she woke up to find one of her kidneys missing.
The bookstore front of Grimli was unassuming, and fitting, she supposed. It was all boring and grey like the rest of the buildings, but it was the inside she was more interested in. “Ok focus. What did Tara say? Oh yeah, fireplace for spectators, but I’d really want the bookshelf to the left… Spectators of what exactly?” She muttered to herself as she played with her hair self-consciously; she didn’t want to be remembered as that one weird customer who whispered things like ‘scallywag’ to bookshelves. She jumped back a little when said bookshelf melted away to reveal a hidden staircase. There were a few other people milling around in the small shop, but none of them seemed surprised.
“Are we gonna pretend this is normal?” She gestured to the staircase that led to god-knows-where to no one in particular, grimacing to herself when she was ignored (unsurprising; these people looked like they didn’t get out much). “I guess we are. Ok then.” Awkwardly, she shuffled down the stairs, where the sounds of muffled shouts where getting clearer. Good Lord, what could Torr be getting up to in a place like this? Did anyone else know about this? Did Tara know her brother? All these questions were swimming in her head when she was practically
blinded by a particularly bright light.
Once she regained her bearings, she found herself looking at some sort of stage. Two guys were having a go at each other, spurred on by the cheering and jeering from the crowd.
Spectators. Blue eyes scanned over the heads of random people, locking on to the familiar figure she came searching for. With a determined ferocity, she started pushing her way through throngs of smelly bodies – seriously, didn’t anyone here understand the concept of personal hygiene? – leaving the shouts of ‘you can’t be here’ in her wake as she stomped over them. “What the
hell, Torr?!”
