“Easton called it The Moonrise,” I said.
“What do you think it means?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea.”
We sat there in silence for a moment.
“The Magician would know about this,” I said, and immediately regretted it.
The Magician was still MIA, and the last thing I wanted to do was remind Chloe about that fact.
“Sorry,” I said.
Chloe shook her head. “It’s fine. There has to be somebody else we can ask about this thing.”
I thought about Russell Milligan, but there was no way he was going to speak with us again.
“I don’t know, maybe Fatman?” I said.
Chloe jumped up from the couch. “Fuck, yes. Fatman,” she said, as she ran over to the front door and tossed me my shoes.
“Wait,” she said.
“What?”
“Check for tracking devices.”
The two of us pulled our shoes apart, but we couldn’t find anything.
33
AN INVISIBLE CITY
We found parking a block and a half away from the porn shop, hopped out of the car, and pulled up our hoods in unison against the rain. As we ran across the street, Chloe reached out and grabbed my hand—and, for just a moment, I felt like I was living in a normal world, like Chloe and I were a regular couple running across a street in the rain toward a warm table in a cozy bistro, not a couple of game-obsessed lunatics rushing toward a porn shop basement in order to ask a crossbow-wielding shut-in to help us win a deadly game that might be the only thing keeping the multiverse together.
While we made our way up the sidewalk toward the store, I imagined what it would be like to do all of this stuff alone. There was no way I would have been able to handle it. I was really happy that Chloe and I were doing this together.
We approached the store, and I could see that the tall wrought iron gate was open and hanging out over the sidewalk.
“What the hell?” Chloe said. She’d clearly noticed the same thing.
As we walked through the gate and down the steps toward the basement door, we heard a distant banging and shuffling coming from somewhere deep inside the office.
“Hello?” Chloe called out.
The banging and shuffling grew louder and then abruptly stopped.
The door that opened into Fatman’s office was ajar. I knocked and then pushed it open a bit farther. The slow creak of the door against the silence inside the office was unnerving.
“Fatman?”
“Neil?” Chloe said, right behind me.
There was no answer.
“We’re coming in,” I said. “Please don’t murder us with a crossbow.”
We stepped into the room.
The fluorescents were out, but the office was dimly illuminated by a swath of warm light coming from somewhere in the back of the room.
The entire place had been torn apart. What had once been somewhat orderly rows between shelves were now winding rivers of scattered books and papers.
“Hello?” I called out again. I figured it would be worth losing the element of surprise if we could avoid a crossbow bolt through the rib cage.
Still no answer.
“What the hell happened here?” Chloe said as we waded through the mess of books and papers strewn across the floor.
“Looks like the ransack scene in every movie ever,” I replied. “Don’t touch anything.”
“Holy shit.” Chloe was staring at the back wall of the office. “Mother’s gone.”
I followed her eyes. She was right. There was nothing left of the huge makeshift supercomputer that had taken up the entire back wall. Where there had once been more than a hundred monitors and a shit ton of other electronic stuff, there were now only wires and splinters of black spray-painted wood.
While we were standing there staring at the wall, we heard another series of dull scraping sounds coming from the back room—quieter this time.
“Shit,” I whispered. “Do you think whoever did this is still here?” I was so floored by the state of the place, I hadn’t even considered that possibility.
Chloe picked up a lamp and tested its weight.
“That’s probably not gonna help,” I said as I unscrewed the metal leg from an old dining room table that used to be covered in boxes.
“Where the fuck did you learn that?” Chloe asked.
“No idea. Saw it in a movie maybe?”
I handed the heavy table leg to Chloe, unscrewed another for myself, and the two of us carefully made our way to the back of the room, toward the source of the light and the dull scraping sounds.