“But it couldn’t work while I was touching it. Anyway, I’m not sure a curse on me would even stick.”
Elliott spread his wings halfway out and bared his teeth, shifting from foot to foot. “She could cast a charm on an object,” Caryl said, “a charm that psychically compelled you to kill yourself. You’ve seen that you’re not immune to psychic spells.”
I exhaled, defeated. “Look. I made her promise not to cause me harm.”
“I find it hard to believe she would consent to that.”
“Well, she promised not to cause me harm tonight, or to keep me past midnight.”
“That sounds slightly more plausible.” She considered. “But I didn’t hear the conversation; there may be a loophole.”
“This is like Russian roulette with six thousand chambers. I’m okay with that level of risk.”
“If you find yourself on the end of the wrong chamber, it does not matter what your odds were.”
“If I die, you can say ‘I told you so’ at my grave, and that would probably be more fun than working with me.”
Caryl gave me one of her long, blank stares as Elliott tucked his head and closed up his wings. “Very well,” she said, “do as you like.” She turned for the door as Elliott gave me a tragic look over her shoulder.
“Caryl . . . ,” I began. But she was already gone.
? ? ?
Gotham Hall, as best I remembered from my dance-club days, had been near the Broadway end of the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. It was a quarter till nine when I got there, so the Westside’s pedestrian shopping paradise was aglow with strings of lights and loud with the music of street performers. I paused by the vomiting-stegosaurus fountain to slip on my fey glasses.
I still couldn’t see the entrance to Gotham Hall, but I could now see a suspicious dark webbing stretched across the narrow space between the clothing store and the mortgage broker on the corner. It reminded me of the glamour on the Seelie bar, but it was infinitely more intricate, a thing of mesmerizing fractal beauty.
I wasn’t sure how literal Vivian had been when she said, Think of me, but I gave it a shot, holding her image in my mind. As I did so, the strands of the dark web began to snap, parting dramatically like a theater curtain to reveal the red maw of Gotham Hall. The doorway was narrow, oppressed by the two buildings on either side of it, and just inside the dimly glowing passage stood two gorgeous, bored-looking bouncers.
“Ten dollars, please,” said the ebony idol on the left as I approached.
“Vivian told me to meet her here.”
“Do you have an invitation?” said the bronze idol on the right. They were both human, according to my sunglasses, but damn.
“If you mean a written invitation, then no.”
“Ten dollars, please,” said the ebony idol.
I grumbled and fished for my wallet.
Inside, the narrow hallway was a dim Looking Glass nightmare of venous red walls, purple curtains, and chessboard tile. Just the sort of place a homesick vampire might find comforting. Soulless dance music pulsed in my ears as I tried vainly to adjust my eyes. Weirdly, the patrons seemed to be human. If any of them found it odd that I was wearing sunglasses in the dark, they neglected to say so.
As I recalled, the downstairs consisted only of a dance floor and a billiards room, so I painstakingly climbed the surreal stairs—almost too narrow for two people to pass each other—up to the bar and eating area. The second story was elegant, though still moody: cinnamon wood floor, honey-gold wallpaper with the texture of crushed velvet, cloudy violet ceiling. There were a dozen or so people wandering about in various states of substance abuse.
Vivian sat with her back to me at the bar, posed with casual grace, dark hair shining. She wore Elvira heels and sheer black stockings with a seam up the back. Despite her come-hither attire, three bar stools on either side of her were clear. Perhaps the patrons could sense what I saw through my glasses: the aura of bruised misery that hung over her like San Fernando smog.
The sound of my cane caught her attention as I approached. She swiveled and held out her hand without getting up, speaking with that bubbly L.A. lilt that mismatched her appearance so disturbingly. “Millie. A pleasure to finally have a name to go with that unforgettable face.”
“Forgive me if I don’t shake your hand,” I said, stopping just out of arm’s reach and taking off my sunglasses.
“Oh my, my,” she said with a Cheshire smile. “What has -little Caryl been telling you about me?”
“More to the point, what has she told you about me?”
“Not a thing.”
“Then first, you need to know I have so much steel holding my bones together I get hit on by robots. Second, I’m pretty sure you don’t want the good people here to see you without your makeup on.” It was the best I could do to warn her without mentioning the word “magic” around a bunch of human eavesdroppers I didn’t know.