“This used to be a run-down neighborhood,” Rondeau said—presumably sharing his hard-won tourist-guidebook wisdom. “Then in the ’60s gay men started buying up the old Victorians and renovating them, and before long this was the unofficial gay capital of the world. Some people are afraid the Castro’s going to go the way of Fisherman’s Wharf, though, lose all its authenticity and become a kitschy tourist-trap. It’s pretty popular with straight tourists, for some reason.”
“Small-minded bastards want to see the modern homosexual in his natural habitat?” Marla said, drawing a glance from a middle-aged man and woman taking pictures of the rainbow flags. She grinned at them nastily and they shuffled off.
“Um,” Rondeau said. “Dunno. There’s supposed to be some great bars around here, though.”
“What’s the dyke presence like?” Marla said. Rondeau wasn’t the only one with flexible sexuality. She’d had her share of affairs with women, though she’d never given up entirely on men; as far as that went, she’d had a fling with an incubus once, and a one-night stand with a woman she suspected of being a Rakosh dressed in a beautiful illusion. After you’d mated once or twice with the supernatural, mere differences in genitalia seemed irrelevant—humans were at least all built along the same lines, with the same basic nerve endings, just in different configurations. These days, she didn’t have much time for romantic entanglements of any sort.
“Eh,” Rondeau said. “They come out for the pride parade, and they’re around, but I get the sense they’re a minority in occupied territory.”
“You ‘get the sense,’ oh bold explorer?”
“All right, fine. The guidebook says so, then. But I’m practically a native compared to you.”
“Let’s scout out Finch’s place,” Marla said. “Lead on, native guide.”
After peering at the map for a while, Rondeau set off away from the bright thoroughfare, down a side street. “This area is still heavily residential,” Rondeau said. “Tourist influx notwithstanding.” Neat Victorians stood behind wrought-iron gates, and trees in iron cages lined the sidewalk. There were more rainbow flags, posters in windows bearing political slogans, and one black-and-blue S&M flag. A couple of the houses they passed had signs discreetly marking them as bed-and-breakfasts.
“I guess that’s it,” Rondeau said, “on the other side of the street.” Finch’s house, a dark blue three-story Victorian, was near the top of a hill. There were perhaps fifteen people standing in a ragged line in front of the house, which had a small porch blocked off by an elaborate wrought-iron gate. Marla and Rondeau stood in the shadows, watching as an attractive, dark-haired woman wearing a wine-red velvet cape opened the gate from the inside and spoke to the assembled crowd. She beckoned four people forward, who promptly disappeared through the front door, into the house. The apparent hostess chatted briefly with the others waiting, then went inside herself.
“Weird party,” Marla said. “Making the guests wait.”
“But I didn’t see money change hands, and more important, nobody handed over invitations,” Rondeau said. “So maybe we can get in without any fuss.”
“Unless they all know one another,” Marla said. “But we’ll obliterate that obstacle if we come to it.” She crossed the street, and Rondeau followed. They took a place at the back of the line. Most of the people waiting were youngish, and diversely dressed—some in leather jackets, some in ordinary street clothes, some in velvet and lace, all talking to one another comfortably.
A man with short black hair and Buddy Holly glasses glanced at Marla and smiled. “Have I seen you here before?”
“Maybe,” Marla said.
He looked her up and down, openly appraising. “I think I’d remember you. Maybe I’ll see you downstairs later?”
“Anything’s possible.” Her admirer was, quite obviously, not a sorcerer, and Marla’s initial assumption that Finch’s party would be a gathering place for the magically inclined was apparently mistaken. She hadn’t yet come up with a new theory. Maybe Finch just liked to entertain. That wasn’t unheard of, even among the sort of deeply self-centered people the magical arts attracted. Some people enjoyed seeing their radiance reflected in the eyes of others.
Rondeau was deep in conversation with a willowy, pale woman with white-blond hair. She was beautiful, Marla supposed, in a nearly-translucent, fragile way. Her eyes were rimmed with kohl, and she looked up at Rondeau with a mixture of childlike awe and sexual longing, but Marla suspected that was her default expression, an accessory as carefully chosen as the knee-high black boots and the black latex flip-skirt. The look certainly worked for her—it had captured Rondeau like a Venus flytrap snared flies.