Book of Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

him. “Talked to the roommate up in Amherst. She says Erin was on her way out to a club on Kenmore Square last night.” Landauer gave him a look of sly triumph. “Get this. The club’s called Cauldron.”
    835 Beacon Street, Kenmore Square. The neighborhood was shady, with junkies and crack whores lurking in the shadows of the three-story building: a warehouse, with its few windows painted black from the inside and no identifying signage. An enormous bouncer hovered at the door with beefy bare arms crossed, dressed in a black hood and studded leathers like a medieval executioner. Garrett and Landauer flashed tin at him and walked past the DRESS CODE ENFORCED sign into the castlelike gloom of Cauldron. They stood in the black-lit entry hall with the pulse of synthesizers throbbing through them, blinking as their eyes adjusted to the dark. The walls around them were a bloody red; the ceiling two stories above was crisscrossed with ghostly lengths of white cheesecloth. Black leather booths and a few counters with high stools ringed the walls; the booths were framed in iron with heavy crimson drapes, some of which were already drawn across the entrances, creating cocoons of privacy. Four huge black columns sectioned off the packed dance floor; dozens of heavy linked chains hung from the ceiling, surrounding the dancers in a cagelike cube. The dense crowd of young patrons was costumed to the hilt; makeupran down their sweating faces like black tears as they undulated inside the chains.
    The two detectives moved through the roar of the crowd, reeling at the assault of pulsing music, lasers, and flickering silent German Expressionist films projected on several walls, with their crooked buildings and monstrous shadows. Young people dressed in leather, chain mail, even dragon wings, milled and drank and slouched on large black cubes. A stocky long-haired blond man at one of the tall tables was completely naked, his entire body painted bright blue. A young woman with candy-apple red hair sidled by them, wearing only strips of wide red vinyl tape across her breasts and pelvis.
    Garrett heard Landauer mutter beside him, “Freak, freak, freak-azoid . . .” Garrett looked at his partner and saw equal parts of lust and loathing on his face. He himself could feel the throb of the music through his body, down to his pelvis, an insistent, sexual pulse.
    His own taste in music ran to classic rock, on the Irish side: U2, the Pogues, Van the Man, of course the Stones, who were Irish in spirit. But he’d always been drawn to the haunting music of The Cure, whose dark and driving “M” he recognized playing now.
    As he paused to listen, the pounding of the music turned into something else, a feeling of . . . import, almost of being watched. Garrett turned in the crowd, staring through the flashing lights and flickering projections . . .
    Landauer nudged his arm, breaking the spell, and nodded toward the long oval bar. The partners split up, moving to opposite sides. Garrett stepped between two bar stools, his eyes taking in a banner above the mirror advertising an upcoming
SAMHAIN PARTY—Bands All Night, Costume Contests.
The corseted magenta-haired barkeep gave him a bold and appreciative once-over before Garrett leaned across the bar and flashed his badge, forcing himself to keep his eyes well above her pushed-up breasts.
    “Boston PD,” he shouted, and put Erin’s photo on the glossy wood. “Did you see this girl in here last night?”
    The bartender squinted with raccoon eyes, shrugged. “Wearing what?” she shouted back.
    Garrett looked over the room, the wildly costumed patrons. The bartender had a point; their own parents wouldn’t know them. He glanced down at the blond girl in the photo and had a moment of disconnect.
What was a girl like Erin, a textbook preppie, doing in a place like this to begin with?
    It seemed highly unlikely, yet he knew well enough that teenagers and college students had worlds of secrets they