Night Life

by Caitlin Kittredge

  "Points for originality," I told him, "but the only place I'd come with you is to the downtown lockup, where I would proceed to throw you in a cell with the baddest homeboy I could find, sit back, and laugh my ass off." I went between them and shoved open a door.

  I heard the second were say, "I like her, man."

  "Go bang a blood witch," the first replied.

  The lobby was all peeling plaster and painted façade, looking like every seedy adult movie theater I'd ever been in. The cheap gilt molding was flaking like golden snow, and soggy wine-colored carpet stank of fifty years of slow rot.

  Olya appeared from the back of the concession stand, a toolbox and a roll of electrical wire in her hands. "Oh. You came," she said. "I bet Dmitri you wouldn't show."

  I grinned. "How much did you lose?"

  "Enough," she grumbled. "Follow me."

  I followed Olya down a narrow hallway lit with corroded copper sconces that flickered and sparked ominously. Good thing the Crown was too damp to go up in an electrical fire. "Doing some home improvement?" I asked Olya, pointing to the roll of wire.

  "This damn place hasn't been rewired since it went up," she said. "And since the city cut the power, forget this jury-rigged shit. We're lucky if we can run a hot plate."

  I smelled the mold and the must and decades of bodies crammed together. "Why live here?"

  She turned and glared at me. "You go where your pack goes. This is home."

  "Sounds fun, just like summer camp," I commented.

  Olya stopped and gave me a look that was equal parts pain and pissed off. "I suppose I could live alone in a gutter somewhere like you, Insoli. Or better yet, in a Russian work camp like my brother." She poked her finger into my chest. "We didn't have to let you leave the Velvet in one piece, bitch. When you're in another pack's den you show some respect."

  I met and held her anguished look. "I'm not a member of your pack, Olya. I'm here to find out who murdered a member of your pack. And I may have to put up with shit from your brother to get the information I need but I do not have to take a damn thing from you. Back off."

  She growled. I growled. We stood there in mutual dislike for a few seconds more before she pointed across the theater. "Dmitri's behind the big screen. Do what you have to do and get the hell out." She turned and flounced away from me, managing to look like a spoiled princess even in jeans and a dirty cotton shirt, lugging a toolbox.

  "Thank you," I said to no one.

  * * * *

  The seats of the Crown had been mostly ripped up and stacked in corners. A few had gotten converted into beds, and held snoring weres in stages of undress I didn't glance too closely at. A sharp smell of old celluloid and older dust drifted through the air. I followed the path picked out to the edge of the torn projection screen, and went behind.

  Someone had made an attempt to turn the space into a sort of lounge, ancient plaid sofas and a console television with the screen kicked in arranged in no order, like cast-off oracle bones. Manley the Cowardly Werewolf was splayed on one of the sofas, smoking. He saw me and said, "Shit."

  "Relax, Manley," I told him. "Didn't you get the memo? I'm invited."

  "Oh yeah?" he said, stubbing out his butt and standing. "Who by?"

  "'By whom,' and Sandovsky."

  "Quit bein' a bitch or I might take it into my head to school you across the mouth," he said.

  I stared him down to see if the dominate still worked.

  Manley started to quiver all over. "Stop doin' that!"

  I grinned. Still worked. Like a charm.

  Manley growled. "Knock it off I said!"

  "Wayne, give it a rest," boomed Sandovsky's familiar voice from above us. I turned and saw a tiny flight of stairs leading up. Sandovsky was midway down, arms crossed.

  Manley took a quick leap away from me and back onto the sofa. "Sorry, Dmitri," he muttered. "Didn't know you was bringin' the fuzz around to our pack house."

  "The fuzz?" I laughed. "What crappy B movie did you grow up in?"

  "Knock it off," Sandovsky told me in the same tone he used with Manley, Olya, and the other Redbacks. "I didn't bring you here to stir shit."

  "Talk to me like that again and you'll wish I hadn't come, period," I warned.

  He rolled his eyes. "Upstairs." He turned and went back up, the treads creaking under him. I followed. Sandovsky was wearing ratty jeans that grabbed his ass in all the right ways, and I couldn't help but notice. I looked down at my feet.

  The mysterious upstairs turned out to be a long storage room that ran the length of the building above the seating floor. It was full of cardboard cutouts of movie stars last popular thirty years past, nibbled by mice. Pieces of arcane machinery from the projector and the concession stand crouched like formless nightmares in the low light. Sandovsky wound his way through the wreckage and opened a small door at the opposite end. I followed in the near dark and tried not to break my ankle on the stray pieces of trash underfoot.

  Once, the space had been the projection room, and the tiny window still looked down on the theater. Now it housed a bed made with military corners, a ratty armchair, and a huge, battered bookcase full of odds, ends, and, surprisingly, books.

  Sandovsky shut the door and indicated the chair. "Sit if you want"

  "No thank you. I haven't been sprayed for fleas and ticks recently."

  His lip curled. "You always such a bitch?" He was back to being Mr. Big Scary Were Man, but judging by the ruin of bottles and cigarette butts on the floor by the bed he'd had a rough time of it after we parted ways at Club Velvet

  "You bring out the bitch in me," I told him.

  "Ain't that the truth," he muttered. He grabbed a pack from his shelf and tapped out a black cigarette, lighting it with a Zippo from his back pocket. He sucked on the clove and exhaled bluish smoke before extending the pack to me. "Want one?"

  "I don't smoke."

  "You should. You're wound tight enough to pop."

  I crossed my arms. "Sandovsky, did you bring me here to jerk my choke chain or did you really want to talk about Lilia?"

  His face hardened and he mimicked my gesture, crossing his bare arms and causing pectorals to pop out under his Indian Motorcycles T-shirt. He wasn't sculpted by any stretch, but the muscles were there, rocky and lean, the kind of body built by a lifetime of forced labor and hard, dirty fights.

  I dug my nails into my own arm. Focus, Luna. So what if he has an incredible chest?

  Sandovsky was watching me, a thin trail of smoke escaping from his nose. His anger had been replaced with plastic amusement. It was his default, I was starting to realize. Everybody has a mask that they pull on when they're hiding vulnerability, with varying degrees of success. Mine is Bitch. Sandovsky's seemed to be Sardonic.

  "Okay, lady cop." He smirked. "Let's talk about Lilia." He turned his back to me and went over to the projection window, flicking ash down into the theater. "Lilia was a good girl," he said. "She came from the same town in Ukraine as I did. Hardworking family, father died in the fallout from Chernobyl when she was just a baby. I liked her."

  "Let me guess. High school sweethearts?"

  "Hey." Sandovsky turned and jabbed his cigarette at me. "I'm doin' you a favor, so you can cut the fuckin' sarcasm. Just because Lilia was a whore and I pimped doesn't make us shit to be scraped off your shiny cop shoes. We weren't always like this."

  "I thought you said you weren't her pimp," I reminded him.

  "I wasn't. Not anymore. When Lilia first came over to the States she was scared, had just phased for the first time and needed someone to help her settle in. When you have, to hide inside for three or four days of every month there ain't a lot of respectable nine-to-five jobs that'll take you."

  I got close to him so I could watch his eyes. They remained placid green oceans, with only the barest hint of turbulence. "And I suppose being stronger than the average pro wrestler, able to see in the dark, and prone to fits of rage doesn't help, either." His body radiated warmth, like a ba
nked fire, and I regretted closing the distance. Well, not really, but I probably should have.

  He dragged, exhaled. "Heh. You're not as ignorant about the bite as Olya thought." He turned his head and looked at me full-on. "You feel it. Oh, yeah. You feel it when the moon's getting full, like it is tonight." He threw away his butt and asked me, "So, you ever kill anyone while you were phased?"

  I gritted my teeth so he wouldn't see how the question rattled me. "We're talking about you. Do you know who killed Lilia?"

  "No," he said. "No, I don't. But I would dearly love to find the bastard."

  "Lilia had drugs in her blood," I told him. I could get fired for this, and rightly so. You don't go around blabbing confidential case details to a witness just because he's hot as all get-out.

  "What drugs?" he wanted to know.

  "That's what I'm going to ask you." I looked him in the eye, giving the stare I was getting so good at. "I saw your arrest record. I know you moved up from pimping to dealing, Sandovsky. Lots more lucrative and less hassle than screwing around with whores all day, I imagine."

  He got close to me, getting in my space so I'd have to back up. I didn't move. Forced to look up to make eye contact, I asked, "Did you give Lilia the drugs that knocked her out? If you did, you could be charged with manslaughter." I paced to his bed so I could get out from under his tall frame. "She couldn't defend herself when that creep jumped her until it was too late. Did you make it possible for her to be murdered? Is that why you're playing the guilt-racked card?"

  Sandovsky clenched his fists; I could see the effort in the cords of his neck. He was about one microfiber away from hauling off and hitting me across the face. I shifted my feet to equalize my weight and dared him, in silence, to try it.

  "All I did to Lilia that night was fuck her brains out," he said roughly. His tone was nasty and disinterested but the way it scraped out of his throat belied the grief that was still in him. "Since I know that's what you wanna hear. She was good, free pussy, so I took it. So what? I'm an animal anyway, right? I don't feel one way or the other. Right?" He closed the gap between us and gripped my arm, hard.

  I let my kickboxing stance go and looked away from him. Sandovsky unsettled me with his mere presence, and I had let that rattle me. Now I was officially a jerk.

  "Sandovsky, I'm sorry," I said after a minute. He grunted and let go, rooting through the pockets of his jacket until he came up with a joint.

  "Lilia was a good girl. Too good for this, and she used to cope. My future mate was a fucking junkie—is that what I need to say? I didn't give her drugs, but I'm sure she had some. She was sweet and she wasn't smart and I didn't stop her from using like I should have. There. Now get the hell out of my bedroom."

  Instead I reached out and put a hand on one of his ropy shoulders. He tensed like a coiled spring. "You can help me put the brakes on whoever killed Lilia. If you do that, I'd appreciate it. Enough to get off you and your pack's back."

  "What makes you think one little packless were is anything to me?"

  "Maybe because you can't sit still when you're in the same room as me?" I offered. He gave me that smirk-mask again. I longed to know what he was really thinking under there.

  "Don't flatter yourself, baby. So what if you rev my motor a little?"

  Oh, gods. Don't you dare blush, Luna. And really don't dare to think about how long it's been since you revved anyone's motor.

  "That's not it, Sandovsky, and you know it." Sounding like a total puritan should steer the conversation back on track.

  After a long minute of lighting up and inhaling, holding, and releasing the pungent pot smoke, he said, "I'm only tellin' you this as courtesy, because maybe I like you a little more than I should. This ain't your business to take care of. It's pack business, and there will be pack justice."

  We could argue later. "I accept that. Tell me."

  Sandovsky exhaled again. "Lilia had a rich John. I told her to get out of it but she wanted some money stashed for when we got the hell out of Nocturne." He laughed once. "'Cause I'm such a hard case, I can't even buy my woman a burger and a Coke. Lilia did like finer things."

  "What was the rich John's name? Would he give her drags?" Was he the type to rape and cut throats?

  "That came later." Sandovsky's jaw twitched. "I never let her do that stuff when she worked for me, and I let myself think I'd finally get her clean when we went away. She'd never tell me the John's name. Probably because she knew I'd wring the sleazy bastard's neck."

  I frowned. "Was he violent with her?"

  "Not so you could see. But whenever she came back from bein' with him, she'd have this look, like she was a million miles away. Real spacey, and she'd get so jumpy I couldn't go near her."

  Perhaps stating the obvious, I said, "That sounds like drugs."

  "Detective, I've seen what every drag known to man can do to F you up. This wasn't drags. She'd look like she'd just seen something so horrible she couldn't bring herself to say it."

  "Did she tell you anything about him?" I asked.

  "Just that he was some rich prick living off Daddy and hadn't done shit since high school except ride around in his Benz and piss on people like Lilia and me. She said he couldn't go an hour without mentioning what a big-shot lacrosse player he'd been at his little preppy school. Lacrosse. Pussy." He snorted.

  The ice in my gut was not imagined this time. "Did she say which prep school?"

  "Shit, how am I supposed to remember? I think it was Alder Bay or Cedar Heights … definitely a tree name."

  I swallowed to quell my furious heartbeat and told Sandovsky, "Thank you. That helps."

  He lay down on his cot and took another pull off the joint. "Sure. Whatever. Now unless you'd like to join me, get out and leave us alone."

  Not even going to touch that one.

  I opened his door. "I'll find him, Sandovsky," I said.

  "Dmitri," he replied.

  "Excuse me?"

  "That's my name. You can call me Dmitri."

  "All right. Good-bye, Dmitri." I shut the door and left him lying there, leaving the Crown in a cloud of my own frenetic thoughts.

  * * * *

  On the street I walked for my car at a fast clip, my shoes hitting pavement too hard for me to make out the footsteps at first. Clip, clop.

  I stopped and turned around. All the streetlights were burned out, and the marquee of the Crown cast scant light into alleys and jagged open spaces where anything could be hiding. I took a step backward and said, "Whoever you are, play out the horrorshow scene with somebody else, okay?"

  After a few seconds of walking I heard it again. Footfalls of something heavy and sharp almost perfectly in cadence with my own. Step, step. Clip, clop.

  The corner of the boulevard yawned ahead. I picked up the pace in tiny increments, trying not to make it look hike I was running. A smell of cordite and rotted things had overpowered the stench of Ghosttown, and my were instincts screamed at me to break and flee.

  The boulevard was fifty yards … forty … I made it to a light trot. Clip clop clip clop clip clop.

  Hex that. I ran. Now there were more of them and I swore I heard whispers and cries and fluttering wings…

  At the mouth of the street I pulled my Glock, thumbed the safety, spun, and aimed. "Hex off!" I screamed, more panic making itself evident in the words than I was happy with. My heart beat a thousand miles an hour, and I fought not to gag at the burning-trash smell.

  Nothing was behind me except old lampposts, wrecked cars, and piles of trash that rustled in the wind. A breath I hadn't meant to hold rushed out of me.

  Wings. Jesus. Nothing had wings. Those rumors about blood witches being able to fly around as giant man-bats were definitely exaggerated.

  Still, if I had stumbled onto a blood working, good sense dictated I would get the hell away. Blood witches used their own bodies to draw the magicks, and their power was so unadulterated it could open doorways to the dead. And to worse places. Rhoda had tol
d Sunny and me bedtime stories of daemons unleashed on the world by idiotic blood witches whose power got away from them. Sunny would hide under her covers, but I was the one who always ended up with nightmares. Probably just my animal brain's good sense. No one wanted to meet a daemon face-to-face. Blood witches who tried to summon them routinely went insane.

  They couldn't be called, or pulled, with workings. They couldn't exist here at all.

  So there was nothing behind me, and never had been.

  I believed that until the sidewalk in front of me started to burn.

  It started with the crackle of a working, and grew into a whooshing roar that liquefied and then became solid again in a glowing orange sigil that seemed to change and bend as I watched. My eyes ached and feedback screamed in my ears, until I realized that it was me screaming.

  Voices hissed up at me, that same fluttering and whispering of wings and tiny scraped throats.

  I turned tail and hauled ass out of there, sprinting down the boulevard and hitting the side of the Fairlane with a smack. My keys slid to the ground and I groped desperately, knowing that if I looked behind me I would see something that should never have eyes laid on it, something so terrible that it charred the very air, because I could smell it and it was coming—

  I slammed the key home and jerked open my car door, throwing myself inside as the cacophony passed overhead with a scream of defeat. The Fairlane rocked from side to side as I cowered in the driver's seat, holding myself like the little girl hearing the ghost story all over again.

  When it had been silent for a good ten minutes, and my hands had stopped trembling enough to fit the key into the Fairlane's ignition, I started the car and hung a U-turn on the boulevard with a screech, merging onto the Appleby and driving way too fast toward downtown.

  Eleven

  Alistair Duncan's elegant Victorian bungalow sat on a side street in the type of neighborhood where the homeowners' association regulates the height of your bushes and has a hissy fit if you paint your shutters the wrong color. I parked illegally by a hydrant and jumped the stairs two at a time to his front door, pounding hard enough to rattle the leaded panes.