Wrong Destination

Getting to the Rock of Eternity was easy enough. Mary just had to walk through a door; they still hadn’t figured out a solid system for getting back out. Most of the time she and her family just had to wait for Billy to come back and do his visualisation trick.

And while waiting for him to be done with any heroics that had him distracted, they wandered the seemingly endless place.

She wasn’t even sure if that teleportation was just something Billy could do, or if it was a property of this place. The Rock didn’t seem to have normal doors.

Then again, what had Billy said the Wizard called this place? The heart of all magic, something like that. If this place was so magical then surely it couldn’t just be Billy who knew how to get out.

Mary stopped, closed her eyes, and thought.

Billy said it was just by thinking. Hold the image of the place in her mind, try to focus on where she wanted to go. Her room would be ideal. Billy had said he’d first ended up on the subway car, but when he’d rescued them the first time he’d gotten distracted and taken them to…

Oh no.

The oppressive silence of the Rock of Eternity faded, and Mary knew with a sudden sinking feeling that she’d managed to teleport. She didn’t need to open her eyes to know where; the loud music told her that much. The same fucking strip club Billy had dropped them into before.

She really needed to have a word with him about that, she reflected. Why did it have to be here of all places?

“Hey! Hey, girl!”

She opened her eyes, instantly assaulted by the image of indecent costumes adorning a handful of women on the stage, on top of all the men watching. She took an instant step back.

A hand grabbed her shoulder. She jumped away.

“About time you got here, you’re on in five.”

She turned around to see an older man looking down at her. Mary’s eyes widened.

“What? No, I’m not-”

“Save it, you’re obviously not here to watch,” he said. “Only one reason we tend to get girls in here. Can’t afford cold feet at the last second.”

“Hey, no, I swear-”

He bundled her through a nearby door to a closed off area. A line of slightly tatty, easily removed costumes lay up along the side. There was a curtain rail obviously meant to serve as an impromptu changing room, only the curtain was torn and hanging uselessly by a single ring.

He pulled her closer. Mary tried to tug her arm away.

No way. He couldn’t be serious.

“Stop!” she shouted.

“Look, I really don’t care why you want to back out,” he said. “We’ve been having a tough enough time since captain fucking sparklefingers shot a lightning bolt through our roof a whole back, half our girls left, I’m not letting someone as cute as you go to waste. Pick your costume, get out there, strip.”

“I’m not a stripper!” Mary said, indignant.

“Save it,” he said. “I don’t care if you want to call yourself a stripper, exotic dancer, a motherfucking ecdysiast, but there’s no way this story ends with anything short of you getting out there, on stage, and taking your clothes off. So what are you waiting for?”