“Vampires aren’t the scariest thing out there.” She pulled a green canvas courier bag over her shoulder, across her chest, and went to the back room, turning off the lights as she reached the doorway. I didn’t have a chance to ask her what was the scariest thing out there.
“Ready?” Grace said to the others.
“As long as it doesn’t take all night,” Anastasia said, a wry arc to her brow.
We set off down the alley in the opposite direction we’d come from. Full night now, the city seemed strange, foreboding. Skyscrapers beyond the edges of Chinatown suggested forest outside this island of a neighborhood. The sky was overcast, stars and moon invisible, but city lights gave the air a yellowish glow. The narrow streets, the fire escapes, the dark brick buildings made me claustrophobic. This was not our territory, and those enemy wolves were still out there. We had to keep moving.
“How far is it?” Anastasia asked after we’d rounded our fifth corner.
“It’s a ways yet,” Grace said.
“We could drive,” Ben said.
She shook her head. “No, we have to go on foot.”
That sounded ominous.
Ben, Cormac, and I walked like soldiers in a hostile jungle, pacing softly, hyper aware, looking everywhere. My back tingled, as if my Wolf’s fur was standing on end. If Anastasia had any qualms, she masked them, walking with her usual poise. She would hear the heartbeat of anyone approaching. Anyone mortal, anyway. Heck, why should she worry? If we were attacked she’d just throw us in the way while she continued on her quest.
Finally we turned into another narrow alley. This one had clothes left drying on one of the fire escapes, and further on a doorway was framed by a dozen red paper lanterns. The ordinary and exotic bumping up against each other again. The door Grace stopped at felt particularly old, made of wood, planed smooth. The handle had an old-fashioned keyhole below it, the kind with a circle on top of a tall triangle. Grace had the key for it.
She turned the key, the lock clunked over, and the door slipped open. Dust puffed into the gap. I smelled age—old wood, damp earth, and cold stone. The back of my neck prickled.
From her bag, Grace pulled a small, brass candle lantern—square, with scratched glass windows—and a lighter to light the candle inside. The soft, yellow glow it cast seemed weak against the darkness around us.
“Why not just bring a flashlight?” Ben said.
“For the same reason we didn’t drive,” Grace answered. She pushed the door wide.
I wasn’t psychic, but an ominous sense of wrongness pressed at me. I touched Ben; his hand reached for mine and grabbed hold.
“It’s in here?” Anastasia said and walked through the door, undaunted by the lack of light.
Squinting against the candlelight, my own vision was adjusting—the door opened into a long, brick-lined hallway. The vampire’s dark form was already invisible.
Grace sighed, as if she dreaded following. We all hesitated. This felt like walking into the maw of some leviathan.
“What kind of magic is this?” Cormac asked.
“Which one of your souls is asking?” she said.
Ben looked sharply at her, then me. “How does she know about that?” I squeezed his hand, quieting him.
Cormac pursed his lips. “It’s not important. I was just curious.”
“We’ve all got our crazy, huh?” she said, smirking at him. “Me, I don’t know where the magic comes from. My grandma taught me. She came over from China right after World War II. I’ve got a brother and sister, but she picked me to teach, and it didn’t matter how much I argued, I knew she was right. Just like she was right about leaving China, because I’m not sure she or the pearl or anything she knew would have survived the Cultural Revolution. When the vampire handed me that slip of paper, I just knew. I don’t know what kinds of magic you’re used to. This is just my family’s magic and it’s been around for a long time.”
“The Chinese practice ancestor worship,” Cormac said. But I was pretty sure it was Amelia this time. Her words, her phrasing.
“No—we honor our ancestors. That’s different. Just who the hell are you?”
Cormac nodded into the darkness. “What’s in there?”
Glaring at him, Grace said, “This thing she wants, you can’t just put it in a safe or a bank deposit box. So you make a door to someplace else. That’s what this is.”
“That’s not encouraging,” I said.
“At least we probably won’t get attacked by mercenary werewolves here,” Ben said.
Grace looked at us. “She wasn’t kidding. There really is someone after the pearl.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Night’s not getting any younger,” Cormac said, and walked through the doorway.
The rest of us finally followed, and Grace closed the door behind us. On the back side of the door hung a length of paper showing several Chinese characters painted in broad ink strokes.
“What’s it say?” I asked.
“It’s a blessing,” Grace said. “To protect whoever passes through the doorway.”
“‘Abandon every hope, ye that enter…’” Ben murmured. I elbowed him.
I couldn’t see much, even with a werewolf’s eyes, so I tried to scent danger. But I didn’t know what I was smelling for. The air here didn’t smell exactly wrong. But it didn’t smell quite right. Decades of incense saturated the brick walls. The place was still, but it didn’t seem empty.
A set of wooden stairs, worn shiny by years of traffic, led down. Anastasia waited about ten steps along.
“You decided to join me?” she said. Her face emerged, illuminated by Grace’s candle, pale and shadowed.
“We have to keep moving,” Grace said. “Come on.”
“How far is it?” Anastasia said, letting the young woman into the lead.
“It’s still a ways.” Grace went on, holding up her lantern, a sphere of light.
Ben, Cormac, and I, the pack of three, stuck together behind the others. About twenty steps further, the stairs finally reached a packed dirt floor.
Ben said to Cormac in a low voice, “When she said ‘a door to someplace else,’ what
