Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(72)
I started to tell her about Vivian’s promise but hesitated. She might wonder why Vivian would take the meeting seriously enough to offer that promise. “Why would she bother hurting me?” I said instead.
“She owns a pest control company, Millie; she had a large fortune and chose to invest it in wholesale extermination.”
“Killing me would harm Berenbaum, wouldn’t it?”
“Negative emotions do not fall under the fey’s under-standing of ‘harm,’ since humans frequently and demonstrably seek them out.”
“Vivian can’t lay a hand on me without destroying her own facade. What harm could she do?”
“She doesn’t need to lay a hand on you. She can create metaspells.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Her wards can cast their own enchantments. Say Vivian is in Paris and you try to break into her warded house in Los Angeles. The ward casts an enchantment on you when you pass over the windowsill, and the enchantment causes your heart to explode. She has a perfect alibi.”
“Wouldn’t my touch disable the ward, though?”
“Not if she was still powering it.”
“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.”