“I’m having it turned off,” she says. “It was only around for one reason.” She pulls out a cell phone, stores my contact information. I get the same from her.

“You need a lift anywhere?” I say. She’s gotta be in her nineties by now and I’m not leaving her alone in an empty train station after midnight.

“No, but thank you,” she says. “I’ll be just fine.”

“Look, I’m not gonna just leave—”

Her eyes flash a dim, glowing red and her smile is full of teeth. “Looks are deceiving, Eric. I’m not as old as I look. I’m much older.”

Some things fall into place. “This is why my dad didn’t like you, isn’t it?” I say. Now that I’m looking for it, I see the signs. “Lamia, right? I dated one a few years back in New York. It didn’t work out.”

“It very often doesn’t,” she says. “But it worked with your grandfather and I. Your father didn’t trust me. But Robert did, and that’s all that mattered to me. Goodnight, Eric. Be safe.”

She stands up smooth and graceful as a dancer and for a brief moment I can see her true self just under her skin. It’s a good glamour, but then, Lamias are excellent predators.

“You too, Miriam. I’ll see you around.”

—

I get to the Ambassador grounds about half an hour later. The hotel closed in ’89, but they kept it around a while for film shoots. That’s the fate of everything in this town. It thrives, declines, gets turned into a movie location, then they tear it down.

They left it standing a good long time, too. Finally came down a few years before I got back to L.A., and they built a school complex on the grounds, the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Needed to call it something, I guess. Kinda morbid, though, you ask me.

I slap a HELLO, MY NAME IS sticker with the words I’M NOT HERE written in Sharpie onto my chest and pump a little magic through it. I stand outside the gates of the school and peer inside. I can barely make out the outline of the old hotel in the distance. It looks a little more solid from this side of the veil than I’d expect. I can’t usually see a vanished building on the other side unless it’s got a lot of significance. I guess the Ambassador rates.

It’s not a long walk, but I’m not sure which route would be easier. Navigate through the school until I get to the site of the actual hotel, or pop over to the dead side now and walk in a straight line.