The garish neon sign spelled out archer's bull's-eye. In smaller letters beneath: the place to score.
We had circled the block once and twice, trying to get a view from all angles, but other buildings, including a discotheque and a restaurant, blocked approach from the rear. Now we joined the line. The scent of perfume from many bodies hung in the air, and the tang of cigarette smoke, along with the endless mutter of traffic from the street, and the dimly heard banging of the music from the club. When the wind blew, droplets from the fountains fell among us, refreshing.
Colin nudged me. "Hey! There she is! I wrote her a letter. Why is there another guy with her? I thought I was supposed to have mind-control powers or something. What's the point of mind control if your girls date other guys? What's up with that?"
Vanity said, "She's not your girl because you wrote her a love letter."
Colin muttered, "If I had mind-control powers, she would be!"
Quentin said mildly, "I've seen that guy on TV. Funny, I thought he was done with computers."
I started to look "past" the walls of the building, but Vanity hissed, "Stop!"
"What?" I said.
"Your eyes turn red when you do that, and they seem to be, sort of, further away than your head is."
"Well..."
Colin said, "I'll handle it."
Without another word, he jumped over the velvet rope separating one part of the line from another. He was speaking to a young woman with long chestnut hair that brushed her hips. Her hair was longer than her dress, which almost did not make it all the way from her armpits to the top of her legs. Whatever he said, he was making her laugh, and I noticed he touched her bare shoulder when he spoke.
He was wearing her sunglasses when he returned and, without a word, he passed them to me.
"I could have just closed my eyes, you know," I said crossly. "I can see through my lids."
"Gross," opined Vanity.
In a higher dimension, where no mortals could see, I opened my hypersphere and jarred it to set it ringing. The concentric pressure waves of not-light radiated out in four directions, filling hypervolumes rather than volumes. In the sudden gleam, I looked.
"The buildings are interconnected. Two dance floors with lights and lasers. A bar. Basement rooms contain refrigerators, wine cellars. There are offices on the top floor."
"Can you see through lead? Look for a safe," suggested Colin.
"Are you an idiot? I am looking over the sides of things. It doesn't matter what they're made of."
"Anyone look like a god?" Colin asked. "They have ichor inside 'em instead of blood."
Victor said, "Leader, I just noticed the electromagnetic aura concentrated here dropped. The signatures are consistent with the standing-wave phenomena Quentin manipulates. Magic."
"Dropped, meaning... ?"
"Something just went away, or reduced output. Doesn't look like a threat."
I winced and bit my lip. In the higher plane, I folded my hypersphere back into a disk, feeling foolish. "Boggin warned me to be cautious. I might have scared Archer away. If he sees in the fourth dimension, he just saw a spotlight passing over his house here, or if he has a Phaeacian...
Vanity, is anyone looking at us?"
Vanity was signing an autograph for a young man who mistook her for Lindsay Lohan. He was trying to wheedle her phone number from her when Quentin stepped between the two, letting his walking stick rap threateningly near the boy's feet and allowing her to disengage.
Vanity said, "Amelia, that is the dumbest question since the question mark was invented in 500
a.d. Every man here is looking at us, comparing us to his date, and every date is sizing us up, too.
And the boys are staring, wishing they were men. So, yes, a lot of people are looking." She turned and waved at several tall men in tuxedoes, who were smiling toward her. Over her shoulder, she said, "If there is a sniper on the roof, I can't tell, not in a crowd."
Then we were at the front of the line. The doorman was dressed in Lincoln green, with a peaked cap on his head and a clipboard in his hand. The Merry Man effect was jarred by his sunglasses and hearing aid, which made him look like a Secret Service agent from a movie.
"Names?"
"Amelia Windrose, how do you do?" "Vanity Fair." "Victor Invictus Triumph, sir." "Call me Nemo." "Randy Johnson Willie Joystick, but friends call me Dick."
He looked up. "Vanity Fair? Like the magazine?"
Vanity smiled brightly. "They named a magazine after me? This is a wonderful country!"
The expression in his eyes was hidden. "You kids make those names up?"
Quentin said, "Actually, we did. The North Wind sent us. We're here to see Archer."
The guy looked back down at his checklist. "I'm sorry, your names, made up or not, are not on my list. The Bull's-Eye Club is invitation only. Next!"
Vanity said, "But we have an invitation! Boreas said he sent word ahead."
"Next!"
I said in my best Headmaster Boggin voice, "See here, young man! We are here to see Mr. Archer, and we have no intention of leaving without seeing him!"
The two guys behind us (one of whom had a ring both in his nostril and in his lip) started to shoulder forward, but Victor stood in the way. They made the mistake of deciding to manhandle him, grabbing at his shoulder and elbow. There was a loud snap of noise and a smell of ozone, and the two men jumped back, yowling and swearing.
Colin turned toward them, gritting his teeth, and his hair started to stand up, and his face to grow dark. Quentin tapped his walking stick on the ground, and a dark shadow began to stream from his feet and swell across the sidewalk and up the building.
"Troops!" I said sharply. "Stand down! The Dark Mistress has not given the word yet!"
This drew some hoots and murmurs from the crowd around us. We were suddenly the center of attention.
The guy with the rings in his nose and lip said, "Hey! He's got a stun gun! He shocked us! I'm calling the cops!"
A voice from the crowd called out, "The cops'll just kick your ass, man. This is L. A."
I did not see the fast-moving molecular packages leave Victor's body and enter the nervous systems of the two men behind us, but I noticed the sudden snarl of moral forces in the area as the angry young men behind us suddenly looked sleepy and forgetful.