The Space Between

  I have an idea that if I speak, my voice will break and then so will the rest of me, clattering into pieces. The only thing holding me together is my silence.

  “What happened to her?” he says after awhile.

  “Azrael,” I tell him, hugging my knees. The dry grass scratches my legs and I’m cold from sitting on the ground, but I sound composed.

  “What’s Azrael?”

  “You already know him,” I say. “He appears to you in dreams, like in the stories. Angels are always appearing to people, bringing them messages.”

  Truman makes a dry, wordless sound, like a laugh, but not. “Maybe two thousand years ago, but there haven’t been a whole lot of divine visitations just lately. And trust me, the things I dream about aren’t like any holy visions I’ve ever heard of.”

  “That’s because he’s not like the angels in the stories. He’s unbending and absolutely dedicated to his calling.”

  “What’s he the angel of?”

  “Death,” I say, gazing into Myra’s face. She stares back, glazed and out of focus, looking past me into the middle distance. “He wants to kill us all.”

  Truman stands up. He lifts Raymie from the weeds and cradles her against his shoulder. Then, without saying anything, he reaches for me, taking me by the arm and guiding me to my feet. He turns me away from Myra’s body and leads me back toward the gate.

  “Where are we going?” I say, sounding vague and breathless.

  His hand on my arm is gentle but unfaltering, and he just keeps walking. “It doesn’t matter. Away from here.”

  Back in the hotel, we sit in silence. Raymie is lying on the floor with her rabbit, chewing restlessly on its ears. Outside, it’s starting to get dark.

  “That was bad,” Truman says from the couch, but his voice is so strange and so flat that it takes me a moment to make sense of what he’s said.

  I cup my elbows and nod. Raymie just chews harder on the rabbit.

  When the phone by the bed rings, we all jump and Raymie bites down so ferociously that the rabbit tears and little bits of stuffing come spilling out.

  I pick up the receiver and am relieved and slightly disoriented when Moloch speaks on the other end.

  “Pet,” he says. “Listen. Do you think you can come down to the lobby? I need to have a word with you.”

  Even thinking about going back down to the casino makes me feel very tired. “Can we have the word over the phone?”

  “Well, the thing is, it’s not really something I can discuss over the phone. You kind of have to see it. And bring your tragic friend, why don’t you?”

  When I hang up the phone, I’m still half-dazed, shaking my head. “We have to go downstairs and meet Moloch in the lobby.”

  Truman looks up from his seat on the couch. “Are you sure? What about Raymie?”

  Raymie shakes her head and gnaws harder on the rabbit. “Bells,” she says, sounding willful and sullen.

  I pick her up and carry her over to the closet. “I think she’d rather stay here.”

  The fact is, I would rather stay too, but Moloch is waiting for me and with any luck, he’ll know what to do. My only solid hope of finding my brother is gone. All we have left are Truman’s dreams, and who knows where those will lead us.

  MARCH 10

  O DAYS 10 HOURS 25 MINUTES

  Moloch was waiting for them down in a little furnished alcove just off the lobby. He looked characteristically punk-rock, his sleeves pushed up, his slacks cuffed to show three inches of black combat boot. Beside him was another man, tall and blond. He wore a dark suit and an incongruously silver tie.

  At the sight of him, Daphne stopped abruptly. The look on her face was close to unreadable, but Truman thought he recognized apprehension, or maybe guilt.

  The man in the suit turned toward them. His expression was pleasant, but tightly controlled. “Daphne,” he said. “How unexpected to find you here. And I see you’ve brought a friend.”

  When he looked at Truman, it was like a small electrical shock. His gaze seemed to settle inside Truman’s bones. It made his teeth hum.

  Beside him, Daphne was practically wringing her hands. “Truman,” she said, looking at the floor. “This is Beelzebub.”

  Truman nodded, but couldn’t think of anything to say. His throat felt closed up. Beelzebub was too polished, somehow. Too clean. Everything about him looked neat and sophisticated, nearly immaculate, except for a small tattoo on his jawline, just below his ear. It was a single housefly.

  Beelzebub motioned to her and said, “May I have a word with you in private, please?” He spoke easily, but his eyes were chilly. His gaze kept returning to Truman.

  Daphne nodded, lowering her chin like she was waiting to be punished.

  As the two of them left the alcove, she glanced over her shoulder and gave Truman a little wave. Her face was anxious and Truman was about to start after her when Moloch caught him by the arm and shook his head.

  “Don’t worry about them. He’s just going to scold her a bit, and I can’t say that she doesn’t deserve it. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  He pulled Truman back into the alcove, guiding him toward the wall, toward a pair of high-backed chairs and a forest of potted plants.

  Truman looked back over his shoulder. He could still see Daphne fading into the crowd. She was looking up at Beelzebub, gesturing with her hands. Then the gap in the crowd closed and she was gone.

  Moloch leaned against the wall. “Sacrament,” he said, but not to Truman.

  As soon as he touched the striped wallpaper, a door appeared, but it was nothing like the grimy entrance to the Prophet Club, or even the door he and Daphne had come through when they’d arrived at the hotel. This door was easily fifteen feet high, heavy and carved with elaborate scenes of miracles and saints. It towered over them, but no one passing by the alcove seemed to notice. A red and gold sign above the door read THE CHURCH.

  Moloch opened it, gasping against its weight, and waved Truman through ahead of him. Inside, they found themselves in a dark hall at the end of a long line of people.

  When they got up to the front, the bouncer gave Truman a once-over and held up a hand to stop him, shaking his head. He was bigger than the bouncer at the Prophet Club, and a lot tougher-looking. His mouth glittered with metal and his eyes were a dangerous shade of red.

  “This isn’t torment night,” he said to Moloch. “If you want screaming, take it someplace else.”

  “Don’t be an ass.” Even though he looked younger and smaller than the man guarding the door, Moloch’s voice carried an air of authority. “He’s just a guest.”

  The bouncer didn’t say anything else. With a sullen look, he waved them in.

  Inside, the club was huge and open like a warehouse, but the walls were covered in stained glass and the whole place was lit with giant purple chandeliers. Spaced along the edge of the dance floor were what looked like confessional booths. The curtains had been taken down, but the booths were still recognizable, decorated with carved flowers and gilded cherubs.

  Truman followed Moloch through the crowd to the back wall, which was taken up by a long bar. It was packed with a throng of girls who all looked like they could be Daphne’s sisters. The men were less identical, but just as obviously inhuman. Just as obviously demons.

  At the bar, they had to elbow their way up to the bartender, a short man with glossy black skin and stubby horns poking up through his hair. “What can I get you boys?” he said in a bored voice.

  Moloch glanced at Truman. “Bourbon on the rocks and a Bloody Martyr.”

  Truman expected the bartender to study him like the bouncer had, but he only shrugged and reached for the glasses. “You want the Martyr sticky and sweet or hot as hell?”

  Moloch smiled his strange, tight smile. “Oh, hot as hell, please.”

  The bartender nodded. He poured their drinks quickly, setting down the glasses and turning to the next group. Truman’s drink was impossibly cold, burning the pal
m of his hand. Moloch’s was thick and bloody-looking, topped with what looked like a communion wafer. He sipped it experimentally and then drank off half in one swallow.

  As they turned from the bar, one of the black-haired girls moved closer, reaching for Truman’s arm. “Hello there, stranger. We’re just about to go out dancing. Why don’t you join us?”

  Her face was perfectly proportioned, with smoky eyes and slick red lips. Her dress was like rainbow snakeskin or a butterfly’s wing, shimmering every time she breathed.

  Moloch shoved her away, looking contemptuous. “Come on,” he said to Truman. “Grab your drink and we’ll get a seat before they really start to close in.”

  They crossed the floor to one of the deconstructed confessionals and each took a booth. They were less than a foot apart, but with the wicker screen between them, Truman couldn’t see Moloch’s face.

  With the glass in his hand, it was easier for Truman to pretend he was someplace else, just sitting in a quiet room somewhere. Sitting in his bedroom on Sebastian Street maybe, drinking Wild Turkey out of a coffee cup in an attempt to hide his self-destructive habits from Charlie. Back before he discovered that he really didn’t have to. His life would be some bleak, empty place with no bright lights and no pale girls and no men with flies tattooed below their jaws. Unremarkable. Obscure.

  For weeks after his mother’s death, he’d woken up hopeful. His first thought when the alarm went off was always that he’d simply dreamed the grim parade of days following her funeral, that she was still alive, not sick, not dying, but laughing out in the kitchen with Charlie. Then he’d sit up and the reality of her death would settle into the room again. Each morning, he woke up and the first thing he felt was the headache, the nausea that came and went in sweaty waves. The hangover was miserable, but not deceptive. It only meant one thing: his mother was dead.

  As he sipped his drink, a gaping hole seemed to open somewhere under his ribs and he had to stop thinking about it.

  Looking out from the curtainless booth, he was suddenly cold. The whole place was full of dried flowers and wooden crucifixes, heavy altars decorated with red velvet runners and steadily melting candles. Some of the demon girls were using the altars as cocktail tables. It made him think of his dreams and the nightmare church, but the layout was all wrong. Whatever dark cathedral he’d been dreaming about, it wasn’t this one.

  “What is this place?” he asked, staring out at the crowd.

  Moloch spoke through the wicker screen between them. “Like the sign says, it’s the Church. The finest club outside of Prague. Or maybe it is in Prague. With the jump-doors, it gets a little hard to keep track.”

  “So, where we are isn’t real?”

  “Oh, it’s real, it’s just not measurable. If you checked the blueprints, the extra space wouldn’t show up, but that doesn’t mean we’re not here. The world is full of unused corners.”

  Truman watched the crowd swaying out on the dance floor. “Will Daphne even be able to find us here, then? When’s she coming back?”

  “Well, I can’t say for sure. I suppose that’s up to your father.”

  “Charlie?”

  Moloch began to laugh. It was a low, unpleasant sound that made Truman look down at his hands. “No, not Charlie. Come on, do you actually expect me to believe that you didn’t recognize your own father out there? For the love of all things ugly, you look just like him.”

  Truman sat in the confessional booth, staring down into his drink. The ice was melting steadily. In a way, he’d known it the second Beelzebub looked at him. The buzzing in his teeth had been proof even before the long, tapering fingers, the pale eyes. “Does Daphne know?”

  Moloch leaned closer, speaking to him through the screen. “No. I had a notion that she would have figured it out by now, but she’s always been wretchedly stubborn about Beelzebub’s more unpleasant qualities, and that includes his predilection for mortal women. As they say, there are none so blind as those who won’t see. Anyway, it didn’t seem like any of my business.”

  “How’d you know, then?”

  “It was in your blood,” Moloch said shortly. “Just simmering in your veins along with everything else. The folks at home do not give enough lip service to the taste of mixed blood, by the way. Exceptional.”

  Truman finished his drink, making a face. “You tasted my blood?”

  “Only a drop—not like you were going to miss it. Anyway, you were too busy working on your sordid little death wish to mind.”

  Truman stared out at the crowd of laughing demons, feeling helpless. “That night,” he said in a whisper. “That night at the party—I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  Beside him, Moloch made a derisive noise. “Suit yourself. You’re the one who toxified your blood with alcohol and indulged in a brief coma. You would have died if she hadn’t come sweeping in at the last minute. So don’t tell me you didn’t have some idea of what you were doing.”

  Truman stared up the vaulted ceiling, which was bathed in purple light. He stared at the chandeliers. He stared at the empty glass in his hands. It was different, hearing it from another person.

  He glanced at Moloch through the screen, trying to make out his silhouette. “Fine, I mean I got fucked up, but it was an accident. I’m not really like this.”

  On Moloch’s side of the confessional there was silence. Then he sighed and leaned closer to the little window. “Yeah, you are. Maybe you weren’t always, and maybe one day you’ll be clean and whole and shiny again. But right now, you’re not doing yourself any favors by pretending your downward slide is some freak occurrence. This is you, right here, right now.”

  Truman didn’t say anything. He was thinking of Charlie. Of skinny little Alexa Harding, and of Dio Wan, who had been his best friend once, an eternity ago. Of anyone who’d ever watched him drink and pass out and buy razors and pound himself into little tiny pieces. They’d said the lines, made the right noises, but even when he was destructing right in front of them, no one had ever moved to stop him. In the end, they had always just let him do it.

  “Daphne thought you were worth keeping,” Moloch said. “Against all reason, against my strenuous objections. She needed a partner in crime, and she went with you. So you’d better get it together, that’s all I can say.”

  Truman made fists, digging his fingernails into his palms. They sat side by side with the wicker lattice between them, while out on the dance floor, the bar was almost hidden behind a crowd of girls with black hair and excruciatingly short dresses. None of them were Myra, and Daphne hadn’t smiled since before their ill-fated expedition that afternoon. Before Myra and the purple blanket, the broken bracelet. The search had ended in nothing, in a broken body, and Obie was still out there, tied to a table in a dark, secret place that looked like a church.

  Moloch’s voice was kinder, suddenly. “She likes you, you know. She might not say so, but I can tell. And you like her.”

  Truman shook his head, leaning back against the ancient upholstery, wishing his glass weren’t empty, wishing he didn’t wish for things that could kill him.

  “No,” he said, trying to convince himself that what he was saying was a fact. That he wasn’t completely crazy about Daphne. His voice was so low it was barely audible above the music. “She doesn’t. I don’t.”

  On the other side of the screen, Moloch made a breathless noise, almost a laugh. “God, you’re such a liar.”

  Truman closed his eyes and didn’t answer.

  “You’re very lonely,” Moloch said and for once, his tone wasn’t sarcastic or mocking.

  Truman nodded. The booth was too small, suddenly. His throat hurt. “Yeah.”

  When he looked over, he was surprised to see that Moloch’s palm was pressed against the screen, fingers spread. The gesture was strangely tender.

  “I’m not a holy man,” Moloch said from behind his hand. “I’m not pious, and I’m not good. But if I were, your penance would be to start reaching for the things you want and
giving up the things that will destroy you.”

  Truman didn’t answer right away. He was no stranger to self-destruction, but running around with demons seemed pretty bad, even for him.

  When he did speak, his voice sounded dry and hoarse. “What if they’re the same things?”

  THE THEATER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  There was a time when I would have been relieved to see Beelzebub standing in the lobby with Moloch, waiting to tell me what’s happening and how to fix it. But now, his face is stony, and I can only square my shoulders and wait for the consequences.

  As soon as we’re through the lobby doors and out on the street, he stops and takes me by the shoulders. “What in the name of two unbridled hells do you think you’re doing? I’ve been worried sick about you! No one even knew where you were.”

  We’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk, surrounded by tourists. Every now and then, I think I see a flash of white skin, black hair. Sisters who could die in the shadows as easily as Myra or Deirdre. I don’t tell him that my mother knew and that she’d gladly have told him, just to see him look disappointed in me. All he had to do was ask her.

  “I came to find Obie.”

  That makes him shake his head in exasperation. “I’m taking you home. Now.”

  “No,” I say, and it’s strange to know that he can’t make me go. The realization is liberating and a little sad. He’s always been the one to make the rules and give the advice. The voice of authority.

  Beelzebub raises his eyebrows. Then he takes me by the elbow and I think he’s going to shake me, but instead he turns me away from the strip, toward the darker, narrower streets, waving me along in front of him.

  “Where are we going? I told you, I’m not going home.”

  “No? Then you and I are going to have a little talk.”

  We follow the same general route I walked earlier when my mother guided me to Myra, and for a little, I think that he’s somehow taking me back to the empty lot. Instead, he stops in front of a boarded-up building. It’s tall and windowless with a rickety, unlit marquee. The sidewalk in front is deserted and the glass doors are dark.