Head high, I skirted the largest fire, moving quickly to avoid the grumbling demons trying to down me with a surreptitious spell flung out like a tripping foot. There was anger in some, amusement in fewer. The air reeked of lamb, and I couldn’t fathom why they were camped out around a fire. Unless it was because they were well and truly under an open sky, one that was theirs and not toxic from the waste born in their war with the elves.
“Touch me, Tron, and your nose is a snake,” I muttered as I aimed for a canvas-draped shape that had to be the jukebox, and a ripple of laughter rose up. Spine stiff, I turned my back on them and flipped up the stinky tarp to find the expected modern, bubble-and-light jukebox. It didn’t stock music but tulpas, memories of times and places made real with demon magic. With the symbolic payment of coin, I could shift Dali’s restaurant from camel and donkey to electronic disco, and with that, Pike and I would fit in and could stay.
Slowly my exuberance began to fade. Dali was right. There were only a handful of options where there had once been hundreds. There’d never been many tulpas from the current century, as only female demons had the mental stamina to make one and Newt hadn’t trusted anyone to pluck it from her mind to make many. But I didn’t even see the upscale New York power bar. It was all ancient Rome, China, and Mongolia. Old stuff. I needed something that had antiseptic, jeans, and maybe a cheeseburger. But then my eyebrows rose. American Gigolo?
“Ah, not that one,” Dali said, suddenly at my elbow.
“Why not?” I dropped the coin in, and he shifted uneasily.
“Newt made it when she was in one of her more strange moods,” he said, and my eyes narrowed, hearing a half-truth. “No one likes it.”
“Sounds like fun,” I said, then pushed the right button.
Dali groaned, dropping back when everything but the demons became hazy. The drums shifted to suggestive, canned music from the seventies. The sky darkened to a low ceiling, and the sand became a dirty, scratched floor. Dingy walls appeared, and the lights, what there were of them, were low. Small round tables made a half circle around a stage. I could smell cigarettes and bad Brimstone. The bar was big enough to dance on, with hundreds of bottles and one disgusted demon in a purple robe behind it. As I watched, his robe vanished into a pair of bondage shorts and a halter. He even had the kohl-lined eyes and blue-dyed hair. Good God, it was a strip bar.
“Wow, even a trapeze,” I said, seeing it swaying behind the man onstage. There wasn’t much between my eyes and his skin, and as I watched, there was even less.
The demons in their Mesopotamian robes made ugly noises. Most popped out, but three moved to the stage, their clothes shifting to modern, sleazy businessman as they waved dollar bills and tried to lure the male stripper closer.
“You’re going to ruin me,” Dali said, and I beamed. He looked like a bouncer now, and I brushed a flake of glitter from his colorful vest. Pike and I matched the decor. If he wanted to refuse me a table, he’d have to be honest about it.
“I see a quiet spot in the back,” I said as I gestured for Pike, and he stood. Behind him, the bales of fleece turned into a hard bench sporting carved names and numbers. “We’ll have three cheeseburgers, a couple of beers, and the first aid kit. There’s bound to be one in a sleazebucket place like this.”
Nose wrinkled, Dali watched the memory of a man gyrate on the stage. “I remember the day she made this,” he said, focus distant. “It was a bad one. Minias pulled it from her psyche. He never did tell me what triggered it. I had no idea she’d been going reality-side. Neither did Minias. He swore she hadn’t slipped him in a hundred years, but you can’t make a tulpa if you haven’t been there. I’ll get your order in.” Dali turned from the stage. “I’ve only got three staying. Shouldn’t be long.”
“Thanks, Dali,” I said, grateful as I looked over the low-ceilinged room. I had a feeling the jukebox held only a few themes because Dali didn’t have the magical funds to support more. They’d lost nearly everything but their lives and what curses had been in the collective when the original ever-after had gone down.
I shoved my flash of guilt away, frowning at the three demons in their cheap suits shouting out catcalls and waving dollar bills at the stripper. Chances were, he wasn’t a paid extra but part of the tulpa itself, a solid illusion from Newt’s memory. Even so, I felt myself warm as the tall, imagined vampire blew me a kiss and gyrated just for me. There was a scar on his neck in the shape of a sickle, and his bottle-blond hair reminded me of Kisten. Flushing, I headed for a table.
Pike slid heavily into a chair. His back was to the wall, and I took the one next to him, the stage to my left. The pain creasing his scarred face made him look old, and my guilt thickened. He could be in a hospital right now, doped up on vampire pheromones and feeling nothing. But then again, him in a hospital would have left him vulnerable to his brothers’ plan B.
“A strip bar? Is that what counts as a night out for you? Nice.”
I quirked a smile at the sarcastic humor in his voice. “It was either that or a picnic in the Arizona badlands, and I don’t think there was a first aid kit in the car.”
Pike carefully shifted to a more comfortable position. “Someday, you’re going to have to explain this so every other sentence out of you doesn’t sound crazy.”
I jumped when Dali came up from behind me and dropped a first aid kit on the table followed by two beer bottles, dripping with condensation. “Burgers will take some time. Unless you want ground lamb?” he said hopefully, and I shook my head vehemently.
“Thanks, Dali,” I said, then clinked my bottle against Pike’s and took a swig. Slumped, Pike stared longingly at his, and I wondered if he was worried about tampering. “Your brother can’t reach you here. Unless your brother is a demon.”
Pike reached for the bottle, looking pained as he tipped it up and downed it, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Damn, that’s cold,” he said when he came up for air, a swallow or two left in the bottom. Glancing at the bar, he held up two fingers, and the bouncer turned tender nodded.
Somehow that made me feel good. Quashing it, I flipped open the first aid kit and began rummaging. “Shirt off,” I directed. “Let’s see the damage.”
Again he hesitated as if reluctant to make himself vulnerable, but at my expectant stare, he carefully, painfully, took his shirt off. I had been right: it was lined with Kevlar, the fabric having done much to minimize the damage. The stripper made a catcall, and I looked away from the stage, blanching.
Pike’s chest was a mess of old and new scars, blood and caked pixy dust holding him together. Or at least it had been, and new ribbons of blood dribbled down as he blotted them with a wad of napkins.
“Hey, can I have a bowl of warm water and a couple of towels?” I called loudly. The stripper had finished, leaving just us and the three demons at the stage nursing their drinks and listening to bad seventies music. “Okay,” I said, reluctant to run my fingers over him. His abs were more than nice, and his body trim. I scooted my chair closer, and after hesitating to make sure he’d let me, I prodded his swollen nose to see if it was broken. There was a scuff on his cheekbone, and a scrape at his hairline, and a nasty gouge under his eye, but compared to the old scars, they looked hardly mentionable. “Your face looks okay.”