“But having my hand in a splint for several weeks seems so . . . wasteful. Normally I’d use a panacea to heal the soft tissue damage before going to a boneknitter. And if the nerve damage was really bad, I’d book a psychic surgeon to take care of it. My downtime would be three, maybe four days, tops.”
“Granted, this way is slower, but it’s a system that’s worked for us humans for centuries,” I pointed out. “After all, most of us don’t have easy access to Golgotham General. And since these wounds are immune to magic, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to be patient.”
“But we healers are famous for being awful patients.”
“So I’ve noticed.” As I let the dog back in, Beanie ran straight to the spot on the floor I’d just cleaned, frantically sniffing at the linoleum in search of a stray atom of food that might have been missed. “I think it’s really sweet that you want to still fix my breakfast for me, darling, but I can take care of myself. I’d rather you spend your time figuring out an easy way to break the news about the new addition to the Royal Family.”
“Don’t remind me.” He grimaced. “If my renting a room to a human got the Blue Hairs worked into a lather, I can just imagine how that will go over.”
As Hexe left the kitchen, I turned to look at Scratch, who was perched atop the refrigerator, licking his front paw. “Keep an eye on him while I’m at work, will you?” I said, keeping my voice low so as not to be overheard.
“I haven’t been his babysitter in a very long time,” the familiar replied. “But I’ll do what I can. However, if he orders me to leave him alone, there’s nothing I can do. He is my master.”
• • •
As I walked to work, the reality of my situation settled onto my shoulders like a shawl made of lead. Until Hexe regained his dexterity—assuming he recovered it at all—I was the breadwinner for the household. But how much longer would that be? My job at Canterbury Customs was nowhere near as strenuous as banging out horseshoes for Chiron, but it was far from an office job. At some point I would have to take maternity leave, assuming Canterbury didn’t simply fire me once he learned of my condition. As it was, telling my boss I was pregnant would have to wait until Hexe and I broke the news to his family. There is an etiquette to such things, after all.
Canterbury was working the forge as I entered the shop, his flanks shining with sweat. “I see you’ve finally come stumbling back from the Jubilee!” he chided. “And just in time! Bjorn Cowpen’s carriage is ready. I need you to accompany the delivery and handle the paperwork and final payment.”
As Canterbury’s apprentice, I was used to being sent on errands, but this was the first one that went beyond merely being his gofer. The fact he trusted me to collect a payment for him spoke volumes, as he usually was the only one who handled the money from the clients. Since this was a major new step in our working relationship, I felt both proud and a bit nervous about my new responsibility.
About an hour later a centaur claiming to be Cowpen’s chauffeur arrived and hitched himself to the awaiting carriage, which was about as subtle as a circus wagon. The carriage itself was a phaeton, the body of which was painted bright red, with overlarge wheels boasting gilded spokes and custom-designed hubs that bore the initials B.C. The calash top was made of faux–leopard skin, with matching plush velvet seat cushions, and had whirling mirrored disco-balls in place of the usual carriage lights. It was so gloriously, unrepentantly vulgar that it was totally awesome.
After Canterbury made sure I had all the necessary paperwork, I hopped inside the carriage, and although it may have looked like something Liberace used to race harness, it rode like a dream. I barely felt a single jounce as we made our way to Golgotham’s red-light district.
Although Duivel Street may be the shortest street in all of Golgotham, it is easily the busiest. Outside of Witches Alley, the Rookery, and the Fly Market, the flesh pits of Duivel Street are the biggest tourist attraction in the Strangest Neighbor in The Big Apple. If you can imagine a vice, there is guaranteed to be somebody or something catering to it somewhere along Duivel.
While Bjorn Cowpen owned several such adult entertainment operations, the Big Top Club was his flagship. The front of the building was shaped to resemble an enormous, leering clown’s head, like the entrance of a funhouse. The carnival decor was continued throughout the club, with vintage freak-show banners and circus posters covering the walls. Red-and-white striped canvas bunting was draped from the ceiling to give the illusion of a circus tent. Three candy-striped “tent poles” were located along the elevated runway that bisected the main room, providing the club’s entertainers the means to demonstrate their acrobatic skills. As I entered the Big Top it was obvious from the dancers strutting their considerable charms on the runway that the club’s name wasn’t just an excuse for circus-related decor.
I walked over to the bar, which resembled a shooting gallery you’d find at a carnival midway, complete with bull’s-eye targets and flying ducks. The bartender was a young huldu dressed in the straw boater, striped shirt, and red silk sleeve-garter of a sideshow barker.
“I’m from Canterbury Customs,” I said. “Councilman Cowpen is expecting me.”
The bartender cut his eyes to the darkest corner of the room. “The boss is, uh, in a meeting right now.” Cowpen was sitting in a red vinyl booth, talking to a shadowy figure whose back was to me. “Take a seat. He’ll be with you shortly.”
I glanced around the club. It was barely ten in the morning, but there were already a handful of patrons crowding the tip rail. No matter the hour, there was always someone ready to party on Duivel Street. The customers were watching a particularly pneumatic huldra in clear stripper heels wrap herself around a pole while using her cow tail to pluck the dollar bills from their hands. Back in their native Scandinavia, the huldrefolk were famous for their physical beauty, and the females of the species were especially notorious for luring human men into the woods for sex. Now they simply lured them into the champagne room.
As I sat down at one of the tables near the runway, a topless waitress wearing greasepaint on her face and a pair of red foam clown-nose pasties walked over to hand me a box of popcorn and take my drink order. I smiled politely and shook my head. She shrugged and went down to the foot of the runway, where a couple of tourists were flashing platinum cards.
Suddenly there was a loud thudding noise that had nothing to do with the music pumping from the sound system. I looked up to see Cowpen’s bull-tail thumping against the side of the booth he was sitting in as he talked to his guest.
“Thirty percent?” he exclaimed in angry disbelief. “Are you crazy? I’m already paying you guys fifteen for protection!”
“That’s the deal, Councilman,” the shadowy figure replied, his voice a throaty rumble.
“Look, your boss knows that I’ve always been amenable in the past. I’m sure we can negotiate a deal that’s fair to both sides. . . .”
“Marz ain’t lookin’ to be fair,” the other man said, cutting the strip club owner off before he could continue. “He’s lookin’ for thirty percent.”
“That’s outrageous!” the huldu exclaimed, this time slapping his tail onto the table for emphasis. “I refuse to pay it!”
“That’s too bad,” the Maladanti said as he slid out of the booth, tossing back his peach-colored Jheri curls. I recognized him as Gaza, the goon from the Stronghold who had shown Hexe the torture implements. My heart started to beat so fast it felt like it was standing still. “It was a nice place you had here.” With a quick flourish of his left hand, the Maladanti sent a ball of hellfire flying toward the bar, and then casually strolled to the door, like a championship bowler turning his back on a strike roll. He didn’t have to see the fireball land to know it was a direct hit.
The bartender leapt over the counter like a bullock jumping over a low fence as the hellfire struck the bull’s-eye mounted over the top shelf stock. It splashed on contact like a water balloon full of napalm, sending flames in every direction. Ton
gues of fire raced up walls, setting the ceiling drapery ablaze within a heartbeat.
The huldra in the plastic heels was still twirling about, her back arched and head thrown back, her long honey-blond hair streaming behind her like a banner, when she saw the fire race across the ceiling. She gave a weird, decidedly nonhuman bleat of alarm and lost her grip, which sent her flying off the runway, landing with a loud crash on the table beside me. Jolted free of their lust by the fear of death, the Big Top Club’s clientele cast aside their drinks and lap dancers and made a mad dash for the exits.
As the room rapidly filled with billows of acrid smoke and shouts of fear, I flashed back to the frantic chaos of the riot only a few months before. I knew it was important to stay as calm as possible and get out as soon as I could to avoid becoming lost in the choking fumes. I moved to help the dazed dancer back up onto her feet, even though she proved as wobbly on her six-inch plastic heels as a newborn calf.
As I guided the dancer toward the exit, I heard the bellow of an enraged bull, and saw Councilman Cowpen, his normally handsome features contorted into a masque of bestial fury, bound after the retreating Maladanti. The huldu grabbed Gaza, spinning the spellslinger around while wrapping his tail about his throat at the same time. Instead of struggling, Gaza merely made a gesture with his hand. As I exited the Big Top Club with my charge, I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Cowpen drop to the floor like a bag of wet cement.
Upon our escape from the burning building, a brace of huldren swarmed forward to claim their fellow dancer like a band of naked angels. I had to hand it to them—they did not seem the least bit embarrassed about standing in the middle of Duivel Street in nothing but their landing strips, surrounded by gawking tourists taking pictures with their cell phones.
“Where’s Bjorn?” one of the dancers asked, casting about anxiously for some sign of the councilman.
“He’s still inside,” I said, turning to look at the entrance to the club. Smoke was billowing from the clown’s mouth like the world’s worst case of heartburn. “The spellslinger who torched the place pulled a sleeper on him.”
Upon hearing this news, the bevy of huldren strippers started mooing like distraught cattle preparing to stampede. Although Councilman Cowpen was a sexist and a bigot, I could not find it in me to leave him to die in a fire. I stepped forward, waving at the strippers for silence.
“Calm down! I know where to find him, but I need someone to help me rescue him.”
The young bartender stepped forward. “I’ll go.”
Together, we ran back inside club, holding our breath against the curtain of smoke. Although fewer than three mere minutes had elapsed since Gaza first hurled the fireball, the interior of the club was almost unrecognizable, thanks to the flames and smoke. It seemed like an eternity as I sought for the place where I’d last seen Cowpen, but I finally spotted the huldu sprawled on the floor.
“Councilman Cowpen!” I shouted as I knelt beside him. “Wake up!”
“Pappa!” the bartender bellowed, grabbing what I now realized was his father by the shoulders. “You’ve got to get out of here!”
Cowpen managed to open one eye, which rolled about in its orbit like a greased ball bearing, but was otherwise unresponsive. To my surprise, the bartender lifted his father from the floor and tossed him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry as if he weighed no more than a bedroll. The moment we headed toward the dim glow of the fire exit sign, a huge chunk of burning canvas detached itself from the ceiling and crashed down on the spot we’d just vacated. We continued to push through the wall of smoke, and seconds later I was rewarded by a rush of fresh air into my aching lungs.
Upon seeing the bartender emerge from the burning building with the unconscious Bjorn thrown over his back, the dancer I had helped escape earlier gave voice to a strange, bovine cry and rushed forward to greet us. “Is he alive?” she asked, her tail switching anxiously back and forth.
“I think so, Mamma,” the bartender replied as he lowered his father onto the sidewalk. Cowpen’s limbs abruptly spasmed and he started to cough as Gaza’s sleeper spell finally began to wear off.
“Tyr—go see to your sisters,” the older dancer said, pointing to the gaggle of strippers staring worriedly in our direction. “The last thing we need right now is someone getting rustled.”
The bartender nodded his understanding and went to put himself between his siblings and the leering throng of looky-loos that had gathered about them. Mrs. Cowpen knelt beside her husband, gently wiping the soot from his face with the end of her tail. She smiled up at me, tears shining in her cornflower blue eyes. Now that I was aware of the exact relationship between her and the rest of the club’s employees, I suddenly found myself too embarrassed to look anywhere but directly at her face. I’d heard of family businesses before, but nothing like this.
“Thank you, young lady, for helping us. My name is Svenda.”
“Well, we Golgothamites have to stick together, ma’am,” I replied. “And you can call me Tate.”
Suddenly there was the sound of a loudly clanging bell, and I looked up to see an old-fashioned pumper wagon, pulled by a brawny centaur wearing a fireman’s helmet and a heavy canvas coat, arrive on the scene. There were identically dressed firefighters clinging to the sides of the wagon, one of whom was Octavia, our new boarder. As the pumper came to a halt, the faun leapt down and snatched up a four-foot-long metal tool that looked like a cross between a pry bar and a sledgehammer, wielding it like it weighed no more than a broom.
“It’s a nasty one, Chief!” she shouted as she eyed the smoke and flames belching from the Big Top’s entrance.
A Kymeran bearing the badge of fire chief on his helmet reached into the pocket of his canvas coat and removed a small glass bottle the size of a Christmas ornament. “There you go, my friend,” he said as he removed the stopper. “Eat your fill!”
The jinn shot forth like a flash of lightning, and a second later the outline of a creature composed not of flesh and blood but from smokeless fire hovered in midair above Duivel Street. As the elemental turned its attention to the inferno before it, its eyes literally burned with hunger. It tossed back its blazing head and opened its fiery mouth and inhaled mightily, like a child preparing to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. A cascade of flame suddenly came pouring out of the building like the torrents of a flash flood. The gathered onlookers shouted in alarm and raised their arms to shield their faces and eyes from the blistering heat as the fire shot toward the hovering jinn. This seemed to amuse the elemental, whose laughter rang out like the peals from a great bell.
Within the space of a few heartbeats the conflagration was extinguished, and what had moments before been a raging inferno was now no more than a swelling in the jinn’s belly. The elemental yawned and stretched its flickering limbs as it disappeared back into the safety of its bottle, where it could digest its meal in peace.
The moment the jinn was contained, the firefighters trained their hoses on the front of the building, dousing it in high-pressure streams of water. Once they finished with the exterior, Octavia entered the burned-out club through the clown’s head, only now one side of it had melted from the extreme heat, causing the face to sag as if it had suffered a stroke. Using her metal fire tool as a walking stick, she made her way, sure-footed as a goat, through the charred ruins, searching for hidden hot spots to extinguish.
Bjorn Cowpen seemed woozy but otherwise unharmed. As his family gathered around him, he kissed each of his daughters on the forehead, muttering endearments in their native tongue, before warmly embracing the son who had carried him to safety. He slipped an arm around his wife and heir, using them as living crutches to hobble over to where I stood.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your club, Councilman,” I said, and was surprised to realize that I actually meant it.
“I have others,” he said with a weary shrug. “But this was the one I inherited from my father, when I was Tyr’s age.” As he looked m
e in the eye, I could tell he was truly seeing me for the first time. “You’re Canterbury’s apprentice, are you not?”
“Yes, I am,” I replied. “He sent me to hand over the title to your new carriage and take the final payment. But I’m afraid I left the paperwork in the club. . . .”
“That old horse-wizard must really trust you,” Cowpen said as he reached into the pocket of his skintight pants and pulled out a folded piece of paper, which he then handed to me.
I unfolded the paper and saw that it was a cashier’s check drawn on Midas National Bank. I checked that the zeroes lined up before and after the comma and decimal were of the correct number, then nodded my head and carefully transferred it to my own pocket.
“I appreciate what you did, human,” the councilman continued, stepping in close to shake my hand. “But if anyone asks you what happened today, you didn’t see nothing. Understand?”
I stared down at the tightly bundled wad of hundred dollar bills pressed into my palm. Part of me wanted to give the money back and tell Cowpen that pretending nothing happened wasn’t going to keep the Maladanti away. But then I remembered my own delicate standing with Boss Marz, the stack of bills on Hexe’s desk, and the future cradled inside me.
“More than you realize,” I replied.
Chapter 11
While my “tip” from Cowpen wasn’t going to solve all our financial worries, it was enough to give us the first breathing room we’d known in months. For the first time since Jubilee Night, not only did there seem to be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, for once it didn’t appear to be a train barreling down on us. However, the moment I set foot in the door and saw a scowling Hexe waiting for me in the front parlor, my high spirits came crashing back down to earth.
“Octavia tells me that you ran into a burning building today. Is that true?”
“For crying out loud, Hexe!” I groaned, setting down my lunch pail on the coffee table. “I didn’t do it for kicks! Did Octavia also mention I went in there to save Bjorn Cowpen?”
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