Five minutes later, they were back in the street and heading for the main part of town. This time Ronan wouldn’t say where they were going.
It was only when they turned into the High Street that Lily began to suspect what sort of destination he had in mind.
Down the street she could see an art gallery and beyond that a bar and a couple of nightclubs. As they drew near, she could hear laughter and the clink of glasses mingled with the doof-doof beat of electronic music.
Outside the first nightclub a long line of people stood waiting to get in. To Lily’s surprise, Ronan walked straight to the front of the queue, where a huge black man stood guarding the door. He stared at them as though they were a couple of pesky flies he might swat away with one of his enormous fists and Lily’s heart kicked up a gear as he and Ronan eyed each other. Ronan’s head only reached the bouncer’s shoulder.
‘Hey, Credo,’ said Ronan, after what seemed like forever.
‘Ronan,’ nodded the big guy. He looked right and left and then, apparently satisfied, reached out and grabbed Ronan by both arms. Lily shrieked and then fell into embarrassed silence as Credo pulled Ronan into a huge embrace.
‘Where’ve you been, boy?’ demanded Credo. ‘I ain’t seen you for two weeks.’
Lily almost laughed to see Ronan practically struggling to free himself from those huge muscular arms.
‘I’ve been at school, Credo. Now, can you please let go?’
‘School?’ queried the bouncer, releasing Ronan and stepping back with a grin. ‘You mean they ain’t kicked you out of the new place yet?’
Ronan glanced at Lily and then laughed. ‘Not yet.’
Credo frowned. ‘Don’t you go getting into trouble again, boy. Bolt won’t like it.’
‘Bolt needn’t worry,’ said Ronan tersely. ‘I’m behaving myself.’
‘Then what’re you doing here at this time of night?’ growled Credo. ‘Daytime hours, remember? Bolt don’t like you comin’ round so late.’
‘I just want to take a look,’ replied Ronan. ‘Show my friend the club.’
For the first time, Credo turned his attention to Lily. He stared at her, unblinking, for several seconds and Lily did her best to meet his gaze. She half expected him to roar with laughter at the idea of letting someone who was so obviously under-age into his nightclub. Instead, he looked her up and down as if she were some kind of new life form.
At last he said, ‘Welcome to the Third Dimension. I’ll get Linus to take you down.’ He waved to a beefy white guy standing just inside the doorway, unclipped the velvet rope holding back the queue, and waved them through. Lily heard cries of protest from the wannabe patrons before their voices were drowned out by the electronic music that permeated every corner of the crowded club.
It was an amazing space. Around the room, cylindrical perspex pillars held up the ceiling, each of them filled with twisting tentacles of light that changed colour and moved with the music. Lily would have liked to stop and watch, but Ronan drew her through the crowd to the bar.
‘Sit here,’ he mouthed, patting a tall neon-green bar stool.
Lily jumped up onto it and he put his mouth to her ear. ‘You’ll probably like this room.’ He waved his arm. ‘Plenty of firsts in here.’
Lily looked. It wasn’t really fair to call it something as mundane as a room. It reminded her of an underground cavern, with a ceiling so low you could almost touch the enormous sculptures hanging from it. It took her a few moments to get accustomed to the constantly changing light, but when she did, she realised that what she’d thought were sculptures were actually paintings: incredible 3D paintings hung at crazy angles in their big box frames. There were huge silver wheels, giant coiled nautilus shells, a clenched fist, and bunches of long narrow pipes. An enormous silver pyramid hung down over the dance floor with a crystal point that almost touched the heads of the throng of people dancing beneath it.
Light cables ran under the dance floor and, as Lily watched, they shifted, roiling about like multicoloured snakes writhing beneath the dancers. The music changed and a tech-house beat set the floor pulsating. The crowd whooped and hollered as the lights responded to their dancing feet.
She suddenly wondered if Ronan liked dancing. She was pretty sure dancing with him would be a first she’d enjoy. She turned to look at him and found him watching her, his eyes alert, his mouth on the edge of a smile.
‘What do you think?’ he shouted, waving at the interior.
‘It’s amazing,’ Lily shouted back. ‘Are we going to –’
‘What’ll you have?’ bawled a voice.
Lily jumped and would have fallen sideways off her barstool if Ronan hadn’t caught her.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘A Rusty Nail and a margarita thanks, Tony.’
‘I don’t want –’ began Lily.
‘Put it on Credo’s tab?’ asked the barman.
‘Yeah, great,’ said Ronan. ‘Come on, Lily, let’s find a booth. We’ll be Under the Tiles, Tony.’
The bartender nodded.
They edged their way around the dance floor and into a smaller room at the side. It took Lily a moment to adjust to the new space.
The walls were blood-red and at first glance the ceiling appeared to be undulating. Waves of colour rippled slowly back and forth above her head and it was a full minute before she realised that the ceiling was built in a series of hills and valleys covered with rows and rows of endlessly turning tiny cubes. They were lit by rotating coloured spotlights and the whole effect was hypnotic.
‘What do you think?’ asked Ronan, after Lily had stared up at the ceiling for several minutes.
‘It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she replied.
‘Wait ’til it stops.’
‘Why does it st– oh!’
The cubes directly above her head had stopped turning and, to Lily’s astonishment, a huge pair of green eyes now stared down at her. As she watched, one by one the rows came to a standstill and gradually the ceiling was revealed as a gigantic copper-coloured face. It stared down at them, the spotlights momentarily lighting it so brightly that for a second Lily could see the detail in the cubes overhead.
‘It’s a painting!’ she exclaimed.
‘Not exactly,’ said Ronan. ‘More like a stencil. It’s really a giant picture broken into thousands of tiny pieces – one for each cube.’
‘It must have taken forever to do.’
‘Months – and that was just the first face – though it did get quicker with each face because – well, repetition is a great teacher.’ He grimaced. ‘Still, I’m not sure I’d do it again.’
Lily’s jaw dropped. ‘You did this?’ she cried, pointing at the ceiling.
Ronan nodded. ‘And the 3D stuff above the dance floor, too.’
She stared at him and then at the ceiling again as a blood-red spotlight lit the face and one great eye slowly winked and disappeared as the cubes began rotating and the ceiling gradually started undulating once more.
‘It’s amazing! How did you think of it?’
‘Playing Monopoly at my last school.’
‘You’re kidding?’ Lily looked at him in disbelief.
Ronan shook his head. ‘Actually, I’m not. It was the dice that did it. I threw a double two and there was something about the way they fell that made me think of eyes.’ He pointed to the ceiling. ‘Each cube has four usable sides. So I drew four pictures and stuck them on.’
‘It must have been a lot more complicated than that,’ said Lily.
He grinned. ‘Put it this way, my ideas are usually the easy bit.’
‘But you did it,’ said Lily, staring at the ceiling again. ‘Are they all faces?’
‘Not every time. Sometimes it’s geometric patterns, others it’s more like an abstract painting. The whole thing’s done using a computer program and the timing is deliberately random. It keeps people Under the Tiles longer, which is why Bolt agreed to have an art installation on the ceiling.’
‘Who’s Bolt?’ asked Lily. ‘And why does he want them here longer?’
‘Bolt owns the Third Dimension. He paid for the ceiling and he likes people to stay in here drinking lots of his expensive fifteen-pound cocktails.’
As if on cue a waitress with silver dreadlocks wearing a skin-tight bodysuit came over and put down their drinks.
‘Thanks, Murphy,’ said Ronan.
‘They’re on the house,’ said the girl. ‘Bolt’s compliments, only he said you’d better drink them quick and make tracks.’
‘Bolt’s orders, you mean?’
The girl nodded. ‘He’s just looking out for you, Ronan. He doesn’t want any trouble.’
‘Sure.’ He picked up his drink. ‘We’ll be out of here as soon as I’ve shown Lily the Dungeon. Don’t worry,’ he added as Murphy began to protest. ‘Credo’s got my back.’
She left and Ronan handed Lily her drink. ‘Here’s to your first cocktail Under the Tiles,’ he said, clinking his glass against hers.
Lily eyed her glass warily.
It wasn’t that she was new to alcohol – she’d drunk at friends’ parties in New York and her grandmother had spent hours during the summer trying to teach Lily the difference between a shiraz and a pinot noir. It was more that she didn’t know what this particular drink meant. Ronan had said it was a ‘first’, but did that mean he assumed it was her first margarita? Or the first of several drinks for the night? Or something else entirely?
She ran her finger around the salt-encrusted rim. It probably wouldn’t hurt to drink one drink before they went back to the Academy. A salt crystal stuck to her finger. She put it on her tongue, savouring the briny taste.
‘Bottoms up,’ said Ronan, and drank deeply.
Lily took a mouthful and felt the sour taste of lemon and tequila wash over her tongue. She wondered if one margarita could make you tipsy. She had no desire to get drunk – it was bad enough that she’d already broken every rule in the Academy’s book.
She took another sip, reminded herself that nobody knew, and gazed up at the ceiling again. The cubes were slowing down and this time it was a man’s face that appeared. Lily gasped and almost choked on her drink.
The man had a strong, ruddy face with incredible cobalt-blue eyes under thick black eyebrows. But it wasn’t his face that had startled her. It was the red-and-green snake tattooed across his chest.
‘Isn’t that –’ she began.
But Ronan grabbed her hand and said, ‘We’d better go.’ He downed the last of his drink and added, ‘Bolt’s okay, but I don’t want to make him mad by staying too long.’
‘But I haven’t finish–’
‘Come on.’ Ronan pulled Lily to her feet. ‘Let’s go see the Dungeon.’