I sat there on the bench for a long time, staring into space and absently rubbing my tattoos under my sleeves. I could have handled that better, I knew. Without Simon and Lily, I would never have gained enough control of my magic to earn the deal with Maven. But what exactly did Lily want from me? It wasn’t my fault that the witches had made a deal with their perceived devil. And it wasn’t my fault that I could use magic that existed more or less outside of that deal. Besides, I wasn’t exactly going to apologize for bringing Simon back.
But you could have been more understanding of Lily’s position, said Sam’s voice in my head. You know what it’s like to be stuck in a deal with Maven, and you didn’t show much sympathy.
I no longer knew if this really was Sam, talking to me from across the line and through our bond, or just what my imagination told me she would say. It didn’t really matter, I supposed. Either way, she was right.
I jumped as my phone began vibrating in my hand. I checked the screen. To my surprise, it was Maven, whom I’d just left less than two hours ago. She couldn’t, like, sense when I was thinking about her, could she? Yesterday I would have said no, but it was becoming clear that I had no idea what Old World creatures could do. And also no idea what I was doing.
I answered the phone. “Lex, you need to get to the Walrus,” came her voice, crisp and tense. There was loud music in the background, so I could barely make out her words. “I need you.”
“Walrus . . . ? Oh, the bar?”
“Now!” she hollered, and the line went dead. I shoved the phone in my pocket and started running.
Chapter 16
I didn’t actually attend CU, so my personal knowledge of the downtown bars is limited to the ones I explored right after being discharged from the army. I’d poked my head in at the Walrus only once, took a look around, and made an immediate retreat. The place existed to service those reasonably attractive suburban kids who spent high school being athletic, well-groomed, and popular B students, the same kids who got drunk every weekend and cared more about lettering in volleyball than about a war on the other side of the world. Not that I’m bitter.
Anyway, the place has a reputation for a few things: great DJs, despite a small dance floor; regular reggae nights; and being a welcoming home for douchebaggy behavior. It’s also loud, dark, and below ground—I could instantly understand the attraction for hungry vampires.
The Walrus was on the corner of 11th and Walnut—literally on the corner; it was one of those businesses where the front door was located precisely where the building’s edges met, like in Times Square. I ran straight up Broadway to 11th Street, ignoring the students and tourists who paused to stare at me. As I got closer, I realized the bar was too quiet: there was no music, no bouncer, no lit neon signs. When I finally reached the door, beginning to pant a little, I saw that someone had taped a piece of ordinary printer paper to the front door. The words “Closed for Inventory” were written on it in sloppy black marker.
I’d seen stuff like this at Magic Beans before, and recognized it as one of the vampires’ tactics. This is America; we love obeying signs, even if they look like they were written by middle-school students. I knocked hard on the front door, and when that produced no results, shouted, “It’s Lex!” as loud as I could. A middle-aged dog walker gave me a funny look as he went past. “Supposed to help with inventory,” I explained. He shrugged and moved on.
I heard the sound of a lock being undone, and the door opened just far enough for me to slip into the building. The entryway was dark, and my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted from the glow of the streetlights when a scared-looking girl of about twenty stepped out of the shadows. I jumped.
“Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you. You’re the boundary witch, right?” She raised the back of her hand to her mouth, and I realized she was wiping a smear of blood off her chin. I automatically shifted my weight to fight, wishing I’d brought a shredder stake with me.
Sensing my wariness, the girl raised the other hand, too, and took a step backward. “Easy, there. I’m Opal,” she said, trying to mollify me, “one of Maven’s vampires. I’m supposed to bring you to her.” The girl took a couple of steps deeper into the bar, gesturing for me to follow. I did, slowly.
The dance floor was, as promised, especially tiny. It was also covered in blood, which showed up well against the wood floor. The blood was bright red, still wet, and smeared around in puddles like someone had tried to make a snow angel in finger paint.
There were a number of people in the back of the bar, but my eyes shot straight to Maven, partly because her power drew me in, and partly because everyone else was staring at her too. She looked like the poster for a horror movie, standing on top of the bar in a tight black miniskirt and the remains of a torn tank top. I couldn’t tell what color it had once been, but now it could best be described as bloodred. Her feet were bare, and long ribbons of blood ran down her legs, but I didn’t see anything that looked like an injury.
Some of the blood probably belonged to the two vampires she was restraining. In one hand, Maven was holding a broken pool stick to the heart of a vampire who was splayed on his back on top of the bar, hands held defensively near his shoulders. The wood had already pierced his shirt and drawn blood, but it must not have gone deep enough to reach the heart yet. In the other hand Maven clenched a handful of black curly hair belonging to a second vamp, a man who had to weigh well over two hundred pounds. She held him at a strange angle—on his knees with his face tilted up—and from the expression of agony on his face, I was pretty sure she could snap his neck with a simple twist. I’d seen a vampire do that before.