“Are you?”
Fear compelled honesty. “A little?”
“Then accept your lot and make a wish! You endanger more than yourself and Amir the longer you wait. This power we wield is not entirely in our control. There are too many paths it can take out in your world.”
“Kardal, you say I’ve held out the longest of any vessel. But am I the first to try to break away?”
He held himself still, even for a djinni. “No,” he said.
“Did any succeed?” I asked.
“One,” he said. “He lived a long, happy life.”
I felt relief like blood returning to a sleeping limb. “And his djinni?”
Kardal looked unmistakably bleak. “The hundred and fortieth son of Kashkash, and my brother two before me, has not returned to Shadukiam in the five centuries since his exile, and none of us remaining may speak his whole name, nor remember his fire lest we risk the same fate.”
I felt as if someone had slapped me. All I could hear was a high ringing. All I could smell was Kardal: smoke and ash and charred earth—not nearly so sweet as his brother.
“Consider carefully, vessel,” said Kardal in my ear. “Perhaps you don’t see him so very differently from how he sees you?”
Kardal vanished before I could summon the courage to ask what he meant. I half fell on the highest step, my legs shaking too badly to hold me up. Aileen had pressed herself into the door.
“Those brothers!” she said.
I forced myself to take deep, calming breaths. “He knows about the sahir!”
“The witch? What are you going to do?”
I stared at her. Forcing Amir into a lifetime of exile seemed like a harsh bargain. Assuming Kardal was telling the truth. “God, I don’t know,” I said.
Down on the sidewalk and to our left, something metallic crashed against the basement fence. I dragged the back of my hand quickly across my eyes.
Agent Zuckerman gave me a cold nod. With the sun on its way down, he could have passed for human in his wide-brimmed fedora and suit. I could barely move. Would he arrest me now, with a vampire murderer on the loose and two angry djinn demanding my fealty?
But his hand was on the rear tire of my bicycle, and his expression was rueful, not triumphant.
“Special delivery from the vice squad,” he said, nodding at the bicycle.
“You’re…”
“Giving it back,” he said. “And informing you that our department is following other leads.” He gave me a speculative look.
“Apart from me?”
He shrugged. “You’re still high on our list, Miss Hollis. Good day.”
He started to walk away and then paused. “You do keep interesting company though. Having business with certain kinds of Others isn’t always a good idea.”
Consorting with a djinni? Surely that couldn’t be illegal. “Don’t sound so excited,” I said.
He fixed me with that intense, abstracted stare, as though I were more statue than human. “Oh, I’m going to get you for something, Miss Hollis. The way you do business.” He tipped his hat at me. “Be seeing you,” he said.
He had a spring in his step as he ambled back down the street. I closed my eyes.
“Maybe I should make that wish,” I said.
“Haven’t I been telling you so!”
She had. And it was time I decided what to do about it, once and for all.
* * *
Something rapped at our window. Aileen snored on, but I hadn’t been able to sleep very well in the heavy, wet heat. And there was something else—a smell that lingered in the still night air that hadn’t been there a moment before. Like a wet cave and metal and rot. I knew that smell; it kept me quiet on the bed, my breathing steady as I ever so slowly reached for the blessed blade that I had lately kept beneath my pillow.
The rapping came again, quiet but deliberate. Then the smell grew just a little stronger, and I knew that it had climbed over the sill. I turned on the bed, restlessly, as though in sleep. The vampire knelt beside me. For a kiss, for a peek of my breast through the lace of an oversized teddy? I didn’t wait to find out. I sat up and lunged forward in one smooth motion, surprising the vampire into staggering backward against the wall. I snapped open the silver blade, pressed it into his neck, rubbed at my sleep-fogged eyes with one hand—
“Nicholas!” I said.
The very same grinned, a familiar expression that both pleased me and reminded me to be wary.
“You’re a little violent for charity, you know that?” he said. “You want to put that down? It might make me excited.”
I moved my arm as though I’d been burned. I sheathed the knife in a quick motion and tossed it on the bed. Perhaps not my smartest idea, but I’d asked him to find me, and it would be a poor show of confidence to keep a knife between us. To my left, Aileen jerked upright and cursed.
“What the hell is he doing here?”
The last (and first) time Aileen had met Nicholas, he’d been dueling with his father while she cowered in a corner.
“Your Zephyr asked me,” Nicholas said, and laughed. Nicholas had the voice of an angel condemning you to death—inhumanly beautiful and terrifying.
“Zephyr—” Aileen’s voice held a warning.
“We’ll go to the hallway,” I said quickly, and Nicholas allowed me to push him out the door.
“What’s this about?” I whispered. It was dark, but I could see him clearly in the moonlight. He looked just the same as I remembered him: apple-red cheeks, too-bright eyes, light brown hair in a deceptively boyish cut. He was several inches shorter than me but I never felt the advantage. When Rinaldo turned Nicholas, he did more than just preserve a beautiful adolescent voice. He warped his son’s adolescent mind, twisted it into a shape that was part madness, part genius, and all dangerous.
It was lucky that Nicholas liked me.
“I liked your note,” he said. “I read it myself.”
“That’s great, Nicholas! Has someone been teaching you?”
He shrugged. “Charlie and me’ve been practicing. He knew a bit more, so.”
It was strange that I even cared. After all, I’d only started to tutor Nicholas in an effort to spy on his gang of child vampires, and, by proxy, his mob-boss father, Rinaldo.
“So, Charity, rumor has it you’ve been nosing around Faust again,” Nicholas said, leaning with cat-like grace against the wall.
“People have been dying.”
“Suckers have been dying. You care?” He laughed again. “Of course you do. Even if you and your Defender friends kill a few of us yourselves every now and then.”
“You wanted me to kill your—Rinaldo.”
“Of course I did.”
“So do you know anything about this? Did more die last night at the Rum?”
He shrugged. “I know plenty, I know nothing. How much will you give to find out, Charity? What’s it worth?”
Careful now. “What do you want?”
His mouth twisted and he leaned forward—just close enough for me to smell the hint of Faust on his breath. “A working dick and somewhere to stick it,” he said.
I froze. I would have choked, but I had that much self-control. I wondered if he was having another one of his fits—succumbing to a madness that took him into another world. But no, he grinned, perfectly lucid.
He giggled and slapped his thigh. “See your face!” he said. “You should see your face, Charity!”
“Nicholas, tell me something useful or go,” I snapped. “I need to sleep.”
He nodded and leaned back against the wall. “The poison caught two of us drinking at the Rum last night. One died right there—oh, you should have seen it, Charity. Shook like a doll in a dog’s mouth. Then he started to upchuck, blood and blood and something tar black. Then he fell into the mess and died.”
“You mean he exsanguinated?”
“Exsanguinated,” Nicholas mocked, exaggerating my diction. “No, the sucker didn’t pop, and yeah
I’m sure he was a sucker and yeah I’m sure he’s dead. Just lost it all over the floor and his skin turned the color of a gravestone and he died.”
My skin felt the shock before the rest of me. Hot and cold chased each other down my arms and stomach. Blood rushed to my cheeks. I thought, So it’s really true. They are turning human before they die.
But I couldn’t be sure of that on just Nicholas’s word alone. Not yet. “And the other?” I asked.
“Dead too. Just took longer. Long enough to get an ambulance to take him. City won’t say nothing about them now.”
“So how do you know he’s dead?”
For a moment Nicholas looked like the thirty-year-old man he probably was. “Because he was one of mine, Charity. He escaped that pit of hell with your crazy daddy and Defenders, but he gets caught by a bad bottle of Faust. I trailed the ambulance. They only take corpses to that part of Bellevue.”
I couldn’t quite bring myself to offer condolences. I remembered what the Turn Boys had done to this neighborhood, back in their heyday. Still, his grief was real.
“I got the bottle,” he said. “Something funny about it.”
“You drank—”
“I’m not stupid, Charity. Just smelled it. Something funny. I gotta know who did this. Me and Charlie, we gotta know. This isn’t right. A fight, that’s one thing, but you can’t go around poisoning people’s liquor, killing whoever happens to drink it. That’s wrong and I’m going to make them pay.”
I shuddered. I doubted Nicholas would leave much when he was through with his revenge.
“I’ll help you catch them,” I said, “if you just do me one favor.”
“A favor?”
“Do you have any of the original bottles of Faust?”
His bright eyes widened. “Why, you want some?”
“Just tell me.”
“Nah, I don’t. Nobody does, far as I know, except maybe that nigger genie.”
In the interest of civility, I overlooked the slur. “So I need you to go to the mayor and tell him that.”
He whistled. “The mayor! Next you’ll be asking me to drop in on Hoover! Flying high, are you, Charity?”
“Even you can’t be ignorant of the vote this Monday. The mayor wants to know about the first week of distribution. If you go to him and tell him that you don’t have anything, then I’ll help you.”
“Why not just send him your genie?” he asked.
Damn. I’d been hoping that Nicholas hadn’t quite figured out my relationship with Amir. “He’s not my genie,” I lied. “I haven’t seen him since I last saw you. You’re the one I can find, so you’re the one who I need to meet the mayor.”
He looked away from me and out the soot-encrusted window at the end of the hall. “And what do you get out of this, Charity?” he asked softly. “Beau Jimmy made you his beau?”
“Beau Jimmy has offered to help me out of some trouble in exchange,” I said. I couldn’t possibly explain that I was in danger of being arrested for saving the life of the same young boy that he and his gang had turned in the first place.
But Nicholas just shrugged. “If you say so,” he said. “I can do that. But I want something too, Charity.”
“I already said I’d help you!”
“I don’t give a shit. Only thing I care about is getting into that morgue. You help me do that, I talk to the mayor. I gotta see Kevin with my own eyes.”
“Why, Nicholas?”
“He talked before he went. He vomited like the other one, but not so much, and then he turned to me and I held him and he was breathing all in and out and I swear I felt his heart beat. And he said ‘Got turned back, Nick,’ and then his eyes rolled back and he didn’t speak no more. And here’s the thing: I’ve never heard of a sucker ever dying without popping.”
“Maybe this poison is different,” I said, though I didn’t really believe it.
“Maybe they ain’t suckers when they die,” he said. “You can ask the mayor to get us in.”
“Maybe I could ask Mrs. Brandon,” I said slowly. “But you have to talk to the mayor tomorrow, got it?”
“How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
“You call me Charity, don’t you? I promise. And I want to see those bodies, too.”
My curiosity, if nothing else, convinced him. “Then I’ll give Jimmy a big surprise tomorrow,” he said. His mouth twisted. “And if you’re lying…”
From the look in his eyes, I wouldn’t fare much better than the actual killer. I backed away. “I promise. In the meantime, could you give me the bottle you stole? I’ll see what I can learn.”
Nicholas gave me that childish smile that was anything but innocent. “You’ll get it tomorrow,” he said. “Good to see you again, Charity.”
“You too, Nick,” I said, and surprised myself by meaning it.
I showed him to the roof since I didn’t want Aileen to start screaming. I hoped she would be asleep, but when I came back inside, I found her sitting on my bed.
“Strange friends, Zeph,” she said, balefully.
“If someone’s poisoning vampires, I have to know.”
She sighed. “You know Judith Brandon?”
“Were you listening?”
“Of course I was.”
“Judith met me with the mayor,” I said. “She mentioned something about the Spiritualist Society.”
Aileen yawned and toddled back to her bed. “She’s one of the regulars at my readings.”
“Really?” I feigned surprise, remembering Amir’s abashed confession over dinner yesterday.
“Don’t sound so surprised. There’s lots of respectable ladies at my meetings.”
“And she wants to talk to the dead?”
“Don’t they all?”
“Anyone in particular?”
“Her husband.”
“Has he said anything?” I felt awkward even asking. Aileen and I had a tacit agreement not to talk about the details of her work at the Society.
“Not a bleeding word. I’m starting to think he’s left her for his mistress in Mallorca and she just comes to keep up appearances, but I do what I’m told.”
I tried to keep silent, but the words came out anyway. “Aileen, have you thought you might—”
“I’m having my biggest night yet, tomorrow. ‘LEGENDARY IRISH SEER PEERS THROUGH THE MISTS TO ANSWER LIFE’S QUESTIONS,’ or so say the flyers. I know Judith will be there, probably a few other people who might know a thing or two about these dead vampires. You want to come?”
I smiled, though I felt like I’d lost. “Sure, Aileen. That sounds like a great idea.”
I had a hard time falling asleep. I rehearsed all the possibilities for the next few important days until I felt exhausted just thinking of it: Aileen’s séance Thursday, the mayor’s dinner Saturday, Sofia’s summoning Sunday, and—of course—the Faust vote Monday.
I didn’t fall back asleep until dawn, and when I did it was to dream of rose gardens, and fountains that filled the air with the gentle sound of water falling onto marble tile.
CHAPTER SIX
“Zephyr,” said Harry, entering my room early the next morning without so much as a knock, “I found something in your cellar.”
Right on his heels came Mrs. Brodsky. “Miss Zephyr!” she said, shrill as a shrieking cat. “This is the last straw! How many times have I said, no males allowed? First those police, and now this! This is a clean establishment—”
I fumbled for a robe. “Mrs. Brodsky, I assure you—”
“No, Zeph, you should come look,” Harry said. He grabbed my elbow and Mrs. Brodsky actually smacked him.
“Off, off!”
Aileen groaned and put the pillow over her head. “Zephyr, if your life must be insane, does it always have to wake me up?”
I grimaced. “Harry, you couldn’t have waited downstairs?”
“The cellar, Zeph,” he said, tugging again. “You’ve got to look.”
“This man … your beau cannot just
waltz—”
“He’s my brother,” I said, at the same time Harry rolled his eyes, turned around and said, “She’s my sister, you old prude.”
“You have a brother?” she said.
Harry took off his cap and bowed far too extravagantly. “Harold Hollis at your service, ma’am.”
Mrs. Brodsky looked between us, her expression a hilarious mixture of relief and annoyance. She pursed her lips. “This is very improper, Zephyr,” she said at a thankfully more tolerable pitch.
“Well I didn’t invite him. Harry, what is this?”
“Will you come downstairs already? The cellar—”
“What on earth is in the cellar!”
Mrs. Brodsky frowned. “Yes, what do you mean? I went to the cellar last night, there was nothing improper in it.”
“Maybe it’s rats, Mrs. Brodsky,” said Aileen, sepulchral tones muffled through her pillow.
“Rats!”
I put my hands over my ears. Harry, at least a head taller than Mrs.Brodsky, put a solicitous hand on her shoulder and stared directly at me. Sucker, he mouthed.
“Oh,” I said. “Let me get my slippers.”
“Rats!” Mrs. Brodsky said, shaking her head in something like despair. “How could this be? I keep everything so clean…”
I choked on a laugh. “I’m sure you do, ma’am,” Harry said soothingly. “It’s probably a stray one that got stuck down there. Zeph and I will have it out in a jiffy.”
“Zephyr knows how to kill rats?” Mrs. Brodsky asked, some suspicion returning.
I had found one slipper, but the other had lodged itself among the dust bunnies far under the bed. I sighed and knelt on the floor.
“Oh, she’s a natural, ma’am,” Harry said. “One of the best I’ve ever seen.”
“Are you an exterminator?”
I sneezed.
“Something like that,” Harry said.
“Got it!” I said, emerging from beneath my bed with the slipper triumphantly aloft. Aileen, having given up even the pretense of sleep, raised her eyebrows at me.
“You have dust in your hair,” she said.
I shrugged and shook out the slipper. “The better to hunt … ah, rats with,” I said. “Lead on, Harry.”
“You will tell me when you catch it?” Mrs. Brodsky was asking as we went back down the stairs. “If there are many of them…”
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