Wicked City

by Alaya Johnson

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Your lawyer,” McConnell said. “He said you hired him.”

  “Pro bono,” Amir said smoothly and I stared.

  “You’re a lawyer?”

  His lips quirked up. “A way to pass the time. I have a degree, but you’ll want to find a trial lawyer if this mess goes any further.”

  “You’ve been granted bail, Miss Hollis,” McConnell said, brushing past Amir to unlock the door. “Someone thought you were worth a hundred thousand dollars, so don’t go running back to Montana.”

  This sum seemed so improbably large that I skipped over it entirely. “Did you call my family?”

  For the first time since his arrival, I noticed that McConnell seemed genuinely angry, not merely gruff. “They were out,” he said. “At least, after I identified myself as a police officer. Several calls went unanswered.”

  I closed my eyes. “Bloody stakes,” I said. I should have known that Mama would go to ground after the scare with Daddy and the golem on the roof. But good luck explaining that to McConnell.

  “Worried, Miss Hollis? I would be. You had me out chasing rainbows all afternoon. But at least now I’ve learned something useful.”

  “You have?”

  “You were obviously worried that we would arrest you. So you warned your family not to speak to the police. But why do that if you’re innocent, Miss Hollis?”

  “You’ve been hounding me all week! And my family—”

  McConnell leaned against the bars. “Knows we’re investigating you. Knows we’d want to talk to them, though they shouldn’t. Not if you’re innocent. Not unless you knew the contents of those letters before I showed them to you. And how would you have managed that, Miss Hollis? Only if you’d written them.”

  Amir took a step forward. “Officer, we have paid bail. If necessary, I’ll wake the judge.”

  McConnell shrugged and unlocked the door to my cell. “Enjoy freedom, Miss Hollis, if you can in this weather. I’ll see you in court.”

  * * *

  “There’s a car waiting just outside,” Amir told me from the vestibule. “Keep your head down. Don’t look at the cameras, don’t answer questions.”

  I didn’t ask him if he was overreacting. The buzz of eager reporters and protestors outside made me feel as though I were drowning in quicksand.

  “Why did you get me out?” I asked. I adjusted my dress and wished that I didn’t look quite so rumpled.

  He gave me a sharp look, more despairing than I expected. “Do you know anyone else who could part with a hundred grand?”

  His every look and gesture offered me something, but I didn’t know how to accept it. I retreated behind insults.

  “At least your profligacy is good for something.”

  “For something,” Amir echoed, again in that strange tone. Was I treating him too harshly? Probably, but I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I stopped.

  “Would you like me to shield you?” he asked.

  An abyss seemed to have opened up at my feet, the same shade as his dark hair. “Shield?”

  “From the reporters,” he said, softly. “I could put my arm around you. Act as a barrier.”

  I gave a hollow laugh. “No. That’s quite all right. I’ve already cost you a hundred grand, let me not be responsible for ruining a suit with rotten eggs.”

  Amir smiled. “Ever brave, Zephyr.”

  I pushed open the door, into the yawning pit of unwanted fame.

  The questions were relentless as Amir had warned. I ignored the voices and the flashbulbs alike, pushing blindly ahead to the black car waiting at the curb. Amir cleared the way ahead, but I had to fend off grasping hands all the same. Calls of “Why did you do it, Zephyr?” blended with chants of “Vampires are people!” and “We support human rights!” until they seemed to form a leviathan, a creature of misery and ill-intent. I elbowed aside a particularly insistent reporter and ran for the door, which Amir held open. I’d plunged inside before I realized that I shared the backseat with someone else.

  “Nicholas?” I said, recognizing his silhouette. Amir climbed into the passenger side front seat and shut the door.

  “We made it,” Amir said, at the same moment that Nicholas turned to me—his face a mask of naked, animal fury—and slammed my body against the door and window. If I hadn’t been so tired or frazzled, I might have managed to overpower him. As it was, he had a knife by my ribs and his fangs near my neck before I could catch my breath.

  “Drive, Charlie,” Nicholas rasped, and the car lurched forward.

  My skin tingled; Amir had blasted enough heat to scorch the seats. “What in blazes are you—”

  “Quiet, smoky,” Nicholas said, the quiet of his voice in stark contrast with the wild fury in his eyes. “I’ll stick her up the ribs if you more than breathe.”

  I shivered. The knife edge vibrated against my skin. “What is this, Nicholas?”

  “You killed him,” he said. His quiet voice broke on the last syllable. He sounded like a real thirteen-year-old boy, and that scared me more than anything. “You killed Kevin, and all this time you pretended to help.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. Even speaking was difficult, with my face squashed against the window glass.

  “There’s letters,” Nicholas said. He pushed the knife until it nicked my skin. I hardly felt it.

  “It’s a frame-up. Someone else wrote those letters to implicate me.”

  “Who’d do that, Charity?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Guess.”

  I hesitated, then realized plausibility ought to be my last concern. “Anyone with an axe to grind against vampires. Madison, maybe.”

  He moved his mouth a little from my neck. “Madison?” he said. “He’s the one who said you did it.”

  “That would be clever of him,” I said, and very carefully detached my cheek from the glass. Charlie was driving us southeast, toward the river. At this hour, the docks were deserted. No one would heed a call for help. It appalled me that I had forgotten how dangerous Nicholas could be. He had attacked me once before. I had seen his face when we visited the morgue. His grief then was his grief now, only now it had a target.

  “It makes sense,” said Charlie, timidly.

  “I told you to stay out of this,” Nicholas said. I had been watching his reflected image in the glass, but suddenly he leaned back in his seat and allowed me to turn around.

  “Still got the knife,” he said, looking between me and Amir. “Still faster than both of you. Don’t try anything.”

  Amir studied my midsection, but the red of the dress would have masked any blood. “I’m all right,” I said, before he could ask.

  Nicholas gave a slow smile, showing off unretracted fangs. “Two boys sweet on you, Charity?” he said, tossing the knife from one hand to another. “That’s some trick you got there. I told Charlie he liked you too much to see straight. He didn’t think much of the idea that you’d killed Kevin and the others. But I’ll tell you, Zephyr Hollis, I think you coulda done it. Maybe you didn’t. You’ve always seemed on the up and up about this do-gooder business. You’re a nice enough girl, but I ain’t sweet on you. I remember how you gutted my papa on the floor of that heathen room of his. Right through the ribs, thatta girl, and there ain’t a sucker in this city made it past five who can’t tell who to watch out for. You’re a Defender, Charity. I knew it the moment you pulled out that sword.”

  “I’m not a Defender,” I said.

  “Used to be.”

  “I gave it up. For charity, as you say.”

  He gave his knife a considering nod. “Maybe you just pretended?”

  “I saved your life,” I tried.

  “You’re still talking,” he said.

  I swallowed and fell silent.

  He didn’t seem inclined to speak, and Charlie and Amir didn’t dare. We drove over the Brooklyn Bridge, the lights of the city suspended in a summer fog. The moon was lost behind clouds,
but it still glowed brightly. I wondered if he would try to kill me; if I could move fast enough to stop it. I didn’t think so. Just over the bridge, he slammed the knife in its sheath.

  “Pull over, Charlie,” he said.

  Charlie turned the wheel with a screech of tires. “I knew you’d believe her, Nick!”

  “I don’t believe her. I’m just not sure. So here’s how it goes, Charity. You’ve got a day to prove you didn’t kill Kevin. No one kills one of my boys without answering for it. Not even you.”

  I doubted I could learn much in a day, but I nodded. What was one more impossible deadline to add to the list?

  Nicholas left without another word. Charlie hesitated, looked back at me, and doffed his cap. “I’ll make him see sense, Miss Zephyr,” he said, and then stumbled out of the car.

  Amir looked after them from the front seat. “I could kill him,” he said, by way of an offer.

  “No.”

  “You’re that fond of him?” I didn’t understand the flatness in Amir’s voice. He wouldn’t look at me.

  “I’m … in a way. He sings like an angel.”

  “What if he kills like one, habibti?”

  My breath caught. “If it comes to that, I’ll do it. I owe him that much.” Maybe he’d been right to call me a Defender. I’d never forgotten my training.

  Amir sighed and turned around. The puddling streetlight made him look gaunt. I wondered how much effort it had taken to get me out of jail. Or perhaps he had been busy teleporting?

  “What happens now, Amir?” I hadn’t meant to say that. It was too open, too vulnerable. Amir was a paradox, a man whose mere presence invited me to let down my guard, and whose conduct least deserved it.

  He reached out and cupped my cheek in his warm hand. “You go to trial, if necessary. You didn’t do it, Zephyr. We’ll find enough evidence to exonerate you.”

  He removed his hand a moment later, as though surprised to have found it there.

  “You’re so sure?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Of your innocence? Don’t be daft, Zeph.”

  “Everyone else believed Madison.”

  “It only seemed so to you. The circumstances of your arrest were colorful, but the letters can only damage you so much without other evidence. I was just speaking with your friend Elspeth and she doesn’t believe a word of it.”

  “Elspeth! What did you want her for?”

  He smiled. “About your plans to toss me into the rubbish heap tonight.”

  I sat up very straight. “You were trying to sabotage the ceremony, weren’t you?”

  “Even if that were possible, I’d hardly admit it.”

  “You’d say anything if you thought it would make me do what you want!” This anger, which had begun as a wan flame, grew larger and more comforting. Whereas the ordeal of jail and Nicholas’s attack had left me feeling weak and frightened, my familiar anger at Amir’s behavior served as a panacea. I could do anything as long as I hated him. “You’ve been manipulating me since we met.”

  “That word again. Do you know, Zephyr, I’m beginning to wonder if you aren’t so obsessed with manipulation because you do so much of it yourself.”

  This hit a good deal harder than I was willing to admit. “The truth doesn’t stop existing just because you twist it enough. It will always come back to you.”

  Amir leaned back against the dashboard, still facing me. I had a momentary pang of regret that we were still separated by the bulky car seats, but I didn’t explore why. The anger was more appealing.

  “Will it?” he said quietly. “That’s fascinating, because running from the truth has worked for most of your life, as far as I can tell.”

  This was such an appalling, terrifying thing to say that my mouth fell open. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Your father,” he said, “did something to you to make you immune. And yet every one of your siblings knows more about it than you do. Your father—”

  “Did not do anything—anything—like the vile slander you’ve accused him of. I don’t know what my immunity has to do with this, but however he did it—”

  “How did he do it?”

  It was a simple question, posed in a reasonable tone, but it absorbed my words like dry sand. I stared at him, desperate and afraid.

  “You don’t know,” he said after a minute, when I couldn’t speak.

  No, I didn’t. Did Harry? Did Vera? I thought of the little boy lying in our backyard, whose name I’d never known.

  But no, Daddy would never have done anything like that.

  “I’m leaving,” I said abruptly, and pulled at the door handle. Amir opened his own door so that we stood, finally, with nothing between us but our own pride and fear.

  “Where?” he asked. He seemed hopeful. I didn’t understand why.

  “Sofia’s,” I said. “I have an appointment.”

  “She isn’t who you need to see,” he said sharply. “You won’t listen to me, I can see that, but you truly haven’t figured it out by now?”

  “Not who I need to see? You really have some gall. You have no right to tell me what to do.”

  He clasped his hands together. “Zephyr … don’t.”

  I looked up at him. Would I ever see him again? The anger made every other emotion recede, but regret passed me like the smell of roses in Shadukiam.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “It won’t solve anything.”

  I laughed. “It will solve you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I sat on a chair in the middle of a chalk circle, while Sofia drew holy words in Arabic in a careful pattern around another one. We were in her kitchen. I had asked if the spell would hurt her baking, but she laughed and said, “Holy ones like honey bees—give mystery.” I wasn’t entirely sure what this meant, but I supposed that was the point. While I waited, I nervously reviewed what Elspeth and Sofia had told me about the nature of the bargaining. I had to have things to offer whatever demon she summoned. I knew from my Montana days that demons weren’t particularly interested in human tangible goods. I wouldn’t get away with offering a priceless Ming vase, even if I had one to give. Demons were like bad witches in fairy tales; they wanted your firstborn child, your voice, your youth. In my present mood, even such an exorbitant price seemed worth it to get rid of Amir forever. But first I would try lesser goods: the red in my hair, my skill with a blade, perhaps even my singing voice. I hoped this would be enough.

  I thought of Amir only as dust to be brushed away. I buried any recollections of our final conversation, of his face as he watched me turn from him. If his voice seemed to bubble up from the murky depths as I watched Sofia prepare the summoning, I firmly ignored it. She isn’t the one you need to see. You haven’t figured it out by now? I heard him say, and I smothered the voice with images of the endless boxes of Faust that Lily had photographed in his possession. He had no moral standing from which to lecture me. He had no further claim on my indulgence and certainly not on my affections. I would bargain with this demon, and Amir would go away, and that would be the end of it.

  Sofia stood up. “Is all right?” she said. She looked younger tonight—perhaps from the soft glow of the candles placed around the room. She had changed from a matronly skirt and blouse to a simple black robe. Instead of a tight chignon, she’d bound her thick salt-and-pepper hair in two rope-like braids.

  “It will be,” I said, and this seemed to satisfy her. I felt absurd, still in the red dress I was afraid I would have to burn after all this was through. But I had only taken enough time to stop at home and take my remaining cash from the bottom of my trunk, along with ten dollars Aileen had given me without question. If I had dared to clean up and change, I had been afraid my anger would give way. Amir didn’t deserve another moment’s consideration. Sofia hadn’t batted an eye at either my appearance or the dress, though she must have known of my circumstances before arrival. Imperturbability must be a good quality in a sahir.

  Our
language barrier hadn’t mattered very much, at this late stage. Sofia had drawn herself a third circle opposite the main one. She stepped inside it and placed the chalk beside her foot.

  “I start,” she said. I braced myself, but she kept her hands at her side. “You sure?” she asked, after a moment. “The djinni…” she trailed off, struggling for words. “He not bad,” she said, finally. “For djinni.”

  I felt as though she had slapped me. After all I had gone through just to get to this point? “I am sure,” I snapped. This seemed sufficient; Sofia nodded, though I wasn’t sure how to interpret the look in her eyes.

  She began with a chant, low-throated and insistent. The air had already been stifling, but now it felt as though a charged storm cloud had blown through the windows. My hair began to lift around my head, and the layered skirt of the much-abused dress rustled in an invisible breeze. Sofia continued chanting. In the center of the main circle, smoke began to gather. Faintly, at first, like a guttered candle, and then burgeoning into a roiling, billowing mass. It glowed red and black and smelled like a forest fire. I’d only seen Daddy summon a demon once, and this didn’t look anything like that last time. In fact, all that smoke reminded me of a—

  Oh no.

  Sofia’s chant grew louder as the apparition in the circle expanded. It still hadn’t resolved itself into anything I could recognize as a figure, but it appeared alive all the same. As though something inside that glowing mass were watching and evaluating me. A djinni. One I’d never met before—I’d been around Amir and Kardal enough to recognize them by the smell of their smoke. I watched it grow to fill the entire space inside the circle. I wondered if it would break through the ceiling, but the smoke seemed content to settle there, towering above the two of us. The smoke now blocked my view of Sofia, but her voice had not ceased chanting once during the astonishing display of her summoning. After another minute, the smoke began to coalesce, collapsing into something resembling a face and torso. I had thought Kardal made little effort to appear human, but this djinni made him look like Rudolph Valentino. His face shifted into shapes like a series of child’s masks, though his eyes maintained their singular bright focus on me. His head was at least as large as his torso and anything below vanished into billowing smoke.