With the night only starting and the hangover of Aventum lingering, Perdition Street was a shadow of itself. It would take another few hours for the saloons, gambling halls, opium dens, and bordellos to lumber back to life, particularly after the holiday. But live again they would. In other parts of the territory, a growing temperance movement had already dampened the excesses of good living, but here where the lords of hell had touched the earth and their children still made habitat, nothing could quite curb the sin of it all.

Despite the rowdy reputation Hypatia prized so dearly, the Eden stood among its lesser siblings on Perdition like the pride of the litter. Only the Excelsior Hotel and the opera house on the respectable side of town rivaled it in dignity. It was a massive three-story building built of rare white brick, wood, and iron. Its arching front windows and three-columned portico were trimmed in Goetia cement, the limestone cut through with divinity dust. Divinity also powered the lights, both outdoors and those illuminating the brightly painted walls inside.

Hypatia had fashioned the Eden after the ancient city of Alexandria. Columns of pink granite rising from floor to ceiling, tiles of sea blue paving the bottom of an indoor fountain, and a ceiling tiled in gold tin as bright and warming as the Mediterranean were the Eden’s most noticeable features. Beyond the decor were the betting tables and the ace-high spirits, watered down though they might be. And then there was the entertainment. Every saloon along Perdition offered music of some sort, popular waltzes or ragtime, and many offered dancing, couples with dance cards on Thursday night and ladies with knee-baring skirts on Saturdays. But only the Eden had a songstress like Mariel. They all knew she was good enough to sing at the opera house or in the concert halls of the great cities, but she was Fallen, and the Fallen stayed in Goetia, close to the mines.

As Celeste approached the Eden, she spotted a Virtue standing guard at the door. The windows showed the interior dark and empty. She kept walking, hoping to avoid the Virtue’s notice, and had just passed out of his view when a figure in the shadows waved her down.

It was Hypatia, and she held a finger to her lips, motioning Celeste to silence. They melted into the shadows in the alley, away from the Virtue’s watch.

“Damn Virtues turned me away from my own establishment.” Hypatia was mad enough to turn milk. “Said it’s closed until I get the place cleaned up properly.”

“Can you still get in?”

“It’s my place, ain’t it? I won’t allow no Virts to keep me from what’s mine.”

“Can you get me in?”

“ ’Course. But why?”