M.L.N. Hanover: Vicious Grace

I knew I had a style. A set of habits that I fell into, time after time. I rushed in where angels feared to tread as a matter of course. I’d done it when I burned my bridges at home and gone to a secular university. I’d done it when I’d gotten involved with my first real lover and his friends, and again when I left for Denver after that all fell apart. I hadn’t known what I was doing when I went against the Invisible College. When we’d gotten into the mess that had been New Orleans, it had been me in the lead, charging ahead without knowing what I was charging into.

But this was different. It was Kim, who knew a lot about riders and possession to begin with. Ex and Aubrey and Chogyi Jake were all with me. And if I didn’t have a set plan, it was only because the idea was to go there first, and then see what the situation was. This time, it was different.

The captain’s voice blatted through the airplane. The flight attendants scurried.

We began our descent.

There had been a time not that long ago when MapQuest printouts had been part of my routine. The GPS was better. Rain was still coming down hard, and traffic on the highway was thicker and faster than I liked. The cheerful little map glowed in the dashboard, encouraging us on, making the city around us seem like a known quantity. The skyscrapers of Chicago glittered and glowed through the storm, towers of gold and darkness. We got off at Division Street, heading east. The low brick buildings seemed to crowd the street, leaning in toward us, and gray-white rain flowed angrily in the gutters. We followed the GPS directions, and the buildings we passed grew taller, the bars more like places college kids went when they wanted to be edgy. Then banks and restaurants. A Starbucks. My head had been filled with the stories I knew about Chicago—Al Capone and Millennium Field, Buddy Guy and deep-dish pizza. I’d never been here before, and looking out at the same corporate coffee joint I’d been to in every city I’d seen, I felt like I’d driven through someplace—some real, genuine Chicago—and wound up at a convention center. I half wanted to turn back.

And then, the city ended. Between rain, darkness, and the four intervening lanes of I-41, I couldn’t see Lake Michigan itself, but the darkness was sudden and extreme. Aubrey turned us north at the GPS’s gentle, vaguely British suggestion, and the world on our right was towering electric light, glass, and concrete and on our left, blackness. I’d never lived on the water, and the contrast made me jumpy. Or maybe I was already jumpy, and it was just something to latch on to.

The building we wanted looked like a hotel. Pale stone rose over twenty stories above us, lights glowing in over half the windows. Black-barked trees rose up the sides, their canopy covering the street and making the bulk of the building behind them seem even larger. The GPS announced that we had arrived. From the backseat, Ex whistled low.

“We’re sure this is the right place?” I asked.

“I think so,” Aubrey said, squinting past a parked FedEx truck as he drove. “Anyone see an address?”

“This thing’s half the block,” Ex said. “Let’s park and find a security guard to ask.”

“Right,” Aubrey said. “Anyone see where we park?”

We circled the block twice, pulling in at a locked loading dock and then back out again before a figure darted out from the sidewalk. A brown-haired man in a suit and tie waved tentatively, and Aubrey paused, rolling down the window. The blast of air smelled of rain and cold.

“Jayné Heller?” the man asked, pronouncing it Jane.

I raised my hand.

“I’m Harlan. Harlan Jeffers. I work for the building management,” he said with a smile, as the rain dripped down his cheek. “Your lawyer wanted me to meet you. Sorry if I’m late.”

“Where do we park?” Aubrey asked. Harlan pointed him to a bush-camouflaged ramp and handed us a radio passkey before stepping back and promising to meet us inside. We turned the car down the ramp and around a sharp corner. A wide steel gate slid open before us, and we went in.

The lobby of the building belonged in an architectural magazine. Gentle archways of butter-colored marble rose and fell all along a wide central court, and a fountain of black basalt in the center had water sheeting down the stone as if spouting up in the air would be too nouveau riche. Classical music played through hidden speakers like Muzak’s grown-up, sophisticated sister. The smell of rain wasn’t completely gone, but it was lessened. I more than half expected the security guard to stop us and ask for our papers. My traveling T-shirt and jeans seemed about as appropriate as an evening gown in a mosh pit. But Harlan appeared again, his hair slicked by the rain and his smile almost painfully eager to please. I wondered how much he knew about us, or if my lawyer had just put the fear of God into him by implication. She had that knack.

“I’m really sorry I left you hanging,” Harlan said, holding out a manila envelope. I accepted it with a smile.

“No trouble,” I said. “We weren’t out there long.”

The envelope held a ring with two keys, a magnetic key card, a sheet of paper with what looked like a four-digit PIN, and a restaurant guide. I pulled out the restaurant guide.

“That’s mine,” Harlan said. “I mean, it’s from me. I knew you were new to the Windy City, and I thought it might help. While you got your bearings.”

“Do they really call it the Windy City, or is that just for tourists?” Ex asked, and Harlan’s smile got a little more nervous.

“One thing,” I said, breaking in before the guy could dig himself in any deeper. “I know we’ve got it listed in the database, but could you just remind me what floor and room we’re heading to?”

“Nineteenth floor,” Harlan said. “You’ve got 1904. Just turn right when you get out of the elevators and it’ll be halfway down on the right. Beautiful view of the lake.”

“Have you been in it?” Chogyi Jake asked. “Not the lake, I mean. The apartment?”

Harlan looked nonplussed.

“We have very strict instructions about 1904,” Harlan said. “We don’t go in or out unless the owner or the owner’s listed agent is present. That’s a very solid rule.”

“So you’ve never been in,” I said.

“No, miss,” he said. “Never.”

I looked at Aubrey, who raised his eyebrow a millimeter. For someone accustomed to dealing with the rich and powerful, Harlan was a rotten liar. The man seemed to sense that he was on thin ice. When he spoke again, his voice was louder and more cheerful.

“My card’s in there too. It has the office number and my private line. If there’s anything I can help with, just let me know. Any time.”

He beat a hasty retreat, and the four of us hauled our suitcases across the wide lobby to the bank of wood-paneled elevators. It took me a minute to figure out that the car wouldn’t move until I waved the magnetic key card over a flat black sensor panel, but then we rose up smoothly, almost silently.

“Well,” Ex said. “That was interesting. I guess getting into the place isn’t too hard.”

Compared to the Los Angeles property, 1904 was simple. Two locks, corresponding to the two keys. A simple magical warning system and a network of aversion wards that made the place feel unwelcoming and dangerous until Chogyi Jake placated them with a handful of salt and a drop of my blood. And the place itself . . .

Imagine a good, solid cottage on the cliffs above a cold sea. Three bedrooms, a living space, a kitchen. Wooden floors, white walls, thick wool rugs of gray and fading red. Rough-hewn wood furniture filled five rooms, and old woodblock prints in cheap frames were the only art. The dining room table was big enough for eight, but with only three chairs. The kitchen had wide, pale linoleum counters and a freestanding gas stove in green-and-cream enamel that looked like it belonged in the 1930s. When I pulled back the thick cotton curtains, the rainstorm, silent behind the triple-paned glass, and the overwhelming view of the black lake framed by skyscrapers to the south was like something out of a Magritte painting. Too implausible to be real. We all walked through the place for a few minutes, just to get our bearings. Everything was covered with dust. Eric clearly hadn’t popped for a cleaning service.