Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(41)

Raz stepped over a fishnet-stockinged someone enjoying a chemical sleep in the lee of a metal trash bin. The someone had bandages up and down their arm. “Folks don’t clean up after themselves in this part of town?”

“She’s fine,” Cat said.

“The bandages, I mean. Impolite not to close your people up.”

“They’re a fashion statement.” Bass pounded beyond the unmarked ironbound door. THE RATS! screamed a chalk sign on the wall beside the door, sharp-edged balloon letters flanked by lightning bolts. The chalk bore the same circle-trumpet glyph, which Cat bet belonged to a new artist on the block.

“Ravings of madmen?”

Cat shook her head. “That’s the band. They’re great, actually. We’re in luck.”

The door opened. Bass flooded the alley. The sleeping someone tossed. Two young men staggered out, arms wrapped around each other; the lighter-skinned one had fangs. The bouncer pushed a larger, angrier guy out after them. He recovered his footing and ran back toward the bar, but the bouncer’s gloved fist clipped him on the jaw and he fell, hit the wall, and slid down to join the crumpled someone, who drew away into a fetal position by reflex.

The bouncer filled the door: a broad-shouldered woman with angular muscles and short spiked orange hair. Cat remembered her from the bad old days. “Hi, Candy,” she said, and thumbed left at Raz. “I brought a friend.”

“I don’t think she’s convinced,” Raz said, and flashed the woman a smile with a little tooth.

The bouncer opened for them like a second layer of door. Cat tipped her as they entered the pulsing dark, the dancing strobes, the surging mass of sweat and flesh and black lace where she’d spent too many years of nights.

It felt like coming home, to a home smaller and shabbier than remembered but still homey. Pool tables in front, unoccupied, beside the bar. Stage on the back wall, cage fronted in case of zealotry, dance floor ringed by private booths. The smoke of a hundred cigarettes congregated in the ceiling. “I missed this place,” she said. She’d taught herself to dread Walsh’s bar while getting sober, but here it was, a refuge where she’d passed hard times. She loved it, though she didn’t trust the way she loved it, like an echo of an unheard noise.

“Good music,” Raz said, bobbing his head almost in time with the beat.

“Ms. Elle!” A voice from the bar, round and big. She turned and with unechoed joy saw double-chinned Walsh, a year grayer but his paunch and big arms and pockmarked face unchanged. He raised one arm above a row of patrons bent over their personal drugs. “Come here.”

“Walsh.” She slapped him a high five over the rounded back of a man with a lizard’s head. “How’s the life?”

“Fat and happy. Didn’t expect you to take my advice when you were last here. It’s been a while.”

“And a while again,” she said.

“Haven’t seen you before, sailor.”

Raz’s hands were deep inside his pockets. “Nice place you have here.”

“What’s tonight’s poison?” Walsh asked. “Some choice kids on the floor today, if either of you are looking for a fang.”

“Whiskey for me.” She held up thumb and finger to gauge the amount. “I’m on a diet.”

“Sailor?”

“Same,” Raz said.

“Don’t need to keep up appearances.” Walsh pointed to the dance floor. “The booths are cheap, and the crowd’s willing.”

“Whiskey, thank you.”

Walsh passed the drinks with a skeptical expression; Cat paid before Raz could try. “What have I missed?” Cat asked.

“Same scene: changes and never changes. You remember Brad?”

“Pale kid with the needle teeth, yeah. In from the boondocks.”

“Let himself go a few months back.”

“No shit.”

“Full out with the claws and everything. Candy took him down, with help. Almost had to call the Suits, but everyone’s okay, except for Brad.” He stabbed his sternum with the tip of his middle finger and made a face. “Shanda moved back down to Alt Selene, her grandkids need some help down there. The Strings broke up, got back together, broke up again. It’s life.”

“Or something like it,” she said, completing their old phrase. “It’s good to see you again, Walsh.”

“Same here, kid. Get out on the floor!”

Raz had taken his whiskey and looked, not tense exactly, but distant.

“I’ll play some pool first,” Cat said.

Walsh kept rein on his surprise. “Get on, then. Take table two.”

They wormed through the crowd to the empty table. “I can’t play with you,” Raz said.

“Don’t be so sure.” She racked the balls, rolled them back and forth on green felt, switched two solids and stripes.

“I’m stronger. My heart doesn’t beat, and I don’t have to breathe. It wouldn’t be fair.”

The cues were still horrible and gnarled. She ground blue chalk against the tip, and inhaled, smelling sweat and blood in a good way. Familiar, long-absent scents of stale beer and cloves tickled up her nose and back down her throat. Her tongue woke wet in her mouth, and she felt an anticipatory thrill, like a man had turned a key in her spine to tighten her nerves like piano wire. Tuning her.