The apprentice pinched her lips together. “Yes. But it is an office, not an individual. The strongest sorcerers pass the duties from one to another, each serving for a few years.”
“What a fascinating civics lesson. Who’s in charge now?” The apprentice frowned and didn’t answer. “The sooner you tell me,” Marla said, “the sooner I leave you alone, and get my business done, and get off this coast entirely. Okay?”
“His name is Finch,” she said. “He runs the Castro.”
“How do I find him?”
“He is…not so easy to find. But he has parties, every Friday. They begin at nine or ten, though he is not always there in the beginning. I am told he usually arrives by midnight, when things are at their busiest.”
“That’s tonight,” Marla said. “Great. Show me where he lives.” She grabbed a pen and folded map of San Francisco from her bag. The apprentice peered at the map for a moment, then said, “On this street.” Marla wrote down the street name and the number.
“Will you be at the party?” Marla said.
The apprentice shook her head. “My master does not approve of such activities. They are beneath his dignity.”
Marla nodded. “Listen, I’m not here to piss anyone off. I just want to do my business and get out of town. Let your master know that. Tell him he never has to see me again, and that I appreciate the help.”
“My master respects strength,” she said. “But, as you dislike being made to wait, he dislikes being bullied. It would be best for you to complete your business and leave the city as soon as possible, or my master may feel it necessary to take action against you.”
“I always did have a knack for making enemies,” Marla said. “I’ll be leaving now.”
The door opened, and the master backed in, Rondeau guiding him. “Hey, Marla,” he said.
“You can let our gracious host go, Rondeau. We’ve got what we need.”
Rondeau blinked. “Um, well, but—”
“Save it. We’re going.” She took his arm and tugged him through the door after her. “Pull the door closed. I don’t want to turn my back on them.”
Rondeau did as she said, and then Marla ran for the exit, Rondeau following close behind.
When they got outside—almost knocking down a few pedestrians in their headlong rush out of thin air—Marla hurried along the street, putting distance between the shop and herself. She glanced back, feeling distinctly that she was being followed, but the apprentice and her master were nowhere to be seen. Probably just nerves. Who else besides those two would want to follow her here?
“Marla, I’m trying to tell you something,” Rondeau said.
“Tell me over dinner,” she said. “We’ve got a few hours to kill, and I think I saw an Italian restaurant earlier.”
“Well. Yes. I imagine you did. We were in North Beach, after all. Don’t you know anything about San Francisco?”
“Cable cars. Golden Gate Bridge. Fog. Hills. Gay pride. If you’re coming here, wear some flowers in your hair. That’s the gist, right?”
“You do have a way of stripping things down to their essentials,” Rondeau said. “But, seriously—listen.”
Across the bay, in Oakland, San Francisco’s looked-down-upon stepsister, a former movie actor named Bradley Bowman—or just “B” to his friends, most of whom were dead or had conveniently lost touch with him—sat in a trash-strewn, weed-choked vacant lot, dropping Valiums into a sewer grate, one pill at a time. “I had one of those dreams,” he said. “I was standing under an overpass. Frogs rained from the sky, and some of them hopped under the overpass with me. A man in an old-fashioned beaver hat stood half in shadow by a pillar, watching me, and when I waved at him, he nodded. There were hummingbirds flying around my head, moving almost too fast to see. A woman in a purple cloak came out of the shadows, stepping on frogs as she walked, and then she tried to kiss me. When her lips touched mine, I found myself wrapped up in a cocoon, and I didn’t know what I was going to transform into. What does it mean?”
After a moment, something spoke from beneath the sewer grate. It talked for a long time, its voice lazy and relaxed.
“Shit,” B said. “Is there anything I can do to prevent it?”
The voice spoke again, more briefly this time.
B sighed. “Guess I have to, then. Damn. I hate going into the city.”