“So what does her driver’s license say?”
I chuckle. “Do you think a woman like Rouge Montrose would ever be caught dead with something as common as a driver’s license?”
“Doesn’t she drive?”
“She has a driver. And if she needs to, she knows how to drive. If she gets pulled over, she’ll make a quick call to the chief of police, who is a card-carrying member of Aces Underground, and get everything squared away.”
“Damn. Imagine having that kind of power…” He frowns. “But how do you know her birthday then?”
“Growing up as her little sister has a few advantages, I suppose.” I key in the code and open the door.
It opens to a small room, dusty and laced with cobwebs. The only objects inside are a selection of cracked floor mirrors.
Harrison studies them, hands shoved in his pockets of the trench coat he’s wearing over his Aces uniform. “Yeah. One of these is a secret door, I’m guessing?”
“Exactly. Now you’re beginning to think like Rouge.” I step closer to the row of mirrors and tap the frame of the nearest one. “Most of them are just regular mirrors. There’s a trick to tell which one is the door. It’s the reflections.”
“What do you mean? All these reflections look the same.”
I shake my head. “To the untrained eye, yes. But Rouge figured out a way to indicate which mirror is the correct one. You see, a true mirror always follows the law of reflection. The light bounces back at the exact same angle it hits. Which means your reflection always tracks your movement perfectly. You move your arm up, your reflection moves up at the same time. The speed of light is so fast that we can’t tell the difference.”
Harrison frowns. “So one of these mirrors…?”
“Is not a real mirror.” I walk slowly sideways, letting Harrison watch as each reflection glides with me in perfect rhythm. “If the surface isn’t mounted flat—say it’s tilted even a fraction—the light bounces back wrong. The reflection lags, or bends. Your brain doesn’t always know what’s happening, but it feels… off.”
I stop in front of the far-left mirror. “See this one? Look.” I slide a step to the right, and my reflection stutters, a tiny beat behind.
He narrows his eyes, shifts the same way, and widens his eyes. “That’s… uncanny.”
“Of course it is. This is my sister’s brain we’re talking about.” I murmur. “She explained the phenomenon to me when I first started working here. That’s how you find the door.”
I rest my palm against the glass. The frame gives under the pressure, swinging inward, the hidden hinges moaning slightly. Behind it, the shadows open onto a narrow staircase lined with fractured shards of mirror.
Harrison looks down the staircase, swallowing. “This is like a fucked-up version of the regular mirrored staircase that members use.”
“As my sister always says, we bask in the weird and the wonderful here at Aces Underground.”
He tilts his head. “That sounds familiar.”
“You probably heard it from my sister when you were here with Maddox.”
“No. It was more recent than that.” He snaps his fingers. “Mr. Night. In the Clubs section. He said it to me when I got here, before I even met you. But he said something else, about turning things upside down.”
“The second part of the phrase. Was it something along the lines of”—I adopt a mystical tone—“‘here we believe that turning the known upside down reveals the hidden?’”
“That was it. I thought it sounded like a warped-ass fortune cookie.”
“Everything about Aces Underground is a warped-ass fortune cookie,” I say. “Take these stairs, for instance. They’re intimidating by design. The last line of defense against someone trying to sneak in. Only the extraordinary can thrive within these walls.” I elbow him gently in the ribs. “Luckily you’ve got someone who knows the club inside and out on your side.”
“Thank God,” he says. “I’d lead the way, but…”
“It’s okay.” I reach into my purse, pull out a small flashlight, and turn it on. The beam bounces off the broken shards of mirror and illuminates the staircase.
We descend, closing the faux mirror behind us, and reach the Red Door marked with the familiar etching of the Spade, the Diamond, the Club, and the Heart. I press on the club, and mechanical gears whir behind it.
“Hear that?” I say. “That’s the bathroom walls. They slide out of place so we can open the door. It takes just a sec.”
“Christ, this place is a funhouse.”
