Mistress of Night and Dawn (16 page)

‘We’ve got to stop this believing-in-magic nonsense,’ Aurelia said when Siv ended the call. ‘It’s not doing either of us any good.’ She stared pointedly at the tufty mohawk that Siv had created on her head by running her fingers through her fringe during the call, the habit that she took up whenever she was stressed, flirting or both. Now that Siv so often wore her customary teaching uniform of ballet tights and a colourful vest top, she looked even more than ever like a pixie with her short locks poking straight up on top of her head.

Siv had nodded her head vigorously in agreement, but despite the fact that the two of them had vowed to take a rational approach to the unusual events that had befallen them they still hesitated when they arrived at the Exhibition’s apparent entrance. Aurelia was loath to acknowledge the strange feeling that surrounded her. She felt that if she walked through the venue’s doors she might enter yet another strange new world where even more bizarre and unexplainable events might occur.

‘It’s like somewhere a witch might imprison Rapunzel,’ Aurelia said at last, staring up at one of the four towers that seemed to go up into the sky for miles, like open fingers on a giant palm ready to snatch her up.

‘I’ll be your knight in shining armour,’ Siv replied. ‘Come on.’ She took Aurelia’s hand in her own and they stepped towards the heavy door.

It swung open silently in front of them as they approached.

‘Come in then,’ said a woman from within. The tone of her voice was halfway between a sultry purr and an angry growl.

She was sitting inside the darkened corridor that lay just beyond the doorway, behind a heavy wooden table upon which a small pile of dollar bills and coins rested along with an ink pad and heavy stamp, and a folded-over piece of card that bore the name ‘Lauralynn’ in the same calligraphic font that had decorated the invitation. Her long blond locks were fixed into pigtails that stuck out on either side of her head in Japanese schoolgirl style. The youthful nature of her hairstyle was in stark contrast with her ramrod-straight back, authoritarian posture and the wry expression that suffused her features. She was so tall and her back so straight and the table so low that she resembled a young queen reigning over the limited territory of the foyer.

They approached the counter and Siv insisted on covering the small entry charge.

‘No bags?’ she asked, raising one perfectly groomed pale eyebrow and staring pointedly at Aurelia’s small purse and Siv’s empty hands. She looked them up and down. ‘You didn’t bring a change of clothes?’

‘I told you that you should have asked about a dress code,’ Aurelia whispered to Siv.

‘He’s blind, how would he know what to wear?’ Siv hissed back.

‘Ah,’ said Lauralynn. ‘Walter invited you. Did he tell you what kind of exhibition it is?’

‘An art exhibition, isn’t it?’ Siv replied. ‘He just gave me this.’ She fished the invitation out of her pocket and passed it over the table.

‘I told him this wouldn’t do . . .’ Lauralynn sighed. ‘Come with me then. It’s an erotic art exhibition. Mostly performance-based. And we ask all attendees to dress the part for the sake of atmosphere. Normally I’d just turn you away, but since Walter invited you . . . come out back and we’ll find something that will do the job.’

She stood up from behind the counter revealing the rest of her frame. Her tightly laced stiletto ankle boots were about seven inches tall, Aurelia reckoned, which made her already long legs seemingly go on for miles. Even in regular clothes, Lauralynn could never have passed as anything but extraordinary. The rest of her outfit was in accord with her hair-do, but her white blouse and short pleated skirt did not manage to imply a semblance of innocence. She seemed like such a simmering powerhouse beneath her clothing that her school uniform costume gave her the appearance of a superhero unsuccessfully feigning harmlessness on an off day.

Aurelia stared closely at the way the strange rubbery fabric of Lauralynn’s outfit clung to her skin and shone in the light. She had never seen anything like it before.

‘Latex,’ Siv whispered, as they followed Lauralynn to the storeroom. She fished a long chain with a brass key attached to the end from between her breasts with the air of a VIP banker about to open a very important safe.

The room was packed with outfits of all descriptions, most in shades of red, purple and black and many of them, in Aurelia’s opinion, either tasteless or frightening, or both.

‘Are they expecting a nuclear war, do you think?’ she asked Siv as she spied a rack of gas masks hanging against one wall.

Lauralynn stared at them and shook her head. ‘Where did he drag you two in from, I wonder?’ she mumbled to herself as she pulled out a rail of clothing from behind a pile of boxes that were brimming with skimpy bras and frilly knickers.

‘You’ll be all right in these,’ she said to Siv, handing over a heavy pile of garments tied together with a ribbon. ‘And this will suit you, Missy,’ she added, trying to throw a bundle of black fabric towards Aurelia and stopping short when she realised that it was too diaphanous to travel through the air and stepping forward and passing it to her instead.

Aurelia grasped the slippery bundle in her hands and held it slightly away from her as if it was a hot potato. What was wrong with her clothes anyway? They were only going to look at things and it wasn’t even dark yet. Surely only posh restaurants and nightclubs had dress codes. She put off undressing, hoping that Siv would be in agreement and they could either leave or convince Lauralynn to let them through as they were, but Siv had already begun to strip off and shimmy into the garments that had been picked out for her. Once fully dressed she swivelled on one toe, executing a perfect pirouette to display her new threads.

Siv’s opaque tights had been replaced with skin-revealing fishnets and her short shorts with an even tinier pair that cupped her arse so tightly her cheeks, already firm and toned from all the dance practice, were perfectly delineated, perhaps even lifted slightly and imperceptibly spread apart. She had managed to wriggle into a stiff but flexible basque that was decorated with a series of satin and stretch-lace panels with a square-cut neckline that simultaneously flattened her small breasts entirely so that her chest resembled a boy’s but was low enough to reveal just a hint of each of her pink nipples.

The whole outfit was cream-coloured and had been purposefully distressed with rips, burn marks and theatre dust to give it an aged appearance. Siv had laced her purple Dr Martens over the fishnets and the heavy boots made the top of her calves and thighs look even shapelier than usual.

Aurelia’s breath caught in her throat. A sharp dart of arousal throbbed within her and caught her by surprise. She had never felt that way about another girl and certainly not about Siv.

She hurriedly glanced away and took a closer look at her own outfit to distract herself. At first glance the dress that she had been handed appeared to be totally sheer and she carefully picked up each of the thin straps and unravelled it to its full length with some trepidation. It was made of a sort of soft, stretchy fine mesh with a pattern of fine diamanté beads that ran in a snake-like pattern down the front, assiduously placed to cover the wearer’s most intimate parts.

Aurelia let out a sigh of relief. Since her response to Siv’s very minor nudity had brought her such a sharp pang of arousal, she was concerned that somehow her tattoo might appear suddenly in front of onlookers and she dreaded the explaining that might be necessary if it were to become visible through a sheer dress.

‘Come on then, try it on,’ Siv pestered. ‘Though I have to say, I’m not quite sure it’s really you. It’s a little “stage show” with all those sequins.’

‘It once belonged to a burlesque dancer in London, apparently,’ Lauralynn explained. ‘But it’s the right length for you.’

Aurelia felt her cheeks warming under the combined gaze of the two women but she complied in the most modest way that she could by quickly unbuttoning her blouse and pulling the dress on over the top and then slipping her jeans off underneath.

Siv stared at her with a critical eye. ‘It doesn’t look right with a bra on,’ she said. ‘That’ll have to go. And your knickers, too, I think. You have VPL. Only one way to get rid of it.’

Lauralynn nodded her agreement. The mischievous half-smile that she had previously sported had turned into a wide grin that transformed her expression into fully fledged devilish.

Aurelia grimaced but did as they suggested, slipping her knickers down to her ankles and kicking them off, then she reached behind her back and unhooked the hook and eyes that held her bra together and slipped a thin strap over each of her shoulders, carefully fishing her brassiere out from beneath the dress.

Bralessness was an uncommon feeling for Aurelia, who was accustomed to wearing an underwired bra every day as a matter of course. It was a sensation that she enjoyed, although only when alone in her bedroom or on a particularly lazy weekend day when she lounged around the house in just her old Arcade Fire band T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts.

The fine mesh of the dress brushed against her chest and her nipples involuntarily hardened in response.

‘I can’t walk out in this,’ Aurelia hissed at Siv. ‘I’ve got practically nothing on.’

‘It’s not as revealing as you think, honestly. Take a look in the mirror.’

She turned and gasped when she saw her reflection. Even in the unflattering electric lighting of the storeroom, Aurelia was a picture. Black was a colour that she rarely wore as her skin was so pale she worried that it made her look closer to dead than fashionable, but the sheer fabric allowed some of her colouring to show through so that the effect was striking but not harsh, and the shimmering diamanté highlighted the greenish-blue colour of her eyes.

Aurelia had always been tall for her age and she suspected that Siv’s reputation for aggression had been the only thing that prevented her from being teased for her height at school. She hd always been longer and leaner than the other girls and her perceived difference had led her to drop out of the dance classes that Siv had persisted with as she had always felt like such a clunky giant.

Now she rarely gave her body shape much thought, but she would probably describe herself as lanky rather than shapely. She had long ago given up on the idea that her breasts might grow larger or her hips fuller as she grew older. Curvaceousness was certainly not an adjective that she would ever have ascribed to herself.

But the linear pattern somehow highlighted the natural curve of her waist and hips and because the dress fell all the way to the floor even though she looked even taller than usual, she still had her ballet flats on.

‘Here, try this as well,’ Lauralynn said, passing her a slim, pale-wooden circlet that was threaded with tiny, lifelike silk flowers. Aurelia balanced it carefully on top of her head. With her auburn hair rippling over her bare shoulders and the floral wreath resting on the crown of her head, she looked like a pagan goddess.

She stood in front of the mirror and closed her eyes, frightened by her own image. In her mind’s eye another picture leaped forward – the vision was of her, but another her. In it she was sheathed in a white dress, and standing with her face to the wind. Her hair was loose but had morphed into a nest of copper-coloured snakes that writhed sinuously against the sides of her face and hissed with each breath of air that caressed her skin. The terrible fierceness of the serpents was matched only by the ferocity Aurelia saw reflected in her own eyes.

‘See? It’s only if you’re standing right in the light that anyone will notice you’ve got nothing on underneath.’

Siv’s voice shook Aurelia out of her daydream. She was standing in front of her own reflection once more, but this time the dress was just a dress and her hair hung as still and lifeless as it ought to.

‘And there’s a whole load of people wearing a lot less than you two, believe me,’ Lauralynn added. Her arm was stretched straight out in front of her, dangling a pair of strappy black stiletto shoes beneath Aurelia’s nose. The heels were six inches high and each was decorated with a bronze serpent that ran up from the base of the heel so its open jaw would rest against the wearer’s ankle.

Aurelia glanced at the shoes and shivered.

‘No thanks,’ she insisted. ‘I’m a flat-shoe kind of girl. Especially if we’re going to be walking around, and I’m betting there’s lots of stairs.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Lauralynn replied with a shrug, before walking out ahead of them and beckoning for the two girls to follow. She was so stable in her own towering heels, she might have come out of her mother’s womb wearing them.

Aurelia was mesmerised by the swaying of Lauralynn’s hips beneath her short skirt and briefly she wondered how the blond woman’s skin might feel beneath her fingertips in contrast with the smooth, rubbery material of her latex hold-ups. She imagined her hand sliding between Lauralynn’s legs and all the way up her thighs and briefly caressing her. She felt her own lips moistening and she was immensely grateful for the protective covering of the sequins that would prevent anyone from noticing her tattoo if it should suddenly appear again.

Aurelia shook her head. What on earth had come over her? Lately she had been experiencing the uncomfortable sense that she was somehow changing, but her conscious thoughts hadn’t quite caught up with the instinctive responses of her body or the fleeting images that darted into her mind like fireflies and disappeared again just as quickly.

Lauralynn caught her eye as they reached the main desk again and winked at her as if she had been reading Aurelia’s thoughts all along. ‘Enjoy yourselves,’ she said. ‘There’s all sorts of displays up there so make sure you have a good look around.’

‘Come on,’ Aurelia said to Siv. ‘Let’s go and get this over with.’ She feigned reluctance because she did not want to own up to the spark that she felt igniting within her and the corresponding flush of excitement that crept from her toes all the way to her scalp. On each occasion that the stranger had visited her she had been in a place like this and surrounded by that strange sense of having found another world. The same energy that had imbued the air at the funfair and at the chapel was present here, as if something magical were about to happen and perhaps that something magical might involve another visit from the man who had left his mark on her in Bristol.