“Come on!” Ray beckoned from halfway up the nearest staircase, and I hurried to join him.
The balcony, when we reached it, gave a better view of what was happening across the room at the squid door. The big, round opening let out into a circular waiting room, still kind of dim, with a few benches hugging the sides, covered in the same dark blue as the walls and floor. It made them almost melt into the darkness and disappear.
Like the people.
Because I’d just watched maybe a couple hundred tuxes and evening gowns be swallowed up by the entrance, and now—where were they now? Because there was almost nobody in there. Just a few stragglers headed for the door, and a woman adjusting a shoe strap while hanging on to her date, who had stopped to consult a small notebook.
“Where did they go?” I asked, before I noticed: the dark wall behind them had another big round door in it, like the one leading in. It was dark enough that I hadn’t immediately noticed it next to the midnight blue wall, but now that I did, I couldn’t unsee it. Because it was filled with a rippling, inky blackness that was swallowing people up like a giant maw.
“What is this place?” I asked, and Curly snorted.
“Geminus’ darling. I designed it; he built it. It was my payment for protection.”
“But what is it?”
“A modern-day Colosseum. He used to be a gladiator, you know? In old Rome?”
I nodded.
“He was there when they flooded the real Colosseum, for a great naval battle. It’s what gave him the idea.”
“The idea for what?”
“A new type of fights. Through each of those doors is a portal to a different water environment, here and in Faerie. Only, instead of ships and crews fighting each other, like the Romans did, Geminus used—”
“Fey.”
Curly nodded. “All different kinds. That’s what people are really gambling on here. The table games are just to keep ’em occupied in between bouts.”
“Like in Vegas,” Ray said. “They got fights in some of the casinos out there.”
Curly’s lip curled. “No, not like in Vegas. Geminus thought a fight wasn’t worth a damn if somebody didn’t die.”
“He set up portals to different areas, for the different types of competitors,” I said, finally getting it. And looking around with a sinking feeling, because there were a lot of doors. Instead of a single building, we were now faced with searching . . . what, exactly? Half the seafloor?
“No one building could have held all the environments he wanted,” Curly confirmed, “so the bouts are held out there.” He gestured at the dark sea beyond the
windows. “Everywhere from the Arctic Ocean to the Caribbean. The audience passes through portals here, into warded viewing areas, and the fighters enter the open sea through separate portals in their holding tanks. And then they go at it.”
“But, if they’re out in the open sea, why don’t they just swim away?” Ray asked.
“Geminus kept family members back here, in holding tanks down below, as hostages. Escape from the scene of a fight or refuse to fight—”
“And they kill your family,” I said, remembering the little girl at the theatre.
Ray gave Curly a shove. “And you helped him?”
The blue eyes grew big with alarm. “I didn’t know all this at first! My idea was for an interactive theatre, a spectacle! Like at my place, only bigger. Geminus turned it into something else. And by the time I realized what he was doing, I was in too deep.”
“So you just kept doing it, you little—”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
“You said some of the portals go to Faerie,” I interrupted, before we got off track. “Then why did Geminus need the one at your theatre?”
“He didn’t. The family did. After his death, the Senate was watching them like a hawk, but nobody was watching me.”
“But now his guys are back in business.”