No one wanted cops at a club, and she and Gabe certainly looked the part of outsiders. Even the bouncers gave them dirty looks, as if they were tempted to invent a reason to remove Ruby and Gabe from the premises.

Ruby's eyes roved over the space. One entire concrete wall was dedicated to permanent marker signatures of bands that had played there and their peeling logo stickers. Everywhere she looked, there was another potential health and wellness violation. Ruby couldn't help but wonder who the owner bribed to keep the place from getting shut down.

Patrons clustered around the bar and against the stage. Everywhere else, it was a more malleable swarm. People were able to shift through it, but not easily and not fast.

Ruby instinctively clocked all the exits, their red signs half-burned out.

Gabe pressed against her, leaning down to speak.

“Looks like the bartender's got his eyes on us, too,” he said, still almost shouting despite being physically right up against her. Ruby followed his gaze and nodded.

This was not the ideal scenario. A takedown here would be messy and liable to start some kind of riot. She made a face. Nothing on this case was easy. Every lead led toward a new corner of humanity she didn't want to see.

“I think this is the opening act,” Ruby rose up as tall as she could to speak to Gabe. He nodded and she wasn't entirely convinced he heard her.

The band on stage at the moment featured a keyboardist with black and red dyed hair, bangs cut into a point. The bassist was almost definitely high as a kite. Ruby could see it in the sway of his body and hear it in the notes he kept playing off-beat.

Despite the noise they were making, the crowd cheered them on anyway, quite possibly because they were just as high as the band.

The song tapered off and the audience whooped and hollered. The mic squealed as the singer of the opening act leaned forward, his mouth so close he may have been trying to swallow the microphone whole. The words were nearly impossible to understand between the slurring and the audio mix, but Ruby caught exactly what she needed: Man's Ruin.

The first band bowed out to the raucous undeserved applause, leaving the stage to make room for the true headliner of the night.

The crowd seemed to have its own pulse. Just when Ruby thought she was regaining her bearings, the lights flashed a different color or a new puff of fog thickened the air.

“This is worse than Thorne’s house,” Ruby shouted to Gabe over the noise.

“What?” He was practically on top of her, trying to hear anything. Ruby resorted to nudging him in the right direction. Communicating was clearly futile.