Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

The mural on her left was of a naked giant, handing a blazing box to a group of men huddled before caves. In the gold-shot sky, vultures circled a mountain peak. Sylvie leaned closer. There were words mixed in with the blaze of light, created purely by paint layered deeper in sections than others, words made out of shape rather than color. Sylvie touched it, tracing the elaborate curls—something about fire and gifts and gods and freedom.

The door at the far end of the hall opened on a wave of sound, and Sylvie stepped aside for a sweaty, chattering group of clubbers.

She looked to the other side. Eden, the temptation of Eve, instantly recognizable. Eve lingered in a smothering verdant world of tangled vines and roots and dangling branches laden with overripe fruit. It made Sylvie claustrophobic looking at it.

Beside Eve, the serpent waited, silvery in the dark earth; its tail coiled about a tiny sapling with one delicate fruit gracing its branches. Only then did Sylvie see Eve’s hand outstretched beneath it, fingers straining against the pressing vines, pushing back the intrusive greenery, reaching for the tiny fruit that shone like starlight. Eden as a prison. Serpent as savior.

Sylvie spotted one more tiny piece of brightness in the mural, near the floor, and bent to look at it. A wolf in profile, standing on a pair of crossed arrows, the whole thing small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. Wolf, she thought. She touched the arrow shaft, and felt more of the tricky bas-relief painting. Tiny letters fought her fingertips, fought deciphering, insisted on being merely texture, but she persisted and found an r, an o.

A signature. Brandon Wolf. He’d been here, working among his enemies. No wonder the Maudit had condescended to work in a club.

Wolf’s abduction looked worse and worse all the time. The oubliette argued planning, but this type of planning was another level up. This was the careful infiltration that swamped its victim in lies and betrayal.

The inner door opened again, and a young man in a staff tee came through, a pack of cigarettes in his hand. “It’s not that scary, you know,” he said, grinning at whatever expression had frozen on her face. “You’ll like it in there.”

He sauntered on by and headed outside. Sylvie opened the inner door, stepped into the club proper, and was numbed by sudden sensation. She shifted to the side, put her back to the wall and rode the moment out.

After the silent hallway, the club seemed a riot of sensory overload. Alcohol scenting the air, iced drinks chiming against glass, the pounding drive of the rock music—My Chemical Romance, Sylvie identified absently, Alex’s current favorite—dozens of people talking, breathing, dancing, moving, and the chaotic visuals of a room divided into sections, not by walls, but chain curtains and raised or lowered floors: All of it made her pause to catch her breath.

Slowly, more details kicked in: The bar was situated to her left, running the length of a cracked, mirrored wall. Men and women leaned on the bar in small groups, talking and gesturing. Directly before her, two steps down led to a dance floor that wound its way through raised sections for seating.

She took the steps down to the floor, heading toward the bar, watching herself approach in the faceted glass, a tired woman with a troubled face. She looked past the weary lines in her skin and focused on the mirror itself. Though she had thought the glass cracked on first glance, now she saw the joins and seams, and realized that it was deliberately done. The pattern eluded her, and she traded that small mystery for that of the bartender, filling glass after glass with a hasty hand, though the club was far from full. A staff member in the NDNM black tee took a tray from the bartender and vanished toward a swinging door. Backroom meeting?

Sylvie pushed past a chain curtain and climbed the three steps to the bar. Once on the same level, the cracks in the glass made words, scratchy, sketchy words, but easily readable. Ni Dieux, Ni Maîtres. NDNM.

While Sylvie had only menu-literacy in French, that phrase she knew. No gods, no masters. The rallying call of anarchists, and a sentiment that Sylvie endorsed wholeheartedly. Most of the misery she’d seen came from people thinking they could tell others how to live or think. She smiled, thinking if she weren’t here for work, this might be a nice place to play.

The bartender barely glanced up, still tapping drinks that were 90 percent foam, tattoos shifting on his forearms, and Sylvie nodded. New carbonation. Mystery solved.

“Be right with you, Lily,” he said, raising his voice to compete with the music, the four-foot space between them, and the constant hiss of the tap.

Sylvie twitched, hearing her own name at first. Then she realized that the sibilance came from the tap, and he had mistaken her for one of the regulars.

His eyes slewed around—hunting black shirts, Sylvie decided, as he hailed one, a girl with frizzed-out hair. “Mickey, come dump these for me.”

The girl sighed but grabbed the tray. “Where’s JK?”

“On break.”

“I thought Auguste—”

“He didn’t come in,” the bartender said, “It happens.” The cool was put on, Sylvie could tell. He was ticked and refusing to show it, refusing to let the girl show it; she wondered why. Maybe Auguste was the owner’s golden boy. Auguste—Sylvie remembered the dark tee the Maudit had been wearing, before she blew a hole in it. Auguste, she thought, might not come in ever again.

“He’s such a shit,” Mickey said. The bartender twitched a shoulder toward Sylvie. The movement had a distinct “shut up, teacher’s watching,” feel about it.

“Vent all you want. I don’t care,” Sylvie said, inserting herself into the conversation. She took a few steps closer, hooked a stool, and sat, putting her between the bartender and a raised table with three young women. They paused in their debate over the merits of a pair of star-shaped sunglasses to stare at her. One of the women caught Sylvie’s expression and stuck her tongue out before snatching the glasses and resting them in her curly hair.

The bartender looked over at Sylvie, startled. “I’m sorry. I thought you were . . . Never mind, can I get you something?”

Mickey took the opportunity to vanish, leaving the laden tray behind.

“Regular Coke,” Sylvie said, “no additions.” The sugar and caffeine would do her energy level a world of good. She sucked half of it down all at once, then turned to look around, pretending she hadn’t scoped the place already.

Her order caused a furrow to start in his pierced brow, a wariness in his expression. “You gonna want anything else?”

“Another Coke, for sure,” Sylvie said. “Maybe a little info. I’m looking for a friend of Auguste’s.” Go with the gamble. Really, in a club this size, how many staffers with French names could suddenly not show up for work?

“Cop,” the curly-haired woman said, with a dismissive sniff and hair toss. The glasses in her hair caught the light and sparked. “Pay up.” She held out a hand to her table mates, a Paris Hilton wannabe and a sulky brunette, and they forked over dollar bills.

The bartender shook his head. “Sorry. Drinks I can help you with. Anything else, try the Internet.”

“Hold that thought,” Sylvie said. “Do I really look like a cop?” She split her glance between the table and the bartender.

The woman who’d declared her a cop spoke up. “You look nosy, and that’s just as bad. People deserve their privacy. No matter what the government would have you believe.” She tossed her head again, a flash of dark glass in her hair. Sylvie imagined her doing it one time too many and breaking her own neck.