“It’s fine,” I say. “I just need to figure out the way in.”
Truman takes the cigarette out of his mouth and squints at me. “What way in? It’s condemned.”
But I’m bending close to the wall, examining the plywood for some clue to the password, and don’t answer.
Just below the painted numbers, someone has scratched
Gluttony
in letters so small they look like odd, uneven pinpricks. I place my palm flat against it and close my eyes.
“Moderation,” I whisper. Nothing. “Abstinence, restraint, abnegation, nephalism.” No response and I consider the possibility that Moloch was only teasing me, luring me out to an abandoned street corner because he thinks it’s funny to watch me flounder. But Moloch is nowhere to be seen and I can’t imagine him perpetrating a joke he couldn’t watch, and the counter-word is there, scratched on the plywood. There must be a way in.
Truman pushes himself away from the wall and puts out the cigarette. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to speak the word.” I press my hands against the wood, squinting at the tiny crooked letters. “There should be an obverse, something to counteract gluttony.”
“Temperance,” he mutters, reaching past me to rest his hand on the board.
At his touch, a handle materializes, followed by the outline of a battered door.
“How did you do that?”
Truman shrugs and looks away. “Gluttony’s a sin. All the deadlies have matching virtues.” My expression must show my confusion, because he raises his eyebrows and mutters, “Catholic school.”
When I reach for the handle, it’s cold and solid in my grasp. Inside, the club is dim, hazy with smoke. It settles over everything like a veil. A wiry man covered in blue tattoos is managing the door. He stares into my face with pale eyes, then smiles a toothy smile. “Good to see a young lady of your breeding. It’s not often that we get the aristocracy in here.”
He waves us into a large, crowded room with an oppressively low ceiling. All around, people are grouped in twos and fours, drinking from a startling array of mismatched glasses.
On a little stage over in the corner, a seven-piece orchestra is playing rock music with a cello and two violins. Everyone is packed together, laughing, talking, dancing. They’re pale and alike, all ghostly copies of each other. Truman moves closer to me, staring around at all the people. My people.
I slide my way through the crowd, scanning the room for Moloch’s crest of red hair. The whole place seems to be nothing but black and white.
When another tattooed footman pushes by us with a tray of drinks, I catch hold of his arm. “Excuse me, I’m looking for my cousin Moloch. Have you seen him?”
The server hefts his tray over the heads of a pair of giggling Lilim and gazes down at me with bored eyes. “I see a lot of people.”
“Well, he doesn’t look like any of them. He works for the bone shop and his hair is very red.”
The server makes an ambiguous noise and points in the direction of a low doorway, nearly hidden by smoke and people. “He’s in the back.”
We make our way toward the door, past packed alcoves and crowded tables. The floor is rough, sloping gently downward, and it’s hard to tell if the room is cut straight from the ground, or if it’s just covered in so much dirt that whatever surface lies below has been buried for centuries. The walls and the ceiling are painted a dark, flaking maroon.
Truman stays close, following me into another room and another. I wonder how far the Prophet Club goes. It sprawls indecorously, winding back on itself. At the end of a maze of hallways, we come out in a low-ceilinged room with a long, heavy bar along one wall.
At a table in the far corner, Moloch has his back to us and is leaning toward a girl with long black hair and an astonishing amount of cleavage. He’s got his coat off and his sleeves rolled up. As he talks, he gestures with what looks like a long strand of beads. The girl sitting across from him is Myra.
I make my way toward them, edging through the crowd and pulling Truman behind me. As we come up behind him, Moloch glances over his shoulder. He smiles when he sees us, but it looks subdued.
“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 account 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?”