Read NightWhere for Free Online Page B

truly desired.
    “It’s tonight,” she repeated. “Are you almost home?”
    Mark opened the garage door a half hour later and stepped into the house to find his wife lounging back on the couch, clearly posing for him. He did a double take.
    “Do you like?” she asked.
    Rae leapt up and did a twirl. The chains connecting the two small leather cups of her bra rattled as she did. Small chains hung in twin silver waterfalls across her bare belly. A curtain of ill-concealing metal.
    She also wore a short black leather skirt and black fishnet hose beneath it. Chains looped from the waist of her skirt, and she wore silver bracelets of chain as well. Around her neck, she had a collar of chain bound to leather. She had painted her lips black and wore dark shadow around her eyes. Rae was darkly, dangerously stunning.
    “Have you been watching Rocky Horror ?” Mark asked.
    She stuck her tongue out. “You have an hour to hit your wardrobe and attempt to keep up with me.”
    “And then?”
    “We have to drive to the north side.”
    “I’m no Tim Curry, and anyway, I don’t think I restocked my fishnets,” Mark joked.
    Rae pursed her lips. “I don’t think those would look good on you anyway. I picked you out a shirt upstairs. See what you think.”
    Mark grinned. “Now you’re dressing me, huh?”
    She slapped him on the ass. “Hurry up!”
    “Don’t wear out your wrist before we leave,” he warned, hurrying away from her towards the stairs.
    “I could say the same thing to you,” she laughed. “Better not take too long up there.”
     
     
    While the last edition of NightWhere had been housed in a run-down section of the city, tonight’s invitation took them to the upscale part of town. The Evanston neighborhood was lined with tall, old trees, and the building they pulled up in front of looked one hundred years old. It was a grey-stone high-rise with ornate limestone accents and watchful gargoyles surrounding its roof. They walked into the U of its courtyard, Rae holding a black mesh cape around her bare midriff as they hurried to enter and get out of sight of any bystanders in the neighborhood.
    Mark opened the heavy wooden front door and they stepped inside. The lobby floor was all black-veined, creamy marble, and a gilded elevator hugged one side of the wide room. A set of slowly curving steps led away from the street to their left. They stood there in the lobby, lost for a minute.
    “Are you sure…” Mark began, but Rae interrupted him.
    “There!” She pointed at the gold antique top of the elevator, which used a needle to show the floors. On the right-hand side, right after the number 12, a small black oval was pasted on, right over the place where 13 should have been. In the center of the circle, two letters were limned in grey: NW.
    “It’s upstairs,” she said, moving towards the elevator.
    “On the thirteenth floor,” Mark said quietly. “Of course.”
    They got on the elevator and pressed the black button that was also obscured with a small black disc reading NW .
    The elevator creaked and ascended, each floor ticked off by the slow clockwise ascent of an arrow above the door. And then the needle stopped, and a bell chimed, and the gold doors opened onto a long, dark hall. They stepped out and saw a handful of dark doorways along either side of the hallway. But their destination was clear. At the end of the corridor, they could see flickers of blue light from beneath a door, and the throb of a bass-and-drum groove echoed dully in the air. They walked quickly down the hall. Rae clutched their invitation for the night like a life preserver.
    Mark raised a fist to knock, but the door opened before he touched it.
    A hand reached out, its fingernails glittered obsidian, its wrist was encircled by the dark ink of a symbol they both recognized from their last visit: a self-devouring snake tattoo.
    Rae handed over the invitation, and a moment later they were inside. The volume of the music was