April shrugged. “All I know is that I’m going to punch that stoner kid in the ’nads if he doesn’t give me my twenty bucks back. He totally ripped me off.”
I took a couple of steps closer to the building. The vibration in the ground got stronger, rumbling through the soles of my shoes and up the pointy four-inch heels. Another two steps closer and I could feel the vibration in my ears now. Music—coming from somewhere nearby. Underneath us, perhaps? If it weren’t for my powers, I probably would have missed it.
“No,” I said. “I think we’ve found it. The Depot? Train station? Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“I guess,” April said. “But this place is totally boarded up.”
I motioned to April as I followed the musical vibration around the side of the building and down the narrow alley between the train station and an equally abandoned-looking warehouse. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I kept chanting to myself with every quick step, but if this was the only way to track down Jude, I wasn’t going to turn back now. The sounds of a screeching car and a shouting man back out on the street made me pick up my pace until I came to a metal door on the side of the building. It looked far more modern than the chained-up doors out front. The vibration was strong from behind the door, and I could even pick up the faint rhythmic pulse of techno music.
“I think this is it.”
“Are you sure? This doesn’t look like a club entrance. I mean, shouldn’t there be bouncers or something?” April’s earlier courage seemed to have washed right out of her. The pale look on her face made it seem like she’d been half anticipating/half hoping we wouldn’t be able to get into the club without fake IDs. A consideration I hadn’t even thought of until now.
I tried the handle, but a bolt in the door stopped it from opening. Then I noticed a keypad next to the doorway with a small red light. “I think all we need to get into the club is the keycard.” I pulled the card out of my pocket—a harder feat than it sounds when your pants are made out of vinyl—and swiped it through what looked like a credit card reader. The light on the keypad turned green, followed by a loud clicking noise as the bolt in the door unlocked.
I pulled on the handle. The door slid open, and a wave of pulsing music flooded the alley. “You ready?” I asked April.
“I guess so.…” She straightened her miniskirt. “I mean, yes,” she said with only a hint of a tremble in her voice. “Let’s do this.”
Just inside the doorway was a long staircase. I grabbed on to the railing and prayed I wouldn’t slip in my high heels as I navigated my way down the cement steps. At the bottom we went through an open doorway and entered the club. It buzzed like a hive with gyrating people, flashing lights, pulsing music, wafting fog from a dance floor in the middle of the room, and flickering plasma TVs as big as cars extended from cables attached to the ceiling. Groups of guys, mostly in their early twenties or younger, crowded around the TVs. They cheered and shouted while playing video games that mostly involved shooting, speeding cars, and almost-naked women. The gaming crowd was dotted with a few girls—dressed just as scantily as the ones on the screens. But mostly the only females in the place crowded around the bar on the far end of the club, or partied on the dance floor in corsets and leather getups that put my attempt at a tough-girl outfit to shame.