from a middle-aged woman in a white dress, saucer-size sunglasses and a ridiculous hat. I smiled at her and tapped a little juice, vaporizing the butt where it lay on the asphalt. She didn’t even notice.
About eleven o’clock that night, I left my condo and drove into Hollywood. It was a Saturday night, and as usual, traffic was a bitch. Fortunately I have a spell that allows me to weave through even the worst snarls with a little lane-jockeying.
Technically, the incantation I think of as the traffic spell is chaos magic—the old school would call it a luck spell. It’s one of my favorites. It’s subtle, and practical and complex enough that most sorcerers can’t manage it. In simple terms, it isolates and adjusts probability lines such that you just happen to find an open route through even the heaviest traffic. I surfed the probability waves through the Hollywood night and found the club on Sunset Boulevard.
I pulled up out front and spun my parking spell, muttering the words of the incantation. “Any place worth its salt has a parking problem.” I eased my car into a spot right by the door of the club just as a yellow Honda tuner pulled out. What luck.
There was a line of pasty, black-clad kids winding around the block, but sorcerers don’t wait in lines any more than we settle for lousy parking or sit in traffic jams. I walked up to the bouncer and smiled.
“I’m on the list,” I said. I wasn’t. I didn’t even know if there was a list. The bouncer’s meaty, clean-shaven head didn’t even budge as he checked me out from behind his wraparound sunglasses.
I reached out and touched the juice, channeling it through my imagination and rearranging it according to the pattern I’d learned.
“I have with me two gods,” I said. “Persuasion and Compulsion.” I released the magic and let it wash over him. Behind the sunglasses, the bouncer blinked.
“Oh,” he said, stepping aside to let me pass, “you’re on the list.”
I met the chorus of protests from the waiting kids with a smile and a little shrug. “I’m on the list,” I said.
Metal detector, pat down, cover charge and then I was inside and heading to the nearest bar.
The Cannibal Club was black decor, chain-link fencing, head-splitting techno-industrial you can dance to, blacklight and the smell of sweat and patchouli. It was teenagers and twentysomethings in black leather, black rubber, black nylon, black vinyl and black velvet. It was body piercings and tattoos, black hair dye and white clown makeup. Flat-panel monitors offered a live feed of the writhing, thrashing, swaying bodies on the dance floor. An electronic ticker scrolling at the bottom of the screens announced that sunrise was at 5:41 a.m.
I went to the bar and ordered a beer. I used a little juice, or I’d have stood there for hours without attracting a bartender’s attention. I took a lengthy pull from the longneck and scanned the club. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for. I guess I was hoping to spot one of Papa Danwe’s guys hanging around, looking suspicious. I didn’t see anyone I recognized, but then it was dark as the Beyond and everyone was dressed like the Crow.
After a few minutes of fruitless squinting into the strobe-pierced gloom, I relaxed and tried my witch sight. A few of the kids in the club had a little juice. That was normal for a place like the Cannibal Club. None of them had the kind of juice to be my killer. I sensed stronger magic in the VIP area that ran along one side of the dance floor, but I didn’t have a clear view from where I was standing by the bar. I dropped the sight and headed that way.
The guy holding court in the semicircular booth was a prince among the pretenders. His glossy hair flowed to his shoulders and draped his white collar in black silk. He’d elected not to conceal the natural beauty of his caramel skin in the hideous clown makeup that seemed mandatory for most of the club-goers, male and female alike. His dark eyes were at once soulful and boyish, and the combination made my knees a little weak.
I’d been in the outfit most of my life, so I’d run into Adan Rashan on more than one occasion. I’d always thought he was attractive. Cute, even as an awkward teenager when his father had first introduced us. That night in the club, I thought he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I don’t have a spell to counteract the intoxicating effect of a truly gorgeous man. If I did, I probably wouldn’t use it anyway. Even if it means I one day get sucker-punched by some seductive creature of the night, I say to hell with it. Some risks are worth taking.
So, yeah, Adan was hot. The Goth posse that flanked him in the booth was pretty much indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd, from where I was standing. One long-haired pale face sitting next to Adan stared at me menacingly. He leaned over and whispered something without breaking eye contact with me, and then he sneered. I hated him already.
I went back to the bar, juiced the bartender again and had her send over a couple bottles of Cristal. A waitress delivered the champagne, pointing in my direction. I raised my bottle and smiled, wishing I’d ordered something classier than a beer. Adan recognized me and returned the smile, then waved me over. The Gothtard next to him scowled, which I liked.
The VIP area was roped off, and I gave the bouncer the same Jedi mind trick that got me in the club. I handed him my empty before making my way over to Adan’s table.
He stood as I approached. He was wearing a tailored black suit, the ivory shirt unbuttoned at the collar just enough to be interesting. The rich fabric draped his slender frame like…well, like an expensive suit on a young male body that’s just about perfect.
“Domino,” he said, “thanks for the champagne.” He leaned across the corner of the table—and across Gothtard—to give me a hug and a chaste kiss on the cheek. He smelled like musk, and apples and cinnamon—and like sweat and patchouli, but that was just the fucking club.
“Hi, Adan,” I said. “You’re welcome. I’ll send the bill to your father.”
He laughed, and it echoed around the table, though the posse probably had no idea what I was talking about. Gothtard didn’t laugh. He just stared at me and brooded dangerously.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” Adan said. “Do you come here often?” Then, laughing, “Jesus, I can’t believe I just said that.”
I’d planned to play the tough girl and outbrood Gothtard, but I found myself laughing, too, because Adan’s dark eyes sparkled and because he had the tiniest little dimples in an otherwise classically sculpted face.
He introduced the posse—Edward, Louis, Armand, Elvira, Wednesday Addams, yada yada yada. I nodded, smiled and then politely ignored them.
Adan sat back down and turned to Gothtard. “Manfred, can you pour the champagne?” The intensity of his brooding deepened momentarily, but he slid out of the booth to do the honors.
“Thanks, Fred,” I said, and took his seat beside Adan.
“It is Manfred,” he growled. He had a cute little German accent, probably affected. I nodded absently and turned to Adan.
“Anyway, no, this is my first time here,” I said. Fred handed him the first glass of Cristal, and he passed it to me. Fred scowled and I smiled.
“And what do you think of the Cannibal Club?” he asked. He took the next glass from Fred and nodded politely.
“It’s growing on me.”
Adan grinned, flashing those dimples again, and we touched glasses. “So what brings you here?”
I waited until Fred finished pouring the champagne and wedged himself in at the other end of the booth, and then I stood up. “I want to dance.”
“That works,” Adan said and laughed. I could feel Fred brooding as we made our way to the dance floor.
I know gangsters who use their magic to dance. I even know the spell. It’s actually a variant of a nonlethal compulsion that neutralizes an opponent, with the secondary benefit of making him look goofy. You cast the spell on yourself, relax your body, and