Wicked City (18 page)

“Oh!” I said, breathlessly. “You're here!”

He drew his lips in, like he was puckering for a kiss or suppressing laughter. “You were screaming my name to the pigeons a moment ago.”

“You heard me?”

He sighed. “I was just on the other side of the building. As I assume you knew.”

“I guessed.” I had hoped I was wrong. My conjecture of what had really taken place in the mayor's office didn't say anything good about a certain djinni's continued penchant for practical jokes.

“You guessed,” he said in that deadpan way of his, at once self-mocking and despairing. “Because you happened to choose this exact moment to visit Beau James.”

“The ghost of his
daddy,
Amir? Who knew your taste in pranks ran so literary.”

He took my elbow and steered me away from the fountain and the curious old man. “I thought it would be effective,” he said.

“I'm surprised you left out the rattling chains.”

He laughed bitterly. “You know me,” he said. “I abhor excess.”

He looked so miserable that my frustration and anger stopped short, like I had prepared myself for a plunge in an icy lake and ended up in a wading pool. He had played a practical joke on the mayor, true, but he didn't appear particularly happy about it. And the joke itself had been strange, to say the least.

“Amir,” I said slowly, “are you conning the mayor into throwing the vote on Monday?”

“An attempt. Hardly a con. A con ought to work, after all.”

We were ambling down a side street, but at this I stopped short. “Why would you even bother?” I asked.

“Forty-two reasons,” he said, and didn't look at me.

“What?”

He laughed. “The vampire suffragette doesn't know? Forty-two. The number of vampires killed in Faust-related incidents since January.”

“Oh.” My hand flew to my mouth, but something about my reaction terrified me even more than Amir's bleak memorization of that number. I gripped my elbows instead.

“Could you actually care?” I said, half to myself. “After what you did in January?”

“For a charity worker, you seem to have a remarkably thin belief in repentance.”

“I believe in human—well,
person
nature. Did you get a Ming vase in the bargain?”

He gave me a look that I could only describe as withering and continued walking without a response. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I had behaved badly, which was never pleasant, but trebly so because it necessitated an unflattering comparison between myself and the amoral djinni who had inflicted Faust on New York City.

I hurried after him, though I suppose I could have let him walk away. But we hadn't seen each other for a few days and his absence had begun to gnaw at me. I had wondered what he was doing—plotting a practical joke, as it turned out—but even now something made me want to prolong our encounter. His long legs moved deceptively quickly. By the time I decided to jog after him, he was a block away.

“I wanted to ask you something,” I said, panting a little.

Amir stopped and turned around. For a moment his eyes flashed the orange and umber of dying coals. I wondered if he was still angry, but he just smiled and brushed a sweaty curl from my forehead. “Yes?” he said.

“Do you know what happened to your brother two before Kardal?” This question had lingered in my thoughts since Kardal's visit, and it seemed safer than exploring the extent of Amir's Faustian regret. Or, perhaps, just safer than what I felt when he spoke of it.

Amir stared at me like I'd asked him to fly to the moon. “Aban?” he said. “What would you know about him?”

“Was he exiled?” I asked.

“That's the story. It happened before I was born. Kashkash desired a woman in the world, but Aban took her instead. So he was exiled. I think it expires in another hundred years or so. I might meet him, then.”

“A woman?” I said, dumbfounded. “It had nothing to do with his vessel cutting the bond between them?”

“Zephyr, it's practically impossible to cut the bond between a djinni and his vessel.”

“Practically? You mean except through death.”

His eyes flared, briefly. A few dark flakes of ash drifted to the ground like dirty snow. “Yes. So tell me, how
would
you like to die, since you seem to be so keen on breaking free of me? Fire? I can make it painless.”

I winced. “But what if it is possible, Amir? What no one has ever tried?”

This made him laugh. “People have tried. My brothers aren't all very nice. Odious as you find me, you'd find some of them much worse.”

I forced myself to breathe. And yet, looking at his dark skin under light dappled by a nearby tree, I couldn't help but wonder what might happen without this artificial obligation between us. If it were possible, shouldn't we know? “But let's say that it did work. And I didn't die. Would you be in trouble? Would the djinn council exile you?”

Amir ran his hand up the bark of the tree, each touch of his fingertips leaving a small black singe. But he seemed abstracted from his agitation, a man torn between different sides of himself.

“I can't imagine why,” he said, finally.

I sighed in deep relief. “Your brother,” I said, “is almost as rank a liar as you.”

“Runs in the family, dear.”

I started walking again, but I didn't make it very far. Amir pulled me back, very gently, by the wrist. I faced him with about as much conscious thought as a leaf falling to the ground. He lifted my chin with one hand and twined his hand in mine with the other. My lips burned. I nearly closed my eyes. But he didn't kiss me.

“If you're planning to kill yourself,” he said, “could you at least give me a few hours notice?”

“I'm not planning to kill myself.”

“Or break free, however you're planning to try. Will you tell me?”

I wanted to say no. I fully intended to say no. “If you want,” I said. “But you can't stop me.”

“Could I ever?” He laughed. “Do you promise?”

“Okay,” I said.

He let me go. I stumbled on the sidewalk. I wondered if he would reach down to catch me and then touch my bare skin and perhaps raise my chin again—

But he let me pick myself up. Left alone, I recalled the other request that Mrs. Brandon had refused, but I had to manage somehow. “I need a favor,” I said. “I need your help getting in somewhere.”

“If it's the moon, I can't help you.”

“Almost,” I said. “The morgue.”

“You're never boring,” he said, and took my hand.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Aileen,” I said, “you look like you're going to a funeral. In your own shroud.”

“The ladies expect a certain dignity.” Aileen secured the edge of her black headscarf with a pin. Though I stood right beside her vanity in the tiny dressing room, I felt as though she were not so much a person as a floating head. Every inch of skin besides her face was covered in a severe, shapeless black dress that resembled a nun's habit. Though an evening rainstorm had finally brought the temperature back to something bearable, it was hardly cool enough outside or in to warrant such enthusiastic body covering. I fanned myself pointedly.

“They think you'll be better able to contact the other side if you overheat on stage?”

“They trust me more if I look ethereal and otherworldly. Not like a flapper. Here, be useful and help me powder my face.”

I sighed, and knelt so I was eye level with her seated at the vanity. I had to admit that I was impressed by the sumptuousness of the Spiritualist Society headquarters. No wonder Aileen ran herself ragged for them. Tonight's Thursday evening séance was, she claimed, her biggest event yet. They must be paying her handsomely. Not that I had seen much evidence of Aileen
spending
the money, but perhaps she was saving it for some big purchase.

Aileen closed her eyes and I dusted the brush lightly over her face. I stopped.

“What's the matter?” Aileen said.

“You look hideous. What is this, flour?”

“Talcum powder,” she said, sighing. “For heaven's sake, Zeph, I'm not trying to catch a beau. Hurry up.”

“You want to look like a ghost?” I said, whitening Aileen's already pale face.

She smiled thinly. “Or like someone who could have a conversation with one.”

A sharp rap on the door startled me into dropping the brush. Aileen cursed. “Christ above, is it time already?” she muttered, and then, in a louder voice, “Come in!”

But the intruder wasn't the young and portly woman who served as under-secretary of the Spiritualist Society who had greeted Aileen so warmly at the door a half hour earlier. It was Lily, red-faced and dripping wet.

“Goodness, did you run here from the Flatiron Building?” I asked. It was still raining outside. I couldn't imagine what would have possessed Lily to ruin her clothes in this weather.

Lily slammed the door. “I just heard back from the chemist,” she said, ignoring my question. She slipped off her jacket and then her blouse. “Do you have anything dry lying around, Aileen?” she said. “Not that fearsome habit, though. I'd rather be wet.”

“There's a dress in the closet,” Aileen said, picking up the brush and finishing the powder herself.

Lily pulled out the dress—well-cared-for, at least a few years old. She sighed. “Better than nothing, I suppose.”

Aileen shrugged. “Take me shopping if you want to borrow better clothes.”

“Just as soon as I solve the crime of the decade, darling.” She kicked her skirt to the corner of the room, nearly missing me.

“So you ran here because you heard from a chemist?” I asked, moving into what I hoped was a safe corner of the room.

“You wouldn't
believe
the traffic on Broadway. Anyway, I admit I was a little put out by the vampire delivery boy—the doorman nearly had a fit—but the bottle was worth it, Zeph.”

I'd nearly forgotten I had told Charlie to give it to her a million years ago this morning. My pulse sped. “There's something in the Faust?” I said. “Some vampire poison?”

“I don't know about poison, but there's something. He said he'd run more tests, but right now it looks like the Faust has been spiked.”

“Liquor?” I hadn't expected that. The manner of the deaths hadn't resembled alcohol poisoning.

She pulled the dress over her head. “No, no,” she said, her voice muffled by the fabric. “Why would a vampire spike Faust with liquor? They spike it with
blood
.”

“Of course!” I said. “So it's tainted blood, then? Something bad enough to kill them?”

“That's his best guess, though it turns out no one knows much about sucker body chemistry. It's hard to say what a human would have to do to their own blood to kill a vampire.”

“Could it have been an accident?” If the blood came from mob sources, a bad taint didn't much surprise me.

She shrugged and knelt next to Aileen in front of the vanity. “Once, maybe,” she said. “But it's happened too many times, with different bottles. And now with that poor police officer … Aileen, what have you done to your face? It's not 1920 anymore. You can afford a little color.”

“She wants to look like a ghost,” I said.

Aileen sighed. “It's just talcum powder.”

“You look like a cadaver,” Lily said, “but I suppose if that's what they want.”

“Thank you, Lily,” Aileen said, looking pointedly at me. “For displaying such an uncharacteristic empathy for the realities of earning one's keep.”

“There's earning your keep,” I said, “and practically whoring yourself for a bunch of old ladies who don't know the first thing about the Sight.”

Aileen whirled around, so pale and colorless that the red of her unstained lips looked like blood. “And you do, Miss Vampire Suffragette? You said you'd help me find a way out of this, remember? Back when that sucker swayed me and my whole world went to hell? Well, it's been six months, Zeph. Where's the help? Where's my way back to normal? Because if you don't have that, then stop treating me like one of your bloody charity cases for the bloody Citizen's Council! If I have to have the Sight, then this is how I'll use it, and I'll thank you for not always looking at me like I'm about to fall apart.”

She turned back to the vanity.

“Aileen … I…” I didn't know what to say. I knew I had behaved badly, but felt put-upon and defensive all the same.

Lily had the look of a woman who hadn't meant to step into a snake pit, but she gamely put a hand on Aileen's shoulder. “I'm sure she didn't mean it like that,” Lily said.

“I take it you haven't been on the receiving end of Zephyr's disapproval.”

“I wouldn't say that.”

“I didn't meant to disapprove of you, Aileen,” I said.

“What would you call it, then?”

I paused. “Concern,” I said.

“Of course.” She stood. “Well, this has been lovely, both of you, but I have a veil to part.”

Someone knocked on the door. Aileen opened it, moving with the grace of a true ghost.

“What are you doing here?” she said, sounding none too pleased.

I peered over her shoulder and was startled to see Amir. “Looking for Zephyr,” he said, and sighed.

“You too?” Aileen stepped back to let him in.

Lily checked herself in the vanity mirror, decided that she looked well enough and gave him a practiced smile. “Fancy seeing you again,” she said.

“Lovely as ever, Miss … Harding, was it?” he said.

I would have rolled my eyes, but Aileen was close enough to hit me.

“How did you get backstage?” I asked.

Amir leaned against the wall and his sleeve brushed my arm. I swear he meant to do it, but his face was bland as butter. “You're pulling quite the crowd out there,” he said to Aileen. “I think I caught sight of the mayor's Duesenberg outside. No one paid me much attention.”