“Are we breaking in to steal urns?” Carwyn asked. “I could use a flowerpot.”
I ignored him and walked around a Dumpster. There was a hatch, wood with wire mesh over it, heavy enough so it was extremely difficult to pull up with one hand, but Carwyn didn’t offer to help and I didn’t ask. I heard a siren and froze for a moment, but it went wailing past like a banshee late for an appointment, and I heaved the trapdoor open so Carwyn could go in before me.
Once I closed the hatch, it was dark there, standing on rough concrete steps, but I felt more than heard the beat of the music already. We negotiated the stairs tied together in semidarkness, damp heat and smoke like mist rising to meet us as we went down.
It was a huge basement, a series of rooms like a network of caves. The walls were the same rough gray concrete as the steps.
It was filled with Dark and Light magic. Shadows that nobody had cast moved on the wall, shadows of things that did not exist: beautiful naked silhouettes and flying dragons and clouds with lightning bolts and rain. The lightning bolts were jagged shimmering lines of magic that dissipated into glitter in the dancers’ hair. One boy wore a neon-green bowler hat that spun continuously on his head, and always at a jaunty angle. A girl with bright wings tied to her back was blowing bubbles, fat globes of pure light that winked purple and blue and gold as they drifted through the room.
Everywhere you looked, there was Light and Dark magic dancing together, shadows and light lacing around people’s limbs.
I’d been taken to this place by other formerly buried ones, some fresh from the Dark city and some hardly remembering it, people who helped me when I was just getting used to my new home. None of them went to Nightingale-Evremonde, and too many of them wanted to talk about what had happened to me in the dark. I hadn’t been back to the club in more than a year.
Tonight, though, when I had already done something monumentally stupid, when I had tied a doppelganger to my side and was already drowning in memories, it looked just right.
“Welcome to Club Chiaroscuro,” I said. “Come on, let’s get a drink.”
“I admit it’s better than flowerpots.”
Carwyn did look mildly impressed as we went to the bar in the next room. One of the girl’s bubbles floated in between us, and I captured it in my free hand. It didn’t burst, but glowed at the proximity to my rings, and I found myself laughing. Blue and green patterns flashed on the glowing sphere, and it went spinning and trailing sparks.
“Hey, Lucie! I haven’t seen you in forever.”
I tossed the bubble up into the air and threw an arm around Nadiya, who had been one of my first friends in the city and was still one of my best friends. Nadiya was almost always laughing but knew when to be serious, and she was always talking, but never about anything that might hurt me.
“You look amazing,” I said, and she did: long, tight black dress, her hijab purple, and her eyes outlined with liquid eyeliner that I could never get the hang of. Whenever I tried, it looked like I’d taken to face painting. I was still wearing the dull, high-necked blue dress from the train station. “Don’t say a word about how I look good or I’ll never trust you again. Coming here was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you that you look good,” Nadiya said. “I was going to ask you to tell me more about how good I look. Oh,” she added a little too casually, her eyes moving past me, and my heart sank. “And I see you brought Ethan.”
I glanced at Carwyn.
“Well,” I said slowly. “Yeah.”
Carwyn’s smile was unlike any smile I had ever seen on Ethan’s face. “Hey. My Lucie is right as usual: you do look amazing.”
Nadiya didn’t know Ethan well. They were always perfectly friendly with each other, but he was a Stryker, and that made every interaction strained. Of course, she didn’t notice anything wrong with this Ethan.
“Thanks. You look good too,” she said. “Did you get a haircut?”
“I did!” said Carwyn, to all appearances delighted. “I did get a haircut. It was time, you know? Because, let’s face it, my old haircut made me look stupid.”
“No it didn’t,” I said.
“Lucie, lamb chop, it really did,” Carwyn assured me. “It was a terrible combination of mama’s little angel crossed with a poodle.” He glanced at Nadiya. “You agree with me, right?”
Nadiya looked puzzled. “Uh,” she said, “you look a bit thinner as well.”
“I haven’t been eating,” Carwyn claimed. “I was . . . depressed by how stupid my hair looked.”
“Ha ha,” I said. “Okay, shut up, you big weirdo.”
“Anything for you, pumpkin,” Carwyn drawled.
Nadiya was looking at us very oddly. I cleared my throat. “Time to dance!”