Every city has one of those neighborhoods -- dangerous, sinister places -- so treacherous that even the criminals who prey on other criminals shun them. Unicorn Lane was such a place. Thirty city blocks long and eight blocks deep, it cut through what used to be Midtown like a dagger. Half-crumbled skyscrapers stood there, mute witness to the past technology, the husks of GLG Grand, Promenade II, and One Atlantic Center, gnawed down to the bones by magic. Rubble choked the streets and sewage overflowed from the busted pipes in foul-smelling streams. Magic pooled there, lingering even in the strongest of tech waves, and hideous things that shun the light found refuge there, among the dark carcasses of gutted high rises. Lunatic mages, vicious, perverted loups who feared a death at the hand of unforgiving Pack, Satanists, and rogue necromancers all ran to Unicorn, for if they could make it there and survive, no lawman on this earth would force them out. Unicorn Lane held on to its own.

Hell of a place for a rendezvous. (chapter 3)

Artists emanate a great deal. They agonize over their looks, over their age, over the competition. A very minute detail can become a matter of great gravity. The building in which they perform soaks in their failures, their jealousy, their disappointments like a sponge and holds all that misery in. It's why empaths don't go to anything about the level of spring faire performances, the atmosphere overwhelms them.