"I have no idea."
Vidocq gets out his flask and takes a big drink. When he's put the flask away, I take his arm and pull him into the biggest, darkest shadow I can find.
There's a moment of coolness in the transition, and we're inside the room. Easy as a broken leg and we're both still in one piece.
Vidocq looks at me, eyes darting around the room. "It worked, then?"
"Two arms, two legs. It worked."
His lets out a breath and looks around, a little awe-struck. "We're at the center of the universe. The crossroads of creation."
"I suppose. I never thought about it that way. For me, it was just the emergency exit out the back of a burning building."
Vidocq turns in a slow circle. "My God. It really is a room full of doors."
"Thirteen. What did you expect?"
"I assumed the doors were a metaphor. Each door would be a way to describe a different state of being."
"No. It's just a lot of doors."
"Clearly. Where does this one lead you?"
"They change, depending on where I want to go. It's all about associations. The Door of Fire leads to chaotic places, usually dangerous. Wind is mostly calm, but changeable. Dreams leads to, well, dreams."
He points to the thirteenth door. "Where does that one go?"
"I never opened it."
"Why not?"
"Because it scares me shitless, and, anyway, that's not how we're going. We're going through here."
"What is this?"
"The Door of the Dead."
MASON'S BASEMENT SMELLS like a straw doormat that's been left out in the rain too long. It's also pitch-black.
Vidocq takes a glass vial from his pocket and blows on it. The room fills with light. Who needs a flashlight when you have your own personal alchemist?
Paint is peeling off the basement walls and ceiling in jagged sheets. Thick roots grow down from the lot above and creep across the ceiling and walls, like black and brittle arteries. A knot of roots has rotted away the plaster from one wall, leaving exposed lath. The furniture sits exactly where I last saw it years earlier-tables, chairs, and a sofa woolly with mold.
In the center of the room is what remains of the magic circle. Some of the chalk is still visible where it's melted into the rotten floorboards. The burned stubs of candles are still lying around the circle, like the last people in here left quickly and never came back.
I can't get hold of any one feeling. It's like my brain and my guts and my heart are stuck in a speeded-up, old-school king fu fight. Different parts of me want to run off screaming in different directions. One part of me wants to puke quietly, but thoroughly, in a far corner of the room. Another part of me wants to rip the place apart, board by board, brick by brick. The weakest, smallest part of me, the one I seriously don't want to hear from, is nothing but apologies and regrets. Sorry, Alice. You told me not to come here, but I did. Then everything else happened.
One part of me that's left is the ten o'clock news. That's the part I hold on to. The cold camera eye. Just take in the scene and report the facts. These ruins aren't my private apocalypse. They're the haunted-house ride at Disneyland. Digital spooks and Dolby stereo moans. About as scary as a basket of kittens.
"What are we looking for?" asks Vidocq.
I shrug.
"No idea."
We move around the room, looking for a clue or a sign that points to something more than damp wreckage. I move furniture and trash away with the toe of my boot. I don't want to touch anything.>"There was this one time Downtown when a couple of big, horned Hellions dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night. Azazel was my boss, but these two worked for Mephistopheles. The general with the fire palace. Lucifer's third favorite general. His boys took me to the arena. It was after-hours, but there were a couple dozen Hellion posh types in the stands. They wanted a private show starring the living boy, which I knew meant that I was about to get my ass kicked.
"My favorite weapon, a na'at, was on the ground. A na'at is sort of like a spear, but it morphs and changes into a lot more than a spear if you know how to use it right. Like everything else down there, the name is a Hellion joke. They call a na'at a 'thorn' because its full name, na'atzutz, is the kind of bush they used to make Christ's crown of thorns.