Wicked City

by Alaya Johnson

  For my family

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Sequels are notoriously tricky, and this one would not have been possible if not for the support of my friends, colleagues, and family, for whose help I am incalculably grateful. I would like to thank Lauren and Alexis, for helping me navigate a thicket of story problems; Amanda, for being so excited to read more; Justine, Abby, and Rachel, for helping me sort out the messes of early drafts; Eddie, for regular care and feeding when I was on deadline; my fellow members of Altered Fluid, for early-morning title brainstorming and general writing advice; Kris, for the beautiful map; Jill and Cheryl, for drinks by the Piazza Nettuno; Karyn, for continuing to be the most awesome editor Zephyr or I could have asked for; and, finally, my readers, whose enthusiasm has encouraged me throughout this process.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Also by Alaya Johnson

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  In the depths of late summer, when airless nights meet dog-eared days, the cream of New York City society flees east to the beaches of Long Island, where dinner parties last the weekend and hangovers last the week.

  But instead of sipping champagne by a fountain at Scott and Zelda’s, I was standing on East Twenty-eighth Street in an evening dress far too hot for the weather and T-strap heels far too small for my feet. The latter had just recently been splattered with that most unsavory of New York excreta: the blood and fatty remains of an exsanguinated vampire—or, in common slang, a popper.

  “I did always hate these shoes,” I said, attempting philosophical resignation.

  “Aren’t they your only ones?” Aileen said. My roommate was staring at the remains of the unfortunate vampire with equal parts fascination and disgust.

  “I already have three blisters.”

  “I don’t suppose you can afford a new pair?”

  I sighed. “Not really.” I hadn’t been paid in nearly two weeks, as my night school classes were on temporary hiatus until August. Money and I never had much to say to each other, in any case. Too many people needed it more—the vampire charities, the immigrant charities, the socialists and the communists and any number of women’s rights organizations. I owned a sensible pair of leather boots that served me adequately. Evening shoes were a luxury I had never bothered to afford.

  And yet now their loss made me unaccountably melancholy—bloodstains have yet to debut in the Parisian fashion houses. Having already made a mess of myself by walking unwarily near the popper, I gingerly stepped closer. The remains of baggy skin could tell me nothing of the poor man’s appearance, but the absence of any stake or scorch mark from a blessed blade made me conclude that he had expired from natural causes. Common enough, particularly in the heat of summer. My friend Ysabel, who ran the Bank on St. Marks Place, always complained of the low donation rates in July and August. The poorest vampires used the Banks, and every summer a few dozen of them died of blood starvation. And when a vampire died, he popped.

  “I wonder who he was,” I said softly. Worn gray trousers and a patched shirt were drenched in exsanguination. Familiar as I was with popped vampires, I had no desire to explore further. Vampire blood burned.

  “You could ask Amir, you know,” Aileen said.

  “About the popper?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Heavens, no. The shoes. What good is having some filthy rich djinni prince at your beck and call if you can’t ask him for a favor now and then?”

  I stood and stepped carefully away from the mess. Nothing I could do for him now—the cleanup crew would take him to the medical examiner’s, and from there the potter’s field. For a moment I contemplated asking Amir to conjure his identity, so perhaps I could inform his family, but I shook my head. That sort of request would mean a wish, and a wish entailed precisely the emotional entanglement I was determined to avoid. When you have a past like mine with a djinni like Amir, extreme caution is warranted.

  “I’m not some gold-digger, Aileen,” I said. “I earn what I have.”

  “Lorelei Lee would ask for a lot more than a new pair of shoes,” Aileen said, sighing. “But have it your way. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a speakeasy with dim lights.”

  “Horace’s has dim lights,” I said glumly. But as we had discovered, our favorite speakeasy was closed for a private party. Horace and I have a working relationship (I have been known to open for the house band), but he hustled us out the door and said to come back next week.

  Which left us here, staring at a popped vampire on a quiet stretch of the East Twenties, wondering what happened to our special night out.

  “I don’t suppose you know of another one nearby?” Aileen asked.

  “The Puncheon?”

  “Very funny,” she said, sighing. New York’s most exclusive speakeasy wouldn’t give two girls from the Lower East Side the time of day. “Should we go home?”

  I was inclined to agree, but my attention was caught by a strange commotion at the other end of the street, near Lexington. A crowd had gathered around the entrance of some establishment—a gentleman’s club or a restaurant, judging by the awning. A reporter’s camera flashed.

  Aileen and I glanced at each other. “That looks interesting,” she said.

  She started to hurry toward the crowd, but I hesitated. I hated to leave the poor vampire’s remains just lying there, trickling into the gutter with all the other refuse of the city. On the other hand, I couldn’t do anything to help him. A clean-up crew had finally arrived in an ambulance wagon parked across the street.

  “Zephyr!” Aileen called.

  I swallowed, took one last look at the popper, and hurried to catch up. I would speak with Ysabel about getting blood out more efficiently to the most desperate vampires. Perhaps that way I could save someone from a similar fate.

  From the back of the crowd, it was difficult to see the object of their focus, but it wasn’t hard to hear about it.

  “Mr. Lindbergh, a picture for the papers?” called out a reporter. From over the shoulder of a short gentleman, I caught sight of the famous aviator’s suit jacket and gray hat as he hurried to the car parked on the curb. They said the man who had crossed the Atlantic in an airplane had a boyishly handsome air, but I couldn’t see his face well enough to tell. The city had thrown him a ticker tape parade a month ago, and I wondered if a man could grow tired of adulation.

  The gathered crowd lingered for a few minutes after Charles Lindbergh drove off, chatting animatedly about their brush with fame.

  “He was handsome, don’t you think?” Aileen was saying.

  “I have no idea,” I said, a little snappish. My feet hurt and the prospects for making it up with alcohol had grown quite slim. “I can vouch for his fine taste in millinery, at least.”

  Aileen clucked her tongue. “You’re no fun,” she said. “We just saw the most famous man in the city.”

  “I saw his hat,” I said.

  “No fun at all.”

  Aileen was my best friend, but sometimes she was insufferable. “Then why are you out with me?”

  “Because my regular partner has defected to the Hamptons. Traitor.”

  The traitor in question was Lily Harding, a peculiar mix of debutante and hard-nosed lady reporter. She had formed an unlikely fri
endship with Aileen, mostly founded on their shared love of late nights, nice gentlemen, and fine spirits. Never mind that Aileen and I shared a small room in a boardinghouse on Ludlow Street, that Aileen was an Irish immigrant, or that she told fortunes for a living. Lily could be a snob about a lot of things, but it wouldn’t be smart to bet on what.

  “Sorry to be such a disappointment,” I said. “You two are out all the time—don’t you know of any other speakeasies?”

  She took a look at my shoes and winced. “We wouldn’t get in,” she said.

  Well, then.

  “Pardon me?” A gentleman slightly taller than my collarbone had turned to face Aileen and me. “If you don’t mind my intruding, I take it you ladies are looking for a gin joint?”

  Aileen nodded. “Absolutely!”

  “I’m going to a nice place not two blocks up. I’d be happy to take you there.”

  Getting a lead on a gin joint from a stranger struck me as a dubious idea, but I did not argue very strenuously. I wanted a night out nearly as much as Aileen, after all.

  The short gentleman chatted with Aileen about Mr. Lindbergh while we made our way two blocks north. An imposingly large gentleman puffed on a cigarette in front of a promising red door on East 30th. Our guide paused and looked a little nervously back at the two of us.

  “I forgot to mention one peculiarity of this establishment,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, but it also serves Faust.”

  Aileen’s nod froze halfway. She turned to look at me. “Zephyr?” she said, a plea.

  The trouble was that I had spent all of my time recently buried in work for my latest cause—Friends Against Faust. We were dedicated to prohibition of the vampire liquor that had spread like wildfire across New York City in the six months since its introduction. My organization contended that Faust consumption had proved too dangerous for vampires and humans alike. Which explained why Aileen thought I would refuse to set foot in any establishment that served the brew.

  But the truth of the matter was that I felt profoundly ambivalent about the wisdom of our cause. After all, if I allowed myself to indulge in the dubious pleasures of alcohol, who was I to declare that vampires were incapable of controlling their own impulses? The real trouble was Amir. The djinni had brought Faust to the city in the first place, and now I found myself unaccountably in control of his powers. An unscrupulous, spendthrift djinni with a penchant for playing practical jokes on humans would hardly be an ideal partner in the best of times. But I had become his vessel—the one human able to control his powers and make wishes. Guilt as much as anything motivated my participation in Friends Against Faust.

  But right now, I didn’t give a fig. I wanted a gin and tonic, and I didn’t care who gave it to me.

  “It’s perfectly fine,” I said, to both of their relief.

  The inside of the speakeasy was low-lit and smoky, with a jazz band barely visible on stage and a shabby but glamorous clientele crowding the bar. As promised, vampires mixed with humans, seemingly without regard for social status. The vampires I easily identified by the dusty pallor of their skin and the unmistakable red flush around their cheeks and ears from a recent feeding. Some even flashed unretracted fangs, a taboo in other social situations. The bartenders alternated alcohol with shots of a thick liquid, so dark it appeared black in the low light. Occasionally, they would top it with a dash of real blood from a bag. Faust had originally been developed from pig blood, but it paradoxically caused vampires to go blood-mad. Presumably adding a bit of human blood helped ameliorate the effect.

  Aileen and I took our drinks and settled into a booth in a corner of the room. The music was nice, but I wouldn’t have been keen on dancing even if my feet weren’t killing me. After relaxing into that peculiar burning pleasure of not-quite bathtub gin, Aileen gave me an appraising stare.

  “Why won’t you make a wish, Zeph?”

  I coughed. “Why? Haven’t I told you before?”

  She lifted one corner of her mouth. “Not really. You talk about not wanting to be bound, but it seems to me that you’re a lot more bound to Amir when he’s desperate for you to make a wish than you would have been if you’d just asked for some rutabagas in February.”

  “But that’s just it, Aileen! If I asked for rutabagas in February, I would have to ask for more in March and April and every other damn month for the rest of my life. The second I give in—”

  “Zeph. You put your blood in his mouth. You bound yourself to him. Why cavil now?”

  I took a big gulp of my drink and coughed again. “He was dying,” I said hoarsely. Half a year before, I found out that Amir was slowly being poisoned by the bite of a vampire, and only my blood—which my daddy had somehow made immune to all vampirism—could save him.

  “You still did it. Even I can see how desperate he’s getting for you to make a wish. All his djinni relatives must be giving him hell.”

  I looked away from her frank gaze and slouched into the seat. She was mostly right, but her logic couldn’t touch my inner conviction that I had to break the bond of vessel and djinni between Amir and me.

  “I don’t know, Aileen…” I said, and groped for some way to change the subject. “Lindbergh did have a very nice hat,” I said.

  She sighed. “Don’t you feel anything for him anymore?”

  “Lindbergh?”

  “Zephyr.”

  I sighed and slouched even further into my seat. “I feel something,” I muttered. “None of this would matter if I didn’t.”

  “Then make a wish!”

  “Aileen!” I said, bolting upright in sudden frustration. “Whatever I feel for Amir, it’s complicated. He brought Faust into the city as a practical joke, for heaven’s sake! I can’t just forgive that. But I also can’t … he means something to me, whatever it is, and how will we ever work anything out if we always have this horribly unequal, magically competing bond where I can force him to do whatever I want? Where even if I do make a wish, chances are it will backfire? If I make a wish now, it’s like I’m giving up on … I don’t even know, but something that might matter, something I might want. And if I don’t want it, or if he doesn’t want it, well, better that we aren’t forced to see each other.”

  Aileen took a careful sip of her drink and rested it on the table.

  “I’m sorry, Zeph,” she said, worry in her eyes. “I didn’t understand.”

  “So you agree?”

  She laughed and popped a melting ice cube in her mouth. “No,” she said. “But that’s never mattered before.”

  * * *

  The next morning the proprietress of our boardinghouse was making the oddest noises in her attic chambers. Mrs. Brodsky was with her boyfriend, who we jokingly called Mr. Brodsky. The floorboards even managed a creak or two, and I could only admire her stamina in this bloody miserable weather.

  “There has to be something we can do,” I said to Aileen, who was practicing Eastern meditation beneath the window. My roommate even wore her lounging kimono—with more determination than comfort, I imagined, given the damp stains spreading at her armpits.

  “Wish for Mr. Brodsky to turn into a frog. No, a water sprinkler. Or one of those newfangled refrigerators that Amir has. That would be lovely.”

  “We could go to his place,” I said, trying to ignore the conflicting strains of anticipation and dread at the very thought.

  “Brave the heat and listen to the bickering duo? I’d rather achieve inner peace, thank you very much.”

  I eyed the copy of Harper’s Bazaar still open on her bed. ANCIENT MYSTICS REVEAL TRUTH AND BEAUTY was the promising headline. “You don’t look very peaceful,” I said.

  “I haven’t had much of a chance.”

  “I doubt Mr. Brodsky is going to give it to you.”

  Aileen sighed and opened her eyes with a speed that suggested she hadn’t been quite so close to inner peace as she claimed. Above us, the floor creaked alarmingly.

  “I think,” said Aileen, “that we should climb
onto the roof.”

  “The roof? It’s filthy!”

  Aileen’s smile grew wider. “We’ll bring a blanket.”

  “It’s probably a hundred degrees up there.”

  “Then it must be a hundred and twenty in here. I swear, if I’d known back in Dublin about New York summers … and New York winters, for that matter. This city has some lousy weather, you know that?”

  “Which is why we must atone by being the greatest city in the world.”

  “A city where no one will think twice about two girls taking the air in the midst of a heat wave.”

  She removed the damp kimono and searched through her trunk. I stayed put, eyeing her cream-colored lace teddy with not inconsiderable envy. I wore my habitual skirt and fitted blouse, clothes that had contented me for ages, but increasingly frustrated me now. That was Lily’s influence, of course.

  “Don’t you have another one of those teddies?” I asked.

  “Things heating up with Amir after all?” she asked, holding up a delicate little slip of navy silk and black lace.

  I blushed and quickly plucked the teddy from her hands. Our discussion last night had been a necessary clearing of the air, perhaps, but I intended to quash any further investigations about myself and my djinni. “Things are heating up inside my blouse. If we’re doing this, I mean to get properly cool.”

  Aileen looked at me like she knew precisely what I was avoiding. But we understood each other very well, and she left well enough alone. Not a day had passed that I hadn’t relived that terrible experience of watching Amir die in his brother’s garden, or heard his voice reciting a poem with such urgency in a language I didn’t understand. And then I helped him live, with my blood staining his lips.

  Take her home, brother, he had said. Let her dream she never met me.

  I couldn’t talk about it to either Aileen or Amir, but I had been investigating possible methods for a vessel to quit her djinni. Elspeth, the vampire leader of Friends Against Faust, had promised to help if she could. She said she might be able to find a sahir—a witch—powerful enough to solve my problem.

  Aileen shook loose her thick black hair. “Shall we? If I’m going to die of this heat, let it at least be with a good view.”