Dark Metropolis

by Jaclyn Dolamore

  “Mr. Kortig said for you to go to the balcony,” one of the other waitresses said, hurrying by her.

  “I know, thanks.”

  Thea took Gerik’s and Freddy’s orders: once again, a drink for each and several rich dishes of food. She made casual banter with them, and when she brought their orders, she tried to find a way to brush one of Freddy’s hands again, but he was still keeping them off the table. It was probably silly to think a boy’s touch could give her visions of her father anyway, but it was strange that he wouldn’t allow her the opportunity to find out.

  “Have you had enough time to consider it?” he asked her when she brought their check.

  “Consider what?” Gerik asked.

  “Coffee, after,” Freddy said.

  “Oh, well, then,” Gerik said. “You never asked me.”

  “I wasn’t aware you were hoping I’d ask you out for coffee, Gerik.” Freddy grinned. “Besides, you’re the one who told me I should get out more.”

  “I guess I didn’t realize how well you’d take to it,” Gerik said, chuckling.

  “Don’t mind him,” Freddy said.

  “Fine,” Thea said. “Coffee. It’s pretty generous for me to give you more than the time of day when you’ve only been here twice.”

  “Then I’m glad I caught you in a generous mood.”

  After these past couple of nights of leaving work to go home to an empty apartment, it was nice to see Freddy waiting for her outside, with a gray fedora now covering his hair. He looked cross with Gerik, who stood a short distance behind him, smoking a cigarette.

  “It looks like we’re stuck with some company,” Freddy said. “I can’t seem to get rid of him, short of murder in the back alley, perhaps.”

  “Every lad has to learn his own ways to avoid his chaperone,” Gerik said. “I can’t make it too easy for you on your first date.”

  “You just enjoy the challenge, don’t you? I know it isn’t your strict moral code. I should probably be chaperoning you,” Freddy replied. Then he told Thea, more softly, “Don’t mind him. He’s harmless. I’ve been on dozens of other dates, of course.”

  She had to smile at this rather backhanded admission that it actually was his first date. Not that it was a real date. Because that would have made it her first date, too.

  No, they had important business to discuss, even if Freddy didn’t know it.

  “Do you have a place you like to go for coffee or something?” Freddy asked.

  “Oh, I usually go to Café Tops because it’s just around the corner. But it’s—I don’t know. Sort of a sad-old-man place, really. The prices are good; that’s why I go.”

  “Gerik has a car, so we could go farther if you’d like.”

  She didn’t trust them enough for that, but she didn’t want to say so. “We could walk somewhere. I like a walk in the moonlight.”

  He looked up at the sky. The moon was nearly full. They couldn’t see any of the stars with all the neon signs. “Sounds nice.”

  They started to stroll. Gerik stayed well back, so she could almost forget he existed.

  “Have you worked at the club long?” Freddy asked, making small talk.

  “About a year.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I do. Never a dull moment.”

  “In a good way, I hope. I heard someone mention that one of the waitresses went missing the other night.”

  The reference to Nan jolted her. Who had been talking about Nan? Everyone else seemed to brush off her disappearance. “Oh—well, yes, she hasn’t come in for a few days. It happens. She probably got a new job.” Thea didn’t really want to talk about Nan. He didn’t need to know how worried she was.

  “You didn’t know her, then.”

  “Does it matter?” Why all these questions?

  “Not if it doesn’t matter to you. I just wondered if you were worried, since it sounded like she vanished unexpectedly.”

  “I don’t talk to the other girls very much,” she said, but her voice was strained.

  “A loner, are you? I am, too. It’s difficult to talk to society girls. They’ve never worked a day in their lives, and they don’t intend to, either. What do I talk to them about when they don’t do anything?”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “That’s a sticking point,” he said. “My father was a clockmaker. I’d like to follow in his footsteps, to honor him. But Gerik shudders at the suggestion that I’d go into a trade.”

  “But making clocks takes skill,” she said, and then realized how silly that was to say. Of course a man from the upper tiers of society wouldn’t care whether Freddy had the skills of a craftsman. “I think it’s very respectable, anyway.”

  “I knew you would,” he said. “That’s why I’m buying you coffee.”

  They were turning away from the entertainment district, toward Frederstrasse, which lacked the wild abandon and abundance of neon lights but nevertheless had a reputation as a hangout for bohemians, with bookshops and small presses for poets by day, coffeehouses and bars by night. The street was lined with trees, men in artistically scruffy clothes spilled out of the bars, and somewhere in the distance she heard an accordion.

  “Wonder where that’s coming from,” Freddy said, perking to the sound.

  “It’s an old song from Irminau,” Thea said. “Did your mother ever sing it to you? Mine did. ‘Little Cuckoo.’”

  “Both my parents died when I was little,” Freddy said, lightly enough, but she could tell it made him sad. She wished she hadn’t asked him.

  The accordion grew louder as Freddy led her right to it, through the door of a coffeehouse called the Hornbeam. She thought Gerik might protest the choice of a rustic coffeehouse, but he went right along. The musician’s eyes were closed, as if he didn’t care whether anyone was watching him. He was missing most of his teeth and needed a shave, but he played beautifully. Freddy led her to a table, dragging out a wooden chair for her. Nearly everything in the room was made of wood, and people drank their coffee by candlelight. Such a contrast from the sleek glitter of her usual environment, it reminded her of the country cottages of childhood summers.

  Gerik took another table nearby and unfolded an evening paper from his coat.

  They ordered cups of coffee, and Thea stirred cream and sugar into hers.

  Gerik still wasn’t paying any attention to them.

  She gave Freddy’s hand a light touch. “Thanks for taking me out. This is nice.” She had planned the words, so they came out smoothly, but she barely heard herself say them. The vision returned. Weaker this time, but still more potent than anything in her imagination. Her father, eyes opening, drying blood on his uniform.

  Freddy’s reaction was restrained but obvious. He jerked his hand back. His brows furrowed, and he looked at the spoon and napkin set on the table.

  She stared at him for a moment until he had to acknowledge her eyes, and then she finally looked away. “You see it, too,” she said softly.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “It was my father. Why do I see my father when I touch you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice quiet. “Are you sure it was your father?”

  “I should think I recognize my own father. Do you—did you know him?”

  “What was your father’s name?” He was leaning closer. She got the sense he didn’t want Gerik to hear them.

  “Henry Holder.”

  “I don’t know the name.” He looked genuinely confused, but she felt he was holding something back. “Has he been missing?”

  “He went missing in action eight years ago, during the war. They told us he was certainly dead, that a lot of men had to be buried unidentified in a mass grave. But my mother has always insisted he’s alive.”

  “Maybe he is, then,” Freddy said
.

  If she let herself, even for a moment, imagine her father walking in the door, imagine his laugh and the way his evening mug of beer used to smell and the piles of books he’d leave near his favorite chair and the way Mother kissed him when he came home from work…imagine all of that being real again…

  “It’s been so long,” she said. “He would have come home by now. He’d have to.”

  “He could’ve been badly injured. Lost his memory,” Freddy said, seeming to think along the same lines she once had. “It happens in books so often that it must happen in real life once in a while.”

  “Even if he lost his memory…” She drew back, letting her eyes drift to the accordion player again. “My parents were bound.”

  “Bound?” He cocked his head. “I thought that was outlawed.”

  “It is nowadays, but they were bound before that.”

  “Was it an arranged marriage?”

  “No. They wished to be bound when they married, so they would always be connected.”

  Freddy looked interested. “I don’t think that was done in my parents’ village. I’ve only read about it.”

  “After my father supposedly died, my mother started losing her mind. When I touch her, the magic that binds them touches me, too. I have a bit of a connection to them both because of the spell, but it’s not strong like Mother’s. I just feel how disturbed she is, and I’m helpless to do anything about it.”

  Freddy’s expression was dark in the dim light. Maybe she’d said too much. She didn’t want him to pity her. She was supposed to be finding out why she saw her father when she touched Freddy, not confessing her own family history. Only, he wasn’t giving her much to work with. She recalled Nan’s comment that the revolutionary papers said Gerik was involved in terrible things. Was it possible he had anything to do with her father’s death?

  “Gerik’s in the government,” she said, switching angles. “What does he do, anyway?”

  Freddy didn’t seem to expect that question. “He’s a domestic adviser or something. I’m not sure what he does, not exactly.”

  “I wondered if he had anything to do with the military. If maybe you’d seen the soldiers and just not remembered it. My father looks young in the vision, like he did when he went off to war, so you would have been young, too.”

  “No.” Freddy stiffened.

  She certainly couldn’t let him stay stiff. She needed him to trust her, so he might tell her more…because there was more. There had to be more. “Well,” she said, allowing some of her sadness and fear to show now. “That’s too bad.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know losing your father is a terrible feeling. I’ll try to see if I can find out anything for you.”

  She nodded, but she wondered if he meant it. Although he seemed interested in her, he still held the cards. He could decide when to return to the club. It could be days or weeks. He could get distracted by society parties, or preparing for university, or whatever boys like Freddy did.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have lied to him about Nan. If he was asking, it was because he was either curious about the mystery of her disappearance or sympathetic that Thea might have lost a friend, and neither sympathy nor curiosity would hurt her tonight.

  “That girl you were asking about earlier, the one who worked at the club?” she said. “She actually was my friend. My best friend. Nan.”

  He glanced quickly at Gerik. “Your best friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you haven’t heard from her?”

  “No. And I never visited her at home, so I can’t check on her, but I’m worried sick. I just didn’t want to put a pall on the night.”

  “I see. Well, do you know her last name? Maybe I could look in the city records.”

  “Davies. And she’s an orphan. Her guardian is named Horst, and I don’t know his last name.”

  “I’ll research it for you and find her address.”

  Thea didn’t have to feign gratitude. She was genuinely glad she’d told him now—it hadn’t even occurred to her to check the city records, and she wouldn’t know how to go about it. “Thank you.”

  Gerik folded his paper and then walked up behind Freddy’s chair. “Having fun, lad?”

  “Yes. Good coffee here.”

  “You look pale. Maybe we ought to think of heading back.”

  Freddy emptied his cup. “Well, I’d better walk the lady home first, don’t you think?”

  “But of course.” Gerik winked at Thea. She was in no mood to be winked at, but she forced a smile.

  “It’s a long walk from here,” she said. “Maybe I should just get a cab.” She didn’t want Freddy to see that the wooden siding was crumbling off the apartment building and exposing old bricks beneath, or that Miss Mueller hung her underwear out the window to dry.

  “We can take you home,” Gerik said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to trouble you.”

  Freddy seemed to understand her reluctance. “She’s a loner, Ger. She doesn’t want to listen to your stories all the way home. I can’t blame her.”

  Gerik laughed. “Just for that, I’m going to repeat the one about the ambassador’s horse in excruciating detail.”

  Freddy was already lifting a hand to hail a cab for her. When one arrived, he opened the door. “I had fun tonight,” he said.

  “Me too,” she said, and it was true, even with all the heavy things they had discussed.

  “Maybe I can see you again sometime soon?”

  “I’d like that very much.”

  “Until next time, then.”

  She slid into the backseat. Freddy waved and then turned away, his silver hair bright in the darkness.

  “I’m impressed.” Gerik lit a cigarette. “Where in the world did you learn to flirt?”

  “Well.” Freddy shrugged. If it took everything he had, he wouldn’t let Gerik know his interest in Thea was anything beyond flirting. “I’ve had a good instructor over the years.”

  “I haven’t instructed you. You never let me.”

  “I meant novels, not you.”

  Gerik snorted. “This girl—Thea? I like her spunk, but I wonder if there is something too earnest about her.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “You’re already too serious. What were you talking about over there with her?”

  “Nothing much. Her family, work…”

  “We’re not trying to find you a wife here. Just someone who will bear you a child. Did you see that little blond waitress? She seemed more up for anything, if you ask me.”

  “I’m just not sure why you and Uncle are in such a hurry. When has my magic not been enough?”

  “Insurance policy, Freddy,” Gerik said. “If, god forbid, we lost you, who would help the dead? And wouldn’t you like a vacation yourself?”

  “Not really.”

  Gerik sighed. “You ought to be begging me for a vacation. And I’m even telling you to rush into things with a pretty girl. Most boys have to do that on the sly.”

  From the moment Gerik first presented this plan, he had made it sound like a privilege and not something Freddy was being forced into. It was so simple, he had said. They could surely find a girl at the clubs. The girls were all pretty and respectable enough to hold a job, but they wouldn’t be working there if they didn’t need money.

  “Nothing about this plan is respectable,” Freddy had pointed out, but Gerik had waved him off and said he worried too much.

  “It’s very uncomfortable talking to a girl, thinking all the while that you have to ask her if she’d like children, especially when I really don’t want children,” Freddy said.

  “She doesn’t have to like children,” Gerik said. “And neither do you. She just has to like money. I told you, we’ve already got a foster family lined up. I’m sur
e Thea needs money.”

  “But—not like that.”

  Gerik sighed. “Maybe falling in love would be good for you. And she seemed a little sad. A girl like that would give you something to protect.”

  “Please,” Freddy said sharply. “Don’t talk about her that way. For that matter, don’t talk about me that way. You’re making this sound like a game of courtly love.”

  “All life might as well be a game of courtly love.” Gerik gave his hand a pat. “I only speak from experience. That was how I felt about the Countess of Ordzy. May she rest in peace. I truly loved that woman. Sometimes you take me so seriously that you remind me of Rory.”

  “I’m nothing like him.” Freddy knew comparing him to Uncle was only a distraction from the real topic. “But I don’t think Thea will like this plan any more than I do, no matter how much she needs money.”

  “We’ll offer her enough for a brand-new row house with electric lights. She’d never have to work again. I bet she’ll see the wisdom of this plan for that. Just as your parents like the money we give them, eh?”

  “Money is nice,” Freddy said. “But it isn’t everything.” It isn’t family. He felt bad lying to Thea and saying he was an orphan, but it hardly felt like a lie to him. He rarely saw them, and he didn’t know them.

  Gerik had been bringing up his parents more lately, reminding Freddy of the favors they received in exchange for his service to the government. It made Freddy wonder if he could really trust Gerik, the man who had raised him, the man who had once insisted to Uncle that Freddy must keep his beloved cat and who had gotten on the floor with him to play with trains. Gerik always used to seem like he had Freddy’s best interests at heart, but lately Freddy wondered if there wasn’t something else going on.

  “Gerik, you know that girl the other day, the one who attacked me?”

  “How could I forget! Sometimes these suicide cases, you wonder if there’s much hope for them.”

  “She was wearing a uniform just like Thea’s. She worked at the club. But she never went back to work.”