Adam was taking her out in the Twilight Realm tonight – the City of Julis rather than Paris.
The motorcycle’s headlight was bright in the forested darkness as they roared around turn after turn. Layla heard a waterfall as they took a tight hairpin turn, heading down into a ravine she was certain didn’t exist in the human world, before they roared up the other side. A vehicle approached but as the headlights passed, Layla’s eyes widened to see it was some kind of mechanized brass and copper carriage with arching brass lamps and a shockingly purple velour interior. It galloped with eight legs like a spider-horse, passing with a jingle of bronze bells. Layla was still blinking, astounded, as a very normal-looking yellow Ferrari zoomed past next. And then Adam roared the bike up another slope and around a bend – giving a broad view over a wide valley surrounded by jagged cliffs.
A city sprawled through the valley, in the same place Paris would have occupied, but it was unlike any Paris Layla had ever seen. There was a broad river like the Seine but it curved through the land differently, and all around the city’s margin wasn’t the sprawl of suburbia but the darkness of a forest, glowing under a high sickle moon and a wide sky of autumnal stars. The lights along the avenues were of every hue, and as they zoomed down from their vantage, wrought-iron Gothic lampposts began along both sides of the road.
Swirling with lights like fireflies, every lamppost featured a snarling gryphon or dragon or mythical creature coiled around the base. Another odd carriage approached, a double-decker clockwork Gypsy caravan. Layla gaped as it passed, pulled by eight massive lions, each with enormous leathery wings tucked tight to their backs as they pulled in their traces. The lions snarled as Adam passed and one swiped out at the bike, which he dodged with a fast maneuver. As they zoomed by, Layla saw scorpion tails whipping behind them, and she heard Adam shout back through the wind.
“I fucking hate manticores! Worse than potholes!”
But as they raced along a watercourse into the city, the isolation suddenly broke to houses and sidewalks. The City of Julis was like a city time had forgotten, antique and fantastical. Similar to Paris in the Victorian era, Gothic mansions stood side-by-side with Victorian row-houses and French Baroque chateaus. Shops and restaurants of stone lined the streets with wide plazas surrounded by cathedrals even more gargantuan than Notre Dame. Everything was wrought-iron, gilded, and cobblestoned, and they zoomed past all manner of vehicles on the evening avenue; from horse-and-carriage, to Teslas, to huge-wheeled bicycles.
Turning down a side street, they headed through a Gothic neighborhood past a wooded park and into a gayly colorful quarter. Wrought-iron and brick apartments crowded close, bars were packed with evening revelers spilling out onto the streets. Wineshops were bursting with song and music on every corner. Many people looked human, but Layla also saw bird-men and cat-people, Satyrs and Phoenix out and about, even a group of Faunus laughing with smoke rising from their nostrils as they stumbled from a bawdy hookah bar.
The dress in Julis was no less astounding than its vehicles. Layla saw everything from Victorian corseted frocks to 1700’s couture with white-curled wigs, to waistcoats and trousers straight out of the movie Newsies. Modern fashions looked like they’d been curated from the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and Layla suddenly realized where the Hotel’s Head Clothier got her gregarious designs. Dressing like Cirque du Soleil met Victorian steampunk was the norm, and as Adam pulled up before a lively bar on the corner of a broad cobblestoned plaza strung with multi-colored lights, a feisty gypsy-band playing within, Layla felt out-of-place in her cream cocktail dress and burgundy heels.
As they slung off the bike and Adam reached out to take her helmet, he gave her a rapacious grin. “Welcome to the City of Julis, Layla Price. What say you?”
“I say wow.” Layla stared around like a drunk person. If she’d thought the vibrance of the Hotel had inundated her when she’d first arrived in the Twilight Realm, it was quadruply so here. The air was super-saturated with fragrance; music broke upon her ears from every street. The lights were so bright they seemed like rose-crystal flooded with starlight. The bar before her glowed with warmth, people laughing as they spilled out to wrought-iron balconies and a sprawling porch. They smoked pipes in the potted greenery, hookahs, and cigarettes. They drank red wine, cocktails, and moon-silversileth-wine. They clapped as musicians finished their lively tune through the open windows, they stomped cloven hooves, they rubbed fingers together producing a chirring sound like grasshoppers.
It was a wonderful cacophony of sound and motion and color – and Layla felt instantly at home, like she once had in the vibrant Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
With a bow, Adam motioned her up the steps of the bar and past the crowded front porch, then in through the open wrought-iron doors. The space was so packed they had to push their way inside, turning sideways to squeeze up to the long mahogany bar. Shining beneath bright Tiffany lamps and crystal chandeliers, the bar was welcoming, with stout padded booths of crimson leather lining the walls and a rickety Victorian staircase leading up to the second level.
The musicians were taking a break, settling their gypsy-band instruments near a roaring river-stone fireplace. Gothic and Victorian mirrors threw the light, making the bar seem enormous though it was actually cozy. Fortunately, a couple vacated their leather-padded barstools just as Layla and Adam pushed in. Sliding up to a seat, Layla grinned at the beautiful melee as a handsome bartender noticed them, and beamed as he recognized Adam.
“Adam Rhakvir, be still my beating heart!” The tall bartender laughed as he came over, in a bright baritone that made Layla feel instantly happy. He wore a charcoal waistcoat and a black collared shirt, his sleeves rolled to his elbows with charcoal trousers. A white bar-towel was slung over one shoulder, sleek black curls pulled back from his face in a stylish man-bun. Black stubble graced his chin, his lean good looks and high cheekbones as stunning as any Courtier of the Hotel. Dark eyes the color of coffee laughed to see them, and Layla instantly adored him.
“Jessup Rohalle! Thought you might be working tonight!” Adam extended a hand and they clasped wrists like old friends.
“Marnet’s got me working every night this week until Samhain on the thirty-first – Rollows Eve, you know. I’m never free of that old goat this time of year!” Jessup laughed with an infectious good humor.
“I heard that, you miscreant!” A booming male voice yelled from around a wooden doorway that led back to steaming kitchens. “Rollows is our most important night of the year! I need you here, working!”
“I meant for you to hear!” Jessup yelled back over his shoulder in the way of family. “I need a day off! You can’t just work me to death, old man.”
“When you’re dead,thenyou get a day off! Until then – work!”
Jessup laughed, clearly on good terms with whomever was in the back cooking. He chuckled, then tossed out two coasters before Layla and Adam, decorated with a laughing jester. “So what’ll it be, Adam? You two in town for Rollows?”
“Rollows?” Layla glanced at Adam, her eyebrows lifted in question.
“It’s like Mardi Gras, but twenty times more decadent. It’s a saint’s day here in the City of Julis, something they celebrate rather than Halloween or Samhain.” Adam grinned at her, then looked back to Jessup. “No, we’re just here for the night, for dinner. And make sure Marnet doesn’t spit in it, will you?”
“I heard that, Adam Rhakvir, you little dog!” Rounding the ingress to the kitchen came a man just as fat as he was tall, not sloppy but burly with serious muscle. His pate was shining bald on top with short dark curls around the outside, his black mustachios curled up with wax. He chuckled heartily, his black eyes glittering as he wiped enormous, filthy hands on his equally filthy white apron. Roaring laughter, he extended a hand to Adam and they shook before the man spied Layla.
“Well!” He boomed over the bustle of the bar. “And who’s this?”
“Layla Price.” She stuck a hand out without waiting to be introduced. “I’m a friend of Adam’s.”
“Afriend, eh?Enchanté!” The man grinned at her lecherously, taking her hand in his enormous one and pressing it with a kiss. “I am Marnet Lousoutte, the owner of this fine establishment! Anything you need, beautifulmademoiselle, you have just to yell it through the thick skull of my nephew Jessup here, and he’ll mess it up at least six times before I fix it!”
“I heard that.” Jessup crossed his arms, grinning in a pleasant way as he leaned a hip against the bar.
“I meant for you to hear, miscreant.” Marnet gave his nephew a teasing grin. “In any case, good to see you Adam, and Adam’s Hotel Courtesan for the evening. The kitchen is busy tonight and mypot-du-vinwon’t wait! Do excuse me.”
With that, the big man bustled back to the kitchen. Layla blinked, turning beet-red as a flavor of scorched bourbon lifted from her skin. “He thinks I’m a Hotel Courtesan?” She looked to the bartender. “Will you please tell him I’m not?”
“Could have fooled me. You’re lovely enough to be one.” Jessup’s dark gaze was sexily deviant as he poured them a pair of waters from a copper pitcher.
