12

Ni Dieux, Ni Maîtres

THE CLUB WAS HIDDEN ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE CITY, IN THE no-man’s-land where the airport gave way to near-empty space. NDNM was a small, freestanding building sandwiched between a gas station and a run-down strip mall on the top of a weedy slope. At this late hour, just past 1:00 a.m., the only lights came from the neon above the gas station, the flickering yellow light of the late-night noodle shop, and the blue glow seeping through NDNM’s narrow, mirrored windows. They reminded Sylvie of gun slits, and her hands tightened on the steering wheel.

She drove past the building once, trying to get a feel for the club’s layout. Front door, narrow windows, back door, no windows, delivery door. A basic box. In the passenger seat, Erinya grumbled. “Scaredy-cat.”

“Reconnaissance is never a bad idea,” Sylvie said. “Some of us are not immortal.”

Erinya sank back against the fake leopard-print seat cover and sulked into silence, picking at a stiff stain in the ratty plush. Sylvie eyed the stain, then decided not to overthink it. They’d needed a car to get to the club; Erinya had gotten one, and made no mention of what its owner had thought about the appropriation of the vehicle.

There was no reason for Erinya to have killed for it; in Chicago, old cars were as common as concrete. Besides, that stain didn’t look like blood. At least, not a lot like blood.

Sylvie drew into the lot, counting cars by row, six here, ten there, two dozen there, trying to estimate how many people might be within. She parked at the edge of the lot and paused, a little at a loss. Erinya had started the car for her; it lacked its key, and she didn’t think the Fury had done anything as real-world as cross wires to jump-start it. Sylvie finally got out of the car with a shrug, the motor still running.

She touched the gun at her back for reassurance and headed toward the door, Erinya trotting eagerly at her heels.

The front door opened, and a young couple came out into the night air on a wave of cigarette smoke, dressed with dark European flair, and speaking in rapid and colloquial French. They passed Sylvie, and the woman turned back to look, her lips twisting slightly.

Sylvie paused; she’d seen Val look at her like that a thousand times. She didn’t pass muster. Sylvie glanced at her reflection in the mirrored windows and groaned.

“Give me your jacket,” she said. Erinya peered over her shoulder, studying Sylvie’s reflection also, as if she could see what Sylvie was seeing more clearly that way.

It might be true, Sylvie thought. Erinya might see insides as opposed to outsides, a person’s soul, rather than the flesh cloaking it.

Sylvie’s grey T-shirt, thrown on that morning in anticipation of a day spent moving boxes, was ready for the ragman. Small dark spots freckled the collar; leftover droplets of blood had washed down from her face and hair, and the fabric was fraying beneath the stains.

Sylvie prodded a dark spot with a fingernail, and the cotton popped beneath her touch with the nasty sensation of a blister giving way. Sorcerer’s blood, she thought. Some type of lingering power gnawing away at his killer. Good thing she’d gotten the blood off her skin.

Erinya handed her jacket over without objection. Black leather, heavily laden with zippers, and with a tattered Union Jack on its reverse. Not Sylvie’s style, but better than nothing. She slipped one arm in and shivered. It felt weirdly alive, vibrating to that strange, nonhuman frequency that surrounded Dunne and the sisters. She hesitated.

“Don’t be such a wuss. It’s just clothes,” Erinya said. She stuck out her tongue. “Bran bought it last time he was in London. A present for being such a good girl.” She stepped closer and stroked the scarred leather, her face as wistful as a born predator’s could get. The entire jacket shivered toward her, like a pet yearning toward its owner. Sylvie jerked away.

Gods and power. She finally understood, in a visceral way, what Dunne was fighting, his worries about the trails he left, the power he shed the way humans dropped skin cells and hair. Erinya’s jacket radiated the same kind of weight a spell did and could probably serve as a tiny little battery for those who were magically talented.

Gritting her teeth, she pulled it on the rest of the way, shuddering as the gun purred against it. The dark spots on her T-shirt bleached white and slowly dissolved in vaporous wisps. “Wonderful,” Sylvie muttered, zipping the jacket closed. She took a last look in the mirror, straightened her hair, checked that the gun was sufficiently hidden, leaving no revelatory bulge beneath the heavy leather hem. Good enough.

She tugged one-half of the double doors open, finding it surprisingly heavy, and Erinya flowed through into the dimness beyond and disappeared. Sylvie followed, slowing immediately and blinking in the low light.

The room was long, running the length of the storefront, but too shallow to be all there was. The light confounded her, being not only dim, but moving, flashing, alive with shadows. Muttered words reached her ears, a garble that she took for foreign before catching a word here and there, and understanding that it was several people speaking at once, not in conversation but in monologues. The light flickered again, blue-white, off to either side of her, and Sylvie’s eyes adjusted.

Television screens. The light that had seeped through the windows, the flickering that teased her eyes now was the familiar glow of television in a dark room. On either side of her, the televisions were stacked in columns ringed by chairs. The screens shifted at different speeds, showing multiple channels. To her left, the seats were mostly full, young men and women leaning forward or lounging back, watching the screens with varying shades of attention. To her right, the seats were mostly empty. Sylvie leaned right, turned her head, caught a brief snatch of words—one television broadcasting into a lull on the others.

“. . . each according to need is the standard we should strive to . . .”

“Tear it all down! The world without authority cannot be worse than the world we have now.” An agitated orator from the left found an echo in a viewer. A man whose stubble gleamed in the reflected light spat the words back at the screen with the fervor of a fanatic. “Tear it all down.” His hands clenched on his knees.

Sylvie, scenting trouble, listened harder and got a trace of a passionate voice tinnily exhorting through muffled speakers: “The government doesn’t serve you. It doesn’t serve me. It serves itself, and forces us to serve it, at the expense of individualization. I say better by far to have no government at all—”

“Ten dollars,” a gruff voice spoke, startling her. She hadn’t seen him approach at all, which amazed her, given his size.

“Ten dollars,” he repeated. “No looky-loos. You want to stay, you pay.” She eyed the stretched-out T-shirt across his broad chest, the palm as big as a dinner plate extended before her, and looked up, then up some more.

Gentle giant? she thought. Let’s not find out. She fumbled through her pockets and pulled out two crumpled fives. “That cover my friend also?” She gestured toward Erinya, now crouched before the lowermost screen, watching the movement within, like a cat fascinated by a fish tank. No one seemed to object that she was blocking the view. It didn’t require any sensitivity to the Magicus Mundi to see that Erinya was best left unprovoked. Even her human-shaped shell suggested that she was the kind of girl who might knock you down in a mosh pit, then kick you in the head if you complained. Kick back, and she’d grab a bottle and brain you.

The giant doorman looked at Erinya for a moment, thoughtful; as she felt his eyes on her, she turned and stared back. “Her? Twenty dollars for the trouble she’s gonna make.”