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“Did I go too far?”
I shrug.
“Technically he did shoot me. And he did kill his friend, so we can assume he would have kept shooting until he killed me or I got him. So, yeah, you saved me, and from my point of view that’s a good thing.” I pause. “Next time, though, maybe you can just snack on the bad guys a little until we see just how much fight they have in them. We probably don’t need to kill all of them.”
“Don’t kill everyone. Got it. You sure you’re okay?”
“The arm’s fine. The coat took most of the damage. It was brand-new. Now it’s like all my damn clothes. Shot up and bled on.”
She cups my face in her hands and kisses me hard. I kiss her back.
“What happens now?” Candy says.
“We go see Hunahpu. I know where the address is. We can leave the bike.”
“How are we going to get there?”
I pull her away from the wall.
“Have you ever walked through a shadow?” I ask.
“Uh, no.”
“Want to?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t let go of my hand.”
I step into the ripe black darkness in the recess by a loading-bay door, pulling Candy with me into the Room of Thirteen Doors.
I take her out again near the address the kid gignss the ave me. It’s on Fairfax a little north of Beverly Boulevard.
As we step from the shadow, Candy says, “Holy fucking goddamn fuck, that’s cool. What was that room we went through?”
“It’s called the Room of Thirteen Doors. I can go anywhere in the universe through those doors, even to Heaven and Hell.”
“Why did we drive to the club? If I had something that cool, I’d be running in and out of it all day and night just to mess with people.”
I believe her. I’m glad I have the key and she doesn’t.
“It feels weird using it in the city when I’m going somewhere the first time. Like the club tonight. I didn’t know where it was or what was going to be there when we arrived. I like to drive because I like to get a look at a place the first time I go there.”
“Why don’t you just get your own car?”
“Are you kidding? People steal them.”
UP THE STREET is a white two-story office building plastered together to look vaguely colonial. It’s as bland and forgetful as any real-estate office.
The first floor is dark, but there are lights behind the windows on the second. It’s almost three and there’s barely any traffic in either direction. Candy and I walk across the street to the glass-and-aluminum front doors. BIO-SPECIALTIES GROUP is painted on the door in a reassuringly scientific-looking serif font.
In theory, I could step into a shadow here and come out on the second floor near the lights, but I don’t want to do that. Drug cookers tend to be on the jumpy side and I’ve already been shot at once tonight. I take Candy around the side of the building and we use a shadow to get into the lobby. No alarms go off, so they don’t have motion detectors down here. So far so good.
There’s a locked wooden door at the top of the stairs with the company’s name on it. I stand there for a minute.
“What are we doing?” asks Candy.
“Shh.”
