Elspeth smiled ruefully. “You and Iris can be remarkably tenacious, really. Yes, I know it would be best for us if it turned out to be the Faust itself. But wishing doesn’t make it so. The article is right, Faust has been available to vampires in Germany far longer than it has here. If the effects are cumulative, there should be dozens dead across a dozen cities, not ten dead from one Faust stall on one night.”
Murder, then. It was the most likely possibility, as Elspeth said. I sighed and sucked down the last of my lemonade, leaving the chunky mint leaf pulp in the bottom.
“How do they get so much mint in there?” I asked.
“Mortar and pestle,” Elspeth said, not meeting my eyes. “That always tasted of summer to me, when I was alive.”
“You’re still alive.”
She snorted. “And all my mother’s food now tastes of rust and dirt. You don’t know how lucky you are, Zephyr, to be human. No, don’t argue, of course I still believe in the cause. We want equality—both for those who embrace this life and for those like me.”
Those like who? I wanted to ask, but I had never seen Elspeth quite so contemplative or raw before. I knew that many vampires lived with the regret of their condition. Elsepth was right: this didn’t diminish in any way the need for their fight for equality, but it did sometimes fill me with this aching sadness. Thanks to whatever my daddy had done when Mama was still pregnant with me, I was immune to all vampire bites. That fact had saved Amir’s life, but had also turned me into his living vessel, a bond that would last until my death. Unless I found some unorthodox means of breaking it.
“So you said a woman here could help me?” I asked.
Elspeth blinked as though I had startled her. “Sofia,” she said. “She made you the limon nana.”
I turned around to study the woman pulling a tray of pastries from an oven. Sofia was younger than I’d imagined a famous sahir would be, a robust woman of around fifty, with wiry arms and sun-baked skin. Her smock was liberally coated with flour, and she had a streak or two in her dark hair.
Sofia looked reassuring. I had a hard time distrusting anyone who baked. Memories of my mama’s kitchen, I suppose. As though she could sense our topic of conversation, Sofia looked over. Elspeth nodded and waved her hand at me.
“This is the one I told you about,” she said.
Sofia came over a moment later with a plate of pastries. I recognized none of them, but just the smell made me painfully conscious of my lack of breakfast. She smiled and gestured to the plate.
“For you,” she said. She spoke with a thick accent, but her meaning was plain enough. I grabbed the nearest item: a triangular layered wedge, sticky to the touch, that crunched with some unidentifiable nut and melted with honey and a hundred other flavors on my tongue. I might have groaned.
She laughed and clapped her hands. “Good,” she said. “My baklava is best, I always say.”
Baklava. I filed that word away for future use. Perhaps I could ask Amir to magic me an entire box of them the next time we were in Shadukiam. Then I swallowed the last of the baklava and remembered that until I made a wish, my presence in Shadukiam would cause seismic disturbances.
Elspeth regarded the pastries with a twist to her lips that could be construed as derision, but I suspected was regret. She and Sofia spoke for a minute or so in their own language while I tried another pastry: this time a honey-soaked confection that resembled a bird’s nest.
“Sofia asks why you would capture a djinni you don’t want.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
More conversation. “How could you do such a thing by accident? Djinn don’t often reveal themselves to humans willingly.”
I flushed—the heat, of course. “It’s complicated. I helped him out of some trouble and now I am his vessel and I would very much like to get out of the obligation.”
I watched Sofia take this in—both my own words and Elspeth’s translation. “You make wish?” she asked, without waiting for Elspeth.
Her direct gaze made my skin prickle. “No,” I said hoarsely. “It’s been six months, but I haven’t yet.”
She nodded. “Then is possible. Hard. But possible.”
For the first time since the vice squad found me in my unmentionables on the roof, I felt the tonic of pure relief. Perhaps I would find a way out of all this, after all.
“What do I need to do?” I asked.
The two women conversed, their voices low though no one else could possibly hear or understand them. Finally, Elspeth nodded. “She says to come here this Sunday night. She will need that much time to prepare. She asks for fifty dollars—which is much less than what she should charge for something like this. Can you get it?”
I had exactly forty-one dollars in my steamer trunk and no chance of earning any more for another week, but I nodded. Aileen was flush these days from her work for the Society ladies; she would lend me ten dollars if I asked. “I can, I promise,” I said.
“And Sofia says you must know that this will be a summoning. She will call on a power—a demon or something like it. The demon will ask you for something in exchange, and you must have things to give it. Otherwise, it could destroy you.”
I knew a little about this from Daddy. Enough to be afraid. The older woman trained her clear gaze firmly on me, as though she was judging my suitability for market day. I halfway expected that she would cluck her tongue and shake her head and say, “No, no, that one’s too skinny—you take fifty cents?” But she leaned forward, elbows on the stained wood table, and raised her dark eyebrows.
“Always need same thing,” she said, her English perfectly clear. “The thing you not want to lose.”
Elspeth cleared her throat. “Your offerings must be precious to you, otherwise the magic will go badly awry.”
As quickly as the relief had come, it vanished again, replaced by the now-familiar churning in my gut. “And then the demon will take it away,” I said.
Elspeth twisted her bloodless lips, and didn’t bother translating. “Wouldn’t be much of a spell if it didn’t.”
Another customer entered the shop and Sofia stood with a nod in my direction. “Remember, Sunday,” she said. “Fifty dollars!”
“I’ll be here,” I said. All I had to do was find something to offer a demon.
Elspeth stood soon after and I followed suit. I waited until she was safely attired in her long, dark coat and gloves. Her hat resembled those worn by beekeepers, with a modest brim and layers of gauze draped over the face. Only once she was safely attired did we depart.
“You’ll tell me if you learn anything about the dead vampires?” she said.
“Of course,” I said. Though I suspected that my avenues for investigation were limited.
“Good luck, then. If Madison is responsible, I hope you find some evidence. You’ll be there for the Monday City Hall picket? Iris says that so far we’ve collected three thousand signatures.”
“That many? Admit that her tenacity can be useful,” I said.
I thought she smiled, though I couldn’t quite see her face. “You both can be useful,” she said. “I must get back. I’m drafting a letter to the Harlem aldermen. Keep me informed, Zephyr.”
I thanked her again for her help with Sofia, but she merely waved a brusque hand and walked north on Washington Street, toward Rector. Swaddled as she was, her status was unmistakable. I ached to see how people stared and avoided her before she disappeared from view, but Elspeth never gave even the slightest indication that she noticed.
CHAPTER FIVE
The offices of the New-Star Ledger occupied the southern half of the fourteenth floor of the Fuller Building, colloquially known as the Flatiron in recognition of its peculiar wedge shape. The newsroom made do with the layout, with desks haphazardly abutting the walls of a series of increasingly narrow corridors. They ended at the point where two desks could fit with just enough space for a person turned sideways. The terminus was a wooden door with two opaque glass panels and an open
transom through which I supposed journalistic hopefuls could throw their screeds. But I wouldn’t envy any transom-thrower at the moment, as the editor in chief himself was engaged in a loud argument to which the entire office seemed to be paying studious attention.
I looked around and caught the eye of the newsman at the desk closest to the door. He had his reporter’s notebook open before him, but didn’t appear to be looking at it.
“Hello,” I half-whispered.
“You want the chief, this isn’t a good time.”
“Lily Harding, actually.”
He leaned back in his chair and nodded his head at the door. “I’d give it another ten minutes,” he said.
Oh dear. It didn’t sound like things were going well in there. The yelling continued.
“If I’d wanted a puff piece on sucker marriage, I would have called the Bowery Mission. You’re supposed to be reporting on the murders—”
“Rodney Kilpatrick’s wife—”
“Doesn’t matter a fig to anyone with a pulse! Get back out there, shake down your sources and find me a story. More blood and fewer grieving widows, got it? My officer down in Battery Park says a few others got taken into the morgue last night.”
More murders? I thought. I remembered, with a shudder, Archibald Madison’s words to his followers: whatever it takes. Had someone followed his advice?
“They’re not letting anyone into the morgue, chief. It might just be a rumor.”
“Then find someone—something who watched them die! Find a witness—heck, find me some popper skin, and I’ll forget you ever turned this in.”
“There’s a rumor the vampires didn’t pop,” Lily said, her tone an odd mixture of defiance and deference.
The man gave a bark of a laugh. “If that’s true and you can prove it, I’ll give you Billy’s desk.”
The reporter to my right jerked, nearly crashing into the wall. “Hey!” he said.
“Back to work, Billy,” bellowed the voice from the office. “And you, Harding, twenty-three skidoo. You got this job because of your sucker sources, so you had better make them sing.”
The door opened a second later. Lily clutched a few typewritten pages, her face nearly as white as her knuckles. She stopped short when she saw me.
“Zephyr,” she said. “You’re early.” I couldn’t tell if this was an annoyance or a relief.
I opened my mouth, then paused. “Just got back from meeting with the mayor,” I said, loudly enough for all interested parties to overhear. “Heard a few things you might want to know.”
Lily’s eyes widened ever so slightly, but she gave no other indication of her surprise. “Great news. Shall we go someplace quieter?”
I nodded and followed behind her while the other reporters in the office stared after us, the speculation about my identity and what business I could possibly have with the mayor practically written on their foreheads. Lily headed straight out of the office and into the elevator before she allowed herself to relax against the wrought-iron and mirrored backing.
“Now I remember why I’d escaped to the Hamptons,” Lily said. “I just can’t tell what Breslin wants some days. How much of that did you hear?”
“He doesn’t approve of widows?”
Lily sighed. The elevator operator pulled open the doors to the lobby and we stepped out. “He doesn’t approve of sucker widows.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Coffee. I need a drink and there’s a place around the corner.”
Unsurprisingly, given the types that tended to rent office space in the Flatiron, the shop on Twenty-third Street was genteel, discreet, and perfectly happy to add a shot of whiskey to any drink for a bill slipped under the table. Lily drank her hot toddy like it wasn’t ninety-five degrees outside, while I opted for a cool drink and more pastries.
Lily relaxed with something closer to her usual grace against the chair. “Meeting with the mayor, eh? Nice one, Zeph.”
“I actually did, would you believe it. Yesterday.”
“A picket line does not an appointment make.”
“I had a handwritten invitation!”
“Let me see it, then.”
“I’m not carrying it around like a love-token. The Hamptons really did turn you screwy.”
“What would Gentleman Jimmy want to do with the vampire suffragette?”
“We negotiated an exchange of services,” I said. “I, ah, ran into some trouble with the law and he offered to help me in exchange for an introduction.”
This explanation nearly made Lily’s eyebrows shoot up into her forehead. “A speakeasy raid?”
“Nothing that exciting,” I said. “Just a misunderstanding related to that matter in January.” I hadn’t told Lily about rescuing Judah, and this did not seem like a good moment to explain. “In any case, it turns out the mayor wants me to introduce him to Nicholas.”
“No! Is the devil-boy still alive?”
I shrugged. “He got away,” I said. I didn’t add that I had saved his life so he could do so.
“And now Walker wants you to find him again. Whyever for?”
Now came the tricky part. “He wants to see if Nicholas has any of the original bottles of Faust,” I said. “He suspects that the original brew was more potent than the one currently on the market.”
“And he wants Nicholas,” Lily repeated, flatly. “Why not give him Amir?”
Either out of kindness or a sense of self-preservation, Lily had declined to identify Amir as the original distributor in her big article last January. She had referred vaguely to a well-placed international investor, mysterious to everyone but Rinaldo himself. “I’d rather not,” I said firmly. “I’m attempting to break the bond between us, and any further complications would only muddy things.” I didn’t bother to explain that I also was disinclined to sabotage my friends’ campaign.
“So the mayor doesn’t know you know the original distributor?” she said. “An intrepid reporter could get quite a scoop with that information.”
“Lily Harding, if you tell Jimmy Walker anything at all, I swear I will never give you another story again in my life.”
Lily leaned forward. “All right, no need to get the vapors. Do you want the whole place to hear you? Never mind, I’m bluffing. I can’t mention Amir now any more than I could last January—I’d sooner claim the Tooth Fairy brought Faust over than a genie. I’d be laughed out of the office.”
I slumped over in my chair. “The myopia of your peers is a profound relief,” I said.
“Still, do you think Nicholas has the original bottles?”
“No.”
“Then why do you think the mayor will help you?
“He did promise.”
Lily gasped. “You don’t want him to find it!”
“What if my help wins him the vote this Monday?”
“I doubt you’d manage very well in prison.”
“There’s just so much … The issue isn’t simple, that’s all. Look at me, I’m hardly the mascot for temperance. Who am I to declare that vampires have to follow an example I can’t even keep?”
“Nuance? From the vampire suffragette herself? I think you might have revoked your radical credentials.”
“That is a gross caricature,” I said.
Lily shrugged. “I’m a reporter.”
“Your forthright moral stance, Lily, it’s why I like to keep you around.”
“Likewise, darling.”
We raised our half-drunk glasses in an ironic toast. “Speaking of which,” I said. “Did your troll of a boss mention something about more killings? Faust, again?”
“I can’t confirm it. Something definitely happened in a blind pig in Little Italy last night, but right now all I have are reports of a fight. The police scraped a few poppers off the tarmac, sure, but officials aren’t talking and I can’t tell if that’s because something strange happened or because everyone’s still gone mum about what happened on Sunday.”
I
shook the ice at the bottom of my glass. “Little Italy … where?”
Lily pulled out her reporter’s notebook and flipped through it. “Broome Street, according to Breslin.”
I had a flash of the Beast’s Rum, unexpectedly resurrected. “That’s where Nicholas and the others used to drink, you know.”
“And St. Marks is where they used to deliver,” Lily said.
“That’s one heck of a coincidence,” I said.
She tapped her pen on the table. “Not neighborhoods I’m inclined to nose around in myself, but shall we try together? By gum, I’ll give old Breslin a story he can choke on.”
* * *
In the cab ride on the way over, Lily told me everything she’d already learned about the incident on Sunday night. She’d managed to gather more concrete information than any of the reports I’d read so far, but didn’t want to publish until she found something really damning. “Like the coroner’s reports,” she said. But since at the moment the basement of the Pathological Wing might as well be Grant’s Tomb, she was willing to pursue other angles.
Ten vampires died that night, all after after drinking Faust that came from a single bottle delivered earlier that evening to a stall that was seedy even by that neighborhood’s standards. Its clientele were mostly Jewish, with a smattering of Irish and other immigrants. Several of the dead vampires had been identified, including Rodney Kilpatrick, whose unfortunate widow had been the proximate cause of Lily’s row with her editor.
Sixth Street was bustling—street hawkers fought with bums for the attention of passersby, and they all avoided the packed mess of jalopies and streetcars. The summer stink was high and almost overpowering; Lily untied her scarf and clamped its fringed end tightly to her face.
“Now I remember why I avoid this place. Ugh, there’s a turd on the sidewalk.”
I gave her a sideways smirk and shook my head. “Be grateful you don’t live on Ludlow.”
“I don’t know how you can stand it.”
“I’ll let you know when I come into my family fortune, Miss Harding. Now, where exactly was this Faust stall?”
Wicked City Page 9
