Wicked City

by Alaya Johnson

  Amir nodded as the mayor removed a tiny scroll from a gold-inlaid case. “So you were hoping I might be able to decipher it? I have some familiarity with the old texts. I’ll do what I can.”

  Everyone leaned in until our heads nearly touched. The scroll looked like what Mayor Walker had claimed: a tiny piece of antiquity, written and illustrated in ornate calligraphy. Somehow I had ended up beside Amir, his ear grazing the top of my forehead. I longed to catch his eye and see if he understood what sort of trap this might be, but there was no way to do so discreetly. Whatever the mayor’s plans, we had no choice but to see it through.

  “Well,” the mayor said. “You can read it?”

  He had backed away, regarding Amir with a half-smile and eyes wide with anticipation. I didn’t understand why. Amir seemed exactly as he had been. But as I looked at him, my vision started to go light and hazy. The image of him and Lily wavered and then split in two. A sharp pain, like a hammer blow, went through my skull. I held back a moan. Could that blow to my head still be affecting me?

  Amir didn’t look up, but I felt his hand rest, steady, on my back. The pain receded a little.

  “It’s quite simple,” Amir said, his words clipped. “It says: I am the djinni of the lands beyond the moon, and I will obey the wishes of whosoever compels me to read these words.”

  I felt another, fainter, pain ricochet through my skull. My vision failed entirely. Amir’s lips were the last thing I saw before the world faded to white. I wondered if I had died, though I could still hear voices, distant and distorted.

  “Zephyr, are you all right?” It was Lily, her hand on my elbow, giving me a quizzing look. I turned my head with effort—the pain had gone, leaving a giddy exhaustion in its wake.

  “I’m not sure that gin was the best idea,” I said to her.

  “And what a strange artifact,” Lily said to the mayor. “Are ancient texts in the habit of discussing genies?”

  Amir replaced the scroll in its surely priceless case. He did not even look at me. “It’s not entirely uncommon,” he said. “There have been legends for millennia about how to bind the djinn to humans. It seems your adventurous friend has happened upon a fairly common trick in past centuries. Disguising the trap in a gilded apple, as it were. I can’t imagine many of the djinn have ever fallen for it, but it’s certainly a curiosity.”

  Amir’s smile held only quizzical friendliness as he handed the scroll back to the mayor. Jimmy Walker was far too good a politician to let his disappointment show, but I saw his moment of surprise and hesitation before he took the case and replaced it in his coat pocket.

  It had been a trap, I thought. And somehow, Amir and I had escaped.

  “Miss Hollis,” Amir said, ignoring the mayor entirely. “Would you allow me to procure you another drink? And you, Miss Harding?”

  The mayor blinked and then shrugged. “So much for divergences. I must get back—I’m sure the papers will print that I missed the necessary votes for the bill because I was too busy carousing in back hallways at my own supporters’ dinner!”

  “Those quotes, Mayor?” Lily asked, retrieving her notebook. He gestured for her to follow him and they walked back into the banquet hall.

  Which left Amir and I alone in the porters’ hallway.

  “What was that?” I whispered.

  He shook his head, though I don’t know who he thought would be listening. “Will champagne do?” he asked.

  “No one will believe it’s punch.”

  He clenched his jaw, revealing, for less than a second, a deep, roiling fury. “If you think I give a shit what those ignorant humans believe, you don’t know me at all.”

  And I did know him. Perhaps I wished I didn’t, but I could no more remove my awareness of him than I could my own skin. He had known what the mayor planned; he had held on to me so I wouldn’t fall.

  “Champagne will do,” I said.

  * * *

  Archibald Madison arrived dramatically, just as we were sitting to dinner, with Judith Brandon scurrying in his wake like a seagull after a ship. I admit I gasped a little when I saw his towering figure stride directly to Jimmy Walker and shake his hand.

  “I’m glad you could make it, Archie,” Jimmy Walker said mildly, and gave a respectful nod to a breathless Mrs. Brandon. “Why don’t you sit beside me?”

  This displaced Mr. Miller, the Manhattan borough president, but given that he’d been firmly in the mayor’s camp from the beginning, he was more than happy to give his pride of place for the prospect of securing this final coup. Though I despised the dirty politics that governed this city, I couldn’t help but feel fascinated by the jockeying and gamesmanship on display at this most political of social events. I could easily see how some people got so seduced by the game, they entirely forgot the purpose for which they played.

  Lily and I had been seated at the far right end of the table, with the other journalists and third-tier guests. She was talking excitedly about the quotes she’d gotten from the mayor and Al Smith about the Faustian menace. She’d tried to talk to Sachem Voorhis, but even her vivacious smile couldn’t induce him to give an interview. I was still a little shaky from the incident in the hallway, and merely nodded at appropriate intervals while Lily chattered on. In her own way, she could be quite restful.

  I expected speeches, but Jimmy Walker seemed perfectly inclined to talk with his neighbors and let the rest of us eat in peace. Lily induced the bribable waiter to bring me a plate of cucumber sandwiches in lieu of the beef bourguignon. Amir and I glanced at each other from time to time, though he was seated clear on the other side of the table with most of the aldermen and Tammany officials. Seeing him here had been bad enough—especially after I had declared my intention to never see him again just this morning. But after the incident in the hallway, my emotions had revealed themselves as intractable and conflicting. With each look, I remembered his hand on my back. Regarding my dessert, I furiously recalled the lies he had told my mother so she would lobby on his behalf. He was my Janus, possessing a beautiful face and an ugly one, and I never knew which side was real.

  I was taking a listless bite of strawberry parfait when Bill Oliver, three seats away, put down his napkin and leaned forward over the table.

  “Miss Hollis?” he said. I looked over in surprise. “Would you mind if I asked you a question?”

  “On the record?” I asked.

  Lily smiled like she wanted to kill him. “Now, Bill—”

  “You can’t stop her from talking, Lily,” he said. “And yes, for the paper, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Lily gave me an entreating look, but it felt churlish of me to refuse to speak to another reporter at what was, after all, a press event. “What would you like to know?”

  “I’m rather wondering,” he drawled, lifting the pen that had heretofore lain idle by his dessert plate, “if your presence here tonight means you’ve changed your tune about Faust. I’d be much obliged to know why—I recall the sensation of Miss Harding’s story this past January. I believe you were involved in taking down the gangster who originated it.”

  A discreet cascade of pens had been readied while Bill Oliver asked his question. Lily, seeing the tide turned against her, sighed and picked up her own notebook.

  “Well, Zephyr?” she said.

  Panic welled in me, though of course I should have anticipated this question. I could hardly tell them the real reason for my recent contact with the mayor. And I owed too much to Elspeth to publicly reveal my ambivalence about Faust prohibition.

  “I don’t,” I said, “I’m not—no, I mean to say, I’m most emphatically not in the mayor’s camp on the issue of Faust. I’m here tonight at—because of my general interest in the issue given, as you say, my past involvement.”

  A younger reporter to Bill Oliver’s left leaned forward. “Well, honey,” he said, “in that case, how’d you snag an invitation?”

  I looked to Lily, but she was clearly reveling in schadenfreude, and would b
e no help. “I don’t know,” I said. “You’ll have to ask the mayor.”

  This elicited some good-natured laughter and scribbling. I hoped I wouldn’t sound too absurd in the morning dailies. Thankfully, I was spared the rigors of further questioning by the chime of Mayor Walker’s spoon against a glass.

  “Ladies, gentlemen, I’d like to thank all of you for coming out tonight. It’s been a terrific showing in support of an issue which, as you all know, has come to mean quite a bit to me and what I hope to leave as my legacy to the city of New York. This has been a tough fight, but tonight I want to tell you, as my friends, closest supporters—and best adversaries—” he gave a friendly nod to the press, though I imagined this category included Archibald Madison foremost, “that I firmly believe we have the votes to fully license and tax the vampire liquor known as Faust.”

  Some reporters joined in on the applause, which struck me as being in bad taste. I wondered if the mayor truly did have the votes to pass the bill. Last I had heard from Elspeth, there were still enough holdouts that defeat was possible. But perhaps Madison’s defection had tipped the scales.

  “Now,” said the mayor, when he could be heard, “you might have noticed our very special guest. It’s been my great pleasure to talk to him tonight, but I know the rest of you haven’t yet had the opportunity. So I thought I’d give him a chance to say a few words to everyone here. Especially my boys in the press, since I don’t know that you’d let me leave the room otherwise.”

  Laughter and clapping. Lily’s pen hovered over the page, trembling with her eagerness to record what would surely be tomorrow morning’s top story. For my part, I felt a curious unease as Archibald Madison thanked the mayor and stood up. He had that same fanatic gleam I recognized from his speech during the evidentiary hearing. His zeal had made him influential; I supposed he had a certain charisma. But he disturbed me. His hatred of vampires ran so irrationally deep that I couldn’t help but shudder every time I looked at him. He thought of them as vermin, whether or not he had agreed to side with the mayor out of pragmatism.

  “I’d like to tell you a story, if you’ll permit me. The relevance will come clear soon enough. This story is about a youngster, never mind who for the moment, who grows up learning that true justice can sometimes only be found in hatred. This youngster knows, or has been told, about those who look and act just like real people, but who have dangerous lusts, unnatural desires. They are not people, they are Others and they must be killed. The youngster learns to kill, taught by a father who learned this lesson in blood and fire and pain. The youngster’s father is a hero, and a hero is a hard man to look up to.”

  From the other side of the table, Amir caught my gaze and frowned. He jerked his head ever so slightly to the right. I turned around in time to catch a faint movement by the grand doors, the hint of a whisper. Had someone else arrived? But no one entered the room, and I focused again on Madison’s odd speech.

  “… And so this youngster came up in the world, learned to kill and then learned to be shrewd. To repudiate killing these Others in public while effecting means to eradicate them in private. The youngster sought justice through hate, but what she didn’t understand—”

  A gasp went through the room and landed on me like a bucket of icy water. Oh God no, I thought. I couldn’t move.

  “What she didn’t understand—” Madison continued, louder now, “was that which her hero father had never taught. There might be justice, and there might be virtue of fighting abominations, but there is a third pillar that supports these two, one that must support them, if we are to value ourselves as men over beasts, as humans over Others. And that third pillar is the law. Human and imperfect though it may be, it must be obeyed or broken at one’s own peril. This youngster broke the law, and sought to blame it on someone far less capable than herself. But I am grateful to her, in my own way. I’m grateful because it caused me to see how my own teachings have neglected this important pillar, this separation of man from beast. Yes, vampires are abominations. Yes, I will fight until I die for their eradication from society. But I will never advocate the breaking of the law. Given that alternative, we are better off with Faust in the hands of the sinners who will suffer its taint.”

  Whispers ran through the room. I looked at my plate, struggling to keep my face neutral. A few of the sharper journalists gave me long, speculative looks. I wondered if I should leave, but surely fleeing the scene would only confirm everyone’s suspicions.

  Madison looked around the table and, apparently satisfied, pulled a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket. I couldn’t help it; I looked at Amir. He stared back at me, a mirror of my own shock and helplessness. His hands didn’t move, his face didn’t change expression, but I felt his offer: make a wish.

  I looked away. Even if I made a wish now, I didn’t see how I could undo the disaster unfolding with such choreographed precision before me. What would be equal to this devastation? I might as well wish I had never been born.

  “I will read you a letter, sent to my associate one week before the killings began. ‘My father’—”

  “Mr. Madison!” To everyone’s utter astonishment, Judith Brandon bolted upright, nearly knocking over her chair. “You will refrain from reading classified material from ongoing police investigations in this public space!”

  The mayor looked significantly less apoplectic than his advisor, but he nodded. “Yes, Madison, what’s this all about?”

  Madison looked up from his paper. “It’s about bringing to justice the true perpetrator of these crimes. It’s about exposing a hypocrite and a fraud to the world.” He raised a trembling hand, like the finger of a vengeful deity.

  “Zephyr Hollis,” he said, “before God, man, and law, I declare you a murderer.”

  I found myself on my feet, my chair on the floor behind me. “I have done nothing!”

  “Do you deny that you wrote letters to my associate for months encouraging these murders, and then provided him with the means to do so?”

  “Of course I deny it! I have dedicated my life to improving conditions—”

  “A clever disguise of your true purpose, revealed here in this letter.” Abruptly, before Mrs. Brandon could stop him, he strode to the reporters’ side of the table and tossed the paper in front of Bill Oliver.

  “See the evidence for yourselves,” he said.

  “Mr. Madison!” Judith Brandon looked on the verge of tears.

  The mayor stood up, but didn’t walk over. He seemed disappointed and amused at the same time, though this stunt of Madison’s had surely dealt his plans a body blow. “I take it you haven’t actually changed your position on Faust?”

  Madison laughed. “The devils don’t need their own brew, Mr. Mayor. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

  Something hard and cold snapped around my wrists. I didn’t even have time to turn around. Harry would say I needed more training, and perhaps I did. But I can’t berate myself for not realizing that McConnell had stepped behind me with a pair of handcuffs.

  “You’re under arrest, Miss Hollis,” he said, his lips like a lover’s against my ear.

  “You’ve probably heard this one before,” I said, “but I’ve been framed.”

  “Of course you have,” he said. I was almost grateful that he led me from the banquet; with all the flashbulbs in my eyes, I could hardly see at all.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “My sister plays harmonica,” I said, “but I could never be bothered to learn. Seems such a shame, now.”

  Across from me, separated by a grubby card table and an ashtray with a dozen cigarette butts, McConnell rubbed his temples. “I would take this more seriously in your place, Miss Hollis.”

  “I’m serious as a silver bullet,” I said, bravely tamping down a hysterical giggle. “But you can’t blame me if these farcical charges prompt some levity. It’s all a girl can do to keep from screaming.”

  “I don’t think the murder of thirteen vampires—one of whom was a dec
orated officer—is a farce.”

  “I don’t think so either. And yet here I am, the innocent accused.” I grimaced. “You can bet the mayor wasn’t anticipating that for dessert.”

  McConnell gave me a long look. We had been in this room for several hours at least. I could not know precisely, because they had relieved me of my pocketwatch along with most of my other possessions. I attempted to take heart from the fact that McConnell seemed so keen to wring a confession from me. It implied that the case against me was not as solid as he wished.

  He stood up and stretched his arms high above his head, so they brushed the low ceiling. “I’m going to get tea, Miss Hollis. Would you like some?”

  I wondered at his sudden change of mood. Perhaps his kindness now was meant as a shock to my system, after the relentless questioning of the last few hours. Perhaps he thought I would start blubbering into my tea and confess my sins.

  His lips twisted in a sardonic half-smile. “I won’t poison it, Miss Hollis.”

  “With milk and extra sugar, if you please,” I said.

  Alone in the small interrogation room, I looked around idly for some means of escape. McConnell’s pen might have a point fine enough to tumble a lock. It wasn’t long enough, however, and I wouldn’t make it very far even if I could leave this room. I wrapped my arms around my torso, fingering the smooth silk of Lily’s dress. Probably my dress now—I couldn’t imagine her wearing it after my ignominious performance. At this very moment the presses would be running images of the vampire suffragette being dragged away in handcuffs. At least McConnell had condescended to remove them once we reached the safety of police headquarters. I took a strange comfort in the resplendence of my clothing; as though the aura of just-from-Paris Lanvin might shield me from the worst depredations of my situation. I had asked for a lawyer, and McConnell informed me that none could be sent up before tomorrow morning. And I expected no help from the mayor’s quarter.