"What you can't believe is how bad it really was. Come on, kids. Let's suit up."
We turned back to the minivan. Karen had known where to get the things we needed. The right props and clothes were as important to what we were doing here as the ritual unguents and incense that Chogyi Jake and Ex were using back at the house were to their work. Only instead of looking like weird occult freaks in the suburbs, we looked like weird ninja wannabes in the city. I pulled black surgical scrubs over my jeans, a soft black wind-breaker over my T-shirt. Karen stuffed her pale hair into a tight black cap.
"They've been meeting here almost since it was abandoned," Karen said as she strapped leather-sheathed knives to her forearms and plucked the sleeves of her windbreaker over them. "Amelie's always in attendance."
"And the girl with the Sight?" Aubrey said. "She's here too?"
"Sometimes," Karen said.
I tested the little blue LED flashlight, then stuffed it in my pocket.
"So if she tipped them off, we could be going into a huge building filled with crazed, armed rider cultists," I said.
"It's a risk," Karen said with a grin. "Come on. Who wants to live forever, right?"
She walked away fast. Aubrey and I trotted to catch up.
"Me," I said low enough I didn't think either of them would hear. "I would very much like to live forever, thanks."
Aubrey turned his head and chuckled, but neither of us stopped.
Karen led us down a side street, walking with her hands loose at her sides and a bounce in her step. When she ducked in close to the building itself, the motion was perfectly graceful and natural. Aubrey and I followed. Karen helped us through an empty window frame, then slid through herself without making a sound louder than breathing. I felt like a kitten on its first mouse hunt.
The hallways were darker than night. The emergency lights had died years before. I took out my little flashlight, and the hall lit up in dim monochrome blue. Graffiti sprawled along the walls and debris covered the floor; old plastic chairs, bits of desiccated shrubbery, a wide, clear plastic box that reminded me of the incubators they kept premature babies alive in. The stink of mold was overpowering. Karen slunk along the passage like a cat, her hands out before her, fingertips touching each obstacle, and then moving on. Aubrey and I followed as best we could. I felt the adrenaline seeping into my blood even before we heard the drums.
The bass carried through first, a throb so low it almost wasn't sound. Like the building had a heartbeat. Karen grinned and picked up the pace. Aubrey and I struggled to keep up. Higher tones started to join the beat-bells, tambourines, bongos. At the corner of two wide hallways, Karen lifted her hand and pointed to the flashlight. I turned it off. Far away on our left, a dim light danced, red and gold and flickering like flames. I saw Karen's silhouette as she moved toward it. When she reached a pair of double doors with AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in fading red, she gestured to the thin gap between them with her chin. I snuck over and peeked through.
The cultists had taken over what might have been an emergency room or some kind of intensive-care ward. There was room for twenty or thirty beds, though the space had been cleared of them. A curved desk squatted in the middle of the room like an altar. Ruined curtains hung like cobwebs from rusting metal tracks. On the far side of the room, half a dozen men drummed, their eyes a perfect, pupilless white.
The light wasn't fire, but a collection of orange and red lamps. The flickering came from twenty or thirty dancing bodies. Men and women. Old, young. Mostly black or brown skinned, but I saw at least one woman as pale as me. All of them were naked.
They writhed and leaped and called out. If there were words, I didn't catch them. My vestigial fear of being discovered eased. These people wouldn't have noticed if I'd led a riot squad through the door. I felt Karen lean over me, squinting through the same crack. She tapped my shoulder and pointed to the far corner of the space.
Between the bodies, I caught a glimpse of what she meant. The old woman from the hotel- Amelie, Legba, whatever we were calling her- walked through the crowd toward the altar. She wore