“Fantastic. Please come inside. Madam Nyxia is already waiting for you.”
“Sheis?” I said, unable to keep the surprise from my voice.
“Indeed,” the woman said, bowing her head slightly.
She waved to the golem. “Solomon? Let our guest in, please.”
The golem rose and unclipped the velvet rope, moving it aside for me to step through. I hesitated. Could this be some trap? Had someone inside the club been hired to find me the same way the changeling had been? But if that was the case, then Declan had probably already been captured. Hewasinside. That much I knew for sure. At this point, if he had been taken captive, I might be the only one who could save him.
“Fuck it,” I muttered under my breath and walked past the golem.
As soon as she pushed open the door, music and conversation assaulted me. The woman on stage belted out a song thatsounded like R&B, but the language wasn’t one I knew or had ever heard before. Either way, the crowd seemed to enjoy it.
The woman led me past the bar to a set of stairs in the back. A witch was polishing glasses and eyeing the singer with a serene smile on his face.
“Would you like a drink before we head up?” the woman asked, noticing me looking at the bar.
“No. Sorry. Just checking the place out.”
She smiled knowingly. “The Catch All Club is the best little hidden secret in all of The Shadow Streets.”
“Shadow Streets?” I frowned at her.
She nodded back outside. “The Shadow Streets. The neighborhood you were walking through. A place of perpetual night, and perpetual excitement. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.” She sighed. “When I have to go about in the human city, it feels…soboring. Anyway, let’s hurry, Madame Nyxia is waiting.”
Walking up the stairs, I cast one last look around at the strange bar. The woman was right. Theregularworld did pale in comparison to what I’d seen tonight. Most magical beings traversed, worked, and lived in the human world. Seeing places like this and Tombstone Station, showed me there was a much more exciting and vibrant world of magic right under the surface. I chuckled to myself. What would a normal human think marching into this place?
We reached an ornate door at the top of the stairs. The woman waved a hand over the knob, and it unlocked with aclick. It swung inward, revealing an ornate den. The hardwood floorswere dark with age and polished to a gleam, reflecting the light from the sconces along the wall. Dark green wallpaper decorated with twisting vines and red roses covered the walls. The twisted vines shook as I looked at them, as though an invisible breeze had managed to make the printed plants move. Beneath the mahogany molding, the lower half of the wall was black obsidian marble laced with white veins.
A card table with two chairs stood in the middle of the room. In one, an older woman of about sixty sat, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a severe bun, and the only adornment on her face was bright red lipstick. The rest of her was pale and equally as severe as her hairstyle. She wore a black pantsuit, complete with a silk tie at her throat.
Across from her, Declan leaned back in his chair, arms folded, glare trained on me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said.
The look on his face was a mixture of surprise, disappointment, and anger. It made me feel like I’d been shoved out on stage with a bright light shining on my head.
“I… I came to find you,” I said, shrugging lamely.
Declan rolled his eyes, and shook his head. “Yeah. No shit.”
Stepping forward, desperate to change the subject, I said, “What’s going on here?”
He sighed, uncrossing his arms and waving to the woman on the opposite side of the table. “This is Nyxia, a warlock. The god Janus is her patron,” he intoned. “She is a relocation specialist.”
“A teleporter?” I said, eyeing the woman.
My quick escape from the academy had been done with panic-induced magic, and even then, the small portal had only transferred me a hundred yards. Atrueteleportation specialist could send themselves, other people, and items to pretty much any location in the world with ease. That kind of magic requiredincredibleconcentration and ability, as well as a near-encyclopedic understanding of spell work.
The fact that she was a warlock was an even greater shock, though. Unlike a witch, who had powers naturally flowing through them from birth, or sorcerers, who spent years learning to access the magic, a warlock had to have made a deal with a god. The god Janus was old, dating to the times of the Romans. He was where we got the name for the month of January. From what I recalled, he was typically shown with two faces, one on the front and one on the back. As interesting as that was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see that. I doubted a deity that ancient or powerful would have given access to magic without a hefty price tag. Most likely, Nyxia had sold her soul to the god in exchange for her powers.
“That’s correct.” Nyxia’s voice was deeper than I’d expected, like the voice of someone who’d smoked a pack a day since they were seven years old.
“She specializes in getting people into places they shouldn’t normally be able to get to,” Declan explained. “She can get past certain security spells, repulsion charms, and unmappable territories.”
“What are we teleporting?” I asked.
“Me,” Declan said.
