Small-town meets a conman

She had expected so much that the scene before her was a disappointment.

Most of the people in Calloway's appeared to be normal, unimpressive people. Sure, Marissa had never seen a woman wear a dress that dipped quite so low in both the front and the back, but she recognized the flapper style from dresses she had seen on the streets. The men wore very sharp suits, nicer than those she usually encountered near the university, and almost everyone smoked long cigarettes which they propped on their upturned hands.

For a few seconds, she felt a little lighter in spirit, relieved that she had not run into anything too horrific. Of course, then she began to take in the smell. Beneath the dusty haze of the cigarette smoke, stronger than the mix of the patrons' perfumes, Marissa noticed, or rather sensed, an odd burning sensation in her nostrils. Shortly after she became aware of this, she smelled the smell that accompanied the burning: a sour, pungent scent. She thought she might have smelled it before, once when she visited her grandfather. The memory stood out to her because it accompanied an argument between Ella Erinson and her father the likes of which Marissa had never heard.

Looking back, Marissa began to think she knew the source of the argument.

On every table, she saw them, and in over half of the raised hands. Various glass containers of all sizes and shapes, each holding its own shade of amber or gold. Some looked clear, but Marissa did not expect that they contained water. Her grandfather's jug of clear liquid sloshed around in her mind as he gestured with it in his hand.

Marissa knew the smell, she knew the colors, and she knew the place. Marissa had just entered the underground world of illegal alcohol consumption.

Because she had either not encountered or not noticed alcohol at Marcel's, the realization arrested her forward momentum.

At that moment, Sam Lincoln looked up from his Scotch and spotted her, suspended motionless by the front door, her pearly pale skin contrasting against the battered mahogany wood. The predatory animal within him stirred as he saw her. She was so soft, he thought. Entirely too soft for a place like Calloway's.

Of course, to Sam, that realization carried rather more anticipation than concern.