Quite possibly, I thought.
Harry’s throat worked, and he looked down in embarrassment. “Ah, the kid’s not that bad once you get to know him.”
“Get to know him? Underage vampires are dervishes of destruction. There’s a reason why we have the laws we do, Zephyr. No wonder the police were interrogating us! You made me lie to an officer of the law!”
I rolled my eyes. “No, Harry lied. You were merely ignorant. And you would have remained ignorant if you hadn’t gone around poking your nose in my brother’s possessions.”
Harry looked startled. “Yeah, Troy, what are you doing here?”
“I heard something! I have the right to inspect my own property, and in any case, you must admit, Harry, some of your late-night escapades would make anybody wonder…”
Troy’s face was getting redder than a bowl of borscht. I raised my eyebrows at Harry, who gave me a pleading look. I took pity.
“My brother has become quite the libertine,” I said. “Have some understanding, Troy. You were young once.”
This had the desired effect. “I only turn thirty next year!” he said.
“In January.”
“I am not old,” he said peevishly. “But I suppose you have a point. I enjoyed myself quite a bit at nineteen, I must say,” he must said, and winked at me.
I hoped Harry appreciated the lengths to which I would go for him. “So now, Troy, unless you would like to mire yourself further in our illegal affairs than you already have, perhaps you should go downstairs, polish your weapons, and attempt to forget everything you have just seen?”
Troy seemed to agree with this plan, as he picked up his sword and started back down the stairs.
“He will be gone within the hour, Harry, or I dock your cut!” he called, when safely on the second landing.
Harry sighed. “Yes, sir.” And then, under his breath, “Nosy bastard.”
* * *
Judah sat cross-legged on Harry’s narrow cot. He had been looking out the window at the twilit street, but turned around when we came in.
“The gold-hair man is gone?” he asked. Harry nodded. “Good,” he said. “Mama wouldn’t have wanted me to speak to him.” Something about his voice seemed odd to me, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“What did Mama want you to say?” I asked.
“Hello, Zephyr,” he said, rather solemnly. “Mama said I should speak to you, though Harry should know also. Mama wants me to tell you that Daddy is missing,” he said.
Harry frowned. “Missing! Is he out on a hunt?”
“Mama doesn’t know, but I think so. He took his gun and his grimmer.”
I looked at Harry, his worried expression mirroring mine. “Grimmer?” I said.
Judah nodded solemnly. “Yes, the book with magic words.”
“Oh, a grimoire,” Harry said and sat on the bed. Judah scooted next to him and lay his head on Harry’s shoulder. Like a real brother, I thought, and then understood what had seemed odd about Judah’s voice. When we’d first met, his accent had hinted of the Italian of his stepfather. But now he sounded like a true Montana boy, down to the slight twang with which he said “Daddy.” I should know—years of living in New York hadn’t eradicated it from my speech.
“Daddy has a grimoire?” I said. “I’ve never seen him do spell-work.”
In fact, when I had discovered that I had no aptitude for it at all, he’d comforted me by saying that spells didn’t matter to a real hunter, and most of them were useless anyway. I’d had the impression that he disdained the use of anything that wasn’t blunt, physical force.
Harry looked at me oddly. “Well, he never did it around you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Forget it.”
“Harry, answer the question!”
Perhaps I should not have sounded so imperious, because Harry’s lower jaw took on that characteristic jut of mule-headedness that I recognized all too well.
“I’m an adult,” he said. “You can’t just order me around like we’re back in Yarrow.”
“I’m not ordering you around. Just tell me since when has Daddy became some great spell worker.”
“That sounded like an order.”
“It’s not a bleeding order, it’s a request.”
“Then, in that case,” Harry said, settling back against the wall. “I’ll consider it carefully.”
Judah looked between us with clear-eyed fascination, though he said nothing.
“Judah,” I said, attempting to sound calm. “Do you know anything about Daddy’s spells? Why wouldn’t he use them around me?”
Something like worry flitted over Judah’s face. “Because you’re dangerous, Zephyr,” he said.
Harry straightened abruptly. “That’s—”
“Dangerous? To Daddy?” Daddy could outfight me blindfolded.
“Judah,” Harry said, with a quelling look. Judah fell silent. Harry bounded off the bed and took my hands, peevishness forgotten.
“It’s the magic,” he said. “It goes strange around you. It always has. Not that any of us are much use at witchery—though Mama says Sonny is showing some aptitude—but if you were nearby something would always go wrong. Daddy never cast much, but he always did it in the shed. He told us to work away from you.”
I gaped. “All of you?” I tried to imagine my thoroughly non-magical family gathering speckled toads by the new moon—and the hundred other ingredients even simple spells required—all to secretly cast little charms without my knowledge.
“Betty? Vera? Tess?” He nodded as I named each of my sisters. “And Sonny, too!” When I left home, Sonny (his real name was John Hollis, Jr.) still took most of his meals from Mama’s breast. He couldn’t be older than six, now.
Harry wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Daddy made sure we could do the basics. He said you never knew when it could save you, because sometimes the hunt goes wrong.”
I had to sit down. My heart beat too fast; I could hardly breathe. The bed creaked a little beneath my weight. Judah gave me a worried look.
“It’s okay, Zephyr,” he said, with such unusual gravitas for a child his age that I had to smile. “You have too much, that’s all.”
“Too much?”
Judah blinked, as though it were obvious. “Magic,” he said.
“But I don’t have any magic.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “You’re immune to vampires, Zeph. Have you really never wondered what that means?”
“Of course I did. You know I tried asking Daddy and Mama for years, but they would never say. I guess I…”
Harry looked a strange combination of amused and peeved. I was realizing that while my immunity had become part of the wallpaper of my life, my siblings had probably spent a good portion of theirs wondering about it.
“Forgot about it?” Harry said.
“No. Maybe a little. Do I ask why I have curly hair? Brown eyes? There are things that make up who I am, and that seems fine. The immunity is a little unusual—”
“Have you met anyone else with it?”
“I haven’t asked! I tend to keep it a secret, after all.”
“And why is that?”
“Because—” I cut myself off. He deserved more than the glib answer I felt at the back of my throat. So, why, Zephyr? I thought, and had a sudden image of myself no more than five years old, sitting on my daddy’s knee. We were in his shed and I had a small knife in my hands. He told me that my immunity is our secret, that it can never go past our family. I asked why. He said, “Because they will hurt you for it.”
“Zeph?” Harry touched my hand. I nearly jumped.
“He told me to,” I said, softly.
The three of us were silent for several minutes, while the dying sun sucked the light from the room.
“So,” I said, finally, “you think Daddy cast a spell on me that made me immune? And that’s why I can’t use magic?”
Harry shrugged. “That’s what we all reckoned,” he said. “But
it’s not as though Daddy gave us a talk about it.”
“What kind of a spell would make someone immune?” I asked.
Judah had maintained an eerie stillness up to this point—so much so that I’d nearly forgotten he was in the room. But at this, his head snapped up. He looked me straight in the eye. “A bad one,” he said.
I shivered. “Judah,” I said. “Where do you think Daddy’s gone?”
“There was a preacher who asked about you. Not a Bible preacher, the other kind. With the caps and beards.”
Harry nodded. “The rabbi Mama told me of. Do you know what he said to Daddy, Judah?”
“I couldn’t hear,” he said. “But after, Daddy found his grimmer and he left.”
To make another bad spell? But I didn’t ask the question aloud. I didn’t know if I wanted the answer.
Harry stood, massaged his temples, and pulled the string for the ceiling light. I groaned and covered my eyes; Judah didn’t react at all.
“But why spend so much on the Fairie Transport to send you?” Harry said. “I talked to Mama yesterday and she didn’t say anything about this.”
“She couldn’t,” Judah said. “The preacher left a little clay man on the roof. It will tell him if we say anything about Zephyr or Daddy.”
Harry looked baffled, but I recognized that description. “A golem,” I said.
“So the rabbi is spying on Mama. And Daddy left!”
I wrapped my arms around my waist. I felt ill. The situation at home sounded worse than I’d ever heard it. “Maybe he didn’t have a choice?”
“Maybe not,” Harry said. “But I have a feeling that nothing good is going to come out of that grimoire.”
“But the fairies didn’t send me, Harry,” Judah said.
We turned to him. “They didn’t?” I said, a slightly hysterical laugh bubbling up like champagne. “How did you get here, in that case? Flight?”
“I can’t fly,” Judah said, smiling as though he didn’t quite get the joke. “Uncle Amir brought me.”
“Amir! Where’s he now?”
“At home. He’s helping Betty kill the golem.”
Harry threw up his hands and flopped bonelessly on the bed. “Heaven help us,” he said.
My headache was returning. “Amen,” I agreed, and slid to the floor beside him.
* * *
My head throbbed like it had taken residence inside a bass drum. One would think that somewhere in the Defenders’ headquarters one might find the remedy for such a situation, but the closest I discovered was a ten-year-old bottle of Dr. Beechman’s Magic Cure-All Tonic. As I imagined that such quantities of laudanum might knock out far more than my headache, I regretfully replaced it next to the ipecac in the woefully out-of-date medicine cabinet. I entered the kitchen in search of a more robust solution, but had only made it as far as the ice closet before being startled by a voice from the door.
“Would you like me to turn on the lights?” Amir asked.
I groaned. “Only if you would like me to stab you.”
This startled a laugh out of him. “I’ve had better greetings,” he said.
Head in hand, heart in throat, I turned to face him. His teeth gleamed, but the rest of him was slightly bedraggled. It looked like he had come in from wrestling a pig. “I’ve had better greeters,” I said. “So, who won? You or the golem? And I do hope my sister made it out better than you did.” Betty was only seventeen, but she had more natural athleticism than either Harry or myself.
Amir shook his head ruefully. “Your sister finally cornered the blasted thing. I had the honors of delivering the final blow.”
I released a slow breath. I hadn’t known until this moment how worried I had been about my family. “Who do you think left it?” I asked.
“A rabbi—or, at least, someone acting the role. Someone clearly thinks your family will provide them with some useful information. Any idea why?”
My head hurt so badly I had to squint to see Amir. I wondered if I would be sick. I cast about for someplace to sit and then decided that the floor was as good a place as any. “I’d ask Daddy if he hadn’t run away,” I said.
Amir knelt. “Zeph, are you—”
“Perfectly fine,” I said. “Why were you at my parents’ house, Amir? I thought you said you were following leads.”
Amir started, but he recovered quickly—smiling and patting my knee. “I was,” he said. “I’m afraid that one didn’t quite pan out, but I’m sure you’ll agree it was lucky I arrived when I did.”
“Quite,” I said, enunciation brittle. “So what else have you been doing on my behalf? Rescuing old women from burning buildings?”
“Scaring away that police officer who was lingering across the street? Illegally breaking you into the morgue?”
I pursed my lips. Perhaps I was being just a smidge ungrateful. “That officer found me again?”
“It would appear.”
“How did you scare him away?”
Amir smiled like a cat. “I turned into smoke and whispered in his ear that his woman knew his secret.”
“What secret?”
“I have no idea,” he said, “but you humans all have them.”
I recognized the way Amir said “humans.” That mix of imperious disdain and incurable fascination, the way I imagined a scientist might refer to his laboratory animals. Needless to say, it infuriated me.
“So you threatened a poor man just because you could? Will you never stop manipulating us? Yes, Amir, humans have foibles, but perhaps not quite so many as your average djinni.”
I was in high dudgeon, but it still surprised me to see Amir look so deflated. I had expected him to argue with me (perhaps I had hoped so), but instead he bowed his head. “I hadn’t meant it that way.”
“How reassuring for the rest of us,” I said, but without much venom. I rubbed my head and wished he would look at me again. “Judah is waiting for you upstairs,” I said. “Harry is with him.”
Amir nodded and left without another word. I wondered what I had done to make him act so strange and contrite. I knew he regretted his actions this past January. I knew, and yet I never missed an opportunity to harangue him for it.
And well I should! But I couldn’t quite escape the sensation that my moral high ground had eroded over the past several months. Someone else would have brought Faust if he hadn’t, Elspeth had said. But I wished that someone else had. A few minutes later Amir returned, alone.
“Where’s Harry?” I asked.
“At the family estate,” Amir said, with a smile. I couldn’t help returning it. “He was worried about your mother. He said to tell you he’d come back tomorrow with any news.”
“You’re a regular courier service, Amir,” I said, painfully dragging myself back upright. First morgue, then liquor, then sleep.
“Only for you, dear,” he said, and pulled a tin from his pocket. “Here,” he said. “It will work better than whatever swill you had in mind.”
“What is it? Fairy dust?”
“Aspirin,” he said, laconically.
I blushed, and took two.
* * *
Given that I was about to be crucified for instigating these murders, I wanted any details to have a public viewing. It seemed to me that the mayor’s office was exercising far too much control of the public perception of this case. And that perception was skewing in a direction decidedly not in my favor. All together, our merry band numbered five: Charlie, Nicholas, Lily, Amir, and myself. Charlie and Nicholas because I had promised them. Lily and her notebook for my own protection. Lily had the jitters around the two vampires. We had first stopped at the Beast’s Rum to get them, interrupting the end of a surprisingly chaste performance of dancing girls. Bruno had been right—the vampires and humans mostly seemed to care about the otherworldly voice emanating from beneath the stairs. The fact that Nicholas had been the one making such beautiful music hadn’t reassured Lily. I couldn’t blame her for being worried about the two surviving
members of the notorious Turn Boys gang. Still, she didn’t complain. Lily was getting her promised scoop, and she’d probably spend the evening with Lizzie Borden if she had to.
Once we arrived at the south side of the Bellevue Hospital Pathological Wing, Amir told us to wait and then disappeared. I felt exposed and conspicuous, but hardly anyone passed us by.
“He’s been in a long time,” Lily said, looking around nervously. “Are you sure he can do this?”
“Yeah, Charity,” Nicholas said. “I don’t know that I trust your smoke belcher.”
“He said he can get us in, he can get us in.” I spoke with such authority that they both backed down. It was odd, I thought, that I wasn’t more worried. But I trusted him. Sure enough, after twenty-one minutes we caught his signal: the on-and-off flash of lights in the corner windows.
Charlie grinned. “I knew you were right, Zephyr!” he said. Nicholas cuffed him on the back of the neck. Lily sighed and brushed passed all of us. The office windows were behind a short balcony a little over five feet from the ground. Amir shut the lights and stepped onto the balcony while the rest of us slunk into the bushes and trees below. He lifted Lily to the balustrade while Nicholas and Charlie scrambled up with little difficulty.
I stayed on the street to make sure that no one saw us entering, and so I was the last to get inside. Amir lifted me with an ease that would have been uncanny had I given it much thought. I lingered in his arms longer than necessary.
“All clear, habibti?” he whispered.
I nodded, dry-throated. He put me down.
The others were waiting inside what appeared to be a medical library. In the moonlight coming through the window, I could just make out the shapes of thick leather-bound volumes with long, incomprehensible titles printed in silver foil.
“I don’t see no bodies,” Nicholas said, so loudly that I winced.
“You were expecting them in the library?” Lily said, dripping with disdain.
“Maybe I’m expecting smoky here to keep his bargain, eh, baldracca?”
I doubted Lily understood Italian any better than I, but the gist seemed clear. She reddened and turned away, her reporter’s notebook buckling from the force of her grip.
Wicked City Page 20
