To my surprise, it was Tjuan who spoke. “She stabbed two men to death with a steak knife,” he said. “Says she doesn’t remember it, got off on insanity.”
Everyone was looking at me in a way that suggested that they already knew about this. I tried to stop the color from draining out of my face, but emotions are slippery things, so everyone got to enjoy my moment of bald horror.
“Maybe think on that,” said Tjuan, “next time you feel like giving her attitude.”
“All right, I get it,” I snapped.
I didn’t like the slow way he smiled. I didn’t like any of this. I didn’t like that I was lower down in the social pecking order than Blondie just because I hadn’t killed a guy. The rewards for kindness and sane behavior seemed to be pretty sparse at Residence Four.
Gloria emerged from the bathroom so glowingly smug that I was almost sure she’d heard Tjuan schooling me.
“I call shotgun,” I said quickly. Gloria stopped in confusion, then frowned. Sometimes you have to savor the small victories.
? ? ?
The ride to Residence One was awkward and Bach-filled. As always, Caryl had turned the music up to a conversation--killing volume, and her gloved fingertips kept precise time on the steering wheel. I flipped down my sun visor and opened the mirror, angling it so I could check on Teo in the backseat. The seat was made for two adults and a child, but Teo and Tjuan were both such beanpoles that Gloria fit comfortably in between. Teo saw me and made a face. I laughed, and caught my own eyes in the mirror as I did so.
For the first time since my tumble off the roof, I didn’t have to look away. Because I was the girl in the drawing.
There had to be some way Rivenholt could feel me if I just thought at him hard enough. He had to know I was looking for him, that I was on my way, that I was going to make it all right.
We headed west on the 10 to Santa Monica and got off on Lincoln, heading south toward Ocean Park. We took a little zigzag path through some residential streets and ultimately pulled into the driveway of a tiny yellow house on a postage-stamp lot. The tall wooden fence around it overflowed with scarlet bougainvillea.
BEWARE OF DOG, read the sign on the gate.
“What kind of dog lives here?” I said nervously when Caryl had turned off the car.
“No dog,” said Caryl as we got out. “But I thought ‘Beware of Interdimensional Portal’ might be a bit confusing to the average home invasion specialist. The sign serves the same purpose: it encourages any interested parties to rob the house next door.”
“Why doesn’t Residence Four have a sign? Isn’t there a Gate there too?”
“Residence Four was the first property we built specifically to protect its Gate. The Gate here had to be built inside a preexisting house, so it is placed . . . more awkwardly.”
“Why is this called Residence One? Was it the first?”
“The sixth, technically. The original LA1 Gate was demolished along with the Hotel Arcadia in 1909, and we were unable to replace it until we could acquire a suitable property two years later. This was the best we could manage.”
“Do you live here?”
She shook her head, unlocking the wooden gate. “Manage-ment lives in independent housing; agents live in Residences and deal with the fey that have been assigned to their Gate. Rivenholt uses LA4, and that is why you and Teo were assigned to him.” Caryl waved us all through into the yard. “Residence One is more of an office than a residence, in truth; it houses the majority of our arcane equipment. Travel through the Gate is limited to our oldest and highest-ranking visitors—the reactionary sort who take offense at being assigned a lower number.”
The tiny front yard of Residence One boasted a lemon tree and several carefully staked tomato plants. A disheveled old woman with stark wide eyes stopped her weeding to stare at us as we walked by and up the front steps.
“Sick sick stinking ugly fuckpiss!” the woman gargled.
“Hello, Abigail,” replied Caryl. No one but me seemed to find this odd, and I was not in the mood for any more public demonstrations of my ignorance.
The inside of the house looked like the inside of every other house in Southern California; there wasn’t even anything worth stealing. Overwhelmed by ennui, I turned to leave, running headlong into a snickering Teo.
“That just never gets old,” he said, taking me by the shoulders and turning me back around to face the interior. “Don’t know why you bother with the dog sign, Caryl.”
“The fey did not put up that ward for sport, Teo. It is a last resort.”
Teo gave me a push out of the tiny foyer into the living room, and as he did so, the ward released its hold on my -psyche. The shimmering black archway in the center of the living room suddenly struck me as decidedly not normal, and I made a small sound to that effect.