Night Life

by Caitlin Kittredge

  "Great. Perfect. This is bullshit," I said. "How did she even get away with giving a nonexistent address at customs?"

  "People slip through the cracks, Detective," said Pete. "If they didn't, I'd be out of a job."

  The meter on my car had run out when I got back behind the wheel, and a pink parking ticket flapped gaily on my windshield. Blue wall, my ass. I grabbed the slip and shoved it into the glove compartment. After I sat and composed myself enough so I wouldn't run anyone down, I started the engine and pulled out into traffic. A dead girl and a missing man behind me at the Twenty-fourth, and the unfinished fight with Sunny at home.

  What a fantastic night this was shaping up to be.

  * * * *

  The downstairs lights in the cottage were all off when I pulled up, and the moon was just above the horizon over the ocean. I stood in the silver brightness for a minute, feeling the cool prickle as the were responded to the pull.

  Five days to the full moon. I shivered, thinking of Sandovsky. What would he be like in full phase? Terrifying. Magnificent. No. I couldn't let myself think of that.

  I opened the door gently, stowed my gun in the drawer, and took off my shoes. "Sunny?"

  No answer. I climbed the stairs, hearing soft harp music coming from behind her door. I knocked. "Sunny? Can we talk?"

  The music shut off, and after a long second Sunny pulled the door open. "What do you want?"

  I took a deep breath and resolved to eat crow, humble pie, or whatever else I could ingest. "To say I'm sorry."

  "You should be sorry, Luna!"

  "McAllister reinstated me," I said quietly. Sunny stomped away from me and sat on her bed, holding Mr. Teddy, her ratty bear. "I'm very glad," she snipped. "How long were you planning to keep the suspension a secret?" Mr. Teddy's mismatched eyes glared at me.

  "Gods, Sunny! I'm trying to apologize, and you're being a real brat."

  "I'm allowed to be any way I please," she said, deliberately not meeting my eyes. "You expect me to help you and keep my mouth shut. I didn't have to leave my mom and Grandma Rhoda to babysit my werewolf cousin, but I did, and you treat me like hired help most of the time."

  That's Sunny—sweet, polite, goes for the jugular.

  "I'm sorry." I rubbed the spot between my eyes. "I don't think of you that way. I'm sorry that I've been preoccupied, Sunny. It's … it's the phase. It's going to be bad this time, I can feel it. I don't want you to be anywhere near me when it happens."

  Her head came up. "Luna, don't pretend that you're doing this to protect me. You're just afraid to admit you have no idea how to protect yourself, and that it scares you."

  "Well, excuse the hell out of me if I don't want to mistake you for prey and rip you apart while I'm phased!" I shouted. "And for the record, Sunflower, I'm not scared of what's inside me, and I'm not scared of what I can do. I like being a were, and if you don't want to help then get the hell out of my way." I crossed my arms tight beneath my breasts and stood straight, daring Sunny to challenge my lies.

  She reached out and took my hand, prying it loose and wrapping her fingers around mine. The strength in her grip surprised me. "Luna, either you let me do this on my terms, or you're on your own and I go back to San Romita," she said. "And if you like being a were so much, then go back to how you were when you first asked me for help."

  "Shut up, Sunny," I warned her.

  "You can go right back," she went on, talking over me. "Back to phasing every full moon and waking up covered in blood, not knowing if it was a rabbit you killed or someone who was unlucky enough to cross your path. If that's what you want, tell me now."

  I wasn't angry with her. I was remembering the first time I'd woken up naked under fragrant rosebushes and sticky with blood that was still warm.

  Sunny said, "Eventually Grandma and I are going to find the right working to cast. One that will keep you from phasing altogether."

  "That can't be done, Sunny, and you know it. Once you've got the bite it will always come out."

  "I can try," she said firmly. "Now, as long as we're being open and truthful and all that, why don't you tell me what happened to your face? You look like you got punched by the Incredible Hulk."

  "Incredible werewolf, is more like it," I said.

  "That sounds like a horrifying and potentially problematic story," said Sunny. "Tell it to me?"

  I told her about Sandovsky, my chasing him onto the roof of the tenement, and what had happened there when I had seen him phase. When I finished her eyes were wide. "He went full-on were and there was no moon? That's … that's terrifying."

  "No kidding." I muttered. "And when you brought me home, I dreamed about… you know." I rubbed my neck. The marks had faded, but the spot still tingled.

  "About Joshua," Sunny said.

  "And now I have to go to Ghosttown, to find this girl that's involved in my new case."

  Sunny shook her head. "Keep playing roulette with the gods if you want. One of these days luck's going to run out and you'll be Hexed."

  "Thank you," I said. "Very supportive."

  Sunny shrugged. "I do my best."

  Seven

  At midnight I slipped quietly out of bed and dressed to go hunting in Ghosttown. I put on a pair of black jeans that had seen better days, a black cotton jersey over my tank top, and my biker jacket.

  I pulled on my steel-toed Cochran boots and laced them. My hair went in a tight bun at the nape of my neck. My Glock went into a waist holster instead of the shoulder rig I usually wore on duty, and to it I added a heavy snub .38 that had been my father's. I didn't even know if the thing still fired, but just having it hanging from my ankle was comforting.

  Last, I undipped my shield from its leather holder and stuffed it deep in my jacket pocket. The last thing I wanted to broadcast in Ghosttown was being a cop.

  I tiptoed out the door silently as I could in stiff-soled boots, and started the Fairlane with a rumble. Sunny's light didn't go on, but I saw her bedroom curtains twitch. I waved to her once before I drove away.

  The Appleby Expressway took me through the skyscrapers of Mainline, with the sparkling sink of Siren Bay to one side and the black humps of Cedar Hill to the others.

  Thirty years ago the Cedar Hill Killer had shared my view, until Nocturne City police gunned him down inside his parents' home in the Hills. Long before that, Jeremiah Chopin, the fugitive from Missouri who had founded a tiny outpost at the coast when he couldn't run anymore, had stood on the ridge above the bay and seen what his city would become.

  True to his vision, Nocturne City was a haven for weres and witches and everyone who couldn't go back to somewhere else.

  And in the end, in the Hex Riots, they had ripped the city apart. The Appleby soared above apartments on an overpass, and finally faded to factories and do-it-yourself storage, until my headlights lit up a rusty sign painted over with the warning DO NOT ENTER—EXIT CLOSED. I eased the wheel over and felt a bump as the pavement became scarred. Weeds, broken bottles, and other, less identifiable objects were caught in my high beams, and I was sure something small and fast with yellow eyes skittered away from the shoulder of the road.

  I stopped and pulled my radio off the hook on the dash. "Seventy-six, Dispatch."

  The radio hissed for a long moment. When the voice came back I jumped.

  "Dispatch. Go ahead, Seventy-six."

  "Investigating a lead at Exit Forty-three off the Appleby Express. Log, please."

  The dispatcher had to be new, because she didn't even pause when she rattled back to me, "Ten-four, Seventy-six. Be safe." Anyone raised in Nocturne would know where Exit 43 led.

  The radio clicked off and I was left in absolute silence except for the whoosh of cars on the Appleby. I put foot to accelerator and drove off the ramp and into Ghosttown.

  Ghosttown had been Appleby Acres, once. Francis Appleby, a forward-thinking postwar mayor, erected the neat rows of homes, hotels, and shops as a miniature income-controlled village at the heart of Nocturne Ci
ty.

  But then the weres and witches moved in. In the small, poor neighborhood there were too many humans who remembered how the packs had once run Nocturne like a hairy, magicked mafia. Fear of witches and the power they controlled spread by viral communication from one block to the next.

  In August 1969 Appleby Acres exploded into fire and death. The Hex Riots lasted for fifteen days and demolished Mayor Appleby's carefully crafted haven of progression and a brighter tomorrow. Now, officially, no one lived there.

  Unofficially, the weres and witches never left.

  A thin ground fog had formed in the night air, dampness leaching from the dark cement blocks that comprised buildings. Ghosttown was above all else a slum, and a terribly dangerous place for anyone without the blood or the bite. Neutral territory for the weres who spread out to run other parts of the city with dealing or pimping; the end of the line for trespassers, who would be lucky if there was enough DNA left to identify them.

  All of which begged the question: why was Stephen Duncan, respectable human son of a respectable human DA, slumming with a Ukrainian immigrant who listed this dump as her address? If she really lived here, it probably meant she was either a were or a blood witch on the run.

  As I drove along what once had been a wide boulevard with a landscaped median, I saw that the road was pot-holed beyond all recognition. I pulled the Fairlane over, killed the lights, and sat, watching.

  Either Ghosttown really was uninhabited like City Hall would have humans believe, or whoever lived here was hiding and waiting. The federal housing blocks made it almost pitch dark, and electrical wires crisscrossed among them like a huge, malevolent insect web. A few dozen yards ahead of me, the burned-out hulk of a Buick sat in state on concrete blocks.

  A thin, wavering light materialized from the fog, and a creaking contraption came into view. It was a shopping cart pushed by a man in a ragged raincoat with a flashlight lashed to the front. He saw my car and stopped. I cautiously eased my door open and got out.

  He raised a hand. "Evenin'."

  "Hello." I nodded.

  "Not from Ghosttown, are ya?"

  I shut the door and locked it. "You're very astute. I'm not."

  "Dunno what that means. Ass-tute."

  I walked around the back of my car and stepped onto the sidewalk. With the light in my face, the man's face became nothing but hollow eyes and a flash of teeth, but I could smell him from where I stood. Cheap wine, human dirt, and a distinctive, tangy scent I couldn't place. Not were, nor witch. "It means you're observant," I said.

  "Yeah. I sees a lot."

  I took a step closer. He flinched.

  "Maybe you can help me."

  He laughed, which became a phlegmy cough. "Don't think so, lady. Can't help nobody, not even myself."

  "But you can," I soothed, giving him one of my trademark smiles. "I'm looking for a friend down here."

  The hobo laughed again. "Lady, ain't no one lookin' for nothing but a fix or a fuck in Ghosttown."

  "Fine," I said, turning to go the other way, down a side street that had once held single-family brick homes. "Maybe you're useless after all."

  "Waittaminute!" he yelled, lunging around his cart and grabbing me by the arm. I shook him off. "You don't wanna go that way!" His mouth was a round 0, and I finally realized why his eyes were so strange.

  They were pure black.

  "Don't touch me," I warned. "I really don't like it."

  "That way is bad news, lady."

  I frowned. "Could you be a little more specific?" How the hell could his eyes be black? Like Lockhart's eyes, but these were dead, like glass chips.

  The hobo shrugged. "Weres don't go that way no more. Bloods don't go that way no more. Tried to hole up in one of them houses, Meggoth's boys came."

  "Meggoth?" How like me to get into deep conversation with a nut job.

  "Up the hill and down the dock, comes the callin' of Meggoth…"

  His eerie singsong sounded familiar, but it could have been because the song was set to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

  "Okay, enough singing for tonight," I said, changing tacks. "Suppose my friend came here looking for the only things people look for in Ghosttown. Where would he go?"

  "Shit, that's easy," he said. "Hotel Raven."

  "You people have a real knack for spooky names," I told him.

  "Gotta go," he grunted, grabbing his cart by the curved handles and bumping it over a pothole. Something wet shifted inside. "Feeding time."

  As he bumped away I realized that the large wheels and curlicued handles didn't belong to a shopping cart, but to an old-fashioned baby carriage. "Hey!" I shouted. He stopped and looked over his shoulder, head swiveling like an owl.

  "Where's the Hotel Raven?"

  "Straight that way!" He pointed down the boulevard. "You can't miss it!"

  * * * *

  How right the hobo was. The Hotel Raven really had been a hotel at some point, a nice one. It still had the original art deco façade and a marquee filled with burned-out bulbs. Obscene graffiti and symbols I didn't recognize covered the frosted-glass doors leading into the lobby. A pale girl in a white fur coat lounged against them, enticing passersby with a bored look that reeked of sex.

  "Hey," she said to me. "Wanna party?"

  "Do I look like I came here to party?"

  She shrugged. "You never can tell." Her legs were toothpicks poking out of a pink vinyl skirt. I had an unwelcome flash of Lilia Desko, limbs akimbo, as her killer had left her. Sandovsky may think he'd gotten away, but the minute I found Stephen Duncan I was back on his ass.

  "Maybe you'll know this girl I'm after," I said. "Name's Marina. She would have been here about two months."

  "And why should I know her?" said the girl with a yawn. She was paler than some of the corpses I'd met and about as animated.

  "You and she were most likely in the same line of work."

  Her eyes flashed. "Hex you, lady. You don't know me."

  I had tried to be nice. Now I smiled and said, "You're right. But I bet I could find out everything from your address to your rap sheet if I ran your name through my computer."

  Usually when I play the police card people get defensive, or they gain a lot of respect fast. This girl laughed.

  "You? Here? A cop in Ghosttown?" She sighed. "Oh, that's rich. Wait until Maven hears."

  "And Maven is?"

  "Sure are nosy. You won't last long like that."

  A fat man in a rumpled white T-shirt, denim jacket, and black trousers interrupted us. "Kindred, honey. I been waitin' all week to see you."

  "Baby," she cooed at him, wrapping an arm around his pudgy shoulders. As they walked away she threw a smile back at me, flashing pointy yellow teeth where there should be only straight.

  I blinked, and looked again, but she and Baby had driven off in a rusty black sedan.

  "I'm losing it," I told myself out loud.

  The lobby of Hotel Raven had the same shredded elegance as the outside—here and there carpet still clung to the floors, and chipped marble formed a reception desk. The antique sconces that had lit the place dangled from their sockets like dismembered ears.

  The elevators were nothing but gaping holes in the wall, their gates askew and stripped of anything shiny or valuable.

  No clerk manned the desk, but a pair of teenagers dozed in chairs with the stuffing pouring out.

  I walked the perimeter, looking for any sign that Stephen Duncan had ever been here. This had been a ridiculous idea from the get-go. I could be sleeping or on my favorite shopping Web site, Feetz.com, combing their listings for a new pair of old Ferragamos.

  A shuffle behind me. The two sleeping teenagers weren't sleeping anymore.

  One of them flicked a folding knife. "Gimme your wallet."

  I reached for the Glock. "Past your bedtime, kiddo. Sorry."

  The second robber roared, and in a flash of air he was behind me, clamping my wrist. He smelled like day-old unwashed were. F
ast little bastard, too.

  "Hey, check it." He grinned at his buddy. "She's one of us, man. 'Nother Insoli."

  I kicked out at his instep and he leapt away from me, again faster than the eye could see. Whoever gave him the bite hadn't been stingy with the magicks.

  Knife Boy made a move and would have caught me in the ribs if someone hadn't slammed a gym bag into his head.

  "Fuck off," said the bag's owner. I spun, jumpy, going for my gun. The petite redhead threw up her hands, dropping the weapon of my salvation to the pavement. "Whoa! Relax! I'm unarmed, Officer. Packless sleazeballs!" she added as the two punks made a run for it.

  I let my hand drop. "Who are you?"

  "I'm Olya," she said. Her voice was firmly American, with no trace of an accent. She was also wearing a white buttondown and slacks, and had a folded apron tucked under her arm. The bag was inscribed with a logo and the jagged script CLUB VELVET.

  "This is going to sound weird," I said, "but you don't look like you …"

  "Belong in Ghosttown? I know." She shrugged. "I live here. Work in the city. I bring deliveries from my club's kitchen sometimes, to the ones that can't get out. Wouldn't live anywhere else myself. It's safe." All this recited as if we were talking about the possibility of rain.

  "Safe? Are we seeing the same urban war zone, Olya?"

  She winked. "I meant safe for people like me. And you, for that matter." She tapped her nose with one manicured finger.

  I sniffed. Olya was a were.

  "I'm Detective Wilder," I said, to stave off the realization that she had a pack and I didn't. "I'm here looking for a missing guy named Stephen Duncan. I have a photo if you need it." I pulled out the yearbook portrait from Alder Bay Academy that Alistair Duncan had left on my desk at the Twenty-fourth. About ten years old, but still a good face shot of Stephen. Olya took it and held it close to her button nose.

  "I'm also looking for a woman named Marina. She lives and/or works in Ghosttown, probably as an escort."

  "Her I've never heard of," said Olya. "But this guy is staying in Room Two-Twelve here." She gestured at the Hotel Raven's doors.

  "You're absolutely sure?" I said.