by Sierra Dean
I swallowed hard. A girl drained of her blood meant a vampire was involved. The girl being ripped up was something different, though. I knew of monsters that might tear their victims limb from limb for kicks, or demons who would remove a person’s bones to suck out the marrow. I’d once heard Keaty mention a bog fae who used ribbons of human skin to make its clothes. But in the city, there was a much more likely option.
Werewolf.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The limited number of plausible options to explain the girl’s strange and ghastly demise circled inside my head as Holden and I walked side by side into the night. Her being killed by a demented human was possible but on the very bottom of my list. How sad is it that in my world a human killer would be the best-case scenario?
My most fitting approximation of what happened was the girl had been attacked by a werewolf and left for dead. A vampire following the scent of blood and suspecting an easy kill had found her and drained her. Shitty way to die—presumably killed by one supernatural beastie and then killed for real by another.
Some people have no luck.
“What’s on your mind?” Holden must have thought I’d stewed long enough.
“I’m thinking if someone is taking these girls, it isn’t Peyton himself. But anyone from the council wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave so much evidence. Whoever is taking these women must be a rogue working for Peyton.” Alexandre was too smart to leave a trail or be out in the open, so he would have other rogues doing his dirty work—vampires loyal to him and his ideas.
“And the girl attacked by wild dogs?”
“Fluke? Just a really unlucky woman.”
“Hmm.” He didn’t look convinced. Honestly, neither was I.
“We need to talk to Keaty. See if he’s heard anything significant from his sources. Mercedes gave us a good starting point, but we need to know if anyone less human has heard something that could help us. If we find out who, or what, is picking up these prostitutes, maybe it will lead us back to Peyton.”
“And you believe Mr. Keats will be able to assist us with this better than the council?” Holden remained unconvinced.
“Keaty has access to things and people the council can’t get to. It’s the reason you guys trusted him to do your dirty work to begin with. It’s also the reason he was allowed to bring me to you.”
Holden’s mouth fixed in a grim line, but he didn’t argue. He knew I was right. Keaty had friends in places both low and high, well, mostly low. But those contacts might be what we needed to find Peyton and whoever was feeding on the prostitutes.
I hadn’t been to the office in two days, which wasn’t all that strange. Keaty kept up the business end of things and only had me come in for non-council jobs when he needed an extra pair of hands. Since he hadn’t been required to kill rogues for the council in six years, it left him time to explore a variety of other unusual cases. It was those unusual cases that had taken me to Albany and made me kill a young werewolf. I was definitely beginning to see how every action had a consequence.
Keaty’s office was a cross between that of a Dashiell Hammett private detective and an NYU literature professor. I let us in through the fogged glass door with a quick tap to announce our entry. He would have already heard my key in the front door of the brownstone. Centered in the room was an antique oak desk, with no computer or any modern convenience in sight. Behind him was a window that looked out on a brick wall. To the left and right of the desk were two walls stacked floor to ceiling with old worn books that had no discernible cataloging system. There was an ashtray on the desk and a bottle of scotch behind it. The story the room suggested was a web of carefully manufactured lies. Keaty was nobody’s fool.
He wasn’t wearing his glasses today, so he showed no physical signs of weakness. When it came to physicality, it was important to him to feel equal to those he hunted. You don’t earn a reputation like the one Keaty had by flaunting your humanity. In the supernatural community Keaty was a ghost story, the kind that changed with every telling but was somehow always true. I knew too well he was not an invisible killer swooping in and stealing lives, just a gifted man who was skilled at his job. It was one of the reasons I tried to distance him from the monsters I dealt with. Eventually his luck would run out and something would kill him. I’d keep that from happening for as long as I could. Kind of karmic payback, considering he was the one who’d saved me from death to begin with.
Keaty rose and offered a hand to Holden. They shook cordially before Holden and I took our seats in a pair of high-backed leather chairs facing the desk. Keaty didn’t make any passive-aggressive remarks about my absence and lack of check-in calls, but he did say, “I understand you had an interesting night.”
I tensed because feminine decency first led me to believe he was talking about my unexpected intimacies with Desmond. Then it dawned on me that my romantic endeavors wouldn’t interest Keaty in the slightest. “You mean the thing at the Chameleon?”
“It was practically a massacre according to what I’ve heard.”
“I’m sure Genevieve has insurance.”
“Genevieve Renard has a type of insurance cash can’t buy,” Holden interjected. “She is owed favors by just about everyone in this city, both human and otherwise. She is a clever woman.”
I smirked when Holden used Genevieve’s last name. Renard was the French word for fox, which I knew thanks to my grandmere’s insistence that I learn a second language. An ocelot named after a fox. If Genevieve was as clever as they claimed, maybe our names really do help define us. Mine was a royal pain in the ass.
“What brings you both to my office?” Keaty asked, interrupting my musings.
I wanted to correct him that it was our office, but I didn’t think an argument of semantics with a vampire in the room would go over too well. My pride remained wounded for the sake of preserving his.
“Have you heard anything about these prostitutes with missing memories? Or the girl who ended up mauled and drained in the park?”
“Yes.”
“Anything other than the basic details?”
“Yes.” His attention moved to Holden, then back to me. For all his apprehensions about things that went bump in the night, Keaty would have made an incredible vampire. He loved to be vague and lacked the nuances for sarcasm the same way older vamps did. No wonder the Tribunal trusted him so much. “Is the council suddenly interested in dead whores?”
“No. But we are very interested in what is killing them.” Holden looked just as unmoved now as he had sitting in my apartment with the werewolves. I wondered if the only place he felt uneasy was walking with me to the Tribunal.
Keaty leaned back and laced his fingers together behind his head. He looked contemplatively at the ceiling, which had beautiful, thick crown molding and was a rich burgundy color in the center. I imagined he was thinking about blood when he looked at it.
“I think your best option would be to talk to one of them yourself.”
I glared at him with no attempt whatsoever to mask my unhappiness. It was past ten now and I still hadn’t eaten. I was cranky and more than a little bloodthirsty. My willingness to scour downtown New York for vampire-thralled prostitutes was wearing thin. It would be so much easier if someone would tell me what I needed to know rather than making me feel like Gretel following a trail of crumbs.
Keaty had no patience for the antics of a twenty-two-year-old vampire hunter and fixed me with a hard stare. “When I say that, I don’t mean interviewing them as yourself, either. I mean if you want to find out what is happening to these girls, you’ll need to find out firsthand.”
Holden’s eyebrows raised such a slight amount it would have been an indifferent change to anyone else. But I didn’t miss the tiny curve of a grin on his lips. He knew what Keaty meant by firsthand.
Unfortunately, so did I.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I’d rather not get into the reasons behind why I own a pair of gold lamé hot pants.<
br />
I found this whole idea ridiculous, and the outfit, in my opinion, was too clichéd. I’d seen enough prostitutes, probably more than Keaty or Holden had, to know the hot pants and black halter were beyond unnecessary when it came to picking up a john in this day and age. The fact I was slight of build and a natural blonde meant I’d be an obvious target.
Maybe that’s what I wanted.
I walked down 59th Street, past the looks of disdain I got by Bloomingdale’s, and gathered more inquiring glances as I reached the area near the Queensboro Bridge. Across the river the lights of Long Island City glimmered more attractively than I thought the city itself was capable of. The East River swept by, and as I watched the water, I considered how many bodies I’d put there and how many had been dumped there by others. Bodies that didn’t all deserve to be dead.
A short distance from the bridge a group of girls huddled together, most wearing tights and long T-shirts. The evening still had a bite of winter to it, but only one of them was wearing a coat. All five girls were smoking, and a permanent cloud lingered over their heads. Three were Latina with hair styled in dramatic braided rows and perms. One was a black girl with her hair in a misguided weave that appeared unnatural and uncomfortable. The look on her face was somewhere between exhaustion and ennui, and her lip jutted out in a pout. She wasn’t inhaling any of the smoke from her Pal Mal. She just sucked it in and blew it back out, not taking any time to let it linger in her mouth. Her shirt had a silver tiger on it. The remaining prostitute was the skinniest white girl I’d ever seen. She had pale skin wrapped like cellophane around her jumble of elbows, knees and jutting bones. These girls had seen monsters that had nothing to do with my line of work. I felt guilty that some of the creatures of my world had crossed into theirs. They had it bad enough without vampires using them as a source of fast food.
As I approached I was thankful my internal temperature protected me from the bitter spring chill. The possibility of a late-spring snow was an unspoken promise on a night like this. I sidled up to them cautiously, my head bowed like a submissive puppy.
“Whatchuwant, you?” the largest of the girls asked. She was six inches taller than me and had to weigh over two hundred pounds. Her arms were crossed over her substantial chest, and she didn’t look like she wanted any part of whatever I was selling.
It hadn’t occurred to me on the walk here I would need any kind of a backstory. Foolishly, I had hoped the prostitutes would see me as one of their ranks and accept me into their questionable sisterhood. Then they would immediately start talking about the vampires who had taken others of their kind, giving me the answers I needed so I could call it a night. I could be such a dumb blonde sometimes.
“Uhh.”
“Park Avenue is da other way, girly. You a long way from da escort services of da Upper East Side, ya know?” This was from the black girl as she exhaled her ornamental smoke in my face.
The skinny white girl laughed but said nothing. It was clear she was the minority here and she knew it.
The big girl took a hard look at me and snorted. “You think you can come here? You think your pretty blonde hair gonna make us say oh, Blondie, you can be one of us? Hmm? You lost on your way to a strip club? Whatdafuckyouwant.”
What I wanted was to give her a good reason to shove her attitude right up her ass before I did it for her. These girls were treating me with the same disdain young vampires did upon hearing my name for the first time. It pissed me off, but in her case she had a reason to look down on me.
A line of tears shone in my eyes, turning them into wide, wet orbs of sorrow. “I was working a few blocks east. Last week this girl on my corner got into a car. She never came back and they found her in the park all ripped up.” My voice trembled convincingly. The Oscar goes to…
They looked unmoved, but I saw the two leaner Latinas bobbing their heads in enthusiastic agreement.
“Yolanda, like what happened wit Cleo, yeah?” The black girl was silenced with a raised hand from the larger girl. She was clearly the leader.
Yolanda’s eyes narrowed, and she assessed me more seriously now. “Whatchyourname, girl?”
“Brigit.” I used the name at the forefront of my mind after meeting with Mercedes.
“Brigit. Sounds like a fucking cheerleader.”
The other girls laughed for a second before they settled into observant silence. In the darkness near the river, at least one vampire was watching the whole exchange. Holden’s presence covered me like a thin, protective blanket. Thinking of Holden brought another vampire to mind. I wondered what Sig would think of this if he knew it was a result of the assignment he’d given me. I thought he might get more than a little pleasure out of my current situation. Doubtless, Holden would let him know about tonight’s antics.
A car drove by and slowed, and I became the girls’ last concern. I hung back, and the five of them launched into a well-oiled chorus of, “Hey, baby! How you doin’, honey? You need a date? I’ll show you a real good time.” The whole thing made me queasy.
I was expecting him to pick one of the thin, prettier Latina girls, but to my surprise large, bland-faced Yolanda was chosen by the john. I craned my neck to get a better view of him, but the guy looked like any other hard-up, middle-aged schmuck who could only get pussy on a street corner.
The other four returned to huddle near me and gawked at me like I was a zoo display. They said nothing, just blew clouds of smoke in my face. I was willing to bet none of these girls were older than sixteen, yet each one looked about forty.
“Who’s Cleo?” I broke the silence and hoped it didn’t make me sound like a cop. I had crossed my arms over my chest and was pretending to be cold.
The two skinny Latinas looked at each other and said nothing, but each wore a grim expression. The white girl shuffled uneasily. The chatty black girl was my in, that much was clear. I stared at her, and she folded faster than a lawn chair.
“She used to be wit us, ya know?” the black girl said. One of the Latinas snarled when the girl started to speak, but it did nothing to stop the newly opened fount of knowledge. “It was like you said, yeah? She was here, she got picked up, but she did come back. Only she wasn’t right.”
“Wasn’t right how?”
“Veda. You shut your fucking mouth.”
Veda ignored her. “What it matter now, Misty, huh? Cleo dead, ain’t she? What da fuck it matter now?”
I needed to be clear on what Veda had said. “She’s dead?”
“Yeah, fuck man. Yeah.”
“But she was alive when she came back to you guys?” I asked.
“She got dropped off in this like, limo. She got out and she was like, staggering, ya know? Like she was drunk?” Veda pantomimed the weaving and bobbing of a woman under the influence, then abruptly stopped and pretended to smoke again. “Cleo ain’t no dummy. She knows you don’t drink when you wit a john. Dat shit get you killed.” Veda shook her head, heaving a solemn sigh as she pointed her cigarette at me for emphasis. This was the knowledge of world-weary teenaged prostitutes.
“But she was alive?”
“Fuck, girl, you deaf?” Misty said, but she didn’t seem hell-bent on putting an end to my questions anymore, so I would take what I could get.
“It was weird, yeah?” Veda continued, looking from me to the other girls, who each nodded seriously. “Like, she was babbling some shit in a weird language. Like you see on dem Jesus shows where the guy touches their heads and shit?” Veda mimicked this by acting out a faith healing on the skinny white girl. The girl giggled when Veda touched her forehead and dramatically announced, “You be healed, bitch!”
“She was speaking in tongues?”
“What da fuck else she gonna speak with?” Veda rolled her eyes. I saw no reason to explain, so I let her go on.
“Anyway.” Veda was enjoying being the center of attention even for such a small group. Her voice had begun to bubble with enthusiasm. I suppose being around Yolanda must have limited her
opportunities to be noticed. “She went home after that an da next day Yolanda goes to check on her, right? ’Cause Raymond would be right fucking pissed if Cleo missed a night, ya know?”
I nodded as if I knew the full extent of their pimp’s wrath.
“And?”
“And Cleo was dead.”
“Dead how?”
“Fuuuuuck, Blondie, you ask a lot of questions.”
“I’ve been told that before.”
“Yolanda said it looked like she’d been dead for days,” Misty interjected, looking for her own chance to be the group’s source of knowledge. “Said she was all pale and shit, and looked like she had no blood in her.”
I felt the blood drain from my own face. I knew all too well where this was going. “Did you have her buried?”
“Do we look like we can afford to pay for a funeral?” This obvious point had been brought up by the previously silent white girl, who had recovered from her faith healing enough to resume smoking.
“Did someone bury her?” My heart was pounding.
Misty looked guilty, turning away from Veda, who appeared ill at ease upon hearing the question.
“No.”
“No?”
Veda glared at me and I shut my mouth. “We wanted to. We called the cops, right? Anonymous-like so that someone would take care of her?”
Now I could see where this fit in with the information Mercedes had given me. I nodded. They all bobbed along.
“But when the cops came, they didn’t take a body. There was no news about it. It was like she ain’t never even been there.”
But she had been there. It was no longer a mystery what had happened to Cleo the prostitute. And I knew, too, what had happened to the girls like the one Mercedes had told me about. I’d thought the body in the park was too sloppy to be Peyton, and now it was clear to me why.
