From the design on the gate, Marla suspected Finch was—at least in part—a sexual magician. What Marla had always somewhat contemptuously referred to as a “pornomancer.” Her own first teacher, Artie Mann, had been a pornomancer, though of an unconventional sort. It was actually a relief to discover this about Finch—pornomancers weren’t known for their offensive capabilities, though it wouldn’t do to underestimate Finch, and she was just making assumptions based on an odd home-design choice.
The woman in velvet emerged, opened the gate, and beckoned the next four people—including Marla and Rondeau—inside.
Sexual excess was not immediately apparent. Once inside the dim foyer, Marla and Rondeau joined the same people they’d been waiting in line with outside. By standing on tiptoe and looking over the heads of the people in front of her, Marla could see a woman standing at a counter as if tending a ticket booth. She was handing people clipboards, and retrieving clipboards from people who were finished filling out some kind of form.
“What, we have to sell our souls to get into this party?” Rondeau said.
“I guess so,” Marla said.
“It’d better be a pretty good party, then. I like to get full value for my soul.”
“Full value for your soul wouldn’t get you a cup of coffee at a convenience store,” Marla said, but her heart wasn’t in the banter; she’d suddenly realized what kind of party this probably was. She had to admire the Chinatown sorcerer for sending her here with a straight face.
The line moved forward, and the people who were finished with their clipboards went down a short hallway and turned right into another room. Marla and Rondeau each took a clipboard, which contained a sheet of paper printed with a set of rules and disclaimers, with a place at the bottom for signature and date. Marla closed her eyes briefly and pressed her hand to the paper, feeling with a sense beyond touch until she was sure the paper wasn’t magically prepared. This contract would be binding only in the legal sense. Some sorcerers could write a contract in such a way that the signers were bound by pain of death to obey, but Finch hadn’t done that here. Marla scanned down the rules. Nothing unexpected. This was the kind of party she thought, which was likely to make the evening more complicated than she’d expected.
“No drinking, no drugs, no touching without permission,” Rondeau said, bewildered. “Don’t monopolize the equipment in the dungeon, safe scenes are good scenes, use gloves, dams, condoms…. Oh,” he said, and Marla was not surprised to hear a smile in his voice. “You brought me to a sex party, Marla. You are letting me have a little fun on this trip.”
Marla sighed, signed an indecipherable scrawl at the bottom of the paper, and handed the clipboard back to the smiling attendant. Rondeau did the same. “That’ll be twenty dollars each,” she said, and Marla nodded to Rondeau, who handed over two twenties.
“For twenty dollars each, there’d better be some decent food in there,” Rondeau said. “Oysters wouldn’t be amiss.”
“We’ve had bad luck with oysters,” the woman said, putting their money under the counter. “There’s asparagus, though, and lots of sweets. You’re here early enough that there’s probably still plenty of food.”
The pressure of people behind them was building up, so Marla and Rondeau went down the hallway, into the other room. The line outside was meant to keep this preparatory area from becoming hopelessly clogged, Marla realized, and possibly to keep the house from getting too crowded.
The next room was jammed with people in various stages of dress, undress, and dress-up. They wore corsets, spiked heels, leather collars, net body-stockings, baby-doll teddies, capes—every kind of lingerie and fetish gear, though some wore nothing but their skin, and some wore sarongs or boxer shorts. The majority were young and reasonably attractive, the sort of hip urban crowd Marla might expect to see at a dance club in Felport. A long table ran along one end of the room, staffed by volunteers who got to attend the party for free, Marla supposed, in exchange for helping support the infrastructure for an hour or two. The people behind the table were handing out brown paper grocery sacks with numbers written on the sides. “Remember your number!” they admonished, as the party guests put their street clothes and other personal items into the bags, which were in turn given back to the volunteers, who put the filled bags away on shelves made from scaffolding. A shelf along another wall held hundreds of neatly folded towels in faded primary colors, and once the guests had girded or ungirded their loins as desired and stowed their belongings, they took towels and went deeper into the house. Several of the guests still carried bags or cases with them—party supplies, Marla supposed.