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The first chills of winter bit into the bricks of a church that stood in the most crowded district of an ever-modern and moving city. Its spire, which had once been considered tall, sat snugly between the commercial high rises, and its facade was bathed in an amber light that danced like a fire. Inside, shadows moved and merged, darkening the figures in the stained glass and giving them a new, forbidding life.
The wind tonight promised colder, meaner days, but Jezebele's promised something warmer, and something much more imminent — sugar around the rim of a glass, a honeyed whisky, and a hearth too strong to be extinguished.
The prismatic figures glittered and winked, extending their invitations even to him.
"I see what you mean now, professor," said Infernus as he slid over the cognac and poured a Sidecar. "You do need a hat. Have you ever heard of a homburg?"
He shoveled ice into a metal scoop until he had to tilt his wrist back to accommodate the pile. The ice cubes that touched his fingers hissed and cracked, and when they tumbled into the shaker a thin line of steam twirled, then dissipated into the air. He gave the professor another smile as he listened.
"Oh, not a chance. I've got enough bow ties to last a semester, but I only just learned there was a taxonomy to it when Marla asked me if I preferred butterflies or batwings. I'm afraid my head's only big enough to fit a single subject. E-eyup," he sighed, popping the P. "Fashion's beyond me."
Only eight hours after the Ritual and he was already fluently fidgeting with the buttons of an old waistcoat, the same way he must have done fifty years ago. He was still a portly man, though completed with a ruffled beard and twirling mustache. The only difference, Dynamo had said, between now and then, was that he could have sworn his hair had turned a little whiter.
"Now, that just isn't true. You don't gotta learn any names to be a snappy dresser. You have an intuition, and that's all that matters." The conversation paused to let Infernus mix his cocktail. For fifteen seconds, he felt the ice snap from one cup to the other; an invisible vibration that steadied his hands and mediated with whatever adrenaline he still had left in his system. "Speakin' of Marla, you been home yet?"
"Are you kidding?" When Dynamo beamed, the skin of his face became rosy and the creases around his mouth stood out beneath his scruff. "First thing I did, after shaking your hand, saying thank you, getting on the train… It was, well," for one full and almost bursting moment, he struggled to put to words a feeling Infernus couldn't begin to guess the depths of. "It was — great! It was great." The moment slipped into the next when Dynamo exhaled and shook his head, then shook it again, slower and more deliberate. "It's going to be a lot of fun getting used to myself again."
The smile they shared this time was special, if only in its reciprocation.
Dynamo raised and tipped his drink to the tender. "No better way to get reacquainted with my taste buds than catching up with decades of missed progress in the field of alcohol. By…" he swiveled around to face the billiard hall, nestled in Jezebel's nave. "…losing several games of pool. Ah, I was never any good at party games." He had caught the shifty eyes of their partners, who were all nursing their own cocktails. "Thanks again, Infernus. Hey, why don't I pay for this one? We all owe you."
"If we tried to sit down and tally our debts, you all'd never leave and then I'd really start charging you. Don't worry about it, brother." Infernus flashed the embroidered kerchief at his waist and wiped down his side of the bar in preparation for the next drink. "Let's say everything's settled, and we'll send each other Christmas cards or somethin'. How about that?"
"You've got a deal!" Dynamo held up his fingers in a hearty okay! sign as Infernus wondered what he'd even put on a Christmas card. The professor rejoined his table, behind the colonnades and under the shaded arches of the refurbished church. Closer to the apse, where the high stakes were wagered, a group was loudly gesturing, jeering and knocking glasses. It was the sort of gathering Infernus had imagined he'd be in the thick of, but their toasts had crumbled away into something more subdued. Maybe it spoke to the surprising maturity of their group, that despite winning, they had more to think about than lord over.
It had just been Wraith and him on the way back to Jezebel's. The streets of New York stretched out in front of them like another killing field, emptied from fear of the eclipse. The afternoon finally crept to a close and Infernus watched as his usually cocksure companion squared her shoulders and tilted her head just so, staring down the alleys.
You'll see, Wraith said when he asked what she had wished for. You'll see.
Infernus was flagrant in his own motivations. Jezebel's existence was the culmination of several dreams, and he wanted to make it clear to himself, if not to the city, if not to Hank, that it was going to be the rest of his foreseeable life. But tonight, he was also teetering over the edge of you'll see. Tomorrow was beyond him. There might be a letter, a windfall of money, some confirmation that the case against Jezebel's was lost in a sea of bureaucracy. Or there might be nothing at all, and he'll teeter forever on that edge, wondering when he was allowed to relax and let his restless, sparking instincts dull.
They had stood in a tattered ring around the impassive, copper face of their Patron as the world went dark. He had closed his eyes, though already blind, and worded his wish very carefully. When daylight turned itself on like a bulb pulsing back to life, they were left behind in an empty train station, with only the professor as proof that the slithering voice of the Sapphire Flame was playing a fair game.
Infernus was pushing around a puddle of water at this point, absorbing it through the kerchief and squeezing it out again as his wrist ran circles around the counter. He folded the cloth and set it neatly aside.
From the other aisle, Wraith twiddled her fingers and squinted in an ornery way, as if to say get over here, old man. Infernus tried to convey give me a moment in return.
The apse erupted into cheers. How much were they laying down tonight? Above them, the twelve apostles gripped their own cue sticks, suspended forever in the vivid, glimmering glass of an ironic joke. Infernus bared his sharp teeth as he stuck another toothpick in his mouth.
Just then, an especially bewildered lady entered Jezebel's. A pretty Ixian regular, dressed in a mink coat that she was shrugging off her shoulders as she glanced inscrutably at the bar. Apparently finding no answers there, she twisted around toward the open entrance to face a figure, hidden partially in the dark of the gloaming. The irritating glint of filigreed gold on the man's cuffs and his metal buttons revealed him before he closed the door and immersed himself in the church. Candlelight turned his colors soft and warm, in the same mundane way it transformed every other living body here.
He exchanged pleasantries with the woman. Under the arcs of the vaulted ceiling, Infernus could hear every word, but nothing they said was remarkable. The general level of comfortable, reverberating chatter didn't sound any quieter for the table whose conversation had suddenly died down.
Eventually, they parted ways and the Doorman walked to the bar. Infernus rolled the toothpick around in his mouth, to prevent himself from splintering it in two.
He wasted no time brushing up delicately against the counter, as close as he could without sitting down, and he settled a hand across his red, double-breasted jacket.
"Infernus," he said with the barest inflection, only implying that he had more prepared. "I wanted to extend my sincerest apologies for my conduct during 'the Ritual.' And I want you to understand that none of it was personal. I have always thought highly of you."
Infernus leaned a forearm flat against his workspace to match his energy. "I could say the same, so consider your apology accepted." In a way, he meant it; no grudges, no problems. "But I hope you're still stickin' to your guns, whatever they are. I don't mind a fight for a good reason."
"Then allow me the clarification." The Doorman tilted his head, so slight as to be thoughtless, and the heavy curl that had escaped his cap bounced gently against his forehead. When he smiled, it was disarming. His lips slowly, sweetly parted over his teeth. "I'm sorry you had to be there; I'm not sorry I was."
Reputation trailed the Ritual's participants. But it made an exception for the Doorman.
Infernus had seen him in passing once, which he figured was just about the extent of anyone's relationship with him. He'd been over at the Baroness, a sumptuous affair in the middle of Broadway, to meet with the bartender there. Luxury hotels cut all sorts of deals to buy everything, from cotton sheets to foreign liquor, so he left that occasion in the kind of high-flying, boozy spirits a friendly conversation and a bottle of Geneva gin could inspire. The Baroness wasn't extraordinarily old, but it was definitely haunted, in a tethered, mollified way that had him feeling like a gawping tourist as he strolled through the expensive lobby — self-satisfied in his service industry career, which generally, immediately ingratiated him to colleagues at every level of class.
He was just spreading the goodwill when he slid a tip to the boy he had seen stacking luggage for someone who looked like a piece of work, and then he hadn't thought of him again outside the moment he met those startled eyes. Except, maybe, to scoff at the Baroness for hiring the type of dumb and dewy youth that appealed to its regular, senior lady clients.
Turned out that dollar had gone a long way, considering how the Doorman was staring at him. Focused and expectant — waiting, always waiting.
Infernus cleared his throat.
"Buy a drink, and then I'll double believe you. Let me at least do my job."
"Well! I…"
"You're off the clock, aintcha?"
"Of course," the Doorman conceded. "I wouldn't leave my post unmanned."
"So sit down and act like it. Do you ever unwind?"
"I appreciate the concern, but I wouldn't ever consider myself… 'wound.'" Infernus fixed him with a very tailored look, the same kind of expression he'd give to any over-working, twenty-something young man. It re-solidified an unspoken social norm, something that he had been trying to repair by bartending all these hours later, as if it could erase the fresh aches in his calves, the bruises embedded deep in his muscles.
Not so much intimidated as he seemed playfully amused by having a superior outside the Baroness, the Doorman sat down on a stool. He rocked lightly in the small space as he crossed his ankles and perched his polished shoes on the footrail. His eyes flickered over the menu behind Infernus' head, and Infernus was burning with curiosity over what interested him. Consider him disappointed, then, at the response.
"I've no clue what to order. What is it that you're good at, Infernus?"
He bit back an everything, baby to say, instead, "Don't worry about it. Just give me somethin' to work with and you can trust I'll pull it off."
The Doorman hummed and looked absently to the apse. He brought his hands up to the counter and laced them together so that they made a lily-white bridge. "Alright. Then, let's say, I want brandy."
"Easy doing."
Infernus swept up a bottle of applejack and went through the motions, playing fast and loose with the measurements. Lemon juice, syrup and alcohol poured over the lip of his jigger and dripped, thick and pink, into his silvery cup. He dipped his dancing fingers into a bowl of sugar and scattered it into the mix.
"Is it unsettling how perfectly you belong in a place like this?" the Doorman asked over the sound of ice crushing against the walls of the shaker. "As though it was made for you."
"Come again, Doorman?" said Infernus, brushing over the question.
"This old religion is a relic of a world where 'demon' was just the word ascribed to a shadow cast on a cave wall. Imagine, one man throwing up his hands in surrender-" his wrists whirled elegantly as he settled his stare on Infernus. He held out both palms on either side of his head in mock surrender, the ridge of his thumbs a hair's breadth away from his high cheek bones. "-and in another place, parallel but so far away, he is misinterpreted for a bird. Or a monster." The Doorman's own shadow stretched out across the wood counter and spilled over onto the other side. In the Rorschach blot that was his silhouette, he could be mistaken for an imp with curved horns and a willowy, disproportionate neck. "Now the shadows have materialized. They weren't birds after all. Mythologies have become so de-fanged that an Ixian can come to roost behind a bar, in the offal of a church…"
"Making customers a Jack Rose?"
"Precisely," the Doorman smiled as he was slid his drink, apparently full of those canny expressions. He brought the rim to his mouth and swallowed. "A very good Jack Rose, too. You've cut a splendid balance between the tart and the sweet."
Infernus took out the toothpick from his mouth like he was handling a cigarette and it shriveled to ash between his fore and middle finger. The specks drifted lazily to the floor.
"That's the real joke." He nodded, tilting his chin up in the vague direction of the ceiling's ribbed vault. "I don't get it, and I don't care to. I couldn't tell you what good book Jezebel came from. I don't even know if drinking's a sin, but I haven't seen anyone else come to a consensus on that, neither. I don't let it be my business." He returned to his work, clearing ice dregs from the shaker. "Live and let live. It's a courtesy I extend to everyone, including myself. So what's it to you?"
"Hm. Ixia?"
"No — all that shadow play talk. You gettin' at something?"
"No, no." The Doorman pinched the stem of his cocktail, which snaked upwards into the red-tinted epicure. Submerged in the brandy was the impression of a sunken marasca cherry. "None of this has anything to do with me." It took a moment for Infernus to guess that the oddly unmoving, stiff state of his face was how he looked when he was distant and tucked away in his thoughts.
Infernus let the seconds tick by until he needed to manage the bar. He made more drinks for more people who, in a short amount of time, moved to and from the stools like a small crowd of moths leaving and finding the light bulb again. He rounded back naturally to the Doorman and watched him finish his Jack Rose. He tilted back his glass and the cherry tumbled down the bowl, followed by a pink trickle of drink, and vanish into his mouth behind his teeth.
"I think I'll try a game of pool," the Doorman said when he pushed away his glass.
Infernus startled and held back the surprise from his voice. "Sure. But you'll be hard pressed to find a table lookin' for another player."
"I'm quite certain I have a group waiting for me already." From his back pocket, he procured his dollars and left them crisply folded for the bartender to collect. He stood and hardly had to smooth out creases in his uniform, but his hands moved in the practiced fashion until he was better than immaculate.
There was a new, rosy color in his cheeks.
"Thank you, Infernus." His voice creaked luringly, like a swinging hinge.
Infernus nodded. "Be seeing you, Doorman."
He waited for him to leave to take the money. Two dollars — the price of his drink and a handsome tip. Infernus rummaged around for another toothpick, chuckling to himself.
The city asphalt smolders beneath his feet. The ground cracks apart and resembles coal, a crumbling, black toplayer of street that gums up the grooves of his outsoles.
He ran — fast and far enough to get away. Infernus sweeps the hat from off his head and bows into the alley, his chest heaving for breath. He can feel the ragged, but heavy weight of his soul fluttering in his body. It's worn thin in the tips of his fingers; it's a gossamer sheet wrapped around his ribs, a leaden pulse in his head.
His life toes the cliff. He needs a moment, to beckon it back from the edge.
The chalky uptown buildings crowd around him. He limps down the alley until he can haul himself against a wall and hide in the dark, but beyond the veil, there's a parade of footsteps. The rustle of fabric, hard boots and heft, an unmistakable, metallic clinking.
Is it worth it, to become this again and still fail?
The alleyway echoes with the wooden sound of a grand frame settling into concrete. A door unlocks itself and falls open, as though, on the other side, it's been drawn down by gravity. The passage leads wrenchingly close to safety, if that means anything at all, because the Sapphire Flame has been corralled into its northern corner and the Patron's whispers have become desperate.
Infernus gathers his soul, hunches his shoulders and sprints forward. Flames lick at his heels. Hanging above and impossibly close, as if reality has been compressed between two gates, is the bright, golden glow of the transit line.
Until someone else steps through first, and that glow limns the edges of his profile.
The stranger's face has risen in wonder-struck surprise. His mouth is a perfect, tenderly parted oh, and this expression, off-guard and full of light, chafes with his raised revolver.
Infernus' hands fly up toward his head, not in fists but flat, ready palms; the image resembles surrender. It wasn't his intention.
What he last saw, before a bullet bore into his skull, was a streaking pair of beatific, blue eyes and a door — slammed forever shut.