Once through the wide circling doors that snatched people in and spit them out, saturated in strange and overpowering smells, Nim said, “First stop, shoes. Sadly, your shoes should be practical, as I’ve rediscovered more times than I care to admit. But then, I think, we can be forgiven a ridiculous plunge into Forever 21.”
The shoes they found were, as promised, flat, hard treaded, lace-up, and sturdy, though Nim sighed louder than Jonah had over a pair of spiky red heels with only the thinnest of straps holding sole to foot.
“But it’s almost winter,” Alyce said.
“And wouldn’t they look stunning in the snow?”
“They’d look cold.”
Nim gave her a sour look. “You’re worse than Jilly. Enjoy your combat boots.”
She took her revenge at their next stop as she hustled Alyce into a curtained room. “You stay here. Take off those black horrors and I’ll bring you something more appropriate.”
“Practical for chasing devils, like the shoes?”
Nim shushed her. “You said you wanted a man.”
Alyce craned her neck to see around the other woman. “The talyan will be coming here?”
“Not likely. This is truly their version of hell. Now stay.”
Alyce obediently slipped out of the clothes Sidney had left for her—left behind, just as he’d left her. A flicker of anger canceled out the touch of breeze on her naked skin, and the hard stomp of her new shoes felt good as she paced the tiny room.
She was nothing but a curiosity to him, a puzzle to unfold.
When Nim brought back the clothes she’d chosen, Alyce knew she could show Sidney that she had nothing to hide.
Really, this was evil’s secret hideout?
Thorne leaned against a scrawny maple tree that had sucked all the sustenance it could from its narrow island of soil at the edge of the huge parking lot. Sprawled in the middle of the cracked pavement was the Bowl Me Over.
The retro neon sign—not neo-retro, but dating back to Thorne’s own childhood—over the entry was half dismantled, but the streetlights beamed their ugly illumination, dull white as a dead man’s eyes. With a prick of his djinni, Thorne read the sheet of paper taped to the double front door.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION FOR PRIVATE BOWLING LEGION
“I suppose you couldn’t say league,” he muttered.
He’d wrung the location of the ahaˉzum gathering out of Carlo before tossing him off the boat. He might have suspected Carlo was trying to make him look foolish, bringing him to such an inauspicious place where the impatient city pressed close on all sides, but the djinn-man had been too wrecked to lie.
The cars parked near the entrance didn’t lie either, all late-model conspicuous consumption and shining waxy under the lights.
DJIN 1. DEEPBLU C. IMEVL.
Thorne shook his head. “Vanity, thy name is legion.”
The doors were locked when he tried them. He had an invitation of sorts. He could just knock.
He had a djinni. He could just tear the doors down.
Well, shit. He had brought his lock picks since Carlo had reminded him of the good old days. So he let himself in with only a quiet snick of yielding tumblers.
Thanks to the djinni, he might walk on wind chimes and make no noise. But he didn’t forget that those who gathered within were possessed too.
The foyer was darker than the parking lot, and every bit as ugly with the cheap pine-coffin wall paneling. The djinn didn’t need lights, of course, but most of the possessed clung to the delusions of their humanity. They liked to hide their darkness in the light.
So Thorne followed the faint glow of yellow deeper into the building.
Ahead of him, the unlit lanes stretched away from the empty chairs and the snack bar that even hours after closing still stank of nacho cheese.
Nacho cheese and sulfur.
At the far end of the lanes, only partially visible between the pinsetters, the djinn-men of Chicago had gathered under the bare bulbs of the bowling alley’s back room.
Thorne settled himself cross-legged on a scorer’s table to listen.
“… not enough of us yet,” Carlo was saying to the dozen others. “Magdalena is disappointed.”
Thorne wondered if the queen bitch had taken out her disappointment on her lapdog. If so, she’d been discerning in her punishment, since Carlo had been freed of the andiron wrapped around his heart. He paced briskly in front of the gathered men, and his djinni’s energy simmered around his slick gray suit like a kettle on high; the old mobster was clearly enjoying the return to organized crime.
Not everyone seemed so enthused. “I came tonight because you made promises, Carlo. I don’t give a shit about Magdalena’s disappointment.”
Thorne peered through the pinsetter, silently cheering the sentiment. Fuck Magdalena. He didn’t recognize the other djinn-man—he would’ve remembered so many platinum chains reflecting off diamond-studded teeth—but that wasn’t surprising. He knew Carlo well enough to relish stabbing him only because the wise guy had explained to a bewildered, raw djinn-man on a now-distant night why an entire bottle of Thunderbird no longer worked its obliterating magic. Of course, Carlo hadn’t shared until said-empty bottle had been smashed apart and pressed to his throat.
Thorne had to wonder what advantages Carlo had so freely promised on Magdalena’s behalf. And why hadn’t Carlo offered him those advantages? Thorne shifted in irritation. Just as well he’d learned to take what he wanted without asking.
Carlo strutted in a tight circle, the yellow light from the bare bulb greasing his hair like margarine. “Out of us all, only Magdalena has had the nerve to call the ahaˉzum, to continue what Corvus Valerius began.”
The doubting spokesman tapped his chin, jangling the platinum chains over his tight-fitted T-shirt. “Blackbird began by—let’s see—losing his head, then his soul and his demon, and then—oh yeah—the last shreds of his miserable life. What could possibly be the next step?”
“Ending the secrecy.”
Djinni energy flared with an acrid stink. The pinball machines on the other side of the snack bar briefly pinged and strobed, a disturbingly cheerful soundtrack. Thorne closed his eyes while he curbed the demon, knowing his own sockets would be beaming night prowler zeal.
“That’s psycho,” said Chains.
“If Corvus had torn the Veil between the demon and human realms wide open, that would be psycho,” Carlo said. “Magdalena will reveal what we are: all-powerful, invincible, gods in our own right. And goddess. We’d run this city.”
Gods of Chicago? Thorne restrained a snort. But who wouldn’t want to be called a god? Certainly the gathering of djinn-men in a defunct bowling alley were now muttering with eager tones.
He peered at them again. Seen through the mechanical struts and flywheels of the pinsetters, their bodies were a Cubist portrait of disjointed evil. But their isolationism was coming to an end, apparently. Maybe they’d forgotten in this sudden mania that most of them had renounced their pantheistic histories long ago. There could be only one great spirit.
He could guess who would claim that place. And Magdalena would never be satisfied with a mere city.
“Corvus wanted to pit hell against heaven, not to rule,” Chains argued. “He believed if the djinn and angels fought without intermediaries—without us—he would be free. I am not interested in being free to die, spitted on an angel’s sword.”
“What makes you think the sphericanum will act?” Carlo held his hands together in a prayerlike pose—a little something he’d picked up from Magdalena, no doubt. “Things ain’t never been worse for them. A lone djinn-man nearly brought down the Veil. And the sphericanum has done”—he spread his hands—“nothing.”