“Well, hello there, sweetness. I see you’ve brought your Romeo with you.” He tips an imaginary hat at Truman. “Feeling better then? It looks as though death didn’t agree with you.”
Truman nods, but still doesn’t say anything.
We situate ourselves at the table, and Myra gathers up the string of beads, moving her chair to make room for me. Beside her, I finally have a chance to study her face and I can see that something is very wrong. Her mouth is a strange shape I’m not used to, soft and lost-looking.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” Her tone sounds oddly timid. It doesn’t at all match the hunger in her eyes as her gaze darts to Truman, then back to me.
He’s staring at her like he’s never seen a girl so shockingly beautiful, and he probably hasn’t.
“This is my sister,” I tell him, because it’s true and because I have to say something.
Myra leans forward, holding out a hand. “Charmed,” she says in a tremulous voice as he reaches for her.
For an instant, her fingers seem to flicker past his palm, stroking the inside of his wrist. Then they’re back where they belong, clasped in a prim, well-mannered handshake. Her expression goes from vulnerable to something else and back again too quickly to say for sure. I may have mistaken the movement of her hand, reaching to stroke his scarred wrist. But I am almost positive that I did not mistake the look of calculation in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, holding her gaze as I reach over and carefully disengage her fingers from Truman’s.
He gives me a startled look, but Myra only glances down, closing her hand around the string of beads. “Deirdre’s gone.”
The words are flat, without intonation, and for a second, I don’t understand. Then realization sinks in, underlining the difference between gone and gone. Obie is gone—gone from Pandemonium, gone from his apartment. And that’s grave, but not insurmountable. It simply means that his location is unknown, and I’m here on the chance that wherever he might be, I can bring him back.
Deirdre has gone someplace she won’t come back from.
Across from me, Moloch’s face contorts for a second, then goes back to normal. The fleeting expression is one of sorrow, or maybe pity, but one thing is sure. I know now who the girl they found near the Garfield Street station was.
Beside me, Myra fidgets with the beads, then puts them down, cupping her elbows one moment, touching her hair the next. Her hands look uncertain without someone to hold onto. Without Deirdre, she’s just a girl in a short dress, tugging on her own hair. I remember them together, slinking into my room, rearranging my souvenirs and terrorizing Petra. How bright and fierce they looked. How permanent.
“How did she die?” I ask, and my voice sounds thin, like I don’t want to know.
Myra’s lip trembles. “Horribly.” Nothing but a whisper. “They left this nasty thing.”
Her eyes are glistening, but she brandishes the beads at me with savage intensity. Her wrist clatters with bangles and cuff bracelets and a thin silver chain covered in tiny charms. When I look closer, I see that each one is a vial labeled with a different deadly sin. LUST is worn away, as though she has spent a long time fingering it. Despite her apparent distress, she keeps glancing over at Truman, touching her lips with the tip of her tongue.
She breathes a heavy sigh and winds the string of beads around her wrist, knotting the ends together. “I apologize for my lack of composure,” she tells him with a watery smile. “It’s just—it’s so sad. Do you think you could get me a drink? If it’s not too much trouble?”
Truman nods and gets to his feet. “Do you know what you want?”
Myra smiles up at him. Her eyelashes are long and mysterious. They flutter against her cheeks every time she blinks. “A White Angel,” she says in a voice that hints at deep, secret chasms and burning sulfur. “Please.”
When Truman looks at me, I indicate Moloch and touch the pocket that holds the key. Truman seems to understand, because he turns and heads in the direction of the bar.
Out in the front of the Prophet Club, the band is playing a song that sounds like birds at night, darker shapes against a dark sky. The music seeps back to us in sultry tones, pulsing and rhythmic.
Myra watches him go, hissing softly when she sees the way the Lilim and the bone men are staring at him. Then she rises from her chair. “I think he needs some company.”
When she starts after Truman, her step is light and graceful. Her hips sway like beats on a drum.
“He’s got a sort of charm, I’ll admit,” says Moloch softly, watching Truman slide through the crowd toward the bar, with Myra creeping after him. “Kind of brazenly pathetic.”
I nod, but I don’t like how the bone men are looking at him or the way Myra follows behind him.
“You two seem to be managing better now that he’s not in a coma. Or do you just bring all the dying boys you’ve stolen from your cousin to demon night clubs? I imagine Beelzebub will be thrilled to hear that you’re dabbling in Collections now.”
“Is he here?” The Prophet Club seems far too dark and grimy for Beelzebub’s tastes, but I slide down in my chair, trying to make myself smaller, because if he’s here, there’s a strong possibility that I am going to be in a great deal of trouble.
Moloch shakes his head, giving me a knowing smile. “Don’t worry, he’s mucking around in Bulgaria or somewhere. And no, I didn’t tell him that his favorite little protégé is trundling around Earth yelling blue murder about her brother.” He leans closer, clasping his hands around his drink. “How goes the brother search? Did you find anything?”
“Nothing good.” I fish the key from my coat pocket and slide it toward him. “We went to his apartment, but it was abandoned. This was all that turned up. It was hidden inside my snow globe.”
Moloch studies the key, scraping his teeth with a gray thumbnail. “Well, that’s enigmatic.”
“I was hoping you might be able to help. Do you think you could tell me where it came from?”
He stares back, looking distinctly nonplussed. “You can’t be serious.”
I only sit taller in my chair, giving him the look my mother uses when she means to be obeyed.
He rolls his eyes and glances around, then reaches for the key. Turning surreptitiously toward the wall, he holds it to his tongue.
“Was Obie the one who hid it in the snow globe?”
Moloch shakes his head. “He’s never touched it, and that’s saying something. An awful lot of people have handled this.”
“Do you know what it goes to?”
He brings the key to his mouth again, holding it there for longer this time. Then he palms it and passes it back to me. “Asher Self-Storage. The unit number is 206, or maybe 209—it’s hard to get the specifics sometimes.”
“206,” I say, remembering the scrap of paper.
Moloch shrugs. “Fair enough.” Then he glances over his shoulder to where Truman is standing at the bar with Myra. “By the way, you might want to keep an eye on that. Your sister’s in a mood tonight.”
I slip the key back into my pocket, trying not to stare too pointedly at Truman and Myra. Her mouth is very close to his ear and I can’t help wondering what secrets she’s telling him. What dark, seductive promises.
“I feel I’ve been very good about debasing myself for your edification,” Moloch says. “Now, will you think seriously about leaving Chicago?”
His tone is flippant, but underneath is a current of anxiety. I recognize it, but I’m not even close to finding Obie, and now I need to see what’s hidden in Asher Self-Storage 206. “Not yet. I still have some things to do.”
“Deirdre was flogged,” he says abruptly and his expression holds no humor and no irony. “She was beaten to shreds and drained of blood.” Every word sounds strained, like it’s being wrenched out of him.
I realize that he saw her. When he says that a collection crew found her, he doesn’t just mean he heard some grisly secondhand acc
ount of her death. He stood over her body and now here we are, sitting across from each other, trying valiantly not to care. I recall Deirdre, laughing, preening, smiling. Then, when the picture gets chaotic and bloody, I stop thinking about her. The memory of her makes something ache behind my eyes.
“It will be all right,” I say, because it’s what I want to believe. I know better though. Even if murder were something that happened in Pandemonium, it would take a great deal of strength and stamina to beat one of the Lilim to death. More power than most demons possess.
Moloch looks away. His face is slack. “You’ve got a funny definition of all right.”
“I just mean, this has to be some kind of terrible accident, or the result of a grudge or something. Doesn’t it?”
He smiles grimly and shakes his head. “I guess I’m just a little less optimistic than you are. Maybe no one around here wants to admit it, but I’m pretty sure we’re looking at the handiwork of Dark Dreadful.”
I know her only as the monster on the wall, with her jagged teeth, eyes like comets. Whips and knives and razor claws. The blood-drinker. But it’s always seemed too fantastical. Even though I’ve grown up looking at her portrait, I never actually believed that she was real.
“Whatever happened,” Moloch says, “Illinois’s looking a bit fatal right about now. It’s time to get out.”
I shake my head, feeling slightly lost. The only map I have is for Chicago. “Where would I even go?”
“Come to the Passiflore Hotel in Las Vegas. There’s a jump-door in the garden there, so you won’t have to waste time traveling or mess with transportation. It’s a good place for people like us. I’ve got Myra convinced to join me, and quite frankly, it’s a bit suicidal staying around here.”
“Is the Passiflore like the Arlington?”
“No.” His expression is amused and he leans back in his chair, smiling mysteriously. “No, it’s not like the Arlington.”
“If I were to set out for Las Vegas, are there any special words or commands I ought to know? I mean, I had some trouble with the door here. Truman had to open it for me.”
Moloch regards me with eyebrows raised. “Did he, now?”
“Yes, he went to Catholic school.”
“Be as that may,” Moloch says dryly, “I think his ability to open hidden doors has less to do with latent Catholicism, and more to do with being the bastard son of someone with a halo. Blood like that, he can walk through just like anybody else. Now, if you want to get to the Passiflore, all you’ll need is this.”
He takes a black felt-tipped marker from his pocket and rolls it across the table to me.
For a moment, I say nothing, staring down at the marker. Then I look up at him, trying to determine if he’s mocking me. “What do I do with it?”
“You make yourself a door. It just takes an east-facing wall and something to draw with. Render the entryway of your choice, knock politely, and ask for the Passiflore Hotel. If your walking tragedy got you both in here, he should manage the jump all right. The trip probably isn’t going to feel good, but it won’t kill him.”
“He didn’t seem to have any problem coming in here. Do you mean the jump-door will be worse?”
Moloch gives me a complacent smile. “I’m not a betting man, but I’d venture the half of him that’s human is going to find it quite a bit worse.”
MARCH 8
2 DAYS 7 HOURS 13 MINUTES
They sat side by side on the train, swaying against each other as it rocked.
Truman clasped his hands behind the back of his neck and stared straight ahead. “No offense, but your cousin’s kind of a dick. Your sister though, she’s—” He shook his head, trying to find the words for what Myra was. “Holy shit.”
Daphne stared out at the moving skyline. “I know.”
Her voice was distant and Truman lapsed into silence. What he didn’t say was that Myra had scared him a little. Really, he was just glad to be out of there.
At the bar she’d slipped onto a stool next to him, pretending not to notice that her leg was pressing against his. When she’d offered to buy him a drink, his first impulse was to say no. The night before was still fresh in his mind and he didn’t want Daphne to see him drunk again. But his skin felt too tight for comfort and it was just one drink. Myra’s smile was wide and inviting, and Truman found it hard to look away. After a second, he nodded.
“Road to Redemption,” she told the bartender, holding up a hand. Her nails were painted a sticky, iridescent purple, so dark it looked nearly black in the light from the bar. “And doesn’t he look like he needs it?”
“What is it?” he asked Myra when the bartender slid the drink across to him.
The look she gave him was sly. “Don’t you worry about the particulars. Let’s just say, I could have ordered you a Road to Hell—they’re basically the same. The only difference is, Redemption comes with a splash of grenadine.”
The drink was a deep mahogany color, topped with a layer of bright, sickly red.
Myra ran one finger along the back of Truman’s neck. Her touch was electric and he sipped the drink to keep himself from breathing too fast. It tasted like sweet, salty water and something flammable. He’d never been in a bar before, not even to ask for directions or use a pay phone. The Prophet Club was ancient, and decades of liquor had soaked into the counter and the floors, making everything smell boozy and kind of sickening.
Myra sighed and moved closer. Her own drink was almost black, with a thin column of smoke rising off it. There was a hunger in her face that he recognized. It reminded him of girls at school. The ones who would make out at parties and not expect him to call afterward. It was an unsettling look—sad, but a little too predatory.
She turned to face him and held up her glass. The cloud of smoke had already drifted away. “To Deirdre. I’ll remember her for as long as I remember anything.”
She said it with a smile, but her eyes were flat as she downed her drink, then sat toying restlessly with the string of beads knotted around her wrist. A short length hung down separate from the main strand and Truman moved to get a better look. The thing Moloch had given her was a rosary.
“So,” she whispered, letting go of the beads and leaning so her chest brushed his shoulder. “How did you meet my sister?”
Her body was warm through his T-shirt and he stayed very still. “We met at a party.”
“A party? Daphne? How adorable.”
Truman didn’t answer. Adorable was not a word he generally used to describe anything. But it sort of fit Daphne.
“And what about you?” she said, leaning closer and fondling the rosary. “You look lonely, like you could use a kiss.”
He shook his head and inched away. He wanted to argue with her, remind her that her sister had just died and this was hardly the time to be scamming on guys in bars, but even Daphne’s reaction to Moloch’s news had been minimal. And the truth was, Truman wasn’t entirely sure he’d understood the conversation. He knew they’d been talking about someone being killed—murdered, maybe—but all three of them had seemed disturbingly unconcerned.
“Let me tell you a secret.” Myra’s lips moved slowly, almost brushing his neck. “Girls like me, we are very, very good at making people feel better. We find pain, and we take it away.”
“Why are you even talking to me? I mean, what’s in it for you?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s all about you.” Her lips against his ear were unbearably warm. “I know you want to get rid of something—all the feelings, the memories.”
“Like you know anything about it.”
Myra smiled slyly. Then she closed her eyes and moved her mouth along his neck, inhaling deeply like she was smelling him. “Linoleum. Liquor, mildew, soap. And water. I smell water and something black and sick underneath.” She opened her eyes again. “Guilt?”
Truman stared at the wall of bottles behind the bar and didn’t answer. It was unsettling to think that she could see guilt just by look
ing at him.
“And you smell a little like death. Not a lot, just a little.” She held her fingers an inch apart. “Just this much.” Then she licked her lips, and her eyes widened in something like delight. “Oh, alcoholism—that’s nice.”
“I’m not an alcoholic.”
She moved closer, running the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip like she was tasting the air beside his cheek. “Well, not yet. Not quite. But it’s on its way. Six months—a year, maybe. How Deirdre would have loved you. She always had a taste for addiction.”
Myra rested her hand on his knee, pressing her mouth against his ear. “Let me take it,” she whispered. “You don’t want it. It’s just going to hurt you and keep hurting you. Let me take it away and you’ll never have to feel it again.” Her breath on his neck was electric.
And for one excruciating moment, Truman wanted to say yes. The word was there. He could feel it shaping itself in his mouth.
Then he looked past her. Daphne still sat at the corner table with Moloch, partially in shadow. Her face was turned toward him and she looked very out of place in the dim, seedy club. She looked clean.
Myra’s hand on the back of Truman’s neck suddenly turned into the way Daphne had touched him the other night. Holding him in Dio’s bathroom. On the train platform. In the street. Her hand on his forehead, the insides of his arms. Holding him again, always, no matter how ruined and messy and pathetic. Myra was caressing his shoulder when he stood up abruptly.
He crossed the dance floor to the corner, not looking back.
Outside the train, the city flashed by, dark and light and dark. The ghosts of high-rises showed in outline against the sky, but Truman ignored their insubstantial shapes and focused on his own reflection.
“Which one is your stop?” Daphne said, still gazing out the window.
He shrugged, feeling awkward. “It’s not for awhile. I mean, I actually have to go back the other way.”
Daphne glanced up at him with wide, startled eyes. “You came with me?”
He nodded. “I thought it might be better if you didn’t have to go back to your hotel alone. I thought it might be safer.”