Wicked City

by Alaya Johnson

  “Do you know what happened to your brother two before Kardal?” This question had lingered in my thoughts since Kardal’s visit, and it seemed safer than exploring the extent of Amir’s Faustian regret. Or, perhaps, just safer than what I felt when he spoke of it.

  Amir stared at me like I’d asked him to fly to the moon. “Aban?” he said. “What would you know about him?”

  “Was he exiled?” I asked.

  “That’s the story. It happened before I was born. Kashkash desired a woman in the world, but Aban took her instead. So he was exiled. I think it expires in another hundred years or so. I might meet him, then.”

  “A woman?” I said, dumbfounded. “It had nothing to do with his vessel cutting the bond between them?”

  “Zephyr, it’s practically impossible to cut the bond between a djinni and his vessel.”

  “Practically? You mean except through death.”

  His eyes flared, briefly. A few dark flakes of ash drifted to the ground like dirty snow. “Yes. So tell me, how would you like to die, since you seem to be so keen on breaking free of me? Fire? I can make it painless.”

  I winced. “But what if it is possible, Amir? What no one has ever tried?”

  This made him laugh. “People have tried. My brothers aren’t all very nice. Odious as you find me, you’d find some of them much worse.”

  I forced myself to breathe. And yet, looking at his dark skin under light dappled by a nearby tree, I couldn’t help but wonder what might happen without this artificial obligation between us. If it were possible, shouldn’t we know? “But let’s say that it did work. And I didn’t die. Would you be in trouble? Would the djinn council exile you?”

  Amir ran his hand up the bark of the tree, each touch of his fingertips leaving a small black singe. But he seemed abstracted from his agitation, a man torn between different sides of himself.

  “I can’t imagine why,” he said, finally.

  I sighed in deep relief. “Your brother,” I said, “is almost as rank a liar as you.”

  “Runs in the family, dear.”

  I started walking again, but I didn’t make it very far. Amir pulled me back, very gently, by the wrist. I faced him with about as much conscious thought as a leaf falling to the ground. He lifted my chin with one hand and twined his hand in mine with the other. My lips burned. I nearly closed my eyes. But he didn’t kiss me.

  “If you’re planning to kill yourself,” he said, “could you at least give me a few hours notice?”

  “I’m not planning to kill myself.”

  “Or break free, however you’re planning to try. Will you tell me?”

  I wanted to say no. I fully intended to say no. “If you want,” I said. “But you can’t stop me.”

  “Could I ever?” He laughed. “Do you promise?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He let me go. I stumbled on the sidewalk. I wondered if he would reach down to catch me and then touch my bare skin and perhaps raise my chin again—

  But he let me pick myself up. Left alone, I recalled the other request that Mrs. Brandon had refused, but I had to manage somehow. “I need a favor,” I said. “I need your help getting in somewhere.”

  “If it’s the moon, I can’t help you.”

  “Almost,” I said. “The morgue.”

  “You’re never boring,” he said, and took my hand.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Aileen,” I said, “you look like you’re going to a funeral. In your own shroud.”

  “The ladies expect a certain dignity.” Aileen secured the edge of her black headscarf with a pin. Though I stood right beside her vanity in the tiny dressing room, I felt as though she were not so much a person as a floating head. Every inch of skin besides her face was covered in a severe, shapeless black dress that resembled a nun’s habit. Though an evening rainstorm had finally brought the temperature back to something bearable, it was hardly cool enough outside or in to warrant such enthusiastic body covering. I fanned myself pointedly.

  “They think you’ll be better able to contact the other side if you overheat on stage?”

  “They trust me more if I look ethereal and otherworldly. Not like a flapper. Here, be useful and help me powder my face.”

  I sighed, and knelt so I was eye level with her seated at the vanity. I had to admit that I was impressed by the sumptuousness of the Spiritualist Society headquarters. No wonder Aileen ran herself ragged for them. Tonight’s Thursday evening séance was, she claimed, her biggest event yet. They must be paying her handsomely. Not that I had seen much evidence of Aileen spending the money, but perhaps she was saving it for some big purchase.

  Aileen closed her eyes and I dusted the brush lightly over her face. I stopped.

  “What’s the matter?” Aileen said.

  “You look hideous. What is this, flour?”

  “Talcum powder,” she said, sighing. “For heaven’s sake, Zeph, I’m not trying to catch a beau. Hurry up.”

  “You want to look like a ghost?” I said, whitening Aileen’s already pale face.

  She smiled thinly. “Or like someone who could have a conversation with one.”

  A sharp rap on the door startled me into dropping the brush. Aileen cursed. “Christ above, is it time already?” she muttered, and then, in a louder voice, “Come in!”

  But the intruder wasn’t the young and portly woman who served as under-secretary of the Spiritualist Society who had greeted Aileen so warmly at the door a half hour earlier. It was Lily, red-faced and dripping wet.

  “Goodness, did you run here from the Flatiron Building?” I asked. It was still raining outside. I couldn’t imagine what would have possessed Lily to ruin her clothes in this weather.

  Lily slammed the door. “I just heard back from the chemist,” she said, ignoring my question. She slipped off her jacket and then her blouse. “Do you have anything dry lying around, Aileen?” she said. “Not that fearsome habit, though. I’d rather be wet.”

  “There’s a dress in the closet,” Aileen said, picking up the brush and finishing the powder herself.

  Lily pulled out the dress—well-cared-for, at least a few years old. She sighed. “Better than nothing, I suppose.”

  Aileen shrugged. “Take me shopping if you want to borrow better clothes.”

  “Just as soon as I solve the crime of the decade, darling.” She kicked her skirt to the corner of the room, nearly missing me.

  “So you ran here because you heard from a chemist?” I asked, moving into what I hoped was a safe corner of the room.

  “You wouldn’t believe the traffic on Broadway. Anyway, I admit I was a little put out by the vampire delivery boy—the doorman nearly had a fit—but the bottle was worth it, Zeph.”

  I’d nearly forgotten I had told Charlie to give it to her a million years ago this morning. My pulse sped. “There’s something in the Faust?” I said. “Some vampire poison?”

  “I don’t know about poison, but there’s something. He said he’d run more tests, but right now it looks like the Faust has been spiked.”

  “Liquor?” I hadn’t expected that. The manner of the deaths hadn’t resembled alcohol poisoning.

  She pulled the dress over her head. “No, no,” she said, her voice muffled by the fabric. “Why would a vampire spike Faust with liquor? They spike it with blood.”

  “Of course!” I said. “So it’s tainted blood, then? Something bad enough to kill them?”

  “That’s his best guess, though it turns out no one knows much about sucker body chemistry. It’s hard to say what a human would have to do to their own blood to kill a vampire.”

  “Could it have been an accident?” If the blood came from mob sources, a bad taint didn’t much surprise me.

  She shrugged and knelt next to Aileen in front of the vanity. “Once, maybe,” she said. “But it’s happened too many times, with different bottles. And now with that poor police officer … Aileen, what have you done to your face? It’s not 1920 anymore. You can af
ford a little color.”

  “She wants to look like a ghost,” I said.

  Aileen sighed. “It’s just talcum powder.”

  “You look like a cadaver,” Lily said, “but I suppose if that’s what they want.”

  “Thank you, Lily,” Aileen said, looking pointedly at me. “For displaying such an uncharacteristic empathy for the realities of earning one’s keep.”

  “There’s earning your keep,” I said, “and practically whoring yourself for a bunch of old ladies who don’t know the first thing about the Sight.”

  Aileen whirled around, so pale and colorless that the red of her unstained lips looked like blood. “And you do, Miss Vampire Suffragette? You said you’d help me find a way out of this, remember? Back when that sucker swayed me and my whole world went to hell? Well, it’s been six months, Zeph. Where’s the help? Where’s my way back to normal? Because if you don’t have that, then stop treating me like one of your bloody charity cases for the bloody Citizen’s Council! If I have to have the Sight, then this is how I’ll use it, and I’ll thank you for not always looking at me like I’m about to fall apart.”

  She turned back to the vanity.

  “Aileen … I…” I didn’t know what to say. I knew I had behaved badly, but felt put-upon and defensive all the same.

  Lily had the look of a woman who hadn’t meant to step into a snake pit, but she gamely put a hand on Aileen’s shoulder. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that,” Lily said.

  “I take it you haven’t been on the receiving end of Zephyr’s disapproval.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “I didn’t meant to disapprove of you, Aileen,” I said.

  “What would you call it, then?”

  I paused. “Concern,” I said.

  “Of course.” She stood. “Well, this has been lovely, both of you, but I have a veil to part.”

  Someone knocked on the door. Aileen opened it, moving with the grace of a true ghost.

  “What are you doing here?” she said, sounding none too pleased.

  I peered over her shoulder and was startled to see Amir. “Looking for Zephyr,” he said, and sighed.

  “You too?” Aileen stepped back to let him in.

  Lily checked herself in the vanity mirror, decided that she looked well enough and gave him a practiced smile. “Fancy seeing you again,” she said.

  “Lovely as ever, Miss … Harding, was it?” he said.

  I would have rolled my eyes, but Aileen was close enough to hit me.

  “How did you get backstage?” I asked.

  Amir leaned against the wall and his sleeve brushed my arm. I swear he meant to do it, but his face was bland as butter. “You’re pulling quite the crowd out there,” he said to Aileen. “I think I caught sight of the mayor’s Duesenberg outside. No one paid me much attention.”

  “The mayor?” said Lily and Aileen in unison, one with excitement and the other with terror.

  “What would the mayor want to do with me?” Aileen asked.

  Amir’s smile wobbled. “I suspect he wants to contact a ghost,” he said.

  I groaned. “His father?”

  “Not exactly.” Amir glanced at Aileen.

  “Who, then?” Aileen asked.

  He looked away from both of us, unaccountably abashed. “It seems … I ran into Mrs. Brandon outside. He wants to contact the dead vampires.”

  Lily dove for her bag and pulled out a slightly damp reporter’s notebook and a pen. “The mayor wants to contact vampire ghosts? Just to be clear.”

  Aileen drilled her fingers against the doorframe. “Why would he want to do that?”

  “To ask who killed them?” Lily hazarded. “But I didn’t think vampires could have ghosts. Is it possible, Aileen?”

  “I didn’t think so. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to one, but that might not mean anything.”

  Amir’s countenance had turned so dyspeptic I would have suspected him of a stomach upset if he were human. But I understood his expression very well—it mirrored my own, realizing how badly awry his scheme from this afternoon had gone.

  “You just had to mention vampire ghosts!” I snarled. “So much for listening to Daddy’s advice!”

  “This is amazing,” said Lily.

  “Fuck,” said Aileen.

  Someone else knocked on the door. I opened it.

  “Harry!” I said. My brother stood in the doorway, and the under-secretary came into view right behind him. “Aileen,” she said. “Aileen dear, they’re calling for you.”

  “Break a leg,” said Lily.

  Aileen gasped. “What?”

  “It’s theater slang,” Lily said airily. “It means good luck.”

  “Zephyr,” said Harry, pulling me out of the dressing room and into the hallway, while the others went to the stage. “You have to be careful.”

  “Have you been following me again? Wait until I tell Mama—”

  “Listen,” he said, bending down until his mouth was by my ear. “Archibald Madison is here. And guess who’s with him? That other fellow, the one I’ve seen snooping around after you.”

  “How did you know I’d be here?” I asked.

  “I followed Madison’s guy. Which meant I followed you, I guess.”

  “Christ,” I said.

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “Of course I don’t have a gun, Harry! When do I ever carry a gun?”

  He nodded. “What I thought. Here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pocket pistol. “Keep it.”

  I backed up. “Not a chance,” I said.

  “Papa’ll kill me—”

  “Papa’s too crazy to kill you! Just leave me alone. I’ve got too much—”

  Lily waved frantically at me from down the hall. Aileen’s performance must be starting. “Just, talk to me after, okay? Nothing will happen here.”

  I left Harry standing in the hall while I caught up with Lily and Amir, who were watching from the wings behind the stage. Directly in front of us, heavy black curtains blocked our view of the small stage. Further curtains remained bunched above, but if I moved carefully to the far right, I could see Aileen’s silhouette and the packed throng that had come to see her tonight.

  “I’m the only reporter here!” Lily whispered. “Breslin will give me the front page for sure. And look over there—isn’t that the partner of that vampire officer who got killed this morning?”

  I followed her finger automatically, but I should have known even without looking. Of course McConnell would be here. If he’d heard the rumor that Aileen—the darling of the New York Spiritualist Society—was going to attempt contact with the dead vampires, he would have had to come. But the sight of him turned my formless dread into something hard and difficult to digest.

  Amir wasn’t looking at the audience. He was looking at Aileen, settling herself on the single chair in the middle of the stage. Perhaps he wouldn’t have appeared upset to anyone else, but I had spent the past several months in his company and I knew that face.

  “Yes,” I whispered angrily. “This is your fault. Vampires don’t have ghosts! What’s going to happen when she can’t contact them in front of all these people!”

  Lily looked at us intently, though I was fairly sure she couldn’t have heard me. Still, Amir pulled me into the hall. “How was I supposed to know he’d find a medium!”

  “Maybe,” I snarled, “because you impersonated a ghost! Who was he supposed to ask, the electrician?”

  “Aileen isn’t a dumb Dora,” he said, more worried than angry. “If she can’t contact a vampire, she’ll make something up, won’t she?”

  “She can’t always,” I said. “When she gets deep into the Sight, sometimes she can’t control anything.” That, I thought, was why I’d so disapproved of her using it for money. The Sight was too dangerous. I ignored the voice that told me such danger was her decision, and surely she would understand it better than I, regardless.

  Inside the auditorium, th
e audience clapped enthusiastically.

  “Oh, God,” I said.

  “I didn’t realize this would happen,” he said.

  I sighed. “You never do.” I left him and walked back to the side stage, where Lily watched the proceedings with giddy fascination.

  “I’m delighted to present, to such an illustrious audience, the woman who seems poised to become the greatest medium of our generation.” That was the head of the Society, I gathered, sounding far too pleased with herself. Aileen’s doing all the work, I thought crossly. Aileen glanced up at the ceiling, as though distracted by something beyond normal sight. At least she put on a good act. I felt terrible about our fight; I wished I’d had a chance to apologize before her performance.

  “Please be aware that the mastery of a gift as prodigious as hers sometimes requires time. I request that you keep complete silence while she contacts the Other Side. And now, may I present the great Lady Cassandra.”

  Lady Cassandra? I snorted, but thankfully another round of clapping covered the sound. Anticipation permeated the room like a low-lying fog.

  Aileen lowered her gaze and spoke, her Irish accent measured and uncanny. “Who among you wishes to speak to the dead?” she asked.

  * * *

  In the end, McConnell made the request. I’d half expected Jimmy Walker himself to rise and make some irritatingly charming speech, but he sat in the far back, as though he wished to avoid notice. This did not deter everyone in the audience from periodically turning their heads, as though curious about a piece of lint on their shoulders. New York’s most flamboyant mayor ignored the attention. Mrs. Brandon had seated herself near the front, as close to Aileen as possible. She looked at the short stage with almost devotional intensity. I recalled the photograph of her late husband: he had earnest eyes, even in faded sepia. Determined and yet slightly ill-at-ease in an old-fashioned suit. I knew she must have loved him very much, to hope for a contact during every one of Aileen’s sessions.

  When Aileen had asked her question, she was greeted with murmurs and silence. She didn’t seem perturbed by this, merely waited on her wooden chair, still as a nun contemplating God. Then McConnell rose to his feet. He wore an evening suit a few years out of date, clumsily patched by the shoulder. Though I had every reason to fear and loathe him, I could only muster an overwhelming pity. He seemed dazed, still reeling from Zuckerman’s death. I hoped that, despite Amir’s thoughtless prank, Aileen would be able to contact a vampire ghost. The whole city would benefit if we could actually catch the killer so quickly, even if it didn’t help swing the votes against Faust.