If you’ve never been to the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, maybe you don’t understand why I’m staring at that leaf. It’s because leaves imply the presence of trees. There are no trees in Williamsburg.
Why are you here? Like it can hear me, the leaf floats up in the air on a bit of breeze, and turns in place.
The world shivers. Really. Like a picture in an Etch A Sketch, except instead of going blank, it’s a brand new picture. There’s a woman standing right in front of me, dressed in green, and the leaf’s attached to a long stalk coming out of her hand. She twitches her hand and the “leaf” starts to float around, drawing the attention of a teenager with big sunglasses walking past. He smiles, and reaches for the leaf.
He doesn’t see the woman. Or can’t see her. And she’s smiling in a really creepy way.
I jerk open the blinds and knock the butt of the knife against the window. “Hey!” I yell. “Do not eat the mundanes!” The woman-thing shoots an irritated look at me. She starts walking backward toward the alley next to the diner, drawing the guy along with her.
Not for the first time, I wish that Ryan didn’t live off the grid. If he didn’t live off the grid, he’d have a damn cell phone, and I could call him to come kill the demon. But he’s not, and he can’t, and it’s just me.
Shit.
Okay. I look around. Ketchup. I flip the top, squirt out a ton onto the table, and toss the bottle. Finger-painting time! Two intersecting triangles on the window, and dots all the way around, and I stare through the ketchupped Seal of Solomon to the woman outside and think, as hard as I can, Please go away!
Look, Ryan never said how to actually use the Seal.
But it must be good enough, because the woman suddenly hisses and the leaf zips up into her hand. She turns and runs—that’s how I see that she doesn’t have a back. I mean, there’s nothing there, except ragged edges. She’s made of hollowed-out wood, all splinters and rot.
I turn to look at the teenager, just to make sure he’s okay. He’s staring at me. I smile apologetically. He reaches up and takes off his sunglasses, revealing big, black eyes with a thousand facets. He’s a werewolf. He bares his teeth at me, and then lopes off after the woman.
So. Um.
I cannot figure out whose meal I ruined in that encounter.
I look behind me. Dawn’s still in the kitchen, thank god. I close the blinds again without wiping off the Seal, and then go back to the kitchen.
“I don’t know what to tell you, kid,” I lie. “You can stay here if you want, or we can call you a cab to take you home.”
“I have my bike.” She stares at me, eyes rimmed in too much black eyeliner. It’s smearing; she needs to learn to put on foundation and powder before she applies it.
“Leave it here, in my apartment.” I point to the door that goes upstairs. “I’ll call you a cab to take you home. My treat. Seriously. If it’s getting scary out there, I don’t want you biking home. You never know who’s gonna knock you over, you know?”
Dawn swallows hard and nods. “I’ll get my bike,” she says.
“Take this,” I say, and hand over a knife. She takes it, but not without giving me a look. I shrug. “Call it psychology. You’ll feel more confident. And you’re going to give it right back in two seconds, so why not?”
“I guess,” she says, leery, and heads back out front and, hopefully, not to her death.
Because now that I know there’s something wrong outside, I can tell there are other demons hiding around; I can smell it. And I’m feeling really bad about sending my waitstaff home through this without anything to protect them. I hope one of them made it, at least. I hope I didn’t get someone killed just because I was dumb again.
I call a car—we keep the numbers for different cab services handy, just in case a customer needs them, but this time I call the service Ryan recommended years ago—and Dawn comes back wheeling her bike in, the knife clutched awkwardly in one hand. I take it back, and because she looks like she’s going to jump out of her own skin any second now, I decide to go for a distraction.
“Seen Stan or Amanda today?”
She leans her bike against the door to my apartment and then jumps up onto the counter and looks at me worriedly. “Nope, neither one’s been in today. Amanda called, though. I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s been dead.” She has a really heavy Brooklyn accent, and it’s coming out even more now. She sounds like a character on a television show, her accent drawn out—a caricature of herself. She says, “Why do you ask?”
A car horn honks and I look behind her. “That was fast. Your car is here.” I open the cash drawer and hand her a twenty. “Bring the change back tomorrow.”
She hesitates before taking it, and the silver rings on her fingers glint in the fluorescent light. “You sure?”
“Sure.” I push the twenty at her again, and this time she takes it, jumps off the counter. Considering just who recommended this service, I add, “Listen to the driver if he’s telling you something life-or-death, okay?”
Dawn may be too clever for her own good. She nods thoughtfully. “Be careful, Allie,” she says, and then she’s gone, and I can breathe again.
Let’s fix that: I pull my pack of cigarettes from the shelf under the register and light one. Screw the health department and the smoking ban. It’s my fucking diner and I’ll have a Camel Light if I want one.
Then I pick up the phone to call Amanda. That used to be the very first thing I did whenever something weird happened. Now my first instinct is to call down the stairs for Ryan. Since I can’t have Ryan right now, I’ll take what I can get. If all I can get is my drunk best friend, I’ll take her. She won’t be able to do anything, but maybe she’ll come to the diner and keep me company while the vampires mill around outside looking intimidating.
She doesn’t answer the phone. I let it ring until it goes to voice mail and then I call her again, and again, and again. She never picks up. That is so weird, because Amanda is, like, chained to her phone.
I leave her a voice mail asking her to call me, and then I call Stan.
“Hey, baby,” he greets me.
“Hey, Stan. You still coming to the diner for closing?” I ask.
“Yeah, of course.”
“And have you heard from Amanda?” I continue.
“Amanda? No, not at all today. But I’ve been . . . busy.” I can hear his leer.
“Ugh, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Just—it’s almost sunset. Why don’t you come a little early, okay?”
Now he sounds suspicious: “Is this a trick to make me do work?”
I sigh. “No, I just don’t want you wandering around outside after dark. Seriously, there’s shit happening that you need to know about.”
“Don’t worry about me, Allie, I’ve got an iron nail.” He cackles. He still thinks this whole thing is a big fucking joke. And one of these days that’s going to get him killed. The very idea of it twists something in my stomach. Stan isn’t a good guy—I’m not going to lie, okay? I love him, but he’s not a good person.
That doesn’t mean that he deserves to die at the hands of vindictive bitchy demons.
Starting at sunset, hunters start trickling in. I have no idea how Narnia is doing it. Does she even know where the diner is? Okay, evidence is suggesting “yes,” but I am still suspicious. And how is she getting everybody together without the benefit of this week’s newspaper? Maybe she really is using smoke signals. I mean, if she’s the one who assigns hunters, she’s got to have a list of them and some way to contact them.
Maybe, and this is just a wild and crazy guess here—maybe she’s using a cell phone.
Most of them look like normal people who have a few extra scars. A lot of them are wearing retail uniforms, like for Target and IKEA. I guess it’s hard to hold down a desk job when you’re constantly being called to fight demons—or maybe the Doors open in retail outlets like they do in malls, and this is just the most convenient solution.
I want to ask Ryan, but h
e’s milling around, going to each group of hunters and speaking to them in a low voice. I can’t even eavesdrop.
The girl hunters are my favorites, I have to be honest. They take Girl Power to a whole new level. They all look kickass, and have muscles. And I, okay, am selfishly comparing myself to them—none of them are as skinny as I’d expected. Too much science fiction television, I guess, and I’m as vulnerable to social programming as anyone else. I am not skinny by any stretch of the imagination. Never have been.
I tried for a few years, when I was a teenager, but no matter how many meals I skipped, I never lost an ounce. I’m just naturally curvy, I guess.
By the time we lock the door for closing, every single seat is full. All the demon hunters from the area and beyond are here.
Stan’s shown up, too—he and Amanda usually always show up for closing, whether any hunters are around or not. They grew up the same as me, selfish and spoiled, but coming to the diner at closing time is something I can always rely on them for. Mostly I think they do it to make sure that I’m alive, that a demon hasn’t killed me yet. Sometimes I think they do it because they feel badly that I’m poor now, still poor even though the diner does well.
Instead of buying Brazilian leather shoes, now I buy new aprons and T-shirts that say SALLY’S DINER on them for the odd tourist who stops by. Sometimes, if I have some money left over, I get a manicure, but there’s not really a point to it when my fingers are always crushing tomatoes or cleaning up demon guts.
Except instead of being here when I need her, Amanda is probably out at her house on Long Island, sitting by her pool, drinking something alcohol-heavy, and . . . and not being here when I need her, basically. I can’t figure out if I’m bitter because she’s not here when I need her (not that she’d be very helpful, but a girl needs her best friends at times like these), or if I’m bitter because she gets the option of sitting around and doing whatever she wants whenever she wants. The diner’s mine, sort of, and she’s my best friend, but that doesn’t mean that she has to be committed to it the way I am. I know that. And I resent the hell out of it.
“I wish you had come before dark,” I say to Stan while we’re waiting for the coffee to brew. When he asks why, this time I fill him in a little, and tell him about all the vampires—who disappeared from the block at sundown, way before all the hunters showed up.
“I know you’re, like, worried about all this stuff,” says Stan, “but maybe you’re overreacting.”
“I don’t think I’m overreacting.” I reach around him for a loaf of Italian bread and start slicing, just for something to do with my hands.
“Chillax,” he tells me, and sweeps away with the coffee cups. I want to punch him in his stupid face.
He does the coffee, I do trays of stew, and we’re ready to go. Everyone is well into their food and coffee when Ryan stands up and leans against the counter.
“Narnia probably told you all why we were gathering here tonight,” Ryan announces. “That while I was being distracted by a shedu, the Door in this diner disappeared. We can’t figure out if it’s just gone, or if it’s moved. I’ve consulted with Narnia, and she’s damn near positive that it’s just been moved—but we don’t know where, or even why.”
Stan turns to me, his eyes wide. “What?” he mouths.
“Later,” I reply, and tilt my head toward Ryan, hopefully conveying that later means “away from where Ryan can call us mundanes and be mean to us in front of the other hunters.” Not that I necessarily think that Ryan would do that, but it’s always a possibility. I spent a really long time living the life that Amanda lives now—the one with the pool, the alcohol, the drugs, and along with that went being really nasty to other people for no reason at all except their differences.
It sounds like I’m different now. I’m not. Just quieter.
Ryan kept talking while I had my introspective moment slurring his character, and then one of the hunters in the back, the only tall, black, gorgeous woman in the crowd, yells out, “Magic?”
“I think so,” says Ryan. “I’m pretty sure that someone’s moved it, but I don’t know how, and whatever magic they’re using is preventing me from finding it. That’s some serious stuff, and I don’t like not knowing who has it, and why they wanted a Door. But while this is a problem, it’s not our biggest.”
“That’s a relief,” says one of the hunters sitting up front. He sounds sarcastic, but how to be sure?
“What about these idiots, the ones who opened the Door in the first place? I bet they did it!” called out a guy wearing a Fedora and a cape. A cape. Seriously. A cape.
“We learned our lesson!” I reply angrily. “We had nothing to do with this.”
No one believes me, that much is clear. Sometimes I wonder how much the demon hunters hate us. Us being the mundanes that they protect. I think they only protect us incidentally—maybe they just all have tiffs with the demons. If they hate mundanes, people who aren’t hunters, people who don’t know about demons, then why fight the demons in the first place? Why not just let everyone die?
On the other hand, really obnoxious twelve-year-olds could have opened the damn Door. They’re lucky it was me. The ones that show up here to shoot the shit with Ryan? I give them a discount on food, let them sleep on my floors and use my shower.
“Don’t even bother trying that shit,” yells one of the hunters from the back. Yeah, they hate us.
I scowl at them all. “As sick and freaking tired as I am of having a Door in my basement, I would never even consider moving the Door without talking to someone first. Or, hell, moving it at all! Demon guts suck, it’s fucking true, but what about all the unsuspecting people who’d get hurt if the Door moved unexpectedly?”
“Yeah,” says Stan. He sounds a little stoned, and his bleached hair is standing straight up off his head like he’s just rolled out of bed. Probably he has. “Anyway, we wouldn’t even know how. Ryan never tells us anything.”
“Well that’s something he does right,” a Baseball Cap in the back snickers. I look closer; it’s Owen. And seriously? Shit. List.
“Hey, assholes,” says Ryan, as rudely as I’ve ever heard him talk. “Forget the moving Door. We have a bigger problem, bigger than Narnia or I realized. Many bigger problems.” His eyes sweep over the group. “Haven’t you noticed? There are more Doors, spontaneous ones. Ten years ago there was, what, three in the entire state of New York? I’ve seen that many new ones today.”
The hunters do, to give them credit, start looking around and muttering to each other. I even see a Baseball Cap say something to a Fedora. Oooh, evil brings people together.
“Who works the Door at the Kings Plaza mall?” asks Ryan. “Allie and I were there today, looking for our Door, and—”
“That one’s mine.” A Baseball Cap in a security guard uniform stands up. “Christian, at your service.”
“It’s been more active lately,” says Ryan. It’s not exactly a question.
“Yup,” drawls Christian. He’s gotta be from the Midwest somewhere; his accent is sharp and twangy. And he’s gorgeous, but he looks like he could be really mean. I know how to spot people like that. Hunter or no hunter, I’ve got a nose for the snotty bitches.
“When Allie and I were there, the bodies showed signs of multiple mythologies at work; I went back later, and as of two hours ago there is a second Door beside the original one, and it’s brought friends. Definitely spontaneous, though—Allie talked to the fledgling one when we went looking for her Door, before I realized the bigger issue. But there are definitely two Doors at Kings Plaza now.”
“Shit.” Christian says it with feeling. Then he pauses. “She can talk to them?” he asks, and suddenly there’s a lot more interest in the room directed toward me.
“They don’t really say anything,” I say, but my voice is a squeak. “They just like to . . . I don’t know, chat.”
“The Doors like to chat with you?” A Fedora looks skeptical. “Jackson.” He’s the same Fedora
who talked to the Baseball Cap guy earlier. “Doors don’t just talk to anyone.”
“They talk to me. I try not to talk back.” I paste a smile on my face, my ditziest one. “I don’t want what they’re offering.”
“And what do they offer you, chère?” This is from the woman from before. She adds, belatedly, “Call me Roxie. I guard the Door in the movie theater in Sheepshead Bay.”
I’ve been to Sheepshead Bay. Once. Accidentally. I was looking for Manhattan Beach, which butts right up next to it. It’s sort of a little fishing village, built around a bay that drains into the ocean, and it’s full of Russians. Roxie, who is six feet tall at least, wearing a leather vest and leather pants, and has a thick scar bisecting her face diagonally, must stand out.
“They just want me to ask for things. All the Doors are the same.”
“Because,” says Jackson, “the more you ask for, the more demons they can send into the world.”
I know that. “I know that. I’ve had a Door under my diner for six years. And I know better than to ask it for things.”
“It’s just,” Ryan tells me, “that most people can’t actually hear the Door talk to them. It’s just an urge, an urge to ask for something.”
“Okay, I didn’t know that,” I admit.
“Listen, ‘educate the mundane’ is all fun and games,” says a Baseball Cap rudely. They are rapidly becoming my least favorite faction. There’s something to be said for civility in times of crisis. “I’m thinking we need to find out what’s going on, though. If Door activity is on the rise, there’s got to be a reason.”
Ryan nods. “And if it’s because the Doors are preparing to multiply, then we might be looking at something a lot worse.”
“I talked to a vampire—” I was cut off from finishing my sentence by angry mutterings. I exchange a glance with Ryan. He’s just as annoyed with the hunters as I am. Good, someone will have my back when I go rage blackout on these assholes. Jeez. I raise my voice.
“As I was saying! I talked to a vampire who said that there are going to be a lot more Doors to come. It also started saying something about feeding—”
Salt and Silver Page 7
