Just A Girl

Just A Girl

By Lewis Smith

The young woman looked out at the faces below her in the smoky club, standing above it all like a cherubim with a guitar. She only ever looked down at the audience if she wasn't singing, preferring instead to stare at her guitar and tune out the rest of the world, drawing the music out of her instrument and herself.

She did this now, gently plucking the strings of the electric blue guitar around. It came so easily as to be automatic to her. Her blue-white hair tumbled into her face, but she made no motion to move it from her eyes. She and the music were one and the same now, and she liked it that way.

Because for the woman known only as Grey, the blues were the only sound her soul made.

Her green eyes were half-closed as she strummed the strings, coaxing gentle sad notes from the electric instrument. The crowd had completely fallen away now, there was just her and the music at last.

"Now there's nowhere to go," she sang, slowly, deeper than her usual voice. "And I'm running out of life."

She strummed the last note, opened her green eyes and looked out at the audience. They were clapping like their lives depended on it. She smiled, resisting the urge to bite her lip and smudge her black lipstick on her teeth.

She smiled, wider now and nodded her head. "Thank you," she said into the microphone. "Thank you so much. My name's Grey . . .and I've got one more set. Stick around."

The young man at the back table had watched the entire performance with a thoughtful compelled look on his face. The cigarette he had been smoking had been nearly gone, as he had forgotten it, so caught up in the song.

"Hey, Kienan," the man sitting on the other side of the table said. Kienan Ademetria blinked and looked over at him. "She's incredible, isn't she?"

Kienan stubbed out the cigarette he had nearly let burn his hand and lit another one. He took a long deep drag on it and exhaled. "Yes," he said, after a time, the wisps of smoke from his lips making ghostlike shapes in the darkness of the club.

"Now you know why I picked the White Reflection," Carl Drayton said. He eased his large burly frame back in the chair. His bald head gleamed as the house lights came back up and the din of conversation from people at the tapes grew into a steady murmur. "I love this club. Always try to stop in when I'm in the neighborhood."

"I meant to ask," Kienan said, running a hand through his chestnut hair. He shifted in his seat, suddenly aware he was on his braid. "You don't usually work the Frontier. What are you doing on Kuran?"

"Got a job," Drayton said. 'Private contract. I figured I'd see how I liked working in your style."

"Hm," Kienan said, waving the waitress over for another drink. Kienan's "style," as Drayton had so euphemistically put it, was murder. Kienan was the galaxy's most dangerous assassin, a killer so effective the mere mention of his name was enough to cause people to shrink in fear.