“I remember a club,” I say.
The room goes still again.
Akasha sits forward.“You didn’t mention a club.”
“I just remembered.”
That’s not entirely true.The memory has been there, buried beneath louder horrors.A bass line through walls.Perfume.Laughter.A woman with red nails is checking my pulse and saying, “Send her downstairs when she can stand.The patrons like them frightened, not unconscious.”
My skin crawls.I wrap my arms around myself before I can stop it.Knox notices, and his hands curl into fists at his sides.I force my arms down.
“Red velvet,” I say.“Not just the room.Hallways too.There was music sometimes, but it was muffled.Not from speakers in the room.From above or below.I smelled smoke.Sweet smoke.Not cigarettes.Something herbal.”
“Opium lace,” a woman says from the doorway.
Everyone turns.
The witch in the doorway is tall, dark-skinned, and elegant in a way that makes the rest of us look assembled in bad lighting.Her braids are wrapped with gold thread, and her black coat moves around her like smoke.Krishka of the Obsidian Coven doesn’t enter a room so much as claim it has always been waiting for her.
Her gaze lands on me.Not pity, but assessment.I liked her the instant I met her, and the feeling hasn’t changed.
“What is opium lace?”I ask.
“A narcotic incense used in certain clubs.Illegal in most territories because it lowers inhibitions and weakens resistance to glamour.”Her mouth tightens.“Vampires enjoy it.”
Ari’s nose wrinkles.“Gross.”
“Accurate,” Krishka says.
Aldron gestures to the seal.“The Sable Vein.”
Krishka walks to the desk and looks down at it.For the first time since entering, something like disgust touches her face.“I have not seen that mark in twenty years.”
“Where?”Knox asks.
Krishka looks at him.“In a club called Crimson Door.”
The name punches through me, and my knees nearly give out.Knox moves toward me, but I hold up a hand before he reaches me.
Stop.He stops.Not happily.Not easily.But he stops.
I grip the back of the chair until the room steadies.“Crimson Door,” I whisper.
Aldron’s expression sharpens.“You know it?”
I nod.Not because I remember seeing a sign.Because I remember waking up half-carried, half-dragged through a hallway while a man laughs and says, “Careful with her, Crimson Door paid extra for unmarked skin.”
Unmarked.The word makes bile rise, but I swallow it down.
“I heard the name.”
Krishka’s eyes soften by a degree.“The original Crimson Door burned down in 2004.”
“Original?”Malichai asks.
“There are always originals and copies when blood money is involved.”
Aldron’s jaw tightens.“Do you know where the current one is?”
