Prohibition

Part 2

Hope handed the card Lizzie had given her to the cab driver and he nodded knowingly. She smiled broadly and allowed herself to gape openly at everything she saw. Mystic Falls had completely changed once night fell. The street lights were on, the glitter had come out across the sky and all of the women. Hope could feel a strange kind of magic in the air and all around her. She could already tell it was going to be a good night.

When the cab came to a stop, Hope was shocked to find herself outside of Alaric Saltzman's storefront, the last place she had expected to be. "Uhm, sir, are you completely certain you have brought me to the right place?" Hope asked nervously.

"I bring you where you tell me to bring you. This ain't my fault if the store is closed." Hope paid him and stepped out onto the street; wondering what she was meant to do, a couple seemed interested in the window display before stepping into the alley and disappearing right in front of her. She turned the corner to find a door set into the wall with a clear 'no trespassing' sign on the wall. Hope shrugged and stepped up to the door. It wasn't as though she had anything left to lose.

Hope knocked somewhat half-heartedly and a peephole in the heavy metal door slid open to reveal a singular eye. She wasn't sure if she ought to give some kind of a password she didn't have or strike up a conversation until a hand came out. Hope nodded quickly and fumbled to put the card in the hand.

"I was, uh, given a card and told to meet a particularly pretty dame at this spot. Goes by the name of Lizzie." she heard a distant, muffled snort and the door was pushed open with a creak; revealing lights, music, and smoke. Red drapes prettied up the roughshod ceiling up, as bronze filigree decorated the walls and backs of the chairs. Beautiful people in beautiful clothing dance around on the wooden pallet floor. Others watched from the round tables set closer to the bar. To Hope's surprise, she had found herself inside of the most wonderful speakeasy she had ever seen... right beneath the teetotaler Alaric Saltzman's nose. She wondered if he was truly thick enough to not realize what was going on right beneath his nose.

Hope took a moment after entering to survey the crowd of people. A pair at a table in the back corner caught her attention first. One pair of eyes were a warm brown and somehow still as cold as ice, somehow also completely unscrupulous. The other seemed tense and nervous, like a coiled spring, teetering on the edge of fight or flight, his eyes were black enough to be reflective. The cold man leveled her with a stare, snorted once, and muttered into his drink dismissively.

"Are we seriously still auditioning songbirds? The two we already got ain't enough?" he asked just loudly enough for Hope to hear as she approached.

"I don't... I mean that I'm not..." Hope shattered, forgetting how to speak. The tense, shorter man's eyes weighed heavily on her before he offered an opinion. They didn't give Hope a chance to find what she wanted to say. She gritted her teeth before she said something she regretted.

"You should ignore Raf. He thinks he's a tall, dark, and handsome man of mystery. He has just been spending so much time brooding as of late, it's turned him into a cold fish... and made him boring." Hope took notice of the bouncy curls on his head and how they complimented his wide smile. He still buzzed with nervous energy.

"What about yourself, then?" Hope asked, somewhat lamel attempting to turn the tables. Surprisingly, she found her confidence returning and she proudly lifted her chin.

"Oh, am everything you never knew you needed little lady... I am the guy who has credit at the bar." he smiled again. "The name is Milton Greasley, but call me MG, never Milton. Now, where might you have come from... as you certainly aren't from Mystic Falls."

"I am a nobody, from nowhere, and that is all anyone needs to know about me," Hope replied with a dismissive shrug and took a seat at the table, somehow made completely comfortable by this MG fellow. "My name is Hope."

"No one who looks like you is nobody, Ms.Hope. Now, please, allow me to be the first to buy you a drink and commemorate your arrival to Somewhere." MG's grin was as charming at least as Lizzie's had been and she saw no sign of ulterior motive in his face. "Hey, Kaleb! Some drinks, if you wouldn't mind. For me and the lady."

An equally handsome bartender walked through the crowd, bearing a wooden case of whiskey on his shoulder as though it didn't weigh a thing. He had a broad and white smile; the glitter in his dark brown, almost black eyes.

"What do you need, Milton? I am working on a giant mess back there and trying to keep the bar stocked up here." Kaleb answered, clearly annoyed to have been bothered, though his smile didn't once falter.

"What kind of a mess do you mean?" Hope asked, her eyes lighting up with curiosity. She often despised how badly she wanted to know everything about everything.

"Oh, it's all just business stuff, little miss. The day to day of running a place like this one. Product in. Product out. Profits and losses. None of it anything you need to concern yourself with." Kaleb chuckled, rolling his eyes, completely dismissive.

"It ain't anything you picked up from that fancy book learning institute you do go on about, either. Just do your actual job and get us liquored up, would you?" MG snapped back at him, and Kaleb startled, dropping the folder of pages he had been clenching beneath his free arm. The bigger man didn't say a word in return or exhibit a change in his falsely exuberant expression. He only bent to pick up the papers. Feeling poorly, as though she had played a role in the accident, Hope helped to pick them up.

"Well, I can already see the issue here," Hope pointed to a column of poorly scrawled, almost illegible numbers. "You guys just need a real ledger and better handwriting... just watch this here..."

Hope pulled a pencil out of Kaleb's front pocket and briskly added the numbers up into tidy rows before handing the page back. All three of the men watched on in quiet amusement.

"I was made to endure a few years in a New Orleans finishing school for young ladies, meant to turn me into a trained monkey... I mean a secretary." Hope suddenly felt the need to explain herself and her trick with the numbers.

"I have never had a problem with a good secretary." MG joked, and it would have come off skeevy if not for the sweet expression he had been blessed with.

"You don't seem like any kind of secretary I have ever met. What was it that landed you in this place?" Rafael finally spoke up, still watching the dancers and not sparing Hope a single glance.

"It is a rather funny story involving a stunningly beautiful and charming young woman and a picture show." Hope felt warmth rise to her cheeks and pink at the memory. "You would never believe but she looked just like the Elizabeth Saltzman. Anyway, she had given me this card..." she placed it on the bar in front of her and the fellows all snorted into their drinks.

"What would you say if I told you that girl was THE Elizabeth Saltzman? I'm sure that you already know she prefers Lizzie around friends and family, and that this is her father's store we are beneath." Kaleb asked, dark eyes seeming to warm to her a bit.

"You can't be serious." Hope gasped disbelievingly. She knew that she was Alaric's daughter, but they haven't met since they were children. She doubted the other young woman remembered her at all, and certainly hadn't recognized her outside of the theater. Hope had always especially loved her movies because of the distant connection.

"She does a bit of clientele recruitment for the management whenever she ends up in town for a while. I hadn't realized she was back, but it never does hurt to keep our pond stocked. Now, how about that drink?" MG finished filling Hope in, leaning back and folding his arms across his chest. She had noticed a distinct change in his expression and physicality when Lizzie was brought up and wondered what that was about.

"Something with bourbon if you wouldn't mind. I got a taste for it while I was in New Orleans if you have anything like that at the moment." Hope requested with a tentative smile. She knew that was not the regular order for someone who looked like herself. "I can't do with clear liquor."

Kaleb, on the other hand, just seemed impressed before moving through the crowd as though he had been born to it. Hope wondered what he was in school for and hoped it had nothing to do with math. She also took note of how the eyes of many of the others scattered about the speakeasy tended to linger on him.

"Say, MG, would you happen to know who owns this place? My new guardian..." he didn't appear to hear her at all, and Rafael certainly wasn't replying as MG got up and crossed the room as though someone was waving him down and Kaleb dropped off her drink with a friendly smile.