There was a mugginess in the air, thick and choking. If you were in the business of being funny, you could say it was a ‘fun’ compliment to the overbearing sun Canterlot was enduring as of late. Records had been shattered, ground to dust, then finally swept into an orderly pile for disposal at city hall. Global warming doing what years of efficiency drives had failed at. The miserable skin-slick heat chiselled at nerves though, while wrapping thin, greedy fingers around the unwary’s hearts. This weather’s a killer. Adagio Dazzle knows that though. She’s already walked past two corpses in the last week.
Saying Bucephalus Street was a bad part of Canterlot would be an understatement bordering on fantasy. While its inhabitants would brusquely declare it had "character", they forgot to mention the character was a violent wastrel from several turn-of the-century cautionary tales. Its streets were cracked, buildings tired, and the few businesses residing there were desperate at best or criminal fronts at worst.
Perfect place then for a former-siren to work.
Hate was an incredibly specific word for Adagio. She’d fed on it, supped greedily at its bounty during many long dark nights of the soul, and even used it to drag her wounded carcass through mounds of Neighpolionic corpses. It was a familiar darkness. Yet that, like much in her life, was gone forever now. A shrink might say this was a good thing. She’d disagree. It was better to feel something, anything, than this…hollowness.
The old Adagio wouldn’t tolerate the roving scum leering, wolf whistles on their lips and greedy eyes devouring her already sweat-drenched body. While the black miniskirt and crop top were cheap and nasty looking, this was a cheap and nasty place. Better to fit in as a possible mate than stand out as prey. Sequins? Power suits? Anything even slightly expensive was blood in the water.
She’d seen a man stabbed for his watch once. The thing didn’t even work.
No, the old Adagio wouldn't have put up with this, any of it. But she was dead and buried, her grave a mediocre amphitheatre in a middling city. She’d suffer little complaint from that spectre.
There’d been a lot less of it actually, complaining that was. Month three since ‘B-day’ and her sisters were still…processing. Yes, that was a good word for it she decided, black wedges scuffing intermittently on the weed-infested paving slabs, ‘processing’. Everyone did that differently, right? The silence was unusual, though not entirely unwelcome admittedly. Especially considering how often she was exhausted now, but certainly unusual.
Their poor brownstone had long earned itself some peace and quiet after putting up with thirty-odd years of antics.
Thoughts of her home were summarily banished, however, a wretched destination now in sight. It was eight-forty-five and, if everything went well, she’d have enough time for a quick coffee before the doors opened. ‘Went well’ meant being able to summon up enough energy for that sunspawn she called a boss. While her status as an emotovore had been firmly relinquished, it didn’t take magic to tell when someone hated her guts. Hated her in a way that made Adagio’s empty self flicker with the briefest spark of envy.
To feel such a thing so strongly? It must have been exquisite.
Forcing a thin smile, the three thousand-year-old siren descended into her daily tartarus: Chop and Change: Unisex Hair Stylist’s.
Money made the world go round.
It was a good saying, had a distinct ring of truth to it, and made a killer song lyric. As their band's chief lyricist, Adagio used to become rather irritated that they’d not come up with it, so much so that she’d taken some rather pretty pictures with the author's husband and mailed them a few days later. It was petty, of course, but she was petty. Or rather, had been. That kind of wanton spite seemed beyond her now. It didn’t change the core message though. She needed scratch to survive in this mixed-up world of talking apes and dumb equines.
The problem was paperwork. They, she and her sisters, that is, were rather lacking in official bits of it. The earliest thing in their collection was a clay tablet, but a copy of their complaints regarding substandard copper just wouldn’t cut it.
Of course, in the bad old days, she’d just make up some story. Adagio had been a countess, an heiress, a war hero, you name it. As time marched on, though, her little family had needed to rely on their pendants with increasing frequency, especially when society started treating them like kids. Aria had run a glassware factory for fuck's sake!
She’d just wrapped her mind around the twentieth century's proclivity for paperwork when everything suddenly became ones and zeroes. Their magic, even hindered and crippled as it was, could do a lot in this world. You needed ears for it to work, though. Computers, Adagio decided in the late eighties, sucked. Now, without even their weakest abilities, they were in limbo. Stuck with a smorgasbord of fake identification, multiple bank accounts in false names, and properties littered across the globe, they couldn't touch a single one without incurring far too much suspicion.
The brownstone was theirs, though, and it was fully paid off. Tragically dead parents were a lifesaver. Adagio Senior couldn’t reach beyond her fictional grave to cover bills, unfortunately, leading to the siren's current predicament.
“Goddess alive Adagio, ya wanna make the cops think this is some kinda whore house?”
It wasn’t the tone, harsh and cutting as it was. Neither was it her physical presence, the fact that she had a few inches on the siren even before the ever-present ankle boots were factored in, never entered her mind. It was something far simpler.
Her boss's name was Ebony Verve, and her skin was grey-orchid.
Adagio wasn’t chromist, everyone could be a potential target and dividing them based on skin colour was asinine. Yet seeing that colour... on a woman towering over her…a woman admonishing her…
The apathy was welcome afterwards.
“It’s hot, I dressed accordingly,” she mumbled, looking anywhere in the tiny back office other than her boss's overwhelming frown. Sweat still coated her skin, despite the building's shoddy AC having long since kicked into life an hour ago when her manager had arrived. Despite the heat and Ebony’s scorn, Adagio still had her coffee. A little cup of joy she could take solace in. Freshly brewed, it was held reverentially in both hands, her customary pale pink fingerless gloves sparing the worst of its freshly boiled heat.
“Accordingly?” Ebony ran a hand through choppy, ink-coloured hair, an exhausted sigh crowning the moment. “Ya look like a slut Dagi. I could take ya picture, put it online and make enough ta get outta this dump in five minutes flat.”
Adagio could almost feel her pupils dilating.
“It isn’t her, it isn’t her.”
“I mean, I ain’t gonna turn down any customers not thinking straight.” Ebony shrugged, her plethora of piercings catching the lightbulb's dim yellow glow, “Just don’t want anyone getting ideas cause you look like some call girl,” she snarled, tugging lightly at her plaid skirt, itself barely longer than Adagios. “My ass ain’t for sale.”
She was there again, and once more felt truly alive. A goddess among lambs, her soul-self soaring free and awaiting the feast of harvested strife. She was both on stage and above stage. In the physical and meta-physical. Alive and dead. It was her ultimate triumph, her…the fluttering of wings snapped aloud and she rose in terror, not the-
Pale fingers snapped fervently in her face, the black polish that adorned them impressively shiny, Adagio could even see a face in their reflection momentarily. It was unfortunately hers, and it wasn’t pretty. That was just the outside though. Inside, her heart felt like it was going to explode, a prickling sensation sweeping over now empty hands.
“Empty?”
Dream-like, she tilted her head down slowly, staring at the shattered porcelain and steaming liquid pooling around her feet. Curiously, the pain seemed absent despite steam lazily rising from her exposed skin, stains leaving angry red marks as mementoes.
“This shit is exactly why I had to call a ringer in!” Ebony said, voice cracking as she stormed out of the room, a bell ringing moments later. If not for the woman's obsession over timekeeping, Adagio would have thought she’d split, this being far from her first ‘moment’. As was, she’d merely opened the store, all too willing to throw herself single-handedly into work rather than deal with her only staff members problems.
While it only took a few moments to gather the broken cup shards, it was a lot longer before Ebony’s words left her ragged mind.
What did she mean by a ringer?
