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Of course, I'd been careful to transfer all my useful items from the coat to my nice new jacket before I left.
Pew was good, but I was better.
By the time I got back to Caliban's Cavern, the queue was already forming for Rossignol's next set. I'd never seen so many Goths in one place. All dark clothes and brooding faces, like a gathering of small thunderclouds. They were all talking nineteen to the dozen, filling the night with a clamour of anticipation and impatience. Every now and again someone would start chanting Rossignol's name, and a dozen others would take it up until it died away naturally.
Ticket touts swaggered up and down beside the queue, fighting each other to be the first to target latecomers, offering scalped tickets at outrageous prices. There was no shortage of takers. The growing crowd wasn't just Goths. There were a number of celebrities, complete with their own entourages and hangers-on. You could always recognise celebrities from the way their heads swivelled restlessly back and forth, on the lookout for photographers. After all, what was the point of being somewhere fashionable if you weren't seen being there?
The queue stretched all the way down the block, but I didn't let that bother me. I just walked to the very front and took up a position there like I had every right to be there. Nobody bothered me. You'd be amazed what you can get away with if you just exude confidence and glare ferociously at anyone who even looks like questioning your presence. One of the ticket touts was rude enough to make sneering comments about my tattoos, though, so I deliberately bumped into him and pickpocketed one of his best tickets. I like to think of myself sometimes as a karma mechanic.
Caliban's Cavern finally opened its doors, and the queue surged forward. The Cavendishes had hired a major security franchise, Hell's Neanderthals, to man the door and police the crowd, but even they were having trouble handling the pressure of so many determined Rossignol fans. They pressed constantly forward, shouting and jostling, and the security Neanderthals quickly realised that this was the kind of crowd that could turn into an angry mob if its progress was thwarted. They were there to see Rossignol, and no-one was going to get in their way. So, the Hell's Neanderthals settled for grabbing tickets and waving people through. I would have given them strict orders to frisk everyone for weapons and the like, but it was clear any attempt to slow the fans down now would have risked provoking a riot. The fans were close to their goal, their heroine, and they were hungry.
Inside the club, all the tables and chairs had been taken out to make one great open space before the raised stage at the far end of the room. The crowd poured into it, gabbling excitedly, and quickly filled all the space available, packing the club from wall to wall. I was swept along and finally ended up right in front of the stage, with elbows digging into my sides, and someone's hot breath panting excitedly on the back of my neck. The club was already overpoweringly hot and sweaty, and I looked longingly across at the bar, with its extra staff, but it would have taken me ages to fight my way through the tightly packed crowd. No-one else seemed interested in the bar. All the crowd cared about was Rossignol. Their diva of the dark.
There were far too many people in the club, packed in like cattle in their stalls. It didn't surprise me. The Cavendishes hadn't struck me as the type to care about things like safety regulations and keeping fire exits clear. Not when there was serious money to be made.
Set off by a single bright spotlight, a huge stylised black bird (presumably someone's idea of a nightingale) covered most of the wall behind the stage. It looked threatening, wild, ominous. Looking around, I could see the design everywhere on the fans, on T-shirts, jackets, tattoos, and silver totems hanging on silver chains. I could also see the celebrities jammed in the crowd like everyone else, their hangers-on struggling to form protective circles around them. There were no real movers or shakers, but I could see famous faces here and there. Sebastian Stargrave, the Fractured Protagonist; Deliverance Wilde, fashion consultant to the Faerie; and Sandra Chance, the Consulting Necromancer. Also very much in evidence were the supergroup Nazgul, currently on a comeback tour of the Nightside with their new vocalist. They looked just as freaked and excited as everyone else.
And yet, for all the excitement and passion in the air, the overall mood felt decidedly unhealthy. It was the wrong kind of anticipation, like the hunger of animals waiting for feeding time. The hot and sweaty air had the unwholesome feel of a crowd gathered at a car wreck, waiting for the injured to be brought out. These people weren't just here to hear someone sing - this was a gathering throbbing with erotic Thanatos. The mood was magic. Dark, reverent magic, from all the wrong places of the heart.
The crowd was actually quietening down, the chanting dying out, as the anticipation mounted. Even I wasn't immune to it. Something was going to happen, and we could all feel it. Something big, something far out of the ordinary, and we all wanted it. We needed it. And whether what was coming would be good or bad didn't matter a damn. We were a congregation, celebrating our goddess. The crowd fell utterly silent, all our eyes fixed on the stage, empty save for the waiting instruments and microphone stands. Waiting, waiting, and now we were all breathing in unison, like one great hungry creature, like lemmings drawn to a cliff edge by something they couldn't name.
Rossignol's band came ru
She grabbed hold of the mike stand at the front of the stage with both hands and clung to it like it was the only thing holding her up. As the show progressed, she rarely let go of it, except to light a new cigarette. She stood where she was, her mouth pressed close to the mike like a lover, swaying from side to side. She had a cigarette in one corner of her dark mouth when she came on, and she chain-smoked in between and sometimes during her songs.
The songs she sang were all her own material; "Blessed Losers," "All the Pretty People," and "Black Roses." They had good strong tunes, played well and sung with professional class, but none of that mattered. It was her voice, her glorious suffering voice that cut at the audience like a knife. She sang of lost loves and last chances, of small lives in small rooms, of dreams betrayed and corrupted, and she sang it all with utter conviction, singing like she'd been there, like she'd known all the pain there ever was, all the darknesses of the human heart, of hope valued all the more because she knew it wasn't real, that it wouldn't help; and all the loss and heartbreak there ever was filled her voice and gave it dominion over all who heard it.