Page 97 of Breaking the Dark

“It’s this, like, beauty reviewer girl?”

“Oh, right. Miranda?”

“Yes.

“Who is she? Who is Miranda?”

The girl shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know who she is?”

“Well, yeah, I mean I know who she is. But I don’t know, like, exactly who she is.”

Jessica frowns. “You know that makes no sense?”

The girl sighs. “She’s just someone that everyone knows. Everyone talks about. That’s all.”

“And what do they say about her?”

“They say she does these treatments with, like, some kind of creams? And like, a laser? And she’s launching the laser tonight. Here. World exclusive.”

“A laser, huh?”

“Yeah. In your phone.”

Jessica inhales sharply. “I’m sorry? A what in your phone?”

“I mean, I don’t know. That’s what I’ve heard.”

The girl walks away.

Jessica looks at Luke, then pulls her phone from her pocket and switches it on. She feels that pulse of heat again and turns it off. She can’t worry about this right now. She needs to find Malcolm.

After a few moments they turn the corner into Old Broadway and there’s the bar, plain-faced, dark, quiet.

“This it?” asks Luke.

“Mm-hmm.”

She leads him to the window around the back. Luke takes it out with his elbow and they climb through.

Luke uses his powerful flashlight to light up the interior.

“Whoa,” he says, spotlighting an empty beer bottle lying on its side in a corner, the dusty bottles behind the bar, a plastic box of wine glasses. “This place has character. It’s like, I dunno, like the Titanic. Like everyone was halfway through their drinks and then just left.”

Luke is using his feet to bang at the floorboards, searching for echoes, then his fists to knock at the walls, feeling for hollows. Then he reaches into his backpack and pulls out a hand drill and starts drilling holes into the wall. After a few moments he turns to Jessica and smiles.

“There it is,” he says, nodding at a section of the wall about ten feet to the right of the bar. “It’s behind there.” He takes up his fists, turns to bestow upon her a broad smile, and then proceeds to smash the wall into smithereens as easily as if he were smashing an avocado.

As the dust settles, she can see the outline of a doorway, and the rubble-strewn shape of a deep staircase descending.

“You ready?” says Luke.

“Uh-huh.”

She follows him down the dark steps, down one level, and then down again. Jessica feels a swell of claustrophobia tighten her chest but ignores it and keeps heading down. At the bottom of the second flight of stairs is an arched entrance leading into a room twice the size of the bar upstairs. At one end are four circular tables framed by horseshoe banquettes facing toward a checkerboard dance floor. A bar runs all down one side, and there is a huge glitter ball hanging overhead that catches the rays of Luke’s flashlight and sheds them down onto the dark, dusty floor, festooned with old police ribbon.

“Whoa,” says Luke, sweeping his flashlight around the room. “So this isn’t creepy as hell or anything. Where’d you say they found the dead bodies?”