Strange Seattle

Chapter Four

A/N: Said I would get this chapter out by the end of the weekend and I am delivering the goods. There is smut in this chapter and I am not saying who's involved. You'll have to read it to find out.

Living in Seattle, it is easy to forget how busy it is during the summer thanks to school not being in session. That meant tourist attractions were packed and it was definitely hard to get into certain places because of that. I was leaning against the 7-Eleven that was across the way from where the Underground Tour was located, watching families and tourists make their way around Pioneer Square. I found myself thinking how lucky they were, if they did not have supernatural abilities, that they would not pick up on the creepiness that exhumed from the streets after night fell.

A flash of dark curly hair caught my attention across the Square. Slash stood there, with Kimo and an unidentified woman near him, looking around. I recall her from the previous day as the woman I had served coffee to and whom Slash had spoken to just before we left for The Dead Rhododendron. So that was the girlfriend. I push myself off of the building and weave through the crowd of people, making my way towards them. "McKagan didn't have the balls to show up? Figures."

Slash just grins at me when he notices me standing in front of him. "Actually, they should be here soon. Melody, this is my girlfriend Meegan," he introduces me to the woman, who reaches out and shakes my hand. "Melody is one of the native residents I was telling you about."

"It's nice to meet you." I nearly gape at the sound of her voice when the words leave her mouth. Was she a fucking preteen or something? I stop myself before I do and smile at her. "The pleasure's all mine. And just so you know, Emma grew up in Eugene, Oregon. I'm the Seattle native."

"Not anymore," Duff's voice comes up from behind me and I internally twitch. Arrogant bastard. I twirl around to face him. "I see your balls finally dropped," I deadpan and look behind him to see his wife standing there. "Actually I take that back." She gives me a dirty look while Duff seems to hold himself back from saying whatever was on his mind in regards to my quip. I take note of everyone's attire and the only who has seemed to dress for the occasion was Duff. He was decked out in his own leather jacket covering what I suspected to a Seahawks hoodie, the black pants he wore the previous evening, and a pair of Converse sneakers. Slash was looking around once more as if he was expecting more people to show up.

"Looking for someone?" I ask and sneak a glance at my phone. "You know, you guys can take the tour without me. I'm not really interested in hearing about how glue pots burned down old Seattle and literal human shit flooded the city streets. Again."

Meegan gags at that and exchanges a disgusted look with Susan. Duff covers up a laugh with a cough while Slash shoots me a bemused glance. "Not your first tour then?"

"No," I respond and scowl at the curious looks I was now getting, apart from Mrs. McKagan as she was sneering in my direction instead. Bitch. I fucking hope she breaks a heel off her clearly expensive shoes, which I was sure were more expensive than my jacket and phone combined. "All you fuckers need to know is absolutely fucking nothing. Besides, it looks busy and you're not likely to get in."

Susan gives me a nasty smirk and puts on a fake smile, looking directly at someone I was not aware of showing up. "Axl, I didn't know you were coming." I twist my neck around and my eyes land on the singer from the night before. He was followed by the same entourage as the night before, plus a flaxen woman in her mid-twenties wearing clothes that looked like she was dressed for going into the underground tunnels. I look more closely at her as she got nearer, my eyes widening when I recognized her from my 10th grade history class at Roosevelt. Amanda Tufte. She was a preppy girl that sat in the front of the second row while I was the punk chick at the back of the classroom. Punks and preppies generally did not get along well and we never interacted until we got paired together for an assigned history project. I honestly was not surprised to see her as a tour guide because she excelled at history from what I remember.