Every House Is Haunted (38 page)

He paid for his drink and made his way across the room, skirting the stairs that led down to the sitting and dancing area, and took a seat at a table with a slightly better angle.

He loosened his tie as he sipped his drink and glanced around the club. He looked toward the emergency exit again, and noticed something different about the neon sign above it. It said
EXIT
, even though he was sure when he looked at it a moment ago it had said
FIRE
. He stared at it for a long time, thinking about how the other sign had seemed to change as well. The red neon still said
EXIT
. And of course that was what it was supposed to say, right? He couldn’t recall ever seeing an emergency exit sign that said
FIRE
.

He looked up at the VIP lounge. From his vantage point, he could see three tables lined up against the railing. A single person was sitting at each one, but none of them was Jonathan Marchand. One of them, an older woman in a black dress with a mink stole over her shoulders, was tapping her foot along with L’il Joe’s trombone. She seemed to feel Ryerson’s look, and turned and smiled at him.

Ryerson stared back, unable to tear his eyes away. He found himself transfixed by the rhythmic rise and fall of her foot. Maybe it was the smoke in the air, but the rhythm of her tapping seemed relaxing, almost soothing. It seemed to grow louder as he stared. At the same time, the sound of the trombone began to decrease in volume. The smoke was very thick, an opalescent tide that ebbed and flowed, obscuring his view by turns. It cleared for a moment, and Ryerson was startled to see the woman’s foot was no longer a foot. It had become an animal’s cloven hoof. He squinted his eyes and saw that the leg attached to the foot was now covered in tufts of thick, white fur.

His gaze drifted upward, as if by some inexorable force, to discover the long, gruff face of a goat. Its eyes were a burning red split by sharp, triangular pupils. A pair of curving horns sprouted above its downturned ears. It was still wearing the woman’s dress.

“I feel he’s up to something,” Veronica Marchand said. “I suspect he’s trying to locate someone to nullify our contract.”

“Excuse me,” Ryerson said, “but if you believe your husband’s been unfaithful, why not cut to the chase and ask him? It would save you a lot of time and money.”

“I don’t want him exposed,” she said firmly. “I just want to know where he’s going. What I do after that . . . well, that’s my business.” She took out a pack of Kools and lit one with a gold-plated lighter. “I don’t believe in divorce, Mr. Ryerson. In my twenty-eight years of trading I’ve never gone back on my word. I expect the same respect from my husband.”

Ryerson nodded. The business analogy was getting a little tired, but he understood the message perfectly. He had already decided to take the job. Shadowing a cheating spouse was as routine to a private investigator as filling a cavity was to a dentist, but there was nothing routine about the money. That aside, Ryerson found he liked Mrs. Marchand and genuinely wanted to help her. There was something about her gutsy, no-apologies approach to life and business that he respected. It wasn’t his way, but he didn’t meet a lot of people with convictions, much less the fortitude to stand by them.

Ryerson finally managed to tear his gaze away from the goat woman. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them, Jonathan Marchand was sitting across the table from him. He looked like his picture: a dark-haired, dark-eyed man in his early thirties with a scar on his chin and a smarmy smile that looked just as permanent. He looked like the kind of guy who was used to getting his way, and with minimal effort. A man who looked at the world with lazy confidence, with emphasis on the lazy. He was wearing a suit and tie under his overcoat. He was also wearing leather gloves, which Ryerson thought strange considering the cloying heat of the club.

“You’ve been following me,” Jonathan said, grinning. “I don’t know you. Do I?”

“Where did you come from?” Ryerson felt ill and off-balance, like a man suffering seasickness.

“Philadelphia,” Jonathan replied, and tittered. “But I don’t think that’s what you really want to know. You’re a detective, aren’t you? Hired by my wife? The Witch of Wall Street.” He scoffed. “I’m surprised she sent you in
here
. That was very irresponsible of her.”

“She didn’t send me,” Ryerson said. “I followed you here.”

“How resourceful of you. But this isn’t a very safe place to be, detective. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “it’s the only place to go if you want to get out of an uncomfortable predicament.”

“If you want out, then hire a lawyer.”

Jonathan smiled contritely. “A lawyer is of no use to me. My marriage is no ordinary union, just as Al Azif is no ordinary club. As you may or may not be coming to realize.”

Ryerson thought of the goat woman, and had to force himself from looking back at her table. Jonathan turned to face the stage.

“The performers here are presented at their relaxed best.”

“So they say.”

“Yes, but do you know
why
they’re presented? Do you know what happens to those who are put on stage?”

L’il Joe had finished playing. He stood motionless, trombone held close to his chest, almost protectively, and tilted his head up to the sickly glow of the spotlight. He looked like he was waiting for something. The silence spun out. His mouth suddenly fell open in a silent scream. Yellow smoke began to rise up from the stage. It quickly enveloped L’il Joe. He didn’t run, he just stood there while the smoke closed around him. When it dissipated a few seconds later, he was gone.

“Tricks,” Ryerson said, but his voice wavered slightly.

“There are no tricks here,” Jonathan declared. He took off his gloves and held up his left hand. There was an angry red scar across the palm, as though it had been slashed open with a razor, and not too long ago. “It’s all business, detective. Transactions. I made a mistake when I signed on with that witch—I concede that—but I’ll be damned if I’ll let her take me without a fight. This,” he raised both hands to indicate the club, “is a pocket. A kind of purgatory. Time doesn’t pass in this place. I like to come here and think, have a martini or two, enjoy some live music. Al Azif has played host to many performers. Sometimes you’ll meet people you haven’t seen for years. Sometimes you can even find those who have died.” He tittered again and put his gloves back on. “Rarer still, you can find people who are just passing through. Special people. Like someone who can break the bond between a witch and her familiar.” He shrugged. “Expensive, but doable.”

Ryerson found himself repeating something the Blue Fairy had told him: “Promises were made, contracts were signed.”

“Yes.” Jonathan sounded disgusted as well as annoyed. “But how could I have known? How could I have
known?
”

“So you want me to follow him?”

“Yes. He’s a regular man-about-town. He’ll keep you on your toes.”

“Do you have a picture of him?”

Mrs. Marchand raised the hand that had been holding the lighter. It was gone, and there was a photograph in its place, held between her thumb and index finger.

Neat trick
, Ryerson thought, and reached out to take it.

She pulled back at the last second. “Don’t let him see you.”

“I’ll be just another one of the shadows.”

“I’m leaving,” Ryerson said. “Your wife can find someone else to play these games.”

Jonathan threw his head back and laughed long and hard. “You think this is a game?”

Ryerson stood up, knocking his chair over, and made his way across the room, past the bar, and through the curtain. He glanced over at the coat-check booth as he went by, then came to an abrupt halt.

The door leading into the anteroom was gone. In its place stood a wall with an advertisement for something called Fireball Whiskey. It showed two women bent suggestively over a flaming bottle. The slogan proclaimed
IT BURNS!
Neither woman was entirely human. One of them had the head of a hawk, while the other’s face was an explosion of squirming tentacles.

Ryerson went back through the curtain. The black man with the blinding grin was still leaning against the counter, snapping his fingers. “Evening,
suh!”
he rasped.

Ryerson ignored him and went past the bar. He came to the foot of the stairs leading up to the VIP lounge. The sign on the newel post said
VIPERS
. He heard a sizzling sound like water striking a hotplate. He looked up the stairs and saw the velvet rope had become a length of barbed wire. Beyond it he saw a couple sitting at a table. They both had the heads of snakes. The woman was wearing a strapless green dress with a sapphire broach around her scaly throat. The man raised a fluted glass to his lipless mouth and drank the amber liquid with quick darts of his forked tongue.

Ryerson tried to scream, but it got stuck in his throat. He uttered a weak choking sound and stumbled down a short corridor. He pushed through the door of the men’s room and stood for a moment bent over at the waist, hands propped on his thighs, catching his breath. The cloying smell of pine filled his nostrils. He straightened up, went over to one of the sinks, and splashed water on his face. He took a deep breath, held it, and released it in a pathetic whimper. There had to be an explanation for what was happening here. He just had to calm down and figure it out.

Jonathan must have found out he was being followed. He had set a trap, maybe put something in his drink, a hallucinogen of some kind, and now he was playing with him.

The first thing he had to do was find a way out of here.

He went past the row of stalls to the window. It wasn’t barred, and Ryerson silently thanked God for small favours. The lock was a simple thumb latch, but it had been painted over and wouldn’t budge, no matter how much pressure he put on it.

Desperation started to set it. In a panic, Ryerson drove his elbow through the glass. A jagged piece slashed his arm, but he was so keyed up he didn’t feel it. His attention was focused on the view outside the window. He was staring at a night sky scattered with thousands of coldly twinkling stars. He should’ve been looking at the wall of the adjacent building. He took an unconscious step closer. He stuck his head out the window and looked down. He couldn’t see the ground, or anything else for that matter, just blackness. He looked back at the stars. They began to twinkle faster and brighter. Ryerson watched them, utterly transfixed, until he realized they weren’t twinkling.