The Mezzanine — Saturday, January 26, 1991, 4:55 PM

The Succubus Club, State Street Chicago, Illinois

The Labyrinth smelled like sweat and patchouli and something sharper underneath, copper or fear, the two indistinguishable at depth. Sable moved through the crowd in the sub-basement corridor, bodies pressing close in the dark, and found her mark in a side alcove where the black light turned everybody’s teeth blue. A graduate student, early twenties, buzzed on cheap champagne, talking to nobody about Debord. Sanguine type. He looked at her and forgot what he was saying.

She fed. Two pulls, clean, and left him sitting against the wall with a dreamy expression and a gap in his memory he would fill with something plausible by morning.

Darius was thirty feet deeper in the maze, where the corridors narrowed and the music from the basement stage became pressure rather than sound. His target sat against a heating pipe with a thin jacket pulled over her knees. Runaway. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. No ID, no bag heavier than a change of clothes. She looked up at him and her eyes were already calculating what he wanted and what it would cost.

He fed fast. Two pulls. Left a twenty in the jacket pocket because the alternative was leaving nothing, and the twenty would buy a bus ticket somewhere warmer. That was the transaction. He did not look at her face again.

They met at the service stairs. Sable’s mouth was warm, her color high. Darius’s face had not changed.

“There’s a Ventrue in the east corridor,” Sable said. “Feeding on a woman holding peyote buttons.”

He followed her. Through the crowd, past a couple tangled against a wall, through a service door marked STAFF ONLY in paint that was peeling off. The east corridor was narrower, lit by a single bare bulb, and at the end of it a woman was standing over a mortal slumped in a folding chair. The mortal’s hand was open, three brown buttons in the palm. The Ventrue straightened and tilted her head fifteen degrees, an involuntary motion, a dog hearing a frequency, and then walked past them without acknowledgment. Not toward the exits. Deeper. Toward the freight elevator.

“Follow her,” Sable said.

Darius took the service stairs. Four flights, concrete, paint chipped to the rebar. Quiet above the third floor. The VIP lounge was dark except for the city light through the observation windows, and Lorraine was standing at the glass with both palms pressed flat, watching the dance floor four stories below as if the crowd were an organism and she were trying to find its heartbeat.

Then she opened the sliding door and stepped onto the observation deck.

The railing was wrought iron, narrow, ice on the crossbar. Four stories above State Street. Wind off the lake at fifteen miles an hour, and the temperature had dropped below freezing an hour ago. Lorraine stepped up onto the railing and the mescaline had her somewhere else entirely, someplace where the city was a living thing and she could see all its lights at once and the fall was nothing, the fall was a detail.

Sable caught her wrist mid-lean.

Lorraine’s eyes found hers. “The city. Can you see it? All the lights.”

She was not resisting. Her body was light, birdlike, and Sable guided her back through the sliding door with one hand on her wrist and the other on the small of her back, the kind of contact that says I have you and does not ask permission. Darius closed the door behind them.

The aura was a disaster. Agitated violet shot through with gold from the mescaline, and underneath it something Sable recognized because she had seen it before in other faces, other cities, other rooms where someone sat alone and called it preference. Yearning. Chronic, low-grade. The kind that outlasts the body.

She stroked Lorraine’s hair. “Hey baby, you’re just tripping. You know that, right? You just fed on somebody on peyote.”

The reassembly was visible. Lorraine’s eyes cleared by degrees, the violet settling, the gold ebbing, a woman returning from wherever mescaline and four years of undeath had sent her. “Oh. Oh, that’s – yes. That’s embarrassing.”

“You’re fine.”

“I owe you one. Both of you.”

Lorraine talked. Sable let her.

The Awe was gentle, a low-grade warmth, enough to keep Lorraine oriented and open without pushing her anywhere she didn’t want to go. Under it, the loneliness surfaced clean. The Club was where she came to be near things she couldn’t touch. The crowd below was company, not feeding ground. She attended Elysium, stood in the right place at the right time, spoke to the right people with the right words, and went home to the Matthews estate and the silence there.

“Who comes here?” Sable asked. “Eventually.”

Lorraine counted on her fingers. Annabelle was working something tonight, wouldn’t say what. Capone had been here Tuesday and left early, which was unusual.

Then she stopped counting.

“About ninety minutes before you came in. Critias came in with a stranger. Older. I’ve never seen him before.” She looked at Sable and the mescaline was mostly gone now but the fear was not. “He looked at me when I looked at them. Smiled. All his teeth.”

Darius registered: stranger, with Critias, teeth, already here ninety minutes, threat assessment pending.

Sable pressed. Lorraine gave everything. Apparent late fifties. Five foot one, maybe five-two. White hair in curtains over his eyes, thin. While talking, he kept picking things up off the chess table and placing them – not nervous, purposeful. Objects that weren’t there. Critias’s jaw had been locked. Not his usual distance. Something tighter. She had known him by sight for twenty-two years and had never seen him like that.

“He said something about ‘a most fascinating game.’ Critias wasn’t enjoying anything.”

Darius asked about Lodin.

Lorraine’s voice changed. Softer, careful, the specific care of someone who counts nights.

He had been behind closed doors since the new year. Not sick. Not hiding. Working something. Neally ran the sessions in his name, held the stack, didn’t improvise. The pattern was three to four weeks, and then he surfaced and moved everything at once – presentations, judgments, territory shifts. Twenty-six nights. The window was open.

“When he surfaces, things will move. File with Neally if you haven’t. Don’t be last in the stack.” She paused. “Lodin tired is not Lodin generous.”

She would mention the coterie when the time was right. Not before.

They descended to the dance floor. Sleep of Reason was midway through their set, bass frequencies heavy enough to feel in the sternum, the crowd below moving in the half-dark, and Darius scanned the mezzanine balcony from the floor.

Two figures at a small table. Chessboard between them. Critias on the left, back straight, hands on his thighs. The stranger on the right, smaller, hunched forward, white hair catching the stage light. His hands moved. Picking up nothing. Placing it. Precise, deliberate. His lips were moving. Critias was not responding.

The stranger stopped. Looked down at the dance floor. Found Sable.

The grin was ear to ear. Every tooth visible. Then a beckoning motion, courteous, the wave of a host inviting a guest upward. Critias never looked up.

Sable held. The freeze did not come, though something close to it moved through her, a shiver that had nothing to do with temperature. She had been looked at by men who wanted things from her since she was fourteen years old, and she knew the taxonomy (hunger, appraisal, threat, desire, indifference) and this was none of them. This was inventory.

She turned to the bar.

Brennon was polishing a glass, a gesture so deliberate it could only be performance. “The man upstairs with Critias just waved us up. Who is he?”

“A guest. Critias brought him in.”

“Does he have a name?”

“If he’s waving you up, you should probably go up.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Brennon set the glass down. “If Critias’s guest invited you up, it would be rude to keep him waiting.”

A wall. She recognized the construction. She had built enough of them herself.

The velvet rope was unclipped. They went up.

The balcony was a pocket of quiet above the noise, two chairs, one table, one chessboard, two glasses of something neither player had touched. Close, the stranger was smaller than he had looked from below. Five foot one at most. Thin. The white hair fell in curtains and the grin was already there, already waiting, as if it had preceded them up the stairs.

His right hand lifted, took nothing from the air, and placed it on an empty square.

“Are you connoisseurs of the game?” He gestured at the board. “A most fascinating game. It appears simple, but is in fact quite engaging. By the way.” His eyes moved between them, cataloguing. “I am Dimitri.”

Darius looked at Critias.

Critias, without looking up from the board: “I must have concentration.”

One sentence. In two and a half thousand years of speaking he had chosen four words, and the four words were a locked door.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Dimitri said. He did not sound sorry. “But my opponent is at a critical juncture in the game, so I must ask that you depart to your own business. It was a pleasure meeting you. Perhaps in the future, we will speak again.”

He motioned toward the stairs. Polite, absolute.

“Then why did you want to see us?” Sable said.

Dimitri’s grin widened. Something in his face rearranged itself around the delight of being asked. “Did I? I was watching the room. As one does. You watched back. I acknowledged the watching. This is courtesy, yes?” He spread his hands, the gesture of a man with nothing to hide who was hiding everything. “I did not want anything. I simply noticed you.”

They descended. Darius did not give his name. Sable did not give hers. Neither was asked.

Later, after the game adjourned and Dimitri and Critias had left separately and Brennon had confirmed the game would resume another night, they went up again. The balcony was empty. Chairs pushed back. Glasses still sweating. The board was mid-game, pieces not cleared – handmade, carved, heavy, dark wood and pale bone, old. Most pawns traded off early. White had lost a bishop and knight. Black had lost a rook and two extra pawns. The kings were well-protected, the center open.

Sable noticed the white king was tilted. A Greek letter scratched into its base. The black king had something scratched too, facing away.

Neither of them touched the board.

Annabelle was on the public balcony, alone, a glass of untouched red beside her elbow. Sable told her what Lorraine had given them: Ballard’s triple-strike was about timing, not property. Three simultaneous actions to pin Annabelle before Lodin surfaced, so she couldn’t rally the Primogen when the stack cleared.

Annabelle listened without expression. Then: “Lodin’s timeline is not news to me. Ballard’s strategy is not news to me. What is useful is that you put them together without being told to.”

She held Sable’s gaze. “The Armitage gallery is the real target. The only Toreador gathering space on the North Side that isn’t Brennon’s. The other two strikes are expensive noise.”

She placed a folded piece of paper on the railing between them. An address. Wednesday January 29th, eight PM. Then Neally’s session at the Field Museum after.

“Don’t thank me yet.”

In the Labyrinth corridors, coming back from the blood dolls, they heard voices through the wall. Gengis’s, unmistakable. And Brennon’s, lower, measured.

“Come on, Brennon. You know damn well it’s not the existence of a prince we object to. We just want someone who’s not so repressive. With all due respect to your Sire, Lodin’s an idiot and a pain in the ass.”

Fragments from Brennon: “…understand your position, but the timing…” and “…not something I can relay without…” and “…next month may be different.”

Gengis raised Inyanga. Brennon shut it down: “Is being handled.”

They met Thursdays. Same night as the faculty club, same night as the Brewery. The city had a rhythm and both sides thought they were the ones setting it.

State Street. 12:45 AM. January 27 by the calendar, Saturday dead and Sunday born.

They came out the rear service door and Darius caught it first. Perfume. Heavy, sweet, wrong for January. Near the service door, dissipating west in the wind.

Sable caught the second thing. Movement at the alley mouth. A figure stepping back around the corner. Deliberate. Not fleeing, withdrawing. Tall, long coat. Moving south on State Street at a walk. Gone.

Darius said: “I’ll follow.”

Sable stayed.

He tracked south on the opposite sidewalk, parked cars between them. Two blocks south the figure turned east, stopped mid-block beside a parked sedan. Dark, American, late eighties. Engine off. The figure did not get in. He stood beside the cracked window with the posture of a man delivering a report, head inclined, speaking to someone inside.

Male. Six-two, six-three. Broad. Military surplus coat, dark green or black.

The sedan’s headlights flashed once. The tall man straightened, scanned the block. Darius was behind a delivery van. He held position. The tall man got in the passenger side. The sedan pulled out east, unhurried. Dark blue or black. Buick or Olds. No plate.

He returned.

Sable had her own intel. In the Labyrinth, after he left, she had found an alderman with a teenage blood doll in a side corridor. Campaign posters in Pilsen near the haven – she had seen his face. She separated them, worked him under Awe.

Miguel Flores. Alderman, 25th Ward. First term. Anti-displacement platform. Reported to a committeeman named Gallegos, twelve years entrenched, connected to the mayor’s office. Flores didn’t see above Gallegos and didn’t want to.

Midwest Realty Trust was buying commercial storefronts along 18th Street between Ashland and Damen. Cash offers. At least four properties. A thirty-year panaderia sold out for cash. Gallegos had told Flores to leave it alone.

Midwest Realty Trust was the coterie’s landlord at Kaspar and Sons.

Darius processed it. Someone with enough pull to silence a ward committeeman was buying their block. The question was not whether this involved Kindred. The question was which ones.

They drove home. No tail. Haven secure by 1:30 AM. The sedan, the stranger, the alderman, the chess game with its unmarked kings – all of it filed, none of it resolved.

The city had a new problem. The problem had their address.