12. Unwinding

It was late—or, rather, it was early. Sarah sighed contentedly, melting back into the pockmarked and torn vinyl cushions of the booth as her body hummed in time with the music. She hadn't moved since Shanna had deposited her there…oh…however long ago they'd arrived at The White Room.

The White Room was where they always seemed to wind up at the end of the night. It was a dive bar—a real dive bar, and not some trendy, "hipster hideout." The plaster walls were not artfully chipped away in strategic places to reveal the original brick. They were coated in a layer of Kelly-green paint that was barely visible under the thick layer of nicotine residue and graffiti that preserved it. The bar stools and booths were not minimalist pieces made from old iron pipes or reclaimed wood. The stools were made cheap, riveted metal, rickety and badly stained, and looked like they belonged on a construction site rather than in an establishment where people ate and drank. The booths were ancient constructions of plastic, particle board, and vinyl. The cushions were torn in places and patched with threadbare duct tape. A few of the booths were missing seats entirely, and in their places the owner had placed yellowed, profoundly uncomfortable molded plastic chairs that he had bought at auction decades ago, some kind of strange cross between lawn furniture and something you might find at a school. No two were exactly the same. Despite the name, Sarah did not think that there was anything white in the entire building, and so far she had not spotted any obvious tributes to or associations with Eric Clapton either.

It mostly catered to a dwindling group of grizzled locals, almost entirely men, most of whom had grown up in the surrounding neighborhoods. Far from going out of its way to try to attract new customers, most of the bartenders were openly hostile to anyone they didn't recognize. Sarah and her friends were grudgingly tolerated because John's father had been a regular before he died, and most of the older men there had known him.

It was not a popular bar, even during peak hours—and therein lay the attraction. This late at night, they practically had the back of the bar-and the pool table-all to themselves.

Plus the drinks were insanely cheap, and when you were trying to live on a server's pay and save money at the same time, that was not something you could afford to ignore.

It was just the six of them by the pool table: Sarah, mellowing in her booth, while Becca and Erin played against John and Brennan, with Shana standing by nursing a whiskey sour and scrolling through her phone, eyes narrowed in irritation.

Sarah smiled as she settled back against the booth, enjoying the complete lack of pain that came with the movement. This night was exactly what she needed. The last few days had been pretty rough. When she'd awoken a few days ago, the morning after her latest adventure in the Underground, she had been worried that she wouldn't be able to get out of bed. Whatever spell the Goblin King had performed on her must have healed most of the damage—she didn't want to think about what the bargain's curse must have been done to her body that night—but it did not leave her completely free of pain. It had taken several minutes of stretching, ibuprofen, and a long, hot shower before she had been able to dress herself. Once she'd gotten up and moving the pain was more manageable, but work, with its constant bending, stretching, and lifting, had been a trial.

And even worse than the pain were the nightmares. She never remembered the details-thank God-but for the last two nights she found herself jolting awake somewhere around 3am, screaming and slapping frantically at her body, trying to put out imaginary flames that she was convinced were consuming her. As if she wasn't already having trouble sleeping. Her landlord had called her earlier today to inform her that her neighbors had complained about the "loud noises" at night, and she'd had to make up a story about night terrors and assure him that she was seeing her doctor about it.

At that thought, she grinned and fingered the little bulge of pills in her pocket, twisted up in the corner of a plastic baggie. She hadn't heard what Becca's friend had called them—it had been very loud at Central, and the exchange had been fast—but he'd promised Sarah that they would "chill her out" and help her sleep. Sarah sighed contentedly as she nestled back into the ancient vinyl. So far, she had no complaints.

And at least her misadventure with the bargain wasn't likely to happen again. She'd completely destroyed Debbie's dreamcatcher almost immediately upon waking up that morning, hacking it into pieces with her tiny, lethal-looking fingernail scissors. She'd taken the pieces with her to work and tossed them into the dumpster behind the café, not even wanting to take the chance of having the pieces anywhere in her apartment.

She'd also spent a long time that morning staring at the charms and amulets that littered the walls of her bedroom, at the increasingly dingy-looking lines of salt that were starting to blur with the lines of sand in her window sills. She'd been given unequivocal, visceral evidence that at least some of these charms were actually capable of doing something. It couldn't just be the dreamcatcher.

So what to do? On the one hand, she was strongly tempted to tear them all down and destroy them, just to be on the safe side. On the other, they hadn't done anything to interfere with the bargain before—and they might actually be doing something, offering her some kind of protection. In the end, she decided that the safest option would be to leave everything as it was. She had no idea what she was doing. It was better not to take any unnecessary risks.

A cry of dismay cut through the background roar of the music and Sarah jumped, her eyes flying open. But it was only John, holding out his arms incredulously and berating a blushing, shamefaced Brennan. A glance at the table told her that Brennan had sunk the cue. Erin was giggling and doing a little triumphant dance as she watched Becca, eyes narrowed in concentration, placing the cue back on the table and lining up her shot with the steady precision she never seemed to lose, no matter how drunk she got.

Sarah closed her eyes and leaned her head back, smirking. This was the first time that Shana had invited Brennan to go out with them. She'd apologized to Sarah about it that afternoon, explaining that John had insisted.

"He says he's sick of being the only guy, and none of his meathead friends can go out during the week," she said, rolling her eyes.

Cleary Shana had her doubts about John's motivations-and Sarah did too. Ever since Brennan's crush on Sarah had become apparent, John had appointed himself the younger man's champion. Sarah honestly did not know what drove him more—his pity for Brennan, or his love of messing with her.

"Aw, throw him a bone Sarah," John had teased her one night. Brennan had been working bar, and he had gotten more and more miserable each time she had picked up a drink order without looking at him. "Our boy's in love!" The one and only time Sarah had ever been written up was for what Randy had overheard her say to John in reply.

"I made him swear that he's not planning anything," Shana continued. "What do you think? It's completely up to you. Say the word and I'll tell him to fuck off; we could have a girls' night instead."

But honestly, with everything that had been happening lately, Brennan barely even registered. She'd been far more concerned with whether or not Becca's friend would come through that night with the pills. "It's fine," she'd told Shana, shrugging as she hefted her drink tray. "I don't care. He's harmless."

Sarah opened her eyes again, curious to see what had become of the game—but the pool table had been abandoned. John was now busy orchestrating what looked like a jousting match between Becca and Erin using their pool cues and a couple of little square scooters they had found, the kind used for moving furniture. Sarah could see a pile of them in a back corner, near several precariously high stacks of plastic chairs. Shana was standing off to the side, reluctantly playing lookout, alternating between laughter and anxious scolding. Brennan was next to her, grinning—and, to Sarah's surprise, seemed to be calling out advice to Erin, who was giggling so hard that she couldn't hold her cue straight. Sarah didn't think she'd ever seen him look so animated—at work he was practically mute, speaking only when absolutely necessary and sometimes not even then.

In the beginning it had been funny, Brennan's crush on her. It was something for Shana and John to tease her about when Sarah snuck away for a few minutes to join them on their smoke breaks. She'd even joked with them that she would go out with him for a few dates-if he ever worked up the nerve to ask her. He was younger than her, only a few years out of high school, but he was cute in a shuffling, gangly sort of way. Just a few dates—enough time to smooth out a few of those rough spots, teach the boy to stand up straight when he walked, how to dress himself without making himself look like scarecrow, boost his confidence a bit, and then Shana could set him up with one of her dozen cousins or maybe one of the younger waitresses at the café.

But weeks went by and Brennan never made a move. He was, if anything, even more awkward around her than he had been when he was first hired. Sarah was at a loss as to what to do about it. Brennan's distant pining was something she'd never experienced before. She'd never had a problem telling guys when she wasn't interested, but, well—he hadn't expressed an interest in her, exactly. How was she supposed to initiate that conversation? It seemed pretty arrogant to walk up to somebody and tell them that it was obvious that they were into you, but it wasn't happening. Besides, he was so pathetic. One night, when she was cranky after staying up late the night before for an audition, she'd gotten fed up with finding his eyes on her every time she looked up and she had snapped at him. He had flushed beet red, muttered something apologetic at his shoes and didn't say a word to anyone else for the rest of his shift. She'd felt like she'd kicked a puppy.

More than a month had gone by like this before Shana had pulled her aside and told Sarah that she needed to do something about it.

"It's getting out of hand," Shana said. "When you two are on the floor together he gets so spacy that even the customers notice. Last Tuesday someone sent the same drink back three times. They had to comp the whole ticket. Randy blew a gasket—I thought he was going to deck him."

"So?" Sarah had asked, irritated at what she was pretty sure Shana was implying. "That's his problem."

Shana took an impatient pull on her cigarette and exhaled. "It's everyone's problem. Pissy customers don't tip, and Randy's not going to fire anyone until inventory's over—not when we're already shorthanded. Look, no one's saying this is your fault—"

"They better not be!"

"But," Shana stressed. "You are the only one left who might be able to do something about it." She took another drag. "I couldn't get one word out of him, and you know Debbie's tried; I asked John to talk to him, you know, man-to-man or whatever, but he just told him a bunch of weird bullshit about 'how women think.' I think he made it worse."

"So what do you want me to do?"

Shana waved her cigarette in a noncommittal gesture. "I just think you should wait for a slow night, corner him, and have it out. Call him out for staring, make him tell you how he feels, I don't know—clear the air." She looked at Sarah pointedly. "Try to get it over with before inventory—Randy's going to be insufferable enough as is."

Grudgingly, she had agreed to try. But a few nights later her teenage nightmares had become a reality, and after what she had gone through "The Brennan Problem" did not rank very high on her list of priorities.

A loud crash startled Sarah halfway out of her seat. Her eyes flew open, and she was certain the sagging ceiling must have finally caved in. But no—Brennan, who must have joined in on the jousting while she was zoning out, was scrambling up off the floor, bent over laughing and still holding a pool cue, and moving towards John, who had apparently crashed into one of the several precarious stacks of old plastic chairs stored along the back wall. Pieces of chairs were strewn all around the floor around him; a few had shattered into tiny pieces like glass, the plastic grown so brittle with age that it had not been able to survive the impact. Sarah snorted with laughter, then clapped her hands over mouth, giggling helplessly.

There was a commotion at the bar, and she turned. Uh oh. While she could not hear the bartender's shouts over the music and her friends' laughter, his face was very red. Several of the regulars were also yelling in their direction, and the ones who weren't were snickering.

She saw Shana giving her the hairy eyeball as she grabbed John and tried to drag him up off the floor; Erin and Becca were already headed for the back door. Well, time to go home. She was starting to sober up anyway. She peeled herself off the booth and quickly fell in behind her friends, snagging what was left of Shana's drink and downing it as they all hustled out.

"I can't believe you Brennan!" Shanna huffed as they stumbled out into the alley. "The one night I invite you out."

"Don't listen to her dude," John wheezed, clutching his sides, "Oh man, that was epic. I think I broke a rib!"

Erin and Becca were clutching each other and giggling.

"I'm sorry," Brennan said, somehow managing to sound genuinely apologetic while laughing.

"It's not like it was your idea," Sarah said serenely. She might be sobering up, but she still felt pretty damn good. She reached into her pocket and hefted the small baggie there for reassurance. More than enough to get her through to next weekend. She could have one of them every night if she wanted and just melt off to sleep without a care.

"Oh, that's great," Shanna snapped. She was rummaging through her purse as they came out onto the street. "Choose this moment to take his side." She sighed in disgust. "Goddamn it, I left my cigs in there."

Becca and Erin were already leaving, waving careless goodbyes as they set off down the street towards their apartment.

"Don't worry baby," John said, sidling up to Shana. "I'll get you another pack. Gas station's still open."

"Whatever." Shanna flicked her eyes over to Sarah. "I'm gonna take off—you ok?"

"Yeah," Sarah said, in that same serene voice. "Don't worry about me, Shana-banana. I'm fine."

Shana hesitated. "We should walk back with you," she said uncertainly.

John tugged at her arm. "Naw, babe. Sarah's fine—and she's not by herself. Brennan will make sure she gets home ok." He made what he probably thought was a surreptitious thumbs up at Brennan.

Sarah and Brennan looked at each other quickly—he lowered his eyes and shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

Yesterday she would have balked at the thought. But tonight he had seemed different-more like an a regular guy with a personality than just a scared little boy. Besides, she knew all she needed to do was scowl in his direction and he would immediately come up with some flimsy, stuttering excuse to leave—or just disappear without saying anything.

"Yeah," she told Shanna. "Brennan and I will walk home together. I'll be fine." Maybe it was time for them to have that talk.

Shana still looked doubtful, but she allowed John to pull her along down the street.

"Text if you need anything," she called.

Sarah waved in acknowledgement. Then, without turning to see if Brennan followed her or not, she set off down the street towards her apartment.

They were on the edge of the trendy part of downtown, a solid thirty-minute walk away from her apartment. They walked the whole way in silence, the two of them hunched over against the sharp bite of the early autumn morning. To her surprise, Sarah did not find it all awkward. While a quick glance at Brennan's face revealed that he was likely engaged in a tortuous internal debate about what, if anything, to say to her, she knew that he expected nothing of her. There was no need to be on her guard, to watch his face, weigh the level of anger in his voice and quickly calculate what she should do or say next. She could relax. He was so wrapped up in his own uncertainty that whatever she did, whatever she said, he would accept it as the unquestionably correct thing to do or say in that moment.

The feeling of power that knowledge gave her was intoxicating.

When they reached the enormous, ancient house that was her apartment building, instead of talking with him out on the stoop she held the door open for him on an impulse. He looked at her, so transparently surprised that she almost lost her nerve and told him to take a hike.

She led him up the old, creaky stairs and down the narrow hallway to her apartment, one of six within the massive old house, and stood there, facing him. The air was full of the peculiarly present quiet of the early morning; in the dingy hallway the air smelled of dust and the hot metal of the radiators. Sarah knew that she either needed to have "the talk" with him now, or say goodnight. End the poor boy's suffering. But she couldn't seem to find the words. They stood in front of her door for what felt like ages, Brennan's face glued to his shoes.

Finally, he looked up. "Here you are," he said nervously, affecting a casual smile. He made no move to leave.

"Here I am," she echoed faintly. Her buzz was fading, leaving her feeling strangely hollow and insubstantial. Now was the time—whatever she was going to say to him, she needed to say it now.

But still, she couldn't find the words.

"Well," he said finally, with false cheerfulness. "See you at work."

He turned to go, and without thinking, she grabbed the front of his jacket, yanked him back until his body was pressing against hers, raised herself on tip-toes, and kissed him.

It wasn't a shy peck on the lips—it wasn't even a flirtatious good-night kiss. It was thorough, shameless, and—she was still a little drunk—a bit sloppy. At first, Brennan stood there frozen, but after a moment or so he got over the shock and began to kiss her back enthusiastically. He placed his hands on her shoulders, seemed to hesitate, then lightly placed them on her waist, as though he did not really know what to do with them.

When she finally broke for air, both of them were panting. Brennan was looking at her with mingled terror and elation.

She took a deep breath, trying to think of something to say to explain what she had just done, something that would make everything make sense and return the world to its proper state.

"See you at work," she blurted out. She turned quickly to hide her flaming face, unlocked the door to her apartment, and closed it behind her without another word. As she listened to the sound of Brennan's steps walking down the hallway, down the stairs, she dug the baggie of pills out of her pocket, pried open the tight knot, and took two. After a long, hot shower, she climbed into bed and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

She slept soundly—no nightmares—until well past noon; when she finally did wake up, she just barely had time to get herself ready for her evening shift.

"Sorry I ditched you with Brennan," Shanna whispered to her during the dinner rush that night, as they passed each other on the floor. "Hope it wasn't too painful."

Sarah forced a smiled. "Don't worry about it."

"Did you get a chance to talk to him?"

Sarah looked over Shana's shoulder towards the bar, where Brennan was filling pint glasses with a small, stupid grin on his face. She considered her options carefully, and decided to go with technical honesty. "I did."

Shana looked back towards the bar just in time to see Brennan almost drop someone's drink as he was handing it off, spilling about a third of it on the counter—but instead of panicking and breaking into a litany of frantic apologies, he only shook his head, laughed, and refilled the glass. Sarah couldn't hear what Brennan said to the customer as he handed the man his drink, but the guy was chuckling as he returned to his booth.

Shana turned to Sarah, her eyebrows raised. "Damn. Good job," she said, before bustling of to one of her tables with her full tray of drinks.

As Shana was leaving, Brennan looked up from the bar where he was wiping up the beer he had spilled and caught Sarah's eye. Hesitantly, he smiled. Sarah froze.

A loud crash from the kitchen made them both jump—it sounded like someone had dropped a tray of dishes. While Brennan's attention was distracted, she quickly turned away and headed for the kitchen to check on her orders.

The realization didn't hit her until she got home. As she blundered through the door, sore and aching and impossibly tired despite sleeping nearly the whole day before her shift, it struck her that her three days were up and tonight was the night that the Goblin King would come for her again. She shut the door behind her and leaned back against it, closing her eyes and fighting tears of exhaustion.

What was she going to do?

She lurched towards her bedroom. She couldn't think right now—she needed something to clear her head.

She grabbed the bottle on her nightstand and took a long, hard pull, gasped for breath, then took another. Sitting down heavily on her bed, she leaned against the wall, relishing the way the liquor burned all the way down her throat to her stomach.

She hadn't eaten much that day, and almost immediately she felt the familiar rush of relief spread through her body, making her skin tingle. Sighing, she slumped against the wall.

Ok. So this wasn't great. Not even a little bit. But she could handle it. She took one deep breath, then another, repeating those words over and over until the fog hanging over her mind began to lift.

What was she going to do? Well, if she was honest with herself, there didn't seem to be much she could do. There was no puzzle for her to solve, no one to befriend who could help her. This wasn't something she was going to fix through sheer stubbornness, the way she was propelling her fledgling acting career. So, what else was there?

She took a thoughtful sip from the bottle, just enough to feel the burn in her throat again, and considered.

There had to be something. He couldn't be holding all the cards. If he was, she would be down there right now, in his bedroom or on his arm, a mindless sycophant addled by one of his crystals, hanging adoringly on his every word, or whatever his sick fantasy for her entailed. She wasn't, and that meant that there had to be something down there that was on her side. Some rule, some force, maybe even someone must be holding him in check. And if there was, that meant—she hoped—that there was a way out. A way out of the bargain, a way to protect herself from him, maybe even a way to take him down.

She shuddered at the thought, taking another sip from the bottle. So, back to the original question: what was she going to do? Sarah tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling, her forehead creasing in frustration. She didn't have a clue.

And that was it. She sat up. Of course she didn't know what to do. She didn't know anything—or she didn't know enough. She needed information—and the only place she was going to get it was from the Goblin King himself.

She remembered everything she had managed to get out of him last time, in the fifteen or so minutes of conversation they'd had before it had all gone south. She'd learned more about the Underground in those fifteen minutes than she had during all the rest of her time there combined.

That was what she had to do—keep pumping him for information. How?

Immediately she dismissed the thought of seducing him. Not only did the prospect make her skin crawl, but he wasn't an idiot. It was pretty unlikely that he would buy her jumping his bones out of nowhere when she had spent the last three visits alternating between crying and reaming him out.

She would have to hope that it would be enough for her to be…nice. Pleasant, he would probably say—hell, he had outright told her that that was what he wanted. So that's what she would do. She would ignore the fact that he was basically kidnapping her at least twice a week, forget about his violent outbursts, tolerate his titanic sense of entitlement and his patronizing solicitude. She would be his friend, and, in the friendliest manner possible, pump him for every scrap of information she could wring out of him.

She would try, at least.

Could she do it? She didn't know. Despite being an actress, she had never been very good at lying. It just wasn't the same. Growing up, she'd barely been capable of fooling her father—and despite being a successful personal injury attorney, he had been hopelessly naïve when it came to his daughter. She'd never been able to pull one over on her step-mother. Karen could always tell. She would give Sarah a look, a long, piercing stare, looking as though she was peering up at her over a pair of imaginary glasses, and say, "Alright Sarah. If you say so," and Sarah's façade would crumble, and she would lose all heart to follow through on her schemes.

Her "Intro to Theater" professor had called acting "the art of living truthfully under imaginary circumstances." That had stuck with her, because it seemed to explain why it was all different when she was on stage. She wasn't lying—she just became a different person. When she was off stage, she didn't know how to be anyone other than herself.

Well, she was going to have to try. She narrowed her eyes. Surely if she could get through that insufferable shampoo commercial last year—which had never even aired!—she could handle this. She needed to create a character, that was all. Someone who was just like her, but with a much flimsier backbone. And maybe selective amnesia.

She took one last, long gulp from the bottle. At this rate she would almost certainly still be drunk when she arrived Underground, but right now it was hard to see the downside in that. She took another nip for good measure before closing the bottle and heaving herself up off her bed and stumbling to the bathroom. She needed a long, scalding hot shower.

Before she went to sleep, she grabbed a legal pad from her desk and jotted down everything she could still remember about her previous conversation with the Goblin King. She ripped off the pages and tucked them in the drawer where she had put her description of the bargain and its conditions.

When it was done, she combed her long, damp hair back into a low ponytail and dressed herself in jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers instead of pajamas, and told herself as she climbed into bed that she was ready for anything.