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for having a cocktail. A few officers tried to follow, only to find the passages were suddenly blind.

Magnus let the heavy glamour drop, and the speakeasy regained its normal appearance. This stunned the police long enough to allow him to slip behind a nearby curtain and glamour himself invisible. He walked right out of the bar, past the officers. He paused only for a moment to watch them pull back the curtain and study the wall behind, looking for the way to access the escape hatch they assumed had to be there.

Back out on the street, it was a thick September night. New York often stayed hot this time of year, and New York humidity had its own special quality. The air was viscous, full of the murk of the East River and the Hudson and the sea and the swamp, full of smoke and ash, full of the smell of every kind of cooking food, and the raw smell of gas.

He walked down to one of the exit points, where an excited cluster of customers stood laughing and talking about what had just happened. This group was made up of some of his favorite regulars, including the handsome Alfie.

“Come on!” Magnus said. “I think we should continue this at my place, don’t you?”

A dozen people agreed that this was an excellent idea. Magnus hailed a taxi, and some of the others did the same. Soon there was a merry little chain of taxis ready to go. Just as one more person was squeezing into the backseat with Magnus, Dolly leaned in the window and spoke into his ear.

“Hey, Magnus!” she said. “Don’t forget. Watch the money!”

Magnus gave her a polite, yes, whatever nod, and she giggled and tripped off. She was such a tiny thing. Very pretty indeed. And very drunk. She would probably go off to the Bowery now and eat her fill on the city’s less fortunate.

Then the train of taxis began to move, and the entire party (which, from a glance out the back window, looked to have expanded by another dozen) made its way uptown to the Plaza Hotel.

When Magnus woke the next morning, the first thing he noticed was the fact that it was much, much, much too bright. Someone really needed to get rid of the sun.

Magnus quickly worked out that the excessive brightness was due to the fact that all the curtains seemed to be missing from the bedroom of his suite. He then noted the four fully dressed (sigh) people sleeping around him on the bed, all oblivious to the sunlight and dead to the world.

The third thing he noticed, perhaps the most puzzling, was the pile of car tires at the foot of the bed.

It took Magnus a few moments and a number of strange contortions to get over the sleepers and out of his bed. There were easily twenty more sleeping and passed-out people all over the living room. The curtains were also missing from the windows of this room, but he could see where they’d all gone. People were using them as blankets and improvised tenting. Alfie alone was awake, sitting on the sofa and looking out at the sunny day miserably.

“Magnus,” he groaned. “Kill me, won’t you?”

“Why, that’s illegal!” Magnus replied. “And you know how I feel about breaking the law. And who are all these people? There weren’t this many when I fell asleep.”

Alfie shrugged, indicating that the universe was mysterious and nothing would ever be fully understood.

“I mean it,” Alfie said. “If you don’t want to use that voodoo whatever, just hit me on the head with something. You gotta kill me.”

“I’ll get you a bracer,” Magnus said. “Iced tomato juice and Tabasco, sliced grapefruits, and a plate of scrambled eggs, that’s what we need. I’ll have room service send up two dozen of each.”

He stumbled over a few people to the phone, only to find that he had actually reached for a large, decorative cigarette dispenser. It was possible he was not quite at his best either.

“And coffee,” he added, setting this down and picking up the telephone receiver with tremendous dignity. “I will order some of that as well.”

Magnus placed the order with room service, who had by now stopped questioning Mr. Bane’s unusual needs for things like twenty-four plates of scrambled eggs and “enough coffee to fill one of your larger bathtubs.” He joined Alfie on the sofa and watched a few of his new guests turn and groan in their slumber.

“I