My mouth popped open. “Did you find out anything else?”

“Yeah. I had to give him ten bucks, but he finally told me that The Depot is like this superexclusive emogamers’ nightclub in the city. And for another twenty bucks he gave me the address.”

She opened her drawer and pulled out a folded-up piece of paper.

“What … really?” I reached for it.

April pulled it away. “I don’t know if I should tell you where Jude is.”

“Why?”

“Because if I tell you, then you’ll go tell Daniel or your dad, and they’ll go down there and just scare him off. If he wanted them to find him, then he would have contacted them … not me.”

“Not us. Jude contacted me, too.”

April looked down at the folded piece of paper. She turned it over in her hand a couple of times and sighed. “I don’t know if this will even do you any good. You can’t just walk into The Depot. I told you, it’s, like, superexclusive. Not even the kid who gave me the address had actually even been inside yet. You have to have a special keycard or you can’t even get in the door.”

Keycard? I stuck my hand in my jacket pocket and pulled out the plastic card I’d found at the market yesterday. “You mean like this one?”

April’s jaw dropped. “How did—?”

“You’ve got the address. I’ve got the card. We can do this together, or not at all.” I took a step toward her. “What do you say?”

“Okay.” April stood up. She shook in that excited-nervous way of hers. “But we’re going to need makeovers.”

I almost dropped the keycard. “We’re going to need … what?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Depot

THAT NIGHT

Yeah, so this is pretty much the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, I thought as I listened to the weird vroom-vroom noise the borrowed pair of vinyl pants I wore made as I walked. The sound was so distracting that I didn’t see the crack in the sidewalk, and stumbled in the high-heeled red leather boots April had insisted that I wear.

April caught me by the arm before I fell. “Those are hard to walk in, huh?”

“The pants or the boots?” I grumbled. “Seriously, why do you even have vinyl pants?”

“They’re for my Halloween costume. I’m going as Lady Gaga.” She pointed to the pink sequined top she wore with a denim jacket and a black miniskirt. “This goes with it.”

Great, I was headed to a nightclub for the very first time in half a Halloween costume. I wrapped my arms around my waist, trying to cover up my bare midriff. This lacy red top was far too short for my taste, but April had forbidden me to wear my wool jacket over it because she said it would ruin the “ensemble.”

And not only was I dressed like a pseudohooker, I was also walking down a street only two blocks away from Markham—the worst neighborhood in the Midwest—after dark. Yep, this definitely ranks on the list of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.

April looked down at the paper in her hand and then did a full circle, looking at all the buildings on the street. “This is supposed to be the address, but this doesn’t look like a nightclub to me.”

I’d been so distracted by my ridiculous clothes, and the prospect of getting mugged and/or solicited by a total stranger, that I hadn’t even paid attention to the architecture around us. I looked up at the building we stood in front of. It was long and wide, with boarded-up windows and a huge chain wrapped around the handles of the decrepit double doors. I could feel a slight vibration under my feet. “Isn’t this that abandoned train station they’re always talking about on the news? How it needs to be demolished?”

April shrugged. “All I know is that I’m going to punch that stoner kid in the ’nads if he doesn’t give me my twenty bucks back. He totally ripped me off.”

I took a couple of steps closer to the building. The vibration in the ground got stronger, rumbling through the soles of my shoes and up the pointy four-inch heels. Another two steps closer and I could feel the vibration in my ears now. Music—coming from somewhere nearby. Underneath us, perhaps? If it weren’t for my powers, I probably would have missed it.

“No,” I said. “I think we’ve found it. The Depot? Train station? Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“I guess,” April said. “But this place is totally boarded up.”

I motioned to April as I followed the musical vibration around the side of the building and down the narrow alley between the train station and an equally abandoned-looking warehouse. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I kept chanting to myself with every quick step, but if this was the only way to track down Jude, I wasn’t going to turn back now. The sounds of a screeching car and a shouting man back out on the street made me pick up my pace until I came to a metal door on the side of the building. It looked far more modern than the chained-up doors out front. The vibration was strong from behind the door, and I could even pick up the faint rhythmic pulse of techno music.

“I think this is it.”

“Are you sure? This doesn’t look like a club entrance. I mean, shouldn’t there be bouncers or something?” April’s earlier courage seemed to have washed right out of her. The pale look on her face made it seem like she’d been half anticipating/half hoping we wouldn’t be able to get into the club without fake IDs. A consideration I hadn’t even thought of until now.

I tried the handle, but a bolt in the door stopped it from opening. Then I noticed a keypad next to the doorway with a small red light. “I think all we need to get into the club is the keycard.” I pulled the card out of my pocket—a harder feat than it sounds when your pants are made out of vinyl—and swiped it through what looked like a credit card reader. The light on the keypad turned green, followed by a loud clicking noise as the bolt in the door unlocked.

I pulled on the handle. The door slid open, and a wave of pulsing music flooded the alley. “You ready?” I asked April.

“I guess so.…” She straightened her miniskirt. “I mean, yes,” she said with only a hint of a tremble in her voice. “Let’s do this.”

Just inside the doorway was a long staircase. I grabbed on to the railing and prayed I wouldn’t slip in my high heels as I navigated my way down the cement steps. At the bottom we went through an open doorway and entered the club. It buzzed like a hive with gyrating people, flashing lights, pulsing music, wafting fog from a dance floor in the middle of the room, and flickering plasma TVs as big as cars extended from cables attached to the ceiling. Groups of guys, mostly in their early twenties or younger, crowded around the TVs. They cheered and shouted while playing video games that mostly involved shooting, speeding cars, and almost-naked women. The gaming crowd was dotted with a few girls—dressed just as scantily as the ones on the screens. But mostly the only females in the place crowded around the bar on the far end of the club, or partied on the dance floor in corsets and leather getups that put my attempt at a tough-girl outfit to shame.