I dig earplugs out of my backpack. Dancer made them for me out of some kind of stuff that absorbs noise way better than the standard plugs. I wedge them in, tune out the world, and begin sorting through my facts.
One: It’s not after iron. There’s none at Chester’s. I need to get that info to Dancer ASAP.
Two: It’s not after life force because one of the scenes had no life forms and I seriously doubt a mouse would be enough.
Three: Dirt, metal, and plastic are the only physical elements all the scenes had in common.
I start mentally rebuilding every scene I visited, labeling and depositing them in one of the more readily accessible drawers in my brain’s filing cabinet, right next to where Dancer and me play chess sometimes without a board. It’s an important part of your brain to exercise if you want to stay sharp. Being smart is handy, but if you aren’t mentally agile, it doesn’t get you anywhere but stuck in your own fact-ruts.
First up is the subclub. There were over a hundred humans and Fae engaged in various social and sexual activities. I visualize the room in detail, from the torture racks to the sofas, the sexual couplings to the band that was playing in the corner, the food that was on a table, the tapestries and mirrors on the walls. I look for something in the club that I can easily spot at every other scene. Maybe it’s hunting for a tapestry or a special mirror. It sounds stupid, but who can say what might draw a creature like that? Maybe it was cursed and it needs some hallowed Fae object to free itself. You never know with the Fae.
Next up is the warehouse that got iced, populated only by Unseelie and filled with crates and boxes of guns. What was in this place that was also in the club? No tapestries or mirrors that I saw, but maybe there was one in a crate somewhere behind all the audio equipment and electronics.
Then there were two underground pubs with the usual stuff: wood bar, bottles, drinks, stools, a huge mirror behind the bar, folks dancing, a few shooting pool in the corner of one place, playing darts in the other. The wood could have come from anywhere: the stools, the bar, the framed pictures on the walls, the floor. The plastic also could have come from anything: bottle toppers, chairs, plates, phones, the list goes on and on.
The fitness center had three people in a building filled with treadmills and ellipticals and all kinds of weight machines and twenty or so of those milky-crystal meditation bowls. I guess the wood at that scene must have come from the framing of the building. I go back and begin mentally breaking down the structure of each scene, too, so I can add all that stuff into the mix.
“This is impossible,” I mutter. It’s worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. I’m looking for a dozen needles in dozens of different haystacks that are no longer even there because they all exploded. It could be after a red Solo cup for all I know! Do they have red Solo cups in Morocco?
I go through the rest of the scenes and realize I need more info on the ones that happened while I was gone in order to visualize them. Ryodan might have a kick-ass War Room but Dancer’s got lists already put together.
Too bad I’m locked in.
I look at the door. I don’t remember hearing Lor lock it. Lor likes to stir things up, keep them hopping.
I freeze-frame over to it, test the knob and grin.
“Dani, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Jo says.
“He said I couldn’t leave without one of his people. Listening to you talk, you and him are, like, peas in the Jo-pod. That makes you one of his people. Are you or aren’t you? ’Cause the way I figure it, if the dude’s banging you every day and doesn’t consider you one of his people, you’re not just getting screwed, you’re stupid.” I hate manipulating Jo. When her heart’s involved, it’s way too easy. And her heart’s dangling off her sleeve where Ryodan’s concerned. “Dude, you been outside lately?” I push. We have to go now. It took me twenty minutes to find my way back to the main part of Chester’s from the War Room. I got a bad feeling Ryodan doesn’t plan to leave me alone in there too long, with all those computers. I wouldn’t. If I really was stuck in there, that’s what I’d be messing with right now, trying to hack into his systems. “The world is falling apart. Folks are dying! I just want to run a quick errand. That’s all. One tiny little errand. It won’t hardly take any time at all.”
“I’ll go ask him if it’s okay first.”
“You got any idea where he is? ’Cause I ain’t seen him in hours. Isn’t it morning? Did he come to the top of the stairs yet? Is he still summoning you that way for a quickie over his desk, or have you graduated to, like, getting banged in a bed and everything? What’s he got, some kind of progressive ranking system? If you last a whole week, you get to do it in a chair, and if you make it two—”
“Now you’re just being mean,” she says. “Stop it.”
“Just saying. I’d like to see you get some real romance, Jo. You deserve it. You’re the prettiest girl in here and everybody’d love to date you. Do you know he has steak and milk and bread and stuff? I had the best meal today. Does he feed you like that?”
She tries to mask her surprise but doesn’t succeed. “Isn’t he still mad at you?”
“Don’t look like it from where I’m sitting.”
“Steak?”
I lick my lips, still tasting it. “Rib eye.”
“Milk?”
“Dude.” I nod. “Look, all I want to do is run by Dancer’s and get the lists.”
“He really gave you steak and milk today?”
I’d laugh but it’s sad. We’re all so fecking hungry for a home-cooked meal. When spring started to green things up out at the abbey, the girls started talking about growing veggies again. All the produce was gone within a month of the walls falling. If you want to bake something, you have to run a generator to power the oven. Either that or have whatever the feck kind of setup Ryodan’s got here at Chester’s, and even then you can only bake stuff that doesn’t require butter or milk or eggs. Jo’s almost as upset that he gave me good food as she is about him not romancing her.
“I’d call and ask Dancer to courier it over but, dude, no phones and no couriers. Can we just go? We’ll be back before anybody knows we’re gone. And if you and Ryodan really are a ‘thing,’ he ain’t going to give you any guff. He’s going to appreciate a woman with a little spine and independence!” Yeah, right. Ryodan despises spine and independence. He likes good little robots.
“Did he give you anything else?”
If I was having sex with somebody and they gave someone besides me awesome food, I’d be ten kinds of furious. The way I see it, intimacy should entitle you to privileges. If it don’t, it’s just skintimacy like on TV with folks always swapping partners and hurting each other. “Fresh strawberries and ice cream,” I lie.
“Ice cream? Are you kidding me? What kind?”
It’s sleeting when we get outside. Abandoned cars are shiny with a layer of ice. Skeletal trees shimmer like they’re crusted with diamonds. Snowdrifts are piling up. There’s a group of people outside Chester’s but it’s a somber, quiet crowd and I realize these ain’t partiers trying to get inside, these are folks looking to survive what’s coming. I guess all the partiers have already been let in. Wrapped in blankets, wearing hats, earmuffs, and gloves, these are folks that got no generators at home, and the weather has turned dangerously cold, sending them out into the streets to look for a source of heat before it’s too late.
Jo and me look at the folks as we pass.
“Let us in,” they say. “We just want to get warm.”
You can tell there’s heat in the club — and a lot of it — because the area above Chester’s is bare of accumulation. The pavement is an underinsulated roof, and the heat radiating up keeps melting the snow. Even that nominal sign of warmth is enough to keep folks standing around, hoping, waiting.