"And I'm Poison," a girl in a tight black-and-red-striped rayon dress snapped, grabbing Primus's hand away.
The crowd continued moving forward. Primus and Poison showed their IDs and disappeared inside.
A bouncer in a Nosferatu T-shirt scrutinized me, blocking the black, wooden coffin-shaped door.
I held my card proudly. But when the devilish-looking bouncer started studying it, my confidence waned and my heart began to pound.
"This looks like it was taken yesterday."
"Well, it wasn't," I said with a sneer. "It was taken today."
The bouncer cracked a smile, then laughed. "I haven't seen you here before."
"Don't you remember me from last time? I was the girl in black."
The bouncer laughed again. He stamped my hand with an image of a bat and wrapped a barbed-wire-shaped plastic bracelet around my left wrist. "Here alone?" he asked.
"I'm hoping to meet a friend. An older dude, bald with a gray cloak. He was here recently. Have you seen him?"
The bouncer shrugged. "I only remember the girls," he said with a smile. "But, if he doesn't show, I'm off just before sunrise," he added, letting me pass and opening the coffin door.
I stepped through and entered a dark, crowded, smoke-filled, head-banging Underworld. I had to pause to let my eyes adjust.
Dry-ice fog floated over the clubsters like tiny ghosts. The cement walls were spray-painted black, with flashing neon headstones. Pale mannequins with huge bat wings hung from the ceiling, some bound in leather, others in Victorian suits or antique dresses. The bathroom doors were shaped like giant tombstones; one read MONSTERS and the other ghouls. Spiderwebs clung to the bottles behind the bar. A sign underneath a broken clock read NO garlic. Next to the dance floor a mini gothic flea market was set up on folding tables. A vampire clubster could buy anything from fake teeth to body tattoos and tarot card readings. A balcony loomed above the dance floor, accessible by a spiral staircase. Clubsters, with blood-filled amulets dangling from their necks and grimacing vampire teeth, seemed to be a mix of harmless outcast goths and maybe a few truly deranged. But if I had to bank that there were real vampires in this part of the world, some had to be mixing it up here, where they could walk hidden among the masses. The thrashing music of Nightshade blasted from the speakers. I could feel the stares as I walked by. Instead of the usual glares I was used to enduring whether walking down the halls of Dullsville High or sauntering past Prada-bes milling about town, I felt self-conscious for a different reason—I was being checked out. Hot Goths, Gorgeous Goths, even Geeky Goths were eyeing me as if I were a gothic Paris Hilton catwalking down a medieval runway. Even girls, sporting shrunken T-shirts that read SIN or pretentiously exposed their concave, multipierced bellies, scrutinized me territorially, as if threatened by any other single female with black eye shadow in a tight black dress. I fingered my raven-colored hair nervously, trying to be careful whom I made eye contact with. Were they real vampires smelling the scent of a mortal? Or just goths looking for a ghoul?
I pushed my way to the bar, where a longhaired bartender wearing lipstick and eye shadow was pouring red liquor into a martini glass.
"What can I get for you?" he asked. "Blood beer or an Execution?"
"I'd like an Execution, but make it a virgin," I replied with confidence. "I'm driving. Or should I say flying."
The grim bartender broke into a smile. He took two pewter bottles off the shelf and poured them into an iron-maiden-shaped glass.
"That'll be nine dollars."
"Can I keep the glass?" I asked. I sounded like an excited kid at an amusement park instead of an underage teen trying to be cool at a bar.
I handed him a ten. "Keep the change," I said proudly, like I'd seen my dad do a thousand times. I wasn't even sure I was leaving a proper tip.
I took a sip of the red slush, which tasted like tomato juice.
"Was a bald man wearing a dark cloak here the other night?" I asked, shouting over the blaring music. "He made a phone call from the club."
"That guy's here every night."
I smiled eagerly. "Really?"
"And at least fifty guys just like him," he answered loudly.
I turned around. He was right. There were as many shaved heads as there were spiked ones.
"He has creepy-looking eyes and a Romanian accent," I added.
"Oh, that dude?" he asked, pointing to a skinny, bald man with a gray cloak, talking to a girl in a Wednesday Addams dress in the corner.
"Thanks!"
I quickly pushed my way through the crowd.
"Jameson!" I shouted, tapping him on the shoulder. "It's me!"
He turned around. But instead of actually being a senior citizen, he just looked like one. I fled before he could ask me to bond with him for eternity.
I scooted by the gothic marketplace, not having time to stop and purchase pewter, crystal, or silver amulets or have my tarot cards read.
But when I passed the last booth, a palm reader grabbed my hand. "You are looking for love," she said.
A single girl in a club looking for love? What were the odds of that?
"Well, where is he?" I challenged, shouting over the blaring music.
"He's closer than you think," she answered mysteriously.
I glanced around the packed club. "Where?" I hollered.
The reader said nothing.
I slipped a couple of dollars into her palm. "Which direction?" I asked loudly.
She looked into my eyes. "East."
"The bar?"
"You must look in here," she said, and pointed with her other hand to her heart.
"I don't need pithy sayings. I need a map!" I chided, and continued to make my way through the crowd.
I stopped at the DJ booth.
"Did you see a bald man here recently?" I asked the DJ, who was dressed in a white lab coat with fake blood splattered on it.
"Who?"
"Did you see a bald man here last weekend?" I repeated.
He shrugged his shoulders.