Wicked City

by Alaya Johnson

  The rooftop was not so grimy as I feared, though the fire escape creaked and groaned like a graveyard revenant. Aileen laid out her blanket and we collapsed upon it, basking in the breeze and muggy open air.

  Perhaps an hour later, when my skin had begun to turn unpleasantly red, I was startled to hear the sound of someone else banging on the fire escape.

  “You!” shouted Mrs. Brodsky. “There are some men here for you, Zephyr Hollis! They say it is important!”

  Aileen rolled on her side and peered at me. “Men? Sounds promising.”

  I groaned. “It’s probably Amir again, damn him.” I leaned over the edge of the roof. “I told you yesterday, Amir, I’m not making a wish—”

  “Amir? No, no, it’s not your Mohammedan, they say they’re with the police though they don’t look much like police to me—”

  Mrs. Brodsky’s strident voice cut off with a squawk, followed by the thud of booted, male feet greatly taxing the corroded metal of the fire escape.

  “Zephyr Hollis!” called a voice I certainly didn’t recognize. “Please come down immediately.”

  Aileen and I shared a panicked glance. “Did you bring a robe?” I whispered.

  “It was hot, remember? Why would I?”

  “I can’t just go down there in this teddy! Why, you can practically see my nipples through the lace!”

  Aileen squinted. “I think it’s not so much practically, Zeph, dear.”

  I closed my eyes. “Oh, bloody stakes.”

  The fire escape rattled and creaked and groaned again, if anything more ominously than it had before.

  “We hope you’ll come peacefully, Miss Hollis,” said the voice of a second man. “We don’t want to use force, but we will if we have to.”

  “Force!” I said.

  Aileen poked her nose gingerly over the ledge. “They’re coming up, Zeph.”

  “No, stop!” I yelled. The footsteps paused.

  “Miss Hollis, I suggest you make this easy for everyone.”

  “Who says I want to make this easy?” I said.

  “I’ve heard you’re a bit of a firecracker, but now is not the time to make a stand.”

  “Don’t you think you could just … wait in the parlor for me to freshen up? I’m not at my best, at the moment. This weather, you know—”

  “We’re coming up, Miss Hollis.”

  Aileen scooted back. She looked around, peering at the neighboring rooftops and windows. “Do you think someone reported us?” she whispered. “Maybe they’re arresting you for indecent exposure?”

  “You’re just as indecent as I am!”

  Aileen looked at me dubiously. “You know, I’d never noticed that freckle on your left breast before.”

  “This is your teddy.”

  “Why don’t you think I’m wearing it?”

  A pair of hands made themselves visible just beyond the ledge. I looked longingly at the other rooftops, but I didn’t have enough confidence in my vaulting abilities.

  “Well,” Aileen said. “Nothing else for it.”

  “What are you—”

  But Aileen had already stood up on our blanket and was posing with her hand on her hip, as though she were a model for a particularly risqué Harper’s Bazaar. A breeze passed over the rooftop, which lifted her teddy enough for a serious peep show before settling down again.

  She had a point. I scrambled up and stood beside her, posing with perhaps less panache, but equal belligerence. I’m a modern woman, I had told my daddy back in January when he’d caught me in a similar state of dishabille, that time courtesy of Amir.

  I grinned at the thought of what Daddy would make of me now.

  The first man climbed onto the roof. He stopped short and stared until his partner pushed him forward.

  “Ah…” said the first man, and cleared his throat. He was younger than I would have expected, mid-thirties at the most, and quite tall. His partner was a few inches shorter and even narrower, though I could hardly see his face behind his shadowy, wide-brimmed hat.

  “What the devil is this?” said the shadowy one.

  The first man blushed, much to my gratification. “Perhaps we should wait in the parlor.”

  “Oh,” said the second. He clapped his gloved hands and I realized, with a shock, that he was a vampire. I doubted many vampires could claim the distinction of being officers of the law. “Taking your sapphic pleasures, Miss Hollis?”

  Aileen gasped. The tall officer put a calming hand on his vampire partner’s shoulder.

  “Miss Hollis…” He nodded in our general direction without quite looking at either of us. “I trust we’ll see you in the parlor in a few, ah, minutes.”

  And with that, they took themselves back down the fire escape.

  “Well,” Aileen said, after they’d left. “That didn’t go so badly.”

  “You can keep the teddy,” I said.

  * * *

  The two officers were waiting in the parlor when I forced myself to descend ten minutes later, attired in my most conservative outfit. The vampire officer had removed his hat, revealing a thin, characteristically pale face with cheekbones that could slice pastrami. I could tell, from his expression of pinched disapproval, and his partner’s awkward contemplation of the coffee table, that they were attempting to forget the view on the roof.

  “I’m Agent McConnell,” said the tall one, still addressing the coffee table. “This is Zuckerman. We’re from the Other Crimes vice squad. We’d like to ask you a few questions about an ongoing investigation. We can do it here or at the station.”

  “Here, thank you,” I said, trying to hide my surprise. Other Crimes was a special vice squad in the regular police department, tasked with investigating non-human criminal activity. Given the realities of our city, this mostly meant vampires, which made the presence of a vampire officer on the squad particularly interesting.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked, since they both seemed content to watch me in silence.

  McConnell cleared his throat and took a monogrammed cigarette holder from his breast pocket. “Mind if I smoke?” he said, even as Zuckerman was lighting a match for him without so much as glancing at his partner. The effect was one of imposing harmony, a synchronicity of purpose between the officers that felt somehow intimidating. McConnell lit his cigarette and blew a long plume of smoke just barely to my left. I wrinkled my nose and pushed the ashtray conspicuously closer to his elbow. Mrs. Brodsky would blame me if any ashes dusted her precious table.

  “Mort,” McConnell said, slipping the cigarette box back into his pocket, “I think you had better explain matters to the young lady?”

  Zuckerman’s pinched lips receded even further into his face, so he looked like he had bitten a sour lemon. I wondered if he was annoyed with McConnell, but the glare he fixed on me as he leaned forward in his chair quickly made the object of his ire quite clear.

  “We’d like to question you about a matter that occurred this past January.”

  I stopped breathing—just as well, since McConnell chose that moment to exhale his particularly malodorous cigarette into my face. January. The month haunted me, no matter how hard I tried to move on.

  “What happened in January?” I asked, as calmly as I could manage.

  McConnell tilted his head and shrugged at Zuckerman as he tapped his cigarette in the ashtray. Inexplicably, Zuckerman smiled.

  “A major felony,” the vampire officer said, in a tone dry as tinder.

  “Felony?”

  McConnell shook his head sadly. “Afraid so. We have reason to believe that you at one point harbored an underage vampire. A boy eleven years of age, according to our records. That’s a class A felony.”

  “Minimum fifteen years,” said Zuckerman, helpfully.

  Harboring an underage vampire? Of all my less-than-legal activities this past January, saving Judah’s life had risked the largest consequences, but I had barely spent a minute in the past six months worrying about it. I had assumed—st
upidly, it appeared—that no one would ever find out.

  “Mind telling me where you heard this, ah, scurrilous rumor about me and this boy?”

  McConnell stubbed out his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, liberally dusting the tabletop in the process. “Mort did. I don’t have his contacts, of course. But he’s sure.”

  “Sure?” I repeated faintly.

  Zuckerman crossed his arms over his chest. “Your face is well-known, Miss Hollis.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Your type almost never do,” Zuckerman said. “You didn’t think about the stigma the rest of us suffer when an underage vampire gets loose. Now the only question we have is where you’re keeping him now.”

  I cringed inside, but attempted to make a good show of it. “I’ve never had anything to do with an underage vampire! In this neighborhood, child vampires aren’t so rare, anyhow. Surely you’ve heard of the Turn Boys?”

  I might have missed my calling as a stage actress.

  “True, we have heard of the underage vampire gang,” said McConnell. “But Mort thinks this is a separate matter.”

  “And Troy Kavanagh’s Defenders popped those boys in January,” Zuckerman said.

  “So maybe this boy died along with the others.”

  “Miss Hollis,” McConnell said, “we dropped by to inform you that you are our primary suspect in this matter.”

  I swallowed. “So, are you going to arrest me?”

  “Right now, you’re just a suspect,” McConnell said. “But we’re going to be investigating extensively.”

  “Brilliant,” I said.

  Zuckerman made the sour-lemon face again, though he clasped his hands together in something like glee.

  “We think so,” he said. He and McConnell stood at the same moment, again without the slightest apparent need for communication.

  “Good day, Miss Hollis,” McConnell said, replacing his hat with that infuriatingly absent-minded, genial air. “We’ll see ourselves out. Until next time.”

  I wished with all my heart that there wouldn’t be a next time. It occurred to me that I could also wish on a djinni. But even with a felony hanging over my head I didn’t take the possibility seriously. My skin tingled at just the thought of Amir. That was more than enough reason to refuse to contemplate any wishes but my own.

  * * *

  A half-hour later, intending to clear my head with fresh air, I opened the door to find Amir waiting for me on the stoop. He held a letter and a bouquet of lilacs. I froze with my hand on the knob, and wondered for a fleeting moment if I could duck back into the hallway without him noticing me. My heart—already strained from my encounter with the detectives—seemed to stutter in my chest. Six months, and this fire-breathing, spendthrift, amoral djinni still had the power to do this to me.

  And how he knew it.

  Amir grinned and stood up. He held out the flowers. I caught my hands trembling and held them rigidly at my thighs.

  “Are those…”

  “For you,” Amir said, “from the mayor, of all people.”

  I leaned against the doorjamb. My knees felt suspiciously weak. “The … what on earth, Amir?”

  He shrugged, and his grin faded. “Far be it from me to question your choice of beaus. Though I must say, this doesn’t read much like a love letter. In some trouble, Zephyr? You know, I could help—”

  “Let me see that,” I said, snatching both the flowers and the small note. My fingers brushed his for a moment, sending my stomach somewhere in the vicinity of my feet.

  I, of course, gave no outward sign of my discomfiture. I was quite as cool as Amir as I opened the folded note on the mayor’s personal stationery.

  Miss Hollis,

  You seem to be in difficulties. Should you like to get out of them, stop by my office—I’m sure you know where it is—around four tomorrow afternoon?

  Regards,

  James Walker

  “I need a drink,” I said.

  “Before noon?”

  “I’m sure it’s midnight somewhere.”

  Amir settled against the doorjamb and held out his hand. “In Shadukiam, perhaps?” he said, a casual invitation. The strange otherworld that Amir and his djinni brothers called home had a certain appeal.

  I considered—which is to say, I fought strenuously against my better judgment. “The Faust evidentiary hearings are at four. Friends Against Faust actually has a speaking invitation, I can’t possibly miss it. This is our best chance to derail the vote next week.”

  “So we’ll be back by four.”

  “There are two officers with the Other vice squad who are trying to throw me in jail. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to be seen with you.”

  “Is that bigotry I smell, Miss Hollis?”

  I twisted my lips. “No, it’s prudence.

  “You can’t imagine the police would ever come after me.”

  “If there is any justice in this world—”

  “Zeph, you naïve little thing.”

  I scowled. “You can’t fight for justice unless you believe in it.”

  “And I can think of no better way to advance the causes of truth and justice than by going back to my place for a little judicious lawbreaking.”

  “Please tell me,” said Aileen, walking behind me in the doorway, “that this law includes the Eighteenth Amendment?”

  “What else?” Amir said. “Like to come to Shadukiam with us?”

  Aileen giggled beneath the force of his smile. “I’ve heard so much about it, how could I refuse—”

  I turned on her. “‘No’ would be a start.”

  “Why would I want to say that?” she said, all innocence.

  I groaned. “I hope you have very good liquor,” I said.

  Amir brushed my fingertips with his. “Oh, habibti,” he said, not quite smiling, “I should have known you were a natural.”

  I drew back so abruptly I nearly careened into Aileen. “A natural what? Drunk?”

  He shook his head. “Lawbreaker. Now, shall we?”

  Aileen was nodding and I was considering the very clear not-goodness of this idea even as he blinked and the world wobbled and faded and then I sank to my knees on a mosaic floor, with the smell of roses strong in my nostrils and fountains of water tinkling nearby.

  A breeze blew over me, carrying with it the scent of oranges and olives and sun-kissed fields. I felt cool for the first time in a month and that, I decided, was worth the annoyance of spending an extended period of time with Amir.

  “Zeph,” said Aileen from a few feet away. “I cannot believe you didn’t take me here before.”

  I grimaced and forced myself upright. Some trips were worse than others, but I’d developed a deep loathing for teleportation in the past six months. “I’ll let you know when I open my other universe travel service, Aileen.”

  Though as far as I knew this was the first time she had teleported, Aileen didn’t appear at all troubled. Amir had deposited us in a courtyard centered around a golden fountain. On the marble flagstones were two low-lying divans and large brocade cushions for relaxation. She was smiling up at him and arranging herself on the divan closest to the fountain. This was Amir’s brother’s palace, the only part of Shadukiam that I’d had the privilege to see. It was fantastically ostentatious, with a series of fountains and gardens, honeycombed with arcaded corridors and towers. Redolent pink and orange roses climbed arches inlaid with mosaic of lapis lazuli and jade. I took a deep, heady breath—I could never deny that wealth had its pleasures.

  “So what refreshment suits you?” Amir asked, removing his jacket and sitting on the intricately inlaid mosaic lip of the fountain.

  Aileen kicked off her shoes. “Sidecar,” she said.

  Amir turned to me, and I discovered that the sight of him stripped to a waistcoat and sharp-tailored pants had momentarily rendered me speechless.

  “Same,” I finally managed.

  I didn’t know if he noticed; he tu
gged a little at his lapel and then shook his head before walking away. I sat on the divan next to Aileen, and had just begun to relax into the cushions when he returned with the drinks.

  “Did you make them?” I asked, surprised, as he handed me a frosted tumbler.

  He smiled and sat on the edge of the fountain. Water spray beaded his slicked-back hair, but he didn’t seem to notice. I took a judicious sip.

  “Goodness, I don’t mix the drinks, Zephyr. What do you take me for?”

  “A wastrel?” I said.

  “As you so often accuse me. But surely you must make allowances for a prince.”

  “He has a point,” said Aileen.

  I scowled at her, but without much conviction. Having gotten drunk for the first time not six months before, I was hardly what anyone would call an expert on spirits (well, not those kind of spirits). The only liquors I could identify by taste were cheap whiskey and bathtub gin, neither of which would dare offend the inside of such fine crystal. This smelled like the breeze from the orange fields outside his brother Kardal’s palace; it tasted even better, with surprisingly pleasant hints of bitter and sweet. It hardly burned at all, which I had not known was possible.

  “Well, your houris mix excellent drinks,” I said, raising the glass to him.

  He just smiled and waved his hand. A shot glass filled with deep amber liquid and a single cube of ice dropped with a slight clink on the mosaic tiles beside him.

  “A toast,” he said, taking his drink.

  “To unearned luxury?” I said.

  Aileen sighed. “Give it a rest, will you? Not everything has to be a suffragette rally.”

  “I was going to propose,” said Amir, with such mildness that I felt, for a moment, quite churlish, “to pleasantly boring days. May we have many more of them.”

  “Amen,” said Aileen fervently, and drained half her glass.

  I licked some of the sugar off the rim. “We’re too late for today,” I said. “But perhaps it’s not too much to hope for.” I paused. “Providing Beau Jimmy can actually get the police off my back.”

  “Not to claim undue familiarity with the mayor of your fine city,” he said, “but do you really imagine that his offer won’t come with strings?”