Chaos Choreography (28 page)

“—thought they were only interested in gold, not in reality television—”

I put up my hands, motioning for them to quiet down. “I didn't tell you before because it wasn't mine to tell; I'm telling you now because you need to know that she's a friend. Dragons can be greedy and self-interested. In this case, that works in our favor. If she and her sisters want access to the male of their species, they won't do anything that might get me hurt.” I didn't bother reminding them that “dragon princess” was an outdated, inaccurate term. It was going to take a while for the phrase to work its way out of the language—assuming it ever did. A female cat was a queen, and a male harpy was a harrier. Why shouldn't a female dragon be a princess? There were definitely more insulting words in the world.

“So it's not Brenna because the profit is in a successful show, not a bunch of dead dancers,” said Malena. “Shit. Brenna Kelly's a dragon? Shit. I gotta tell my mother she was wrong when she said no one had ever been able to hide forever.”

“She didn't hide forever,” said Pax, with a faint note of black amusement. “Verity blew her cover. Good going, Verity.”

“I do what I can,” I said. A yellow cab came gliding around the corner with Dominic in the front passenger seat. He pointed at us, clearly signaling the driver. The vehicle pulled to a stop and we all piled in.

I looked back as the cab pulled away. I couldn't help myself. The Crier Theater loomed behind us like some vast, hulking beast, squat and hungry and obscene. My grandmother was in there somewhere, or had been, when she was lost. We had to get her back.

We had to.

The drive home was silent, save for the crackle of the radio and the occasional muttered directions from Dominic, who seemed content to be the most memorable one in the car. Our cabbie hadn't been within range of the confusion charms, and might remember us later if anyone asked. A short redhead, a tall Latina, and a massive Pacific Islander didn't get into cabs in this area every day. I spent the time bent over my phone, sending the new assortment of gruesome snapshots to my father. Hopefully, this would tell him more about what we were up against. If it didn't, I didn't know what we were going to do.

We asked to be dropped two blocks from the apartment. Better safe than sorry, especially when talking about people who were treating my colleagues like their own private hunting ground. Dominic paid the driver, and the four of us stood on the sidewalk, watching as the cab slid off into the night.

“Pax?” I said, once I was sure we were alone.

“I'll do my best to get inside quietly. If Anders wakes up, I'll tell him we were hung up at the theater trying to console Malena. He knows we've been getting close to her recently. He'll believe it.”

“All right. If you see Lyra—”

“If you see Lyra, tell her I took Verity home with me after we left the theater; too upset to deal with the fact that we'd lost someone from my season,” interjected Malena. “Feel free to make like Mac and I were super close, instead of just people who'd danced together a time or two. Sell it as hard as you can, and we'll be besties if that's what it takes to make it look legit.”

“You do make the most remarkable friends,” said Dominic dryly.

Malena looked at him and snorted.

I touched Pax on the arm. “Be safe,” I said. “If anything seems out of place, come find us. Don't be a hero.”

“I have a family at home to worry about,” said Pax. “I have no interest in being a hero.”

“See, I have family, too,” I said. “Having a family seems to be the trigger that keeps forcing people to heroism.”

“You're a good person, Verity, but I swear, I'll never understand humans,” said Pax. With that, he turned and walked away, heading for the apartments and leaving me alone with Dominic and Malena.

Both of them turned to look at me, Malena expectantly, Dominic with the sort of quiet patience that had seen us both through so many potentially life-ending encounters. They were good backup. Maybe not as good as my entire heavily armed family, but still . . . with these two standing beside me, there was a chance that I would come through this alive. That was more than I'd had a few weeks before.

I'd take it.

“My grandmother bought a motorcycle when she got to Southern California,” I said. “Since there's no parking at the apartments, she's been keeping it with a local family of ghouls who live nearby. They have a garage.”

“So?” asked Malena.

“So ghouls are like bogeymen: they prefer to live underground. They don't here in Southern California, which is odd until you account for the earthquakes—but even then, they usually have tricks and techniques that let them build in seismically unstable areas. So why are they living in houses? Why not burrow and reinforce the walls?”

“Maybe they did, and something came and took their burrows away from them,” said Malena slowly. “Like how chupacabra used to mostly live in cactus patch burrows, until humans decided it was time to clear the land. No cactus, no convenient cover for your scrape. No convenient cover for your scrape, you may as well get a condo.”

“That is the most practical approach to industrialization I have ever heard,” said Dominic.

Malena shrugged. “You do what you gotta do. Besides, it's hard to run plumbing into a burrow, and this girl likes her showers.”

“I think someone
did
come and take their burrows away,” I said. We were almost to the hole in the fence, following the path Alice had shown me earlier. Dominic and Malena looked at me. I shook my head. “That sort of subterranean construction would have needed to be done before this area was so overbuilt—if not, it would have attracted a
lot
of attention. We know the ghouls moved to California before it became part of the United States. They were in this area when it was still a part of Mexico. So I ask again, why would they be living in houses?”

“They wouldn't,” said Malena. “Not unless they had to.”

“Exactly,” I said, and ducked through the hole in the fence.

The cul-de-sac on the other side hadn't changed: it was still run-down, still smaller and shabbier than the Burbank I was accustomed to. Dominic looked around without comment. Malena walked a little straighter, clearly more comfortable now that we were in a place
where the shadows were not only allowed, but encouraged to gather.

The little girl was on the lawn again, her tea party set up in front of her with all the care and precision of a royal wedding. She looked up as we approached, tensing. I realized I was still wearing my wig. I was about to reach up and snatch it off when Malena smiled, showing a mouthful of inhumanly sharp teeth.

The little girl visibly relaxed before asking Malena a question in that same almost-French language she'd used when speaking to Alice.

“Sorry, pudding,” said Malena. She had a slight lisp now, no doubt brought on by the size of her teeth. “Spanish, I can do. English, I can do. French, I can't do. Do we have any languages in common?”

“I speak French,” said Dominic. “That was not French.”

“It was Acadian,” said a male voice. I turned and found myself looking at a group of three male ghouls. There was no mistaking their species: not with their grayish skin and jagged teeth. All were fully grown, and taller than me. None of them looked pleased by our presence. “No one here speaks it, so it serves us well within the community. Keeps eavesdroppers at bay. There a reason you're talking to our Aurelie? Last time I checked, it was considered socially inappropriate to talk to someone else's children without their permission.”

My grandmother trusted these people enough to rent garage space from them. I took a breath, took a step forward, and said, “My name's Verity. Alice Price is my grandmother. She's renting space in your garage.”

Their spokesman frowned. “That didn't so much answer my question as it danced around it in a big circle.”

I relaxed. “You know me.”

“The dancer? Yeah, we know you. She's right proud of you, you know. Why are you here, and who are your friends?”

“Malena,” said Malena. “I'm a chupacabra.”

“Dominic,” said Dominic. “I'm . . .” He hesitated, clearly looking for a definition that wouldn't send us
plunging into deeper water. He finally settled for, “I'm married to the dancer.”

“I can vouch for him, and you know my grandmother can vouch for me,” I said. “Please, I need to talk to whoever's in charge here. It could be a matter of life or death.”

“You got that right,” said another voice, again from behind us. This time, it was female. I risked a glance back. Three ghoul women had appeared on the lawn. One of them was holding Aurelie, who looked more annoyed about the disruption of her tea party than anything else.

It must have been nice to be young and unaware of the dangers of the world around you. I didn't have that luxury anymore, if I ever really had. I looked back to the men, and said, “She's missing. Alice is missing. She disappeared in the basement of the Crier Theater, where we were trying to catch the snake cult that's been sacrificing my fellow dancers. I know we're not welcome here, and I know we're not friends of yours, but please. If you know anything about that place and what's underneath it, we need to know. I need to get my grandmother back.”

The ghoul who had been speaking for the others blinked slowly, looking at me in confusion and disbelief. “Alice Price-Healy, missing? Are you sure?”

“She went into the basement to wait for the killers. She never came back out, and she wasn't there when we went down to look for her.” I nodded. “Missing.”

The three ghouls looked at each other, confusion and concern struggling for control of their expressions. Whatever they were thinking, they weren't making an effort to hide it, and I wished once again that Sarah were with us.

Finally, the spokesghoul turned to us and said, “Come inside. We need to talk about the theater.”

“The only bad neighbors are the neighbors who try to kill you, discredit you, or steal your lawn equipment. All the rest can be good, in their own ways.”

—Enid Healy

The sitting room of a family of urban ghouls, trying not to worry about being eaten alive

T
HE HOUSE WAS S
URPRISINGLY NORMAL I
NSIDE,
although my impressions may have been influenced by my own weapon- and taxidermy-draped childhood. The furniture was the mix of Ikea and Goodwill that I expect in any home that doesn't have its own interior design team. The wallpaper was old enough to have faded into a dusty purple, and the windows were covered by blackout curtains. That made sense: ghouls are primarily nocturnal. Keeping the windows covered during the day would let them keep their own hours.

We walked through the living room to the converted bedroom that served as their sitting room. I noted the toys scattered on the floor. Aurelie might be the only child living here, but she certainly didn't lack for the trappings of childhood.

“You know, there's a witch in Ohio who makes fashion dolls for cryptid kids,” I said, as our guide motioned for us to take our seats. All six adults had followed us inside, after putting Aurelie back down on the lawn.
Apparently, she wasn't in any danger if we weren't there. Humans ruined everything. “I could give you her info, if you wanted.”

One of the ghoul women perked up. “Really? Because we've just been buying her the gray-skinned Monster High dolls and telling her to ignore the stuff about them being zombies.”

“Really,” I said. The spokesghoul was starting to look impatient. I offered her an apologetic smile, and said, “I'll bring it by later.”

“For a woman who has managed to mislay a member of her family, you certainly spend a great deal of time discussing fripperies,” said the ghoul.

“I'm so worried about her that I feel sick,” I said. He gestured toward our seats again. This time I sat, sinking into the slightly musty-smelling embrace of a couch that must have been almost as old as I was. Dominic and Malena settled wordlessly on either side of me. “Alice is the oldest, most dangerous member of my family, and she's
gone
. How am I supposed to defeat something that can take her out? How am I supposed to tell my father I lost his mom? But I can't stop paying attention to the world just because I'm scared. I'm too well trained for that.”

The ghoul nodded. “Your grandmother was a good woman, and she spoke highly of you. That doesn't make you our friend. We have allowed you to enter our home because it was better than having this conversation on the street. Please don't mistake pragmatism for welcome.”

“What my father is trying and failing to say is that we'd appreciate it if you didn't show up here all the time; our neighbors can be a little nosy,” said the woman I assumed was Aurelie's mother. “They like the idea of getting us in trouble with our landlord.”

“Never going to happen,” said one of the other women. She slanted a glance in my direction and said conspiratorially, “The house is owned by a dragon princess. As long as we pay our rent on time and don't burn
it down, she doesn't give a fuck how pleasant we are to live near. May the Great Rot bless and keep the greedy ones.”

The dragon princess was probably part of Brenna's Nest; it's rare to have two groups of dragons in the same metropolitan area, even when it's as big as Los Angeles. I managed a wan smile, turning my attention back to the group spokesman. “You said we needed to talk about the theater. Please. What can you tell me?”

He took a deep breath. He looked older and wearier when he let it out again, like he'd used all his energy in getting us this far. “The Crier Theater was built over a warehouse complex that used to belong to us.”

“Not just us,” interjected Aurelie's mother. “Us, and the bogeymen, and the hidebehinds. A whole bunch of the subterranean species. We all clubbed together to build the place.”

“Note how my daughter says ‘we' when she didn't exist at the time. Then again, neither did I. But my grandparents were a part of the group that put up the money, back when this land was more open, and it was easier to bury such things in the bowels of the permits department.” The old ghoul heaved a sigh. “I was born there. I grew up there. I saw my first communion there, and met my wife beneath the warehouse roof. It was glorious. We'd built a world right under the noses of the humans, and we never once saw the sun when we didn't want to.”

There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask, some of which would probably lead us down very dark roads—like “What did you eat?” Ghouls are the only obligate carnivores we know of among the hominid species, and their meat of choice is usually human. They'd been content feasting on corpses until embalming and cremation became the norm. These days, they mostly go for live prey. A lot of disappearances can be traced back to the ghoul community. Since I didn't want to get into a fight with these people while I was asking them for help, I held my tongue.

“We owned that land fair and square. Bought it in
parcels and kept it in the family for as long as we could. We even paid our taxes reliably and on the regular, which is more than most of the humans around here could be bothered to do. But they got us anyway. Said we were an ‘eyesore,' and started chasing loopholes.” The elder ghoul's voice turned bitter. I still didn't know his name. That was probably intentional. Humanize the child, because she was vulnerable, and they didn't want her getting hurt. Hold themselves apart, hold themselves back, because they were adults and could damn well defend themselves.

I hated that we lived in a world where that sort of calculation was necessary, where we could search the sky for aliens and ignore the sapient species living in our neighborhoods and shopping in our stores. Even more, I hated the fact that I was helpless to change it.

“Let me guess,” I said, as gingerly as I could. “Estate taxes?”

The ghoul nodded. “They came at us with lawyers. Said we hadn't filed the correct paperwork for inheritance, and we'd have to come up with money if we wanted to keep our place—a
lot
of money, because the land had become valuable while we were squatting on it and keeping to ourselves. Taxes got them through the door, and then they found a hundred code violations that needed to be fixed, a thousand upkeep flaws that needed to be resolved. We were smart enough to know they'd just keep coming, all those clever humans and their wicked lawyers, until they had what they wanted. So we sold while we could still make a little money. Enough to resettle ourselves, even if we'd never be as comfortable, or as much at home.”

“Couldn't you move somewhere else and start over?” asked Malena. The ghoul turned to look at her. So did Dominic and I. She flushed, but shrugged and pressed on: “There's lots of open land in New Mexico. You could build another warehouse, or buy an old airplane hangar, and try again. Hell, there are whole cities for sale, if you know where to look. Some of them even have liquor licenses.”

“I was born in Southern California,” said the ghoul. “My daughters went to school here, met their husbands here. My wife was consigned to the Great Rot here. I don't want to go anywhere else.”

“Neither do I,” said Aurelie's mother. She cast what could only be described as a fond look at her father, and said, “I'm a Valley girl. This is where I'm supposed to be. Aurie may feel differently when she gets older, when she gets tired of having humans in every direction. She'll be the one who moves to a warehouse in the desert, not me. Although I guess I'll follow her once there are grandkids.”

“Grandchildren change everything,” said the spokesghoul.

Right. “That's why I'm here,” I said, trying not to sound impatient, even as I stressed the words as hard as I dared. “My grandmother is missing. If you were missing, sir, don't you think Aurelie would want to be able to go after you? I need to know about the Crier Theater. Please.”

“I'm getting there,” he said—but he didn't sound annoyed. If anything, he sounded approving, like he'd been hoping I'd push a little harder. “They tore down our whole complex. People rejoiced. Said it was a beautification project. The people who'd bought the land built a shopping complex there. It failed—something about sabotage and rats in the walls that kept chewing the wiring—”

“You say ‘rats,' I say ‘vindictive hidebehinds who didn't appreciate being rendered homeless,'” interjected his daughter.

“—and the place sat empty for a good ten years,” finished her father. “We were starting to put together a plan for buying it back and making our new home in the mall when that Crier fellow swooped in with his big network bank account and bought the whole thing lock, stock, and barrel. He tore it down, and built his new theater over the bones.”

“Which explains why there are six basements,” I said. “The shopping mall wouldn't have seen the need to fill
them in, and Adrian might not even have known they were there.” Or maybe he had, and that was why there were unmarked doors in the halls. He'd left the unused spaces accessible but ignored. That was better than hiding them. Hidden things got found, after all.

The elder ghoul stared at me for a moment. Then, slowly, he said, “No.”

“No?” I asked.

“No,” he repeated. “No, there are not
six
basements. That was our
home
. Haven't you been listening? For fifty years, we lived and died in the warehouses he tore down to build his theater.”

The warehouses had been torn down before Adrian got there, but somehow I didn't think pointing that out was going to make me any friends just now. “What are you saying?”

“He's saying six basements wouldn't be enough for a community the size of ours,” said his daughter. “That place is a honeycomb. There are
dozens
of underground rooms. Some of them probably still have hidebehind illusions covering the doors, too. We may have all lived in the same place, but that didn't mean they ever trusted anyone who wasn't part of their clade.”

“Well, Verity, I'm impressed,” said Dominic. “You seem to have found the only reality show filmed atop a labyrinth. Good for you. That's some remarkable bad decision making.”

I slanted a look in his direction. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Me? Make fun of you? Never. I'm simply doing my best to mock your way of looking at the world, to conceal my own sudden, bone-deep terror.”

“Right.” I took a deep breath before putting on my most winsome smile, looking back to the ghoul, and asking, “I don't suppose you have some sort of a map?”

The ghoul blinked.

They had a map. It was incomplete, missing most of the areas constructed by the hidebehinds, but it was a
map
, and all it cost us was the promise of eight hundred dollars and a favor to be determined later. (I would have been happier with more money and less favor. “Favors to be determined later” are the way people wind up breaking into tombs looking for the lost idols of spider gods who really just want to be left alone. To select a purposefully nonspecific example.)

“So now what?” asked Malena. She was walking on my left, keeping close. I couldn't blame her. The ghouls had followed us out of the house and were on the lawn with Aurelie, watching us go. They weren't the only ones. I wouldn't have wanted to wager a guess as to how much of the neighborhood was nonhuman, expats from their private, lost community—but I was assuming it was more than just the one household. Shadows moved on front porches as we passed them, and bushes rustled in ways that implied watchers larger than the average raccoon.

“Now we head back to the theater and start searching the basements for signs of our missing people.” I couldn't say “bodies.” Not yet. Alice was one of the most dangerous women in the world. She couldn't be dead. It wasn't believable.