Page 5 of When Among Crows
Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she lifted her coffee cup to her mouth.
“Don’t be fooled by her human face, her human voice,” she said. “That is no woman.”
The Crow Theater doesn’t have a sign. Instead, a row of neon birds, each in a different stage of flight, blinks above the marquee. Today the marquee reads:
ALIENS VS. GHOSTS: WHO WOULD WIN?
Alien(1979) vs.The Haunting(1963)—Double Feature
The theater itself is a sagging, scuffed place in Edgewater, one of Chicago’s northernmost neighborhoods. It shows only horror movies, though it seems to treat “horror” as an umbrella term for anything that might unsettle or disgust. Showings from the past week, as listed on the theater’s threadbare website, include a vampire movie from the early aughts where everyone was in skintight patent leather, a documentary on cane toads, andJaws.
A man with ash-brown hair bypasses the box office and steps into the adjoining bar, Toil and Trouble. He passes beneath a cluster of sparkly bats when he steps down into the space, his shoes sticking to the floor a little as he walks. The bar top has been designed to look like a closed coffin,and perched on top of it is a mechanical witch that cackles every time the bartender passes it.
He knows without looking at the bartender that she’s not human. He’s gotten good at sensing it without seeing it, that undefinablesomethingthat he can almost taste. But he doubts any of the other patrons have noticed.
He shrugs the soft guitar case from his shoulders and leans it against the bar, then sits down to wait. His contact sent a message to the owner of this establishment requesting a meeting, but he has no way of knowing if Klara Dryja will actually show up. He’s ten minutes early, regardless.
Above him a string of lights made to look like flickering candles dangles a little too close to his head. He ducks to read the menu scribbled on the far wall in messy chalk handwriting. The zmora bartender sidles up to him.
Though there’s still a chill in the air outside, she’s dressed like it’s the middle of summer, her arms bare, pale as milk. Her hair is cropped close to her head, but her high cheekbones and square jaw remind him of the place he just left. They should. All zmora are Polish, like he is, though they have creature cousins all over the world.
“Can I get you something?” the zmora asks. She sounds American.
It’s so strange to speak to her like she’s the same as him, but he’s getting used to it. “Would I be a fool to order wine here?”
“It’ll taste a little like feet, and it’ll come in a chalice the size of a melon,” she says. “Does that interest you?”
He pretends to consider this.
“I’ll have a beer,” he says. “Whatever you like best.”
“Good choice.”
There’s an array of drinkware just behind the bar: a mug with cat eyes painted on it, a goblet with snakes wrapping around its base, a cup shaped like a human skull. She sets a bottle of beer down in front of him and then raises a glow-in-the-dark plastic cup at him in question. He shakes his head.
The bartender reaches for a rag, setting off the cackling witch, whose pointed hat bobs as she bounces with laughter. The bartender curses, and turns the witch to face the wall.
He’s suppressing a smile at this when someone at his shoulder clears her throat.
She’s a small, slight woman with the sly smile of a fox and hoop earrings the size of his fist. That she’s a zmora is more obvious for her than it is for the bartender—there’s too muchtimein her eyes. Klara Dryja is her name, and she’s the one he’s here to meet.
“You.” She says it as if it’s a certainty. “Come with me.”
“You must be Klara,” he replies.
“Must I?” She’s already stepping out of the bar and into the movie theater lobby beside it.
He leaves a ten-dollar bill on the bar, picks up his guitar case and his beer, and hurries after Klara. The air smells burnt and buttery. She leads him down a short hallway plastered with old movie posters, past the restrooms and both of the theater’s two screens, up a flight of stairs andinto a projection room. On the screen, Sigourney Weaver stands in a spaceship wearing a white tank top and underwear.
A man just inside the projection room glances at them, then draws the curtains across the windows. He’s sitting beside a stack of film reels in tin cases.
“Thank you, Tom,” Klara says to him. She turns back to Dymitr with eyebrows raised.
“Who are you?” she says.
“I came to make you an offer.”
Klara smiles, and her smile is a warning. “That’s not an answer.”
