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“And where would I find these experts, exactly?” I asked.
Freyja smiled. “The same place you’ll find a bazaar of magical wonders. Have you and Theodore Morrow considered a visit to the Black Market?”
CHAPTER 12
Iwas up bright and early the next day, exactly as I’d promised Morrow. Even earlier than I’d promised, in fact, the two of us meeting at ten in the morning in front of a shop somewhere in a more dilapidated corner of the commercial district.
And yes, of course I texted him when I got home.
I hated to admit it, but Freyja had definitely nudged us in the right direction. Did I owe her for her little hint, or was this one a freebie? Only time would tell. As for the orange gemstone: quarantined inside a tightly sealed mason jar that was itself inside a shoe box sitting on top of my dining table. I wasn’t taking any risks, but I also needed to know where it was at all times.
You know, in case of emergency.
With its grubby windows, dusty floors, and empty tables, Crepes & Drapes was the shop equivalent of a western ghost town. It would be generous to say that the store had seen better days, except that was a total lie. The store had never seen a single good day in its life. Was it actually a front for a money-laundering operation? I mean, who ever thought that mashing a crepe café and a curtain store together was a good idea?
Not the gangly, borderline hostile teen sitting at the counter, that’s for sure. He glared at us as we passed, shooting daggers at me especially for daring to peruse the menu above him. The signage was so sad and faded, discolored from long exposure to the sun, even the photos of their most luscious chocolate and fruit-flavored offerings desaturated into pale, unappetizing shadows of their former selves.
“Like ghost crepes,” I mumbled to myself.
“Sorry?” Morrow asked.
“It’s nothing. Just talking to myself.”
He led us away from the café half of the shop and toward the completely unstaffed showroom floor, moldering drapes trailing from oxidized curtain rods, great swathes of dusty fabric dangling from hooks high up in the ceiling. No wonder the teenager was so pissed. He was probably the only person working, not that he had to worry about customers in either half of the store.
I nudged Morrow by the elbow. “Are you sure this is the right place? I mean, I’ve heard rumors about the Black Market, and this ain’t it.”
The dimension was supposed to be a bustling hub of magical trade, the preferred destination for fulfilling all of an arcane underground shopper’s needs.
“A place where all your wishes can come true,” I said, only half certain I was parroting the dimension’s tag line. “For the right price, that is.”
Morrow wagged his finger. “You’re talking like it’s your first day in the arcane underground. It’s in the name: everything’s secreted away, remember? You’ve heard how Sakamoto puts it, how we keep our half of the world hidden from mundane eyes.”
In a way, it was how she discussed the Accord as well. We needed to keep the veil over mundane eyes, because as weird as things could get in plain sight in a place like Nomicon Valley, it was better for the world at large if humans didn’t know that wizards walked among them.
“Like a veil to keep us hidden,” I said. “Or curtains.”
“Exactly. The location of the portal to the Black Market changes, but this time, it’s in the back. Way in the back.”
Morrow had tried to explain it to me how the Black Market tunneled its entrance portal to various parts of the world, depending on supply and demand. We’d lucked out that the portal had elected to open up in Nomicon Valley this week, which saved us the hassle of driving to a different city to chase it down.
I’d expected something spinning and glowing, like the stereotypical fantasy rifts I’d seen in video games, except I really should have known better by now. Portals could be embedded in all sorts of things, like the archway formed by a pair of wizened trees, or an empty picture frame, or a broken mirror. For extra mystique, sometimes you had to enter these portals in unusual ways, too.
“This way,” Morrow said, wrinkling his nose as he pushed through a pair of heavy crimson drapes.
Uh-oh. Extra mystique, here we come. I followed behind him, grimacing when my skin brushed against ancient velvet, so laden with dust that it almost felt grimy.
“Are we sure this is the right way?” I sputtered.
“Positive,” Morrow said, his voice muffled by the womb of fabric closing in around us.
Claustrophobic. Stifling. My breaths came faster, shorter, even as I told myself to stay calm. And then Morrow’s fingers laced through mine, and all my anxiety drained away. The strength of his hand, the certainty of his step — wherever Morrow went, there I would follow.
My heart fluttered. This was just some guy pulling me through a hellish sphincter made out of ancient curtains, yet I was still practically melting out of my boxers. I had it bad, man. Real bad.
I blinked hard as the velvet drapes opened into brittle lace, curtains so tattered that they reminded me of a mummy’s bandages. And then as if this horrible tunnel had read my mind, the lace gave way to strips of gauze, delicate and scratchy, clinging like strands of dry seaweed to my already sweaty skin.
I opened my mouth to ask Morrow when this awful gauntlet was supposed to end, only to be slapped in the face by something heavy, sticky, and smooth. I squinted angrily into the darkness, recognizing the gleam of grubby plastic, those huge, heavy strips that separated a refrigerated butcher’s backroom from the rest of a supermarket. I mean, the nerve.
