Murdock and I exchanged glances. “My dates never wear vinyl,” he said.

“Not a date!” Meryl called back. We caught up with her at the corner and came out into one of Boston’s amusing intersections called squares. Eight streets converged into a tight formation, buildings wedging in like slices of cake. No one in their right mind would try and drive through it without praying to whatever gods they held dear. As it was, a half dozen cars clung to the curbs, burnt-out husks of metal that had been there long enough to rust. One of them had a parking boot clamped to its tire, whether in tribute to the traffic department’s efficiency or indifference was unknowable.

A cluster of people waited on a sidewalk on the far side of the square, some in outfits that made Meryl’s look demure. And the women were even more scantily clad.

“Don’t talk,” Meryl said as we stepped up to the club. No sign over the door, but down in the Tangle, if you didn’t know where you were going, you shouldn’t be there. Following Meryl, we skirted around the waiting queue.

On one side of the entrance, a dwarf worked the line, while on the other, a tall, lanky fey surveyed the crowd. He was one of the solitary fairies who didn’t have any prominent clan affiliation. Not with his yellow-barked skin and damaged, spiny growths like hair on his head. No high fairy clan would ever claim him as their own. He might even be Unseelie, one of the unwanted who banded together to protect themselves from the pretty fey with the nasty essence bolts. He turned unsettlingly white eyes toward Meryl, and his face cracked open in what passed for a smile. “Long time no see, M. What brings you down to party town?”

Meryl gave him a cool nod. “Hey, Zev. Just playing with some friends. Can you let us in?”

His white eyes glittered over us, lingering a moment on Murdock. “New policy. Fey only.”

She smiled coyly and stroked the bent thing in the middle of his face that I hoped was his nose. “I don’t see any humes, do you, Zev? You know me.”

Zev looked down at Murdock, then at the dwarf. When he was sure the dwarf wasn’t looking, he slipped a small stone in Murdock’s hand. It was a ward stone, and I felt Zev’s essence on it as Murdock put it in his pocket with a nonchalant move yet puzzled face. No one would mistake Murdock for an Unseelie with it, but it interacted with his essence enough to keep suspicion down that he was just a human normal. My senses were still hyped-up from the Bosnemeton, and I could see little flashes of purple light cascading around him.

Without a word, Zev gave us his back, unhooking the velvet rope as he did so. We walked through and entered the club. Inside, the hallway closed in tight with bodies, the walls glistening with some kind of phosphorescent life. The floor vibrated beneath our feet. We came around a corner to a blast of heavy bass, filktronica crushing out any chance of conversation.

The cavernous space of Carnage unfolded before us, four wide floors above ripped open to make more height. Crumbled concrete and jagged rebar hung over the main floor, where hundreds of fey danced in a pandemonium of light and sound. Old metal elevator cages enclosing a live band lined the edge of the second floor, five people with drums and electric lutes and harps. The singer groaned into a microphone, her voice adding a sensual growl to the rhythm of sound.

Meryl’s arms shot into the air, and she sashayed into the mix. I made a mental note to kill her for this later. I don’t like dancing. Murdock dove right in, though, taking right to the music. Learn something new about people every day. Of course, all the drugs in the air probably helped. I could smell plenty of weed and a couple of fey concoctions. I did my usual simple shimmy-in-place and looked around.

Carnage was the current place for hot music and the seen scene. I recognized more than a few faces from the arts and leisure pages of the Boston Globe. The place was simply one in a long string of gathering places that placed a premium on edgy and illicit. I had been in more than a few despite Meryl’s belief. They burst into existence with regularity, only to fade when the mainstream found them or the cops did. A new one would spring up before the lights went up on the last one.

All the menace was in the posturing. The most uncool thing to happen to you in the hottest club in town was to get thrown out of it. So, a strange mélange of people bumped and ground against each other who would never give each other the time of day otherwise. The Carnage crowd had a distinct Teutonic bent, with dwarves and elves from more clans than I had seen in a while. Not a few fairies swooped overhead, their eyes glazed with a feverish high. Squirreled away here and there were more solitaries, strange denizens who lingered in the shadows even here. You didn’t see many of them in Boston. They kept to themselves, feared for their lives, and made do with the lot life had given them. Copper-skinned men with overly long arms showed sharp teeth as they teased a skeletal woman, naked and pale, or an amphibious fey of indeterminate sex.

No flits, though. I realized Joe wasn’t with us, nor were any of his brethren anywhere that I could see. I thought he’d wanted to come. Knowing him, though, he had found something fascinating under Murdock’s car seats.

We spent the better part of an hour moving around the floor. What I couldn’t see in the darkness, I could sense. Fey essence everywhere, some minor spells working, mostly on glamours to make the hot look hotter. A lot of action seemed to be going on in alcoves around the upper levels but nothing that shocked me. I left Murdock and Meryl on the floor to get some water. With everything else going on in the room giving me a headache, I didn’t want to increase the head pain with alcohol.

I didn’t want to think about the structural integrity of the building, but hoped the extra warding I was seeing and feeling was enough to hold it all together. Ripping the floors out to create the open space had weakened the structure, but someone who knew how to work stone materials, probably a dwarf or maybe C-Note himself, had used essence to strengthen what remained. Essence could be used to create tough barriers in and of itself. Bonding it to existing brick and mortar made it even stronger.

I leaned against the bar and caught sight of Callin. He stood across from me, a section of gyrating dancers between us. He talked with a motley crew of fey who looked like trouble. I was going to have a conversation with my brother sometime in the near future. It would end in anger, I’m sure, but I at least had to try to understand why he chose to put himself on the wrong side of things so often. He finally caught sight of me but didn’t come over, making it clear he didn’t want us seen together. After a few minutes, he caught my eye again and with an imperceptible nod indicated a wide set of closed doors visible on the third floor above.

C-Note is up there. Don’t do anything stupid, he sent. The man was hanging out with drug dealers and gangs and was telling me not to do anything stupid. I couldn’t complain too much at the moment, though. He had let me know that C-Note would be here tonight when I asked him to find out.

I shimmied my way back onto the dance floor to Meryl and her dancing fool partner. They couldn’t hear me, but I got them to follow me through the flailing arms and legs and wings to the steel staircases that twisted up to the second and third levels. Once above the band, the sound diminished. People milled about what was left of a floor that had become a balcony overlooking the dance floor.

“What’s up here?” Meryl asked.

I nodded behind me toward the sheet-metal door. “That.”

By the way Meryl’s nostrils flared, I could tell she was sensing what I was. “Haven’t you boys had enough of trolls lately?”