68

"Don't dismiss it. There are higher powers in this world."

Cleo laughs dismissively. "All I know is that you can fit a whole lot of guitar practice into eighteen months."

You arrive at Antoine's, a scuzzy juke joint on Dumaine Street. This is the first time you've set foot in the place, but as you step inside and look around, you know you have seen it before. The booths lined with red velvet, the rickety little stage, the scarred bar with its rows and rows of bottles of cheap hard liquor—this is the bar the breastplate showed you back at the Bull's Horns in one of its uncanny visions. The scene of the blues singer on the stage.

How can this be? How can a pleasant night out in your hometown possibly connect to all that crazy business with the Nazis and Operation Lyngvi and the mystical, impossible artifacts you found in Palestine and Tibet?

Your legs feel a little unsteady as the implications hit you.